Chapter Four

Content warnings can be found here

Four days later, Edward ran down the first alley that he came to, and when that turned out to be a dead end, he scrambled over a wall and kept running. His suit, his damned good suit, was spattered with mud and whatever other unthinkable gunge a fellow picked up from the streets when he was in too much of a rush to think of the precedence. A trail of blood ran down from his temple, where one of ‘Bully’ Jackson’s boys had been wearing a ring.

Damn Dickie Thornton. Damn him and all other such callow, underhand swine. Edward took a left, then a right, a stitch building underneath his chest. 

With Peaches’ help, he’d always managed to keep a step ahead of the worst of his bastard creditors, feeding them dribs and drabs when he could, and hiding the rest of the time. Now, though, someone - oh, and couldn’t he just think who - had tipped them off to his favourite haunts and he’d been barely managed to slip out before Sharp Rick’s boys were able to nab him. So, he’d gone crawling to Stevens for - in the most shameful term - a touch, and been turned away with the softest, most sincere words that let him know that it was more than his allowance was worth to consort with old Teddy just now.

Leaving Stevens’ place, he’d run straight into Jackson’s lads.

As he ran, Edward let every curse and blasphemy stream through his mind. It was all he could do not to stop in the street and swear, shouting like a ranter priest. It appeared hell had no fury like the tongue of a bank clerk scorned. Dickie needed a damned lesson. If Dickie bloody Thornton were there, then Edward Valance would... 

What? Let him hit you? 

Let him put his mouth next to your ear, and shiver for his benefit?

“Oh, bugger,” he cried, causing a handful of respectable matrons to glance at him before turning away with pursed lips.

That had been bloody stupid. He shouldn’t be drawing attention to himself. He was on the run. But the pursuit seemed to have tailed off, so Edward took a minute to get his bearings and made a careful, furtive way back to Peaches’ digs, resisting the urge to fall into a gin palace on the way for a much-needed dram. When he reached the tenement, the street door was hanging ajar, but then it always did that. Edward made his way up the dingy stairs, with the occasional glance to make sure no-one was lurking in the shadows with a shiv. His hands were shaking in a way they hadn’t since he’d been a boy, just starting his career in rule-breaking and debauchery. He steadied himself and opened Peaches’ door, reconciling himself to another week holed up in there, with the cold and the stifled air, and the smell that would only get worse as the days passed. 

“Ah, Mr Valance,” said a snide, ingratiating voice. “We was wondering when you would join us.”

Edward stopped, poised, hands already reaching for pistols that were not there.

“I wouldn’t consider running, Mr Valance. My lads wouldn’t take that kindly.”

Of course. Sharp Rick wouldn’t have come up here without his legendary ‘protection’. Edward glanced across the room to where Bruiser Bairn stood over the bed - his bed, Peaches’ bed - oogling the underthings she’d left to dry over the frame that morning. 

‘Dandy’ Pete stepped out from behind the door. 

Teddy drew in a long breath and put on the kind of face you needed when dealing with spinster aunts, impertinent rogues, and the sort of situations where you might lose a body-part. “Good afternoon, gentlemen. I hope I haven’t kept you long.”

“Good afternoon, he says” said Sharp Rick, “Would you say it was a good afternoon, Bruiser?”

“No, Mr Rick,” said Bruiser. His voice was higher pitched that you’d expect from a man that size. Dandy was smaller, hardly an inch over Edward’s height, but he’d been one of the most famed bareknuckle fighters around, until one of his opponents had hit the floor of the ring with four inches of steel in his gut.

No charges had ever been brought. That was what being Sharp Rick’s protection got you.

“Why hasn’t it been a good afternoon, Bruiser?”

“We was waiting for a gent, Mr Rick” said Bruiser, “who seem to think he could welch on us.”

“Wait a minute now,” said Edward.

Sharp Rick smiled and leaned forward on his cane. He was sitting on the only chair in the room. “Chalk him, Dandy.”

The scrapper hit him with a quick one-two, face and stomach, scientific and precise, with a cruel little twist that Dickie Thornton would have loved to know. Edward choked, staggered, went down to one knee. His face was a mess of aching bone and his stomach seemed to have a sharp-edged hole stabbed through it. 

Alright, he wanted to say, point taken. But this little play wasn’t done yet. He got back to his feet, and tried to draw a steady breath, any kind of breath at all.

“What was that you was trying to say, Mr Valance.”

“I’ve settled with you Rick,” he said, and he kept his voice from trembling, kept his hands by his sides, where a gentleman should keep them, not clutching at where it hurt. “I pawned my good suit to do it.”

“Pawned his good suit, did he boys?”

“Looks like he’s wearing his good suit, Mr Rick” said Dandy.

“You know, now I consider it, it does, don’t it? Are you lying to us, Mr Valance?”

“No,” he said, and didn’t even convince himself. That was what pain did to you. To think he sometimes enjoyed this sort of thing. “Now, come on, Rick, I’m a man of my word. I paid you Thursday.”

“Oh, I had some money of you Thursday, Mr Valance.”

“You’ve had more than ever lent me,” he said, though it would have been smarter to keep his mouth shut.

“Did you hear that, boys?”

“I did hear that Mr Rick,” said Bruiser.

“I think you should chalk him again, Dandy,” said Sharp Rick.

“Now, now, boys,” Edward said, when he was back on his feet again, and able to speak without moaning. “We’re all friends, here. I’m sure Rick and I can settle this amicably.”

“Amicably, he says,” said Sharp Rick. “There’s nothing so amicable as the fifteen pound, six shillings and fourpence you owe me, Mr Valance.”

“Fifteen pounds? That’s extortion.”

“Extortion? Now, surely, Mr Valance, I must have misheard you. He wouldn’t call it extortion, would he lads? Not this noble trade of ours, what lets you put bread in your children’s mouths. No. It’d be right shameful, I reckon, for a gent to speak so.”

“Right shameful, Mr Rick,” said Dandy and he smiled his broken toothed, fighter’s smile.

“Bring him here, Bruiser.”