Knockout: A Hell’s Belles Novel

When the girl knocked at his office door, Tommy had never been more grateful for an interruption.

Imogen had left him that morning, somehow sneaking from his arms, leaving him in the deepest sleep he’d had in a long time, sated by her touch and satisfied with her nearness. He’d woken with the scent of her on his sheets and still hanging in the cool air of the room, the only sign that she’d been there at all.

The moment he opened his eyes, he’d sensed her absence, coming to his feet almost instantly, a desperate frustration flaring in his chest. Where had she gone?

I have dreamed of this. Of being here, in your arms.

Why hadn’t she waited for him to take her home?

Let me imagine, just for tonight, that this is real.

Was she safe in the snow? On the streets? In the cold? Had she found her way home?

Of course she was. She was Imogen Loveless. But it didn’t change the fact that he worried.

Tommy had washed and dressed in scant minutes, leaving his rooms and hurrying downstairs, eager to get to her. To be certain she was safe. To fetch her. To bring her back and tuck her into his bed and keep her there, where he could see her. Touch her. Kiss her.

Love her.

Of course, none of it was possible. The night was over and outside the streets had been swept of their snow, and in the cacophony of morning carriages and hawkers making their way through Holborn, Tommy was reminded that she wasn’t for him to love. That she wasn’t for him to keep.

That she wasn’t for Holborn, and five-month babes, and coming down from her Mayfair palace to love him. Even if she said she didn’t want an aristocratic marriage, the alternative—justice, vengeance, world saving—it was too bright for him. Too bold. Too much—not because she was too much, but because he was not enough. It was best that she’d left, because the more time they spent together, the more difficult it would be for him to let her go in the end.

So he’d gone to work, throwing himself into the files he’d compiled on the explosions throughout the East End, knowing that whatever Adams and the rest of the Yard thought of his obsession with these particular crimes, he would do anything he could to solve them.

To bring whoever was harming women in those bright worlds, out of view, to justice.

For the East End, yes. But now for Imogen, as well.

To try, however impossibly, to be more for her. To be enough.

She’d given him more to work with—now he knew that O’Dwyer and Leafe operated a moving women’s clinic, providing illegal tinctures and tonics and procedures to women who were in difficult situations. Who needed care. Who wanted to change their futures, or protect them.

That, combined with the knowledge that whoever was wreaking havoc on the East End was well funded and skilled, suggested that Tommy was looking for aristocrats. Men who were angry and vocal about women. About suffrage. About freedom. About equality.

Men who could easily have used the law to punish, but instead chose a simpler, less public way—a way that would protect their reputations if they could keep their hands clean.

Which begged the question—who was getting dirty?

He’d made a list of a dozen lords, every one of them rich and furious, and with each name his breathing came faster, as he realized that whoever Imogen was up against, she was in more danger than he’d imagined.

And still, she faced that danger without hesitation. Heading toward it—and justice—every time. What had she said? The fight is in the movement.

She was magnificent. The way she’d stitched his arm on the docks after dismantling the explosives in Mithra Singh’s warehouse as though she did it every day. How she’d come running to save him from the original O’Dwyer and Leafe’s. The taste of her when she’d kissed him on the street last night.

The feel of her naked in his bed. Taking him. Meeting his movements—not a fight. A gift.

And still, she’d left him. And he had no reason to go to her until the following evening, when he would play guardian and suffer watching her attend a dinner filled with men who did not deserve her, each vying for her hand—a toff’s version of a medieval tourney.

If only it was a medieval tourney.

He might not hold a candle to these men when it came to land stewardship or buying a damn horse or reciting fucking Shakespeare, but in combat? With a sword in hand? A lance?

He’d crush them.

And he’d go to her, covered in sweat and blood, and kneel before her for even a moment of her approval. Hell, if it were a medieval tourney, he’d toss her over his shoulder and steal her away, his strength all he needed to be worthy of her.

