“Your Grace.” Dorian dipped his head at her, inwardly wincing at her injuries.
“Oh, Gemma! Look what that fiend did to you!” Farah gingerly smoothed dirty brown hair away from the angry wounds.
Druthers had left no part of the unlucky whore’s face unpunished. A dark anger surged inside of him, and he instantly respected the tough woman.
“’Ow’d a lady like you shackle Dorian fucking Blackwell? I’d already bet me garters you’d brought Morley to heel.”
“We’d best leave if we don’t want any trouble,” Murdoch warned.
“You’re coming with us.” Farah linked her arm through Gemma’s. “We’re taking you away from here.”
Gemma wriggled out of her gentle grasp, casting fearful looks up into Dorian’s scarred eye. “Better not, kind girl,” she denied gently. “You don’t want Druthers after you, now. He’s already sore you got to me the first time.”
“I’m not a girl,” Farah protested. “We’re the same age.”
Gemma stepped back from Farah’s second advance and Dorian hated the hurt confusion on his wife’s face as she paused. He knew what the prostitute was thinking even before she said it.
“No, we in’nt,” the woman said wearily. “I’m as old as the sea and tired of this game. Barely werf the trouble to fuck anymore.”
“Don’t say that, Gemma!” Farah insisted. “I refuse to be shocked.”
The whore took another step back. “It’s true. Druthers don’t ’urt your face if ’e finks it’ll still make ’im money.”
Farah would not be deterred. “Gemma, come with us this instant, we must hurry. We must go now.”
Gemma shook her head. “Go where?”
“My home, of course. We’ll give you shelter and food and safety.”
“Then wot? ’Ow will I keep meself? I don’t live off charity, and who’ll ’ire the likes of me? You?”
Farah nodded emphatically. “Of course I will!” At Gemma’s skeptical look, she rushed on. “As it so happens, I’ve acquired a household from my father. I’ll need it staffed.”
Gemma threw up her hands. All the talking had caused the cut in her lip to reopen, but she didn’t seem to notice. “Don’t know ’ow to do much else than lie on me back and spread me legs. Wot would you do wif a whore in a fine ’ouse? Get out of here, all of you, before there’s blood spilt.”
Only someone with a death wish spoke that way in his presence, and Dorian read that wish in Gemma’s hard, dead eyes. She was beyond caring, her spirited demeanor more a habit now than anything.
“Gemma—please!” Farah’s voice thickened with confusion and tears. “Please come with me? I couldn’t bear it if you stayed here.” The desperate, frustrated admonishment tore at Dorian’s guts. He stepped forward, but paused when the prostitute took a frightened retreat.
“We’ll send you to Ben More so you can recover,” he offered lowly, trying not to frighten the woman further. “While you’re there, Walters can show you your way around a kitchen. We’ll join you once our business here in London is concluded.”
The look of adulation Farah sent him gave him strange stirrings in his chest. Like someone had released an army of moths in there.
Gemma Warlow regarded him with something else, entirely. Skepticism, or more accurately, outright disbelief. “Why? Why would the richest thief in England stick his neck out for a frowaway like me? You’re not known for your mercy, Blackwell.”
Dorian met her glare, but couldn’t say the words, so he looked down at Farah who’d clasped her hands hopefully in front of her. She was the only reason. His only reason.
For everything.
A distinct bird whistle warned Dorian they had company before he heard pairs of heavy boots on the planks. Argent had found his perch.
“If your woman fancies a bit of quim, Blackwell, she’ll have to pay for it, like anyone else.”
Dorian and Murdoch turned toward the grainy voice behind them.
Edmond Druthers was a sewer rat with delusions of grandeur. Despite the physical resemblance, he was repulsive, smelled of rubbish and refuse, and had the knack for survival and resourcefulness that kept him on the top of his own little dung heap.
Druthers wasn’t alone. Three wide-shouldered sailors strode the length of the Executioner’s Dock, all of them armed.
“Don’t come near her.” Farah took a protective step in front of Gemma.
Dorian, in turn, stepped in front of his wife. He didn’t have to tell Murdoch to use his girth to help corral the women back behind the crates. The sound of Murdoch’s pistol cocking told him that should he fail, six bullets were waiting for four men. In Murdoch’s hands, those were good odds.
Dorian placed himself between the crates and the wall, creating a semieffective bottleneck. Only two of them could come at him at a time, and unless he did something foolishly out of character, it was impossible for him to be flanked as the only alley for a great span was an abyss in his right periphery.
Once the women were secured out of sight, Dorian made a few quick calculations. He counted three weapons. A knife held by a lanky man he recognized by the street name Bones, as his gaunt skin stretched over a frame more heavy bone than heavy muscle. A cudgel brandished by a hard-bodied, long-haired sailor of African or Island descent. And, if Druthers was a sewer rat, then the monster running his thumb down the sharp edge of his kukri was nothing less than a bear. Immense, lumbering, and all ungraceful brawn beneath the thick pelt of dark hair. The size didn’t fool Dorian, though. George Perth was one of the deadliest men alive.