Chapter One

She made her way through the dockside streets of London, conscious that this was no locale for a lady. It was unavoidable that her ship had docked at dusk, and to some extent her nurse’s uniform protected her from the worst suspicions about her profession. Nevertheless, Jane hurried through the streets, shoulders thrust back, striding briskly and swinging her medical bag to increase her stature. She’d seen the best and worst in humanity since leaving for India. This street, obscured by darkness and fog, made her yearn for a Handsom cab to convey her to a safer part of London.

Behind her, the sound of steps on cobblestones fell into pace with her own. When she sped up, they matched her. Likewise when she slowed down. Some villain was toying with her, but the deserted street offered no help. Jane swiftly turned on him.

“Are you wounded? For if you’re not, I don’t see why you should be pursuing a nurse.”

“Spirited? I like that.” Crablike, he edged sideways, like a predator looking for an opening. He was a tall, lanky fellow wearing a wool greatcoat that melted into the shadows.

“Sir, you must desist. This is not a pleasant game.” They stood in a pool of darkness, on a street lined with dingy warehouses and humble businesses that were closed for the night. Thick fog obscured the distant street lamps in a fuzzy glow.

“This is not a game.” Jane walked away, but he continued his pursuit.

“We are in accord. This is sport.”

“Who sent you?”

He cut her off so quickly that it was only at the last moment she got her arm up and blocked him with her cane. If the solid rap she struck across his shoulder inflicted pain, his face didn’t show it. His smile only widened in the dim light.

Instinct urged her to flee, but her experiences with men aboard ship, in India, and at the volunteer hospital had taught her to stand her ground. A man like this enjoyed the chase, and the sense of power over a woman might excite him to worse predations.

“If you wish to rob me, you should know there is very little for you to steal.” Nurses made a pittance.

“My Dear, I want something much more valuable than your money. But by all means, hand over your money before I take what I want.”

Jane yelled for help at this juncture, but the street was still deserted. They were too far from the docks for a sailor to come to her aid, and too far from any residences. What she would give to see a gin shop! But this criminal had picked the loneliest spot to pounce.

“Leave me be.” She strode on. “I’ve nothing to give you.”

“There is your life, of course.”

She sped up. “What, and risk the noose to murder a stranger for no reason?”

“I have many reasons, and they are delicious—a many-layered feast of pleasure.”

Spotting a gas lamp, Jane fled down a side street, but he trapped her up against a wall. She shifted along to the next building, not because she saw a way out, but because the mortar seemed to be failing. She slipped her hand behind her and shouted for help as she wiggled a brick out of the facade.

This time when he came at her, jaws open, like a rabid dog, she punched the brick into his face. He stumbled back, still smiling in a most unpleasant way; but at least she had the satisfaction of seeing him wipe blood off his lips. He stumbled forward, and she darted across an alleyway, through a warren of narrow paths until she found herself back on the street.

Spotting a passing Hansom cab, she waved her hand and called out for it to stop. The sleepy driver startled, reined in his horses, and drew even with her. Never so grateful to pay inflated prices for transport, Jane rushed into the cab and was just closing the door behind her when her attacker leaped in behind her, rapped on the side of the cab, and said, “Please convey my lady wife and me to my lodgings on Baker Street.”

He muffled Jane’s shouted objections with one large hand and pushed her neck against the back of the seat with the other.

She bit his hand until he let go.

Words were her best weapon, and with the cabman as a witness, he couldn’t murder her.

“What do you want with me?” she hissed. “One does not harass a lady!”

“A lady? In fact, you are a puzzle. Up and down, your speech is far too forthright for a lady, but also not diffident enough for a typical nurse. That white dress, apron, and cap form a costume, disguising your identity.”

“Leave this cab at once!”

Could this brute be one of her father’s workers, sent to give her a good scare and drag her home? She stood up to knock on the ceiling and get the driver’s attention, but he grabbed her by the wrists and looked deeply into her eyes.

“Please,” he said. “If I can’t have you, you must kill me.”

She searched his face to confirm that this was an evil joke, but he’d gone somber and still.

“And how might I end your life, unarmed as I am?”

“Oh, you shall be armed. Let us converse.” He reached into his coat pocket and extracted an officer’s pistol, like the ones wounded soldiers carried to the hospital in India.

“Don’t shoot!”

He pushed it at her, handle forward.

She grasped it, opened it, verified the charge, and trained it upon him.

“I warn you that I shall shoot to kill.”