But it wasn’t a medieval tourney. It was 1840, and sweat and blood were now money and power and privilege, and Tommy Peck was not invited to vie for Lady Imogen’s hand.

The night was over. And it was tomorrow.

And he would be smart to give her up.

But if he found something he could share with her about the crimes they were both so committed to solving . . . then he wouldn’t have to wait to see her.

For business. Not pleasure.

He cursed in the empty room and returned to his files, searching for something new in the reports and scant eyewitness accounts. He grew more and more frustrated, and his mind turned again and again to Imogen, who still hadn’t told him everything she knew. Who kept secrets from him.

Punishment cannot come from within.

What did it mean? Together, they’d brought down several of the most powerful men in Britain—she’d come to him with those files, blue, inked with an indigo bell. And each one had sent a man who deserved it to prison.

He did not imagine for one moment that the Belles had failed to compile similar files for those behind these crimes. She knew more than he did.

Of course she did. She’d tampered with his crime scenes, unraveling his control over them with her carpetbag full of vials and jars and whatever else she’d collected. And that lack of control should have infuriated him. But it didn’t.

Now, he was infuriated that she’d brought chaos into his world and hadn’t let him watch. That she didn’t trust him to stand by her side as she meted out her justice.

That she didn’t offer him a place in her chaos.

Tommy cursed harshly in the empty room, and a knock sounded on the door, equally harsh.

He shot to his feet, his heart pounding. Imogen. “Come.”

The door opened, revealing a young girl, no more than twelve or thirteen, with a round face and an expression in her bright brown eyes that he recognized immediately. She knew things he did not, and was enjoying it.

His pulse raced. He’d seen that particular expression in Imogen’s eyes a dozen times. There was no question that she’d sent this girl, who crossed his office with efficient speed that reminded him of the lady herself, as though she had important business and he was a mere stop on the way to it.

She dropped a tiny curtsy as he stood to greet her. “Detective Inspector Peck?”

“You’ve the better of me.”

A flash of a smile, so familiar. She wasn’t going to tell him her name. The Hell’s Belles trained their vast network of informants and spies and runners well. There was absolutely no need for this girl to be noticed by Scotland Yard, so names were irrelevant. Indeed, they were a liability inside this building. Instead, the girl dug into a pocket sewn deep into her skirts and extracted a small square of paper.

“For you.”

He took it, his heart racing with anticipation. “Thank you.”

The girl nodded once and, task complete, took off. Tommy followed her to the doorway, watching as she snaked through a group of constables who barely had time to notice her before she was off, down the hallway, headed for the exit onto Scotland Yard.

In and out in seconds, her work done, leaving barely a trace. In that, she was nothing like her employer, who had no hesitation being found in the uniform room, and preferred calling cards the size of holes in the side of jail cells.

Full of anticipation, Tommy looked down at the square of paper in his hands. He opened it, confusion flaring for a heartbeat as he turned it over, revealing that it was blank on both sides. He couldn’t help the wide smile that came with the understanding of what she’d done. A thrill rioted through him, and he reached into his desk drawer, extracting a box of matches.

It was a secret message.

Maybe it would read the same as the last, but with a different author.

I love you.

He pushed the ridiculous thought away and struck a match, holding it beneath the paper as he held his breath.

Words appeared.

Not just words.

A bell, just like the ones that had been inked on the files she’d provided him in the past. But this one, not in indigo ink. This one, in goat’s-lettuce juice. And beneath it:

Salisbury Steps

4 o’clock

She was going to tell him what they knew.

Dropping the paper to his desk, Tommy sucked in a breath and pulled out his pocket watch. Half-past three. If he hurried, he’d get there before her.

He snatched his coat and hat from the hook by the door and was down the hallway before he had them on, stopping only when someone shouted his name behind him. He turned to find Adams standing at a distance, a stack of papers in his hand, approaching at a clip.

Tommy shook his head. “No time, Wallace. I’ve somewhere to be.”

