The prostitute shrugged a bony shoulder. “’Er face is too busted to work, so she’s standin’ lookout for a shipment for Druthers. She’s s’posed to send a runner to fetch ’im from the Queen’s ’Ead Pub when it gets ’ere.”
Dorian tried to ignore Farah’s horrified gasp. “Where?” he demanded.
The woman extended a bony finger toward the river where Brewhouse Lane ran straight into the Executioner’s Dock.
“Excellent.” He tossed the coin to the woman.
“You take care, Black’eart,” the whore crowed at him as her hand snaked out and caught it. “The shadows be too full tonight of men wif dark coats and shiny weapons. They’ve driven ev’ryone inside.”
“Good,” Dorian clipped. “Let’s hope they stay there and out of my way.”
The woman’s cackle ended on an airless cough. “Wif you and Argent on the street, they’ll all fink a war’s brewin’ in Wapping.”
“If there was, I’d have brought an army with me.” Dorian turned away, hoping to get to Warlow before whatever shipment she awaited arrived. “Stay off the Executioner’s Dock, just in case,” he threw over his shoulder.
Farah hurried after him, and he slowed his stride so she could keep up. “Executioner’s Dock?” she queried. “Sounds ominous.”
“It isn’t used for its original purpose anymore,” Dorian said, attempting to soothe her obviously jangling nerves. “The crown used to hang river pirates and smugglers from the Executioner’s Dock in centuries past, and leave them there as a deterrent to others. Nowadays that’s rather out of practice.”
“And that very dock is used for smuggling?”
Dorian smirked. “The warning failed. Most criminals saw it as a challenge. Wapping, specifically this dock, has been the epicenter of underground trade ever since.”
At the mouth of the pier, where the stones became planks beneath their feet, Dorian nodded to Argent, who melted into the shadows and disappeared down a side alley, with an almost mystical silence.
The dock running parallel to the river was wide enough for a freight cart or about a handful of men standing shoulder to shoulder. Smaller piers branched from it with various boats and planks bobbing in the lazy black ribbon of the Thames. Upon long-standing order of the crown, the pier that completed the Executioner’s Dock was to remain as empty as it was now. But night after night, dark boats and darker men made it their port to London’s commerce.
“I think I see her!” Farah indicated a stack of crates loosely covered with a canvas blocking more than half the dock one pier to the north. Perched atop the haphazard pile was a smallish boy of maybe eight and a taller feminine form, hunched together against the chill.
“You are to stay by my side, unless I tell you otherwise. Is that understood?” he commanded his wife.
She craned her neck to look up at him and stunned him with what shone from her soft gray eyes. Gratitude. Trust. “Of course,” she promised.
Dorian lost himself to it for a moment. Perhaps this wasn’t such a colossal waste of time, after all.
Murdoch cleared his throat. “The whelp already spotted us and scampered off,” he warned. “I expect we doona have much time before we’ve unwanted company.”
Dorian tore his eyes from his wife. She was too much of a distraction out here. He needed to be sharp and ruthless. Not for the first time, he cursed her presence. She’d insisted Gemma wouldn’t go with them unless she came along, and neither of them was familiar with the prostitute, so they’d not be able to identify the real Gemma. And yet, Dorian couldn’t help feeling like he should have insisted they take the whore, willing or no, and deliver her to Farah’s feet safe and sound.
How did his wife keep talking him into foolhardy things? After tonight, he’d have to look into that.
The crates were in a shadowed swath of walkway equidistant from the gas lamps doing their best to illuminate the pier. As they approached, the plump figure hopped down from her perch, preparing to bolt.
“Gemma!” Farah called. “Gemma, wait!”
The figure froze, and Farah held her hand out, though the woman was not yet within reach.
“Mrs. Mackenzie?” A shocked reedy voice struggled through split and swollen lips. “Wot are you doin’ out here?”
Farah quickened her step and reached for her friend, despite Dorian’s orders. The women collapsed against each other with different versions of relief. Though the grimy prostitute was taller and much larger than Farah, Dorian watched his wife pull her friend into her bosom and hold her there in a very maternal gesture. She didn’t seem to spare a thought for her fine new gray dress or the fact that the woman had dried blood matted to her dirty hair.
It was Gemma who spoke first. “I been sick wif worry over you,” she scolded Farah against her shoulder. “You didn’t tell no one you was leaving, Mrs. Mackenzie.”
“You were worried about me? You dear thing.” Farah stroked the woman’s hair, her cream silk glove coming away soiled, as she flicked her eyes toward Dorian. “And it’s—Mrs. Blackwell now.”
“As in, Dorian Blackwell? If you’re married to the Black’eart of Ben More, I’m the bloody Duchess of York.” Gemma popped out of the embrace, staring at Dorian with the one eye that wasn’t swollen shut as if she’d only just noticed him. “I’ll be boffed,” she breathed.