“You must. Take pity on my terrible affliction. As a woman with medical training, you will understand the hopelessness of my depravity and help me end it. Only death can free me from this addiction.”

“There are doctors and sanatoriums who can help reduce dependence on opium, laudanum, alcohol…”

“It’s nothing so common and easily remedied.”

“What addiction then? Gambling? Cocaine?” The man displayed no signs of wasting or muscular degradation. His eyes were bright by the light of passing street lamps. She lit a match to examine him properly, instantly returning to clinical habits of mind, as if she had never left the hospital ward.

“Your eyes are bright. Your skin is clear. I have felt the evidence of your physical strength. What can possibly afflict you?”

“I hunger. Only for blood. The chase. The excitement. The satisfaction that only blood can bring me.”

Now he was playacting, like something out of a penny dreadful.

“What do you mean by this, sir? And how can a nurse help you? Seek a doctor learned in healing the mind.”

“I’ve tried.” He punched his palm, cracked his knuckles. “I’ve tried every thrill, from the drugs you mention, to the danger of exploring caves, diving off cliffs, fighting wild beasts. I’ve done it all. And yet nothing brings me satisfaction but the hunt. So be true to your calling, and save many lives. Take this gun and end me.”

He must have seen the reaction on my face, because he reached across the cab and covered my hand in such an intimate gesture that I shrank away in disgust.

“Not here, with the cabbie to witness it. We must get away free and clear to finish the deed, but if you do not end me this very night, I will kill and kill again.

“Nonsense.”

“If I met you on the road any other evening, nothing could have stopped me from taking your life. It is only your status as a nurse recently returned from India, and experienced with military medicine, that gives me hope that you will have the fortitude to do what must be done.”

“How do you know where I’m from?”

“It is not difficult. The unusual tan on your face; the easeful way you wear the nursing volunteer uniform, but with a swagger in your step seen only in women of privileged position. The fact that you were walking the streets alone at night means that you are fearless, and you have fallen from that lofty position. So, a nurse by choice or necessity. Your hands are too smooth and clean for you to have ascended to that position. Your accent doesn’t belong in London. It’s educated but northern, maybe from the coal-mining regions. And yet you talk of ladies and gentlemen. So I’m guessing, by that and by the gold chain you think is hidden underneath your layers of light cotton clothing, that you have disguised your well-off origins. Nouveau riche, n’est-ce pas? Your bespoke leather boots give you away.”

“You don’t know anything about me.”

“Your dress is made of light Indian cotton, to help you withstand the heat. You say the word ‘sir’ as if that makes me your equal and not your better, a trait I find refreshing, in that I seldom meet women of your class these days, so low has my dissipation dropped me. So, can you do it? Can you shoot me straight through the heart, or better yet through the head, so that I am killed instantly, painlessly, and for eternity?”

“That would be suicide and a sin. You are asking me to help you kill yourself. Have you not heard of the Hippocratic oath?”

“I was unaware that nurses took the Hippocratic oath. Are they not mere handmaidens to doctors?”

Jane bit back a retort. There was no point arguing with this unstable man, who might attack and force her to use his pistol. Instead she sat back as far as she could in the cab and aimed the weapon squarely at his chest, ready to shoot him the minute he tired of toying with his captive.

“I shan’t kill anyone.”

Well, if you won’t help me, I must find some other way to end myself this night, for this moment of contrition will pass, and I shall kill again. But if that does not suit you, I am feeling merciful, and sorry for all I have done this evening; and so, if you cannot bring yourself to do it, I shall return you to the bosom of your family.”

The hansom cab trotted to a stop at the northern end of Baker Street which was well-lit and lined with cheery townhomes. If she called out for help here, some resident would be sure to hear her and come to her aid.

“This is where we part ways. Should I send you on to St Pancras railway station, or introduce you to my landlady, Mrs. Hudson?”

The mention of a landlady, and the acceptable Baker Street address where a working nurse could conceivably live without vexation, the knowing mention of her family… That was what finally decided her.

“I shall hold this pistol on you, secreted within my skirts while I speak to your landlady.”

“Not anxious to return to your family, then?”

Somehow, he had guessed that her predicament ran deeper than simply seeking lodgings in London, the same way he had correctly guessed at her work in India with the charity hospital, and came very close to guessing the location of her family’s coal mine.

“As I require lodgings for the night,” she said, “it will be my pleasure to make Mrs. Hudson’s acquaintance.”