“Somewhere to be? Or someone to be with?” Something must have flashed on Tommy’s face, because Adams lifted his brows with a knowing look. “I know that look; don’t get that girl in trouble, Tommy.”

“On the contrary,” Tommy replied to the older man, unable to keep the smile from his face, already turning away, eager to get to her. “She’s finally going to let me keep her safe.”

*  *  *

Twenty minutes later, Tommy pushed his way through The Brazen Beaver tavern, which stood at the top of the Salisbury Steps, a well-trafficked set of Waterman’s Stairs that were the closest access point to Covent Garden from the Thames. The tavern’s rear entrance—or front entrance, depending upon how one looked at it—opened onto a small courtyard into which anyone coming up from the river would be welcomed for food or ale.

Imogen wasn’t inside the tavern, and she wasn’t in the courtyard behind, so Tommy stepped to the edge of the embankment, leaning over the low stone wall to check the steps themselves. The top few were covered with a layer of well-trodden snow from the night before, and though the river was not yet low, it had receded enough to reveal another handful of steps that were usually under water, slick with the green muck that was sure to give anyone who wasn’t careful an icy dip.

A bone-chilling wind whipped up the Thames, and Tommy pulled his coat tight around him.

“I did not expect it to be so cold.” He startled at the words, so close, her shoulder barely an inch from his arm—so close that if he leaned in, they would touch.

He could keep her warm.

He cleared his throat and turned toward her, blocking as much of the wind as he could, and he took her in, her face turned to the sky, the sun setting in the west casting a golden glow over her dark curls. Her lips and cheeks were bright red as she flashed a smile up at him, and he distracted himself from the way he wanted to kiss her by cataloguing her clothes—a thick, fur-lined, grass green coat over a purple dress—the skirts bright and beautiful like the prettiest summer lilacs.

One did not have to be a dressmaker to know that the colors were not considered appropriate for winter, but they were appropriate for Imogen, and that was all that mattered. “You don’t look cold. You look like a summer garden.”

He immediately regretted the words, and then felt a different thing altogether when she grinned and ducked her face into the fur collar of her bright green coat. “Be careful, Mr. Peck, or I’ll start thinking you like me.”

“I am on the record for liking you, my lady,” he said, keeping the words quiet, loving the way her cheeks pinkened in their wake.

“I like you, too,” she said simply.

His chest tightened and he asked the question he should not. “Then why did you leave me last night?”

After a moment’s pause, Imogen looked over her shoulder, indicating the path along the embankment. “It will be warmer if we walk.”

“It will be warmer if we go inside,” he said, even as he followed her as she started down the path. He didn’t like her out here in the cold.

She shook her head. “Not inside.”

“We could have met at my office.”

She shook her head. “Definitely not your office.”

“Are you afraid someone will remember the time you were there? Raiding the uniform closet? Or the time you blew up the jail?”

“You’ve no proof of the last one,” she quipped, and he couldn’t help his laugh, or the way he imagined putting his hand to the small of her back and guiding her around the piles of snow the wind had collected.

But she wasn’t his to touch here, in public. Not even if last night, he’d touched her everywhere, and she’d come apart in his arms and then spent hours in his arms, confessing her secrets.

I am not a heroine, she’d said to him, and as he watched her make her way upriver, skirts swaying, the idea that this woman did not see how much of a heroine she was—that she might think herself too much or not enough—was madness.

She was bold and beautiful and brilliant. Captain of her own fate.

And, he feared, captain of his, as well.

“You never wear a uniform,” she said, stepping around a pile of snow.

He held out his arm to keep her stable. “Detectives don’t wear the uniform.”

“Not wearing it doesn’t seem to hinder you getting what you require.”

“You’re here, are you not?” he teased, drinking in her smile.

Once they were at a distance from the tavern, she turned, facing him, the wind whipping her curls into a frenzy, making his fingers itch to smooth them.

