Whitechapel Wagers 02 - Wanton Wager Read Free

there on the pier and been discarded in the Thames. They looked for him for months before Mama found a crumpled note inside a drawer. In it, George Hamilton made a half-hearted attempt to explain why he was not suited to marriage or fatherhood. Mama thought he would return one day. Ada knew they must go on, father or no father. There was a pub to run, and Beth and Vicky needed stability, if such a thing was possible with Mama’s constant fussing.
    But now there was reason to fuss. Beth had “gone astray,” as Mama put it. Ada thought her claims of catching an earl another of the girl’s fanciful boasts, but now her sister was nowhere to be found. It had been four days and no one had heard from or seen her.
    “I’ll go up. Thank you, Harry. Will you be all right closing up on your own?”
    He shot her a look indicating her question was foolish. Though her parents owned the The Golden Bell, Harry was defacto steward and manager, overseeing every aspect of running the busy pub. He had been a godsend when her father hired him years before. It was her father’s one legacy that Ada could be grateful for, that and his insistence she and all his children go to school and obtain a decent education.
    “Thank you.” Ada spoke the word around an unladylike yawn and pressed a hand to her mouth to stifle it.
    “Seems you’re in need of a good kip.”
    “There has been little of that since Beth went…” Ada could not finish the thought. Her sister was missing. No one had seen her in over a week, yet to voice the words gave the fact permanence, a certainty she still wished to deny. She could not bring herself to read the papers and see details of the unsolved murders of women who lived and worked just streets away from their home. But that wouldn’t be Beth’s fate. They struggled, but there had never been a need for the girl to sell her body for food or a place to rest her head. It was more likely the silly little creature had gone off with this man she boasted about day and night. Pray God they went all the way to Gretna Green and Beth might come back a respectable woman. Ada had been trying for days to learn more about the man Beth had referred to in the days before she vanished.
    “Aye, miss Ada. We’ll find the lass. Go see to the missus. Leave the rest to me.”
     
    “If only your father were here.” Her mother stood ringing a wet rag between her hands as she repeated her daily lament. Ada allowed her mother to moan but knew her father’s presence would do nothing to alleviate the problems of running their pub or solve the mystery of Beth’s disappearance.
    Though he hadn’t helped much when he’d been alive, she imagined her father must have been an industrious man at some stage of his life. He had decided to purchase the pub, after all, and Mother said Whitechapel had been different then.
    “’Nother ale here, man. ‘As the well run dry?” Angus McCutcheon’s wail came straight up from the pub through the floorboards of their upstairs living quarters and rattled Ada’s nerves. His cry was so vehement it made her mother jump. Ada couldn’t bear to see the fear and distress in her mother’s eyes.
    “I will speak to him, Mother.”
    “No, girl. Don’t say it. Harry is much better suited to such trouble.”
    It was undoubtedly true, but leaving everything to one man and the skeleton crew who assisted him didn’t seem fair. Though Ada had no interest in managing the pub, she wished her mother would make more of an effort. At two and forty, she was still young, and if she were half as industrious as she was fretful, Ada thought they might all be happier.
    “Very well. I shall leave it to Harry. Especially tonight. I am dead on my feet.”
    Ada’s mother looked up at her through damp lashes and spoke in a voice she could barely make out, but she did not need to hear the words clearly. It was a question her mother had asked every night for the past four nights.
    “Any word of Beth?”
    Ada could not