Nero's Fiddle Read Online Free PDF Page B

tired and I would be a disappointment to you.”
    “You’d never disappoint me, lovey,” the woman replied with a deep chuckle. “Someone needs to take care of you with Faith gone. Perhaps tomorrow night I’ll help perk you up.”
    He waved and kept his feet moving. His mind drifted with the snow and his thoughts dated back and forth chasing specks of light. Plumes of deep purple smoke rose into the sky from the massive apparatuses digging the tunnels for the new subterranean train tracks. Men and machines laboured night and day, unceasing as they crushed rock to circle the inner city from below.
    He skirted one scar in the earth where a digger bellowed and belched smoke. Men fed coal into one end and removed carts of dirt from the other. Temporary railings stopped pedestrians from falling into the black pit. He wondered at the ingenuity that came up with the idea of transporting citizens below the ground. The newspapers speculated it would be an expensive fad; who, they asked, would want to be trapped under the earth in a train?
    With no awareness of passing time, he soon stood on the rough paving of his little row. He lived close to the St Giles Rookery, a desolate area others avoided. For him, he liked being close to the birthplace of so much work for the Enforcers. Although the Rookeries were distinctly quieter and cleaner since a certain viscount stamped his mark on that territory.
    He pushed through the door of his small terrace. Fraser once toyed with taking rooms, but wanted the privacy of knowing no one resided above or below him. The solid little houses kept noise at bay between the residents. He closed the door on the world and made his way through the pitch black to the front room. His fingers sought the switch to the one extravagance he installed in the house. The spinning turbine on the roof powered electric lights in parlour, bedroom, and kitchen.
    He ran his hands over a tired face and through his hair. The dull ache took up residence in his brain and bones. One day, he would escape it all and re-join Faith.
    The maid had reset the fire; after striking a match, he tossed the flame into the pile of tinder. He watched as the tiny flicker devoured the paper and grew, taking over more of the grate as he fed it larger and larger pieces of wood.
    Is this how a flame devours a body? Too fast for a man to react, and extinguished before the room bursts into flames? Or does it lick at flesh slowly, with leisure, like a well-paid courtesan?
    He removed his winter layers and laid them over the back of the sofa. The bowler hat rested on top of the pile. In three slow, tired strides, he crossed the room and pulled open a tall wooden cabinet. He retrieved a bottle of whiskey from within, and a short tumbler. He dropped the glass onto the mantle and worked the cork from the bottle, and then poured a generous finger of amber liquor. Replacing the bottle, his free hand went into his jacket pocket and extracted a small purple glass vial. He undid the dropper and sucked up a tiny portion of liquid. It took all of his concentration to steady his hand and count the drops he squeezed into the whiskey.
    He swirled the laudanum into the drink and settled into the armchair in front of the fire.
    In quiet moments like these, the absence of Faith gnawed the most. He didn’t miss her. ‘Miss’ was too small a word for the yawning chasm her loss opened up within him. If people knew of their relationship, they never understood it. The gently bred inspector and the common prostitute. But she was far more than the companion of his body and heart, she saw into his soul. The blackened mass in his chest covered by rot and decay never deterred her. Piece by piece, she chipped away at the layers he spawned to protect himself from dealing in death on a daily basis. She brought a sliver of warmth and joy into his world and something wholly unfamiliar to him―hope and longing. And then in the summer of 1860, the Grinder snatched her away and