“I have things to tell you,” she said, and he was shocked by the hesitation in the words—hesitation he’d never witnessed in her before.

Did she not understand that he would never betray her trust? He searched for the right way to settle her. “The message,” he said, moving to block her from the wind. “It was business.”

“Yes.” She nodded once. Firm. “It was business.”

“I confess,” he said, trying for levity, disturbed by her seriousness. “I was disappointed.”

A tiny smile flashed. “I fear you will be even more disappointed when you hear what I have to say.”

He shook his head. “Imogen. Whatever it is. We are together in it.”

She took a deep breath and nodded again, as if encouraging herself to go on. She reached into her skirt pocket and extracted a piece of paper. Handed it to him.

“Another secret message?”

“Secrets,” she said, shaking her head. “But not a message.”

He opened it to reveal three names, aristocratic and immensely powerful. Names he had known before he’d seen them that night at the Trevescan ball, in conversation with Commissioner Battersea.

Beneath each name, a location.

Bethnal Green. Whitechapel. Spitalfields.

He immediately recognized the sites of the explosions. “Are you sure?”

She nodded. “But we cannot prove it. There is a missing link.”

He looked down at the list again. “Motive?”

Imogen looked to the river, pulling the fur over her face. “No. Motives are clear.” She set a finger to the top name. “This one owned the factory where a dozen seamstresses died in a fire last year.” She slid a finger to the next address. “Mayhew’s print shop where the remaining workers met to plan their demands for better conditions.

“This earl—he is the money behind a bawdy house in Seven Dials. Didn’t care what happened to the girls who worked there, as long as he got his money.” The next address. “When they fought back, saving enough money to run, his muscle exploded the waypoint in Bethnal Green where they were waiting to be smuggled out of the city. And took eight girls with it.”

Fucking hell. “Linden’s bakery.”

Another name. “This one is a monster, so untouchable thanks to title and fortune that his wife can’t escape him. But she can keep him from tormenting a new generation.” Two addresses beneath. “He discovered she’d been to O’Dwyer and Leafe’s. Blew it up and went looking for proof so he could have her committed.”

Tommy’s teeth clenched at the words. “Did he succeed?”

She shook her head. “The records were hidden in an underground safe. We got to them before they could.”

“The morning I found you,” he said, remembering the Duchess of Clayborn climbing into a carriage with a stack of papers.

A little nod, a flash of surprise that he’d put it together. “Yes.”

“Why explosives?” He looked to the paper. “He could have had her arrested. O’Dwyer and Leafe, as well.”

“And risk the scandal?” she asked. “Even if he was willing to bear it . . . the violence is the point. These men . . . they don’t want solutions. They want suffering.”

He knew it was true even as he loathed it. There, on the paper, a second address. Mithra Singh’s brewery on the Docklands. A flash of memory, O’Dwyer outside. “The clinic moved. You went up against him again.”

She gave a little shrug. “What else could we do? They’re the ones doing the work—all we can do is stand with them.”

“You should have come to me,” he said.

A small, sad smile. “We couldn’t.”

“The missing link.” Something more. Something more dangerous.

Imogen nodded. “We didn’t know how they did it. We didn’t know who they were using. But now . . . we do.”

He reached for her, remembering where they were just in time to keep from touching her. Wishing he hadn’t remembered. Wishing they were inside, anywhere but in full view of the world.

She reached into her coat pocket. “You said we were together in it,” she said softly, opening her hand to reveal a small gold disk, gleaming in the setting sun. “I fear you will feel differently now.”

Tommy’s stomach dropped.

He knew the St. Michael medallion instantly. From Wallace’s lapel. From the drawer in Tommy’s own rooms where he kept the one he did not wear. From countless other policemen.

He spoke to her hand. “Where did you find it?”

“Underneath the cistern in the brewery, where Mithra keeps the wheat.”

“Where I found you,” he said, his gaze rising to meet hers. “Where you were dismantling explosives.”

