Vanity Read Free

ducked into an alley, gasping for breath, hoping she’d given him the slip, but then she saw him advancing on the mouth of the alley, a look of set purpose on his face.
    She plunged out of the alley and back into the rowdy crowd that was beginning to disperse. The mood was now quarrelsome and voices were raised in streams of abuse, fights erupting as knots of people struggled to get out of the square. A rank of chairmen touted for custom as the throng eddied past them and Octavia headed for the line. She glanced over her shoulder, praying that her pursuer had followed her into the alley, but he was still behind her, keeping pace with her, pushing through the crowd, seeming not to hurry and yet somehow gaining. There was a relentlessness to this dogged pursuit, and her heart began to thump, the first tremors of panic fluttering over her skin. She had his watch. If he’d guessed and was intending to capture her and bring her before the magistrates with the evidence still about her, then she’d be facing the hangman as surely as the two unfortunates whose deaths had just provided the crowd with such an amusing morning.
    Her hand slipped through the slit in her skirt, feeling the laden pouch. The tapes beneath her petticoat fastened at her back and were impossible to reach one-handedly through the slit, so she couldn’t untie the pouch and throw it from her at this point even if she wished. And she didn’t wish. It would be a cowardly waste of a morning’s work. There was enough to pay the rent, redeem Papa’s precious books and buy his medicine, and put good food on the table for a month to come. And if she gave it up, those heart-stopping, nauseating moments of terror that had accompaniedevery artful brush of her fingertips would have been for nothing.
    Resolutely, she withdrew her hand and slithered sideways through a noisy family group bewailing the disappearance of a child. They closed up behind her, arguing violently. The rank of chairmen was almost ahead of her now … three more steps …
    “Shoreditch!” she gasped to the leading chair, and moved to step inside as one of the two chairmen held open the door.
    “No, I don’t think so, Miss Morgan.” A hand closed over her shoulder as the quiet voice spoke, gently mocking, behind her. “You see, I really do feel I have a duty to see you safely restored to the bosom of your family.”
    She was caught. But he couldn’t know for sure that she had his watch. She was hardly dressed like a common thief, and the only evidence he had was that she’d been standing beside him when the cry of “pickpocket” had gone up. She turned to him with a haughty toss of her head. “Sir, I find your attentions unwelcome. I trust you won’t oblige me to summon the constable.”
    Amusement glittered in the gray eyes bent with such mocking solicitude upon her. “On the contrary, ma’am. Perhaps I should summon him for you.”
    “You goin’ to Shoreditch, lady, or not?” the chairman demanded truculently before she could gather her wits to deal with this very deliberate calling of her bluff.
    “Most certainly I am.” With relief she turned again to enter the sedan chair.
    “No,” her infuriating companion said in the same affable tone as before. “No, I really don’t think so.” Taking her arm now in a grip that meant business, he drew her away from the line of chairs. “You and I are going to have a little talk, Miss Morgan.”
    “About what, sir?” she snapped.
    “Oh, I think you know,” he said equably. “A little matter of private property and public assaults. But let us get out of this crush.”
    She seemed to have no choice, but at least there was nomore talk of constables. Maybe he’d be satisfied with the return of his property and that would be an end to it. She said nothing, offering no further resistance as he swept her long before him through the gradually decreasing crowd.
    Suddenly the atmosphere changed. The mob began to push and shove with greater