The Dark Affair Read Online Free PDF Page B

gone far beyond its capacity one rabbit warren over.
    “Fecking shite!” he hissed as he flicked his boot back and forth to get the stuff off him.
    He trembled with the horror of the place and his situation. Sure, he’d seen hell in Ireland. But this place was something different. This was a hell where more humans dwelt than any other place in the whole of the world and a man could buy a baby for a shag, gin over half acid, or enough opium to smoke away his brains. This was Gomorrah, and he’d come here to escape so-called British justice and kill the bastards who’d done worse to his people . . . bastards who apparently had no qualms about keeping their own people in the dregs of half-life.
    Holy wounds, if the British could do this to their own people, no wonder they’d systematically starved the Irish. Rubbing his hands up and down his wool sleeves, he hunched, trying to stay out of the muck.
    “What in the name of the Holy Virgin are you doin’ here, Matthew Vincent?”
    The knifepoint digging through his thick seaman’s jacket pinched just enough that he froze lest she be giving it a new hole. And as he held still, his cigarette, which had burned so far down to the end, singed his fingers. “Fecking Christ, Margaret,” he hissed.
    She dug the knife just a little farther, hard enough to warn but not rip his coat. “Answer the question.”
    “Is this how you greet your little brother?” He held up his hands in supplication. “What would Mammy say?”
    The knife relented, and the sound of Margaret mumbling under her breath mixed with the howl of drunkards stumbling out of the gin shop down the street. She then proceeded to smack the back of his head, knocking his cap over his forehead. “She’d say you needed to spend a month on your knees, fingering the beads before the Holy Virgin.”
    Slowly, Matthew turned. The sight of his sister twisted up his heart. She looked just like their mammy had when he’d been all of about five years old. Before she’d begun to lose herself, praying on her knees ten hours a day, begging God and the angels to end the famine that ravaged their country, while Da had gone out fruitlessly trying to save the children with bellies out to their knees. “Ya look good, lass.”
    She arched one brow and skimmed his appearance with skeptical eyes. “Can’t say the same for you, Matthew.”
    He forced a grin and brushed a bit of the dust from his lapels. “I’d do a lot better over a cuppa.”
    She scowled.
    “Ah, Margaret, will you not take me upstairs?” he wheedled, trying to keep the fear out of his own voice. He wasn’t quite ready to tell her what he’d done and what straits he was in.
    But he needed to get off the streets. The bobbies would be looking for him soon. Sketches of his face were coming out in the morning, or so his informants had told him. It was a most unpleasant thing, being wanted in his home and all over the empire. But London, with its warrens and packed-in districts, was the best place for a man of his reputation and intention to hide.
    “I’ll let you up, Matthew, but none of your . . . your business in my house.”
    He gave her an oh so innocent stare, batting his lashes. “Sure, and don’t I know how you feel about the lads?”
    She said nothing but turned and started up the creaking stairs. Long strips of her red hair had slipped free of the twist at the back of her neck. A clear sign she’d been worrying at it and had been disturbed by some event of the night.
    He followed quickly, gratefully.
    Margaret was a saint and there was no question, but she needed a taste for blood. With any luck, he’d find a way to give it to her. For a woman such as she? Glory! If she’d just take up the cause, nothing could stand in their way.

Chapter 4
    M argaret climbed the narrow steps, her long skirts gripped in her bitterly cold fingers. The stairs were rotting shards of wood and twisted nails sticking half up like some devil’s daisy heads waiting