Anger flared, hot and nearly unbearable. She could have been killed that night. And by— “Who?”

“Mithra surprised him, Tommy. He’d set the fire above and had placed the explosives on the lower floor—exactly what you would do if you were trying to blow the whole place to the ground, and anyone who was trying to save it along with it.” A pause. “The fuse in the warehouse matched the fuse I found at the seamstress—fabric.”

The words shattered through him as his mind raced. “From the uniforms. That’s why you were in the closet.”

She nodded. “We’ve confirmed the match of the weave. And the chemicals there—the explosive mix—they are the same from the bakery. And the print shop.”

“Mercury fulminate,” he said.

She nodded. “And the blasting oil—once I had it in hand, it was easy to match.”

The weight of the proof was heavy and devastating. And still, he struggled with the shock of the truth. “The men I work with—the ones I’ve trained—” He trailed off, knowing as he spoke that he could not vouch for them all.

One did not climb the ranks of Whitehall without witnessing the way power consumed people. The way it made different shapes of monsters: Those born with privilege and power, unable to stop themselves from misusing it. And those who had come up on the opposite path—with nothing but strength and hunger—desperate to claim it.

“These men.” She waved a hand over the files. “We cut off their line to muscle. When Adelaide married her duke, her father agreed to set The Bully Boys straight—”

“The Bully Boys aren’t straight,” Tommy said. They were the most notorious gang on the South Bank, run by Alfie Trumbull, a criminal with a code, but no discernible conscience. “They’re claiming more turf every day, and giving Whitehall a run for it.”

“You’re right,” she agreed immediately. “Alfie Trumbull will never cede power. But he’s going to be grandfather to a duke someday, so playing muscle to the aristocracy doesn’t work well for him any longer. That, and he knows that if he came for places the Belles protect, Adelaide and Clayborn will take him down without hesitation.” A long pause. “So the terrible, powerful men who’d used The Bully Boys as hired guns for years . . .”

“They needed another gang,” Tommy said. “One that would be tempted by proximity to power and unfathomable amounts of money.”

“Yes. And we think they are paying handsomely for it.”

He looked directly at her. “Who? How many?”

“We don’t know. We’re looking for the records.”

“Where?”

“In their houses. While they are . . . otherwise occupied.”

His mind was racing, following the plan. “Occupied with seeing you find a husband.”

She lifted one shoulder in a little shrug. “I told you I had no intention of marrying.”

“Imogen,” he said, hot with anger and denial and a keen, furious faith that she was right. “What you’re into—this isn’t one toff and a handful of thugs.”

She paused and looked out at the river. “We know very well what we’re into, Tommy. Duchess isn’t even sure we can trust you.”

He met her eyes, his chest tight.

“I trust you, though,” she said softly, staring up at him with her enormous brown eyes in her beautiful open face. “What they did to these places. To O’Dwyer and Leafe’s. To Mithra’s warehouse. They could just as easily do it to Maggie’s tavern next. And a dozen others . . . if they knew what we kept at Duchess’s . . .”

They would come for them. Without question.

Fear and frustration clouded her gaze. “Tommy—I have to trust you. We are running out of safe spaces. We are running out of people to stand with us.”

He reached out to her, unable to resist touching her, stroking a finger down her arm, hating that he couldn’t pull her close. “You have me.”

“Do we?” she asked. “Are you with us?”

“Yes.” The reply was instant. He knew what she asked. “Yes.”

Over the years, Tommy had made himself a name across London as a decent man and a good detective, and here was the test of it. He could turn his back on the evidence and swear by the good of the Yard. Or he could see the truth. Believe her. And turn his investigation toward what he knew was true. To unearth the corruption inside Scotland Yard.

And so, he faced the question: Was he a decent man? Or a decent detective?

Was he willing to turn his back on Scotland Yard—on his career, on the men who had pulled him from the streets? Was he willing to set a bomb himself? Punish those inside the Yard, standing with those who were outside of it?

