Free Love Between the Lines by Kate Rothwell Page B

easily for the first time that day. The strange combination of Mr. Brinker and Sir Gideon disturbed her usual equanimity. And now she’d be sailing for another country. With them.
    She sat on the narrow bed and looked around her room. It had always felt a safe place, even after someone had broken in and stolen a few items of clothing and some papers. This had become her home. She stifled a sigh and considered what must be done before she boarded the ship for England.
    Packing was easy—all of her possessions fit in the ugly trunk standing in the corner. But the rest of her life would be more complicated.
    The latest Pete Devlin adventure story had to be finished. The list of people to whom she’d have to bid good-bye was long. Some would be satisfied with a note. Others would require a real visit.
    She mentally composed her list of acquaintances and resources: criminals, reporters, fallen women, cops, bartenders, waiters, shoeshine and newspaper boys, a laundress, a midwife, several longshoremen, the hospital porter. So many people would be insulted if she didn’t bid them farewell.
    Any of the names on her list would be enough to cause her poor father to have an apoplectic fit—all the more reason to put distance between Mr. Drury and his daughter.
    Lizzy felt her shoulder s hunch around her ears and forced herself to relax. She dipped her pen in the inkwell and wrote the next note, a letter to her mother, informing her that she would keep the necklace and never sell it.
    No doubt I ’ll be attending balls and so on in London, she wrote to her mother. I’ll wear your lovely jewelry and think of you. She hoped her mother would be amused rather than depressed by the joke of Lizzy as a socialite. To her father’s sorrow, their family would never make it to the highest echelons. Lizzy suspected he blamed both the women in his family.
     
    For the next few days, she concentrated on the easier articles. Certainly no more trying to get herself kidnapped. Yet she couldn’t let go of that story entirely, so she went after it by the more traditional route.
    At the busy first precinct, she sought out her favorite source, a garrulous cop named Clark. She only had to pay him a dollar before he’d talk. “Well, miss, apparently whoever’s taking ’em likes females with blue eyes. Like yours. Same height too.” He winked at her. “You didn’t hear that from me, mind. Better get an official report from Mulberry Street.”
    “ Of course I won’t say a word about you.”
    That was interesting, she supposed. As she made her way back to her boardinghouse, she formed the headline about Blue-Eyed Prey. And she’d describe the dastardly henchmen this reporter had actually encountered in person. She’d write up a piece for Tooley and, walking down the crowded streets, she composed the sensational paragraphs.
    Back in her room, she stood and removed her hat, still wondering what Gottshield and his pal wanted from the women.
    “ You’re a dog with a bone too big for it,” Oyster had once told her as she hunted down a lead. “You’ll eat at it until it’s gone or it makes you sick.”
    Blue-eyed girls, two people had said so now… She caught sight of her own eyes in the speckled old mirror perched over the bureau. Very blue. No wonder they’d attempted to pick her up twice. A distinct shiver ran down her spine. Her methods to track down some stories gave her chills when she recalled them after the fact, once the fascination and curiosity had drained away.
     
    Then Captain Kelly sent word that Gottshield had been apprehended.
    She was in such a hurry , she actually grabbed a cab to race to the precinct.
    Kelly glared up at her from his desk. He pointed to a chair. This was one of the few times she’d been invited to sit.
    He launched into speech before she had time to put the folders on the floor next to the chair. “A ’tec from the nineteenth precinct nabbed Gottshield, took him straight to the Tombs, and so you won’t