Free All Through the Night by Connie Brockway

snatched it from her and turned away. “Go ‘way,” he said sullenly. “Go the bloody ’ell away.”
    “You gots other things to worry about,” Mrs. Cashman said to her. “I’ll take care of O’Shea here. You gots all them noble people comin‘ to look at us, don’t you?”
    “Yes. Yes. I do,” she said. She knew she was babbling but the words just poured forth trying to stop the inner voice that shouted condemnation at her. “I have to find Will and Mr. Fry. It’s imperative that we make a good impression—”
    A thick coil of hair suddenly slipped free of her careful coiffure and unraveled over her shoulder. She looked down. Her skirts spread over the floor, damp with stains. Her gloves were soiled and dirty.
    Appearances meant so much to these people. A woman could fund a charitable institute, but she must never allow herself to become involved in the sordid workings of it. Only a coarse, vulgar woman would do so, and coarse, vulgar women did not get support from rich, well-bred ones. A tear slipped from the corner of her eye. So much for good impressions.

    The simple fact that Anne Wilder roused a deep yearning in him did not exempt her from observation. So Jack had followed her to this tawdry section of the city where his thief had pawned her stolen goods.
    He stopped a discreet distance from the converted theater that now acted as a charitable institute, and warmed his hands by a chestnut vendor’s brazier, occasionally stomping his feet against the sloppy, ice-crusted mud. The rain began in earnest. He adjusted his collar time and again, but the water dripping from the brim of his hat still found a way to trace frigid rivulets down his back. He deliberated over whether he ought to go in after her. She might be meeting someone in there who dealt in stolen goods. Workhouses were a fine place to meet criminals. Still, he held back.
    Because he didn’t want to see her in that place.
    Though it wore the tawdry air of an abandoned theater, the Home still exuded the aroma of a workhouse: sweat, gin, and desperation. He could smell it from here, nearly two blocks away.
    Anne had probably never known the type of people who ended up there: men and women who experienced sex as nothing more than a bodily release because their minds and spirit were too numbed to partake of any other portion of it, children who would trade anything or anyone simply to live another day. People like he’d been.
    As minute bled into minute he found himself growing anxious. She’d gone in there alone. Yes, she was their benefactress, but Jack knew firsthand how little that meant to a desperate man. What if she’d gone out a door leading into an alley and been accosted? What if she’d met someone in a lonely corridor in the building itself? What if—
    He wouldn’t rest until he saw she was safe. He crossed the sleet-blackened street, bracing himself against the scent and look of the place as he strode up the stairs to the front door. Twenty-five years ago he’d left a place like this. He’d never gone back inside another one. He didn’t want to go now.
    A pair of skeletal, rag-covered beggars shrank from his approach. He pulled open the door. A blast of stale, cold air kissed his face and coated his throat with its vile scent of desperation. Inside a baby screamed.
    He loathed this. Yet he entered, keeping his eyes straight ahead, refusing to look at the specters from his youth. A hand brushed his leg in supplication. He jerked forward.
    He spotted a boy whose sharp, clever face was turned with interest toward him. Jack motioned and the boy slunk forward.
    “Where’s the lady that came in here a half hour ago?” Jack asked.
    “Mrs. Wilder?” The boy cocked his head. “What’s it worth to you?”
    “Half a crown.”
    The boy’s eyes widened and then narrowed. He snorted and pointed at Jack’s coat. “Your coat be worth ten times that. You can afford a bit more.”
    The coat was worth forty, but the boy would hardly know