Was he willing to stand with Imogen and choose justice? Vengeance?

He’d pledged her his blade, had he not?

The answer was unequivocal. He was with her. With these women who worked with honor and did more good in more places than Whitehall ever could.

Of course he was with them.

With her.

Before he could say it all, footsteps pounded toward them. He turned, sliding her list of names into his coat pocket, instinctively pushing Imogen behind him as he came to a crouch, fists up, ready for whatever was to come.

If they wanted her, they would have to come through him.

What came was the heavy blow of a truncheon, wicked and devastating at his side.

He sucked in a breath at the pain and threw a punch, knocking his foe back. Foes.

There were two of them, both wrapped in heavy coats and scarves, their faces difficult to see. Not so their clubs and fists, which came fast and vicious, quickly revealing to Tommy that this was no game. That they would put them down right there, in broad daylight, and not think twice.

He dodged another blow. Landed one of his own. And witnessed the truth he’d already known—that Imogen had already revealed. These weren’t mere thugs. Not bullies from the South Bank. Not run-of-the-mill criminals from the East End, trading money for muscle.

These were policemen.

Tommy might not know their names, but he recognized the smoothness of the movements. The lack of fear. The certainty that even if they were caught, they would not face the same consequences as a common street fighter.

Even if Tommy hadn’t recognized the club at the larger one’s side—a Yard-issued truncheon—even if the brute didn’t ring a bell with his broad, pale face and his nose, flattened by force sometime in the past, Tommy would have seen it.

It was confirmation; Scotland Yard was on the take. On the take, and willing to do anything to prevent being discovered.

And if there were two Peelers here, fighting in broad daylight, there could be any number more of them. At every level.

The realization crashed through Tommy along with a horrifying thought—that they would keep coming as long as they were threatened with discovery. Which meant Tommy would have to do all he could to keep Imogen protected. If that meant blood on his hands, so be it.

Consumed with a feral fury, Tommy knocked the larger man into the dirt and made for the smaller of the two, memorizing his features—the dark hair on his pale, freckled face, his bulbous red nose, his small dark eyes.

They grappled with each other, Tommy calling out to Imogen, “Run!”

“I absolutely will not!” she said, too close for comfort.

He threw a punch, sending the man stumbling back, and turned to look over his shoulder. She was unbuttoning that coat—the one that looked like spring and summer all in one. The one that made him wish he could lay her down in a field and have his way with her.

“It wasn’t a request, you madwoman!” he shouted, coming back around to block a heavy punch and land another of his own—one that rang with the crunch of a jaw going out of whack. “Get gone!”

The big one was up again, and this time heading for Imogen. A fucking mistake. If he laid one hand on her, Tommy would personally see it removed from the bruiser’s body.

Imogen was backing away, toward the embankment. “Who do you work for?” she asked brightly, as though they were all at goddamn tea.

Tommy was going to lose his mind. “The police. He works for the fucking police. They both do.”

His own foe didn’t hesitate to reply, “Yeah, but you won’t anymore, will you, Peck? You should’ve let us take you out with that carriage . . .” The carriage outside The Place. It hadn’t been aiming for Imogen. The bruiser grinned, wicked and cruel. “Pride of Whitehall? Not when we’re done with you. Not when we’re done with your girl.”

The threat roared through Tommy, and he went for the man without holding back. All thoughts of justice gone as he fought with a single goal. To protect Imogen.

Her guard. Her warrior. Her vengeance.

Tommy made quick work of his opponent, putting him into the snow, already turning into a dead run, headed to help her. At a distance, she was nearly at the embankment wall, backing away as the other copper headed for her, arms outstretched, a wicked, playful grin on his face, as though they played a game. As though when he caught her, the cruelty would be the point.

She was too close to the low wall. If she wasn’t careful, the bastard would push her into the river, and with her heavy skirts, she’d be dead before Tommy could save her.

Except, of course, Imogen had no intention of requiring saving. As Tommy watched, she reached up and yanked on the obsidian brooch she always wore at her neck—the one she always took care to keep out of reach.

It came off without any effort, and she opened it with a deft movement.

Not a brooch; a box.

Without hesitation, Imogen flung the contents of the box in the direction of the villain, who lifted his hands to his face just as . . .

Boom!

She’d blown the man off his feet. He now lay on his back at a distance, looking dazed and deeply worse for wear.

Tommy pulled up short, staring at the man for a long moment before turning to look at her. “Fucking hell.”

“It won’t kill him, but one must always be prepared.” She waved away his shock and raised her voice in the direction of the prone policeman. “You really should make better choices, sirrah!” Turning a bright smile on Tommy, she said, “I suggest we tie them up and take them to Duchess’s for questioning.”

“I don’t want to question them,” he said. “I want to kill them both for thinking to threaten you.”

Her gaze went soft on him. “That’s very sweet, Tommy. But I think you’ll find we need them alive if we’ve any hope of finishing our investigation.”

She was right, of course. But Tommy struggled to care about the investigation in that exact moment. Instead, he was vibrating with anger and frustration and no small amount of admiration for this glorious woman. Instead, he cared about getting her to a private location and keeping her there for a long time. Possibly forever.

Nevertheless, if Imogen wanted to tie these men up, Tommy would do it. He’d do whatever she asked.

Christ. He was gone for her.

He made for her, eager to do as she suggested as quickly as possible so he could tell her just how gone he was. The words were right there, on his tongue.

I love you.

Except she wasn’t looking at him anymore. She was looking over his shoulder, her soft gaze going hard, and then wide. He turned, knowing what he would find.

His opponent had found his feet again, along with his club. Tommy didn’t have time to block the blow, nor the shove.

The last thing Tommy heard as he tumbled was Imogen’s scream, and then he was in the river, the water like ice, stealing his breath and his strength, pulling him immediately down into the current.

He fought for a moment, with singular purpose.

Imogen.

He had to get back to her.

He kicked off from the riverbed, breaking the surface, forcing himself to take a deep breath. Shouting for her.

Except it was barely sound. The cold had taken his voice.

“Tommy!” She was there, running along the embankment, tracking him.

Being chased.

No. Not being chased. Chasing him.

He focused on her, in that dress—that color, bright purple. Not the aubergine or lavender that would be worn by a different woman.

By a woman in mourning.

Dammit, it was cold.

Would she mourn him?

He drank her in, his arms starting to go stiff. He wouldn’t be able to keep himself afloat much longer. And still, he watched her.

If he was going to die, he wanted to die looking at her.

His boot hit the riverbed and he used the last of his strength to dig into the silt, to resist the current, thankful for low tide. But low tide or no, there was no one to help him. He closed his eyes.

“No! Tommy!”

The words were closer. She was closer. He opened her eyes and saw her, above him, on the Salisbury Steps, where she’d summoned him earlier.

No. If she waded into the river, she could easily be lost. If she was swept up, he wouldn’t be able to save her. They’d die together of the damn cold. He tried to shout to her. “Don’t—”

He struggled, but couldn’t move. That had been quick. How long had he been in the water?

Wait. Now Imogen was in the water, a thick rope in hand—used to moor boats by the steps. She was wading toward him. “N-no . . .” He couldn’t scream. Could barely make the word out for his teeth chattering. “Don’t come further. The current . . .”

She ignored him, and then she was there, reaching for him. “Tommy,” she said, her hand finding his. Gripping him tightly. Feeling hot like the sun. “Please . . .” Her voice was far away as she dragged him toward the bank. “I can’t do this by myself. Please . . . The tide is low enough . . . Can you stand? Please, my love . . . Please stand up.”

My love.

For the rest of time, he would remember those words on her lips.

And the way they brought him back to life.