Free The Devlin Diary by Christi Phillips Page B

breaks off in the middle of the sentence. Jenny very nearly laughs again—she’s never seen a man so rattled by a whore—as he staggers back a few steps and bumps into the wall. Osborne’s hands clutch at his stomach just below his left breast. A black liquid gushes through his fingers. Jenny sees the terror in his eyes as he looks at his hands and then into the harlot’s face, and catches a glimpse of the shining blade flashing from the folds of her cloak. Osborne continues to stare at his attacker, his mouth open in mute horror. He manages to stutter, “I know you…” just before she stabs him again, low in the belly this time, then rips the knife up through his abdomen to his chest. His eyes roll back, blood spills from his lips.
    Jenny claps her hand over her mouth, afraid she’ll scream and give herself away. Osborne’s body slumps to the ground. The whore squats down and quickly removes the gloves from his hands. On the smallest finger of his right hand is a gold band. She attempts to pull it off, but the ring won’t budge. Jenny’s eyes grow round as she watches the whore bend back the entire finger—it makes a sharp cracking sound, like a stout branch snapped off a tree—then cut it off with the knife, as expertly as a butcher chopping off a chicken leg. Then she grabs onto the finger next to it and slices it off, too.
    Quivering with fear, Jenny shrinks into the shadows, making herself as small and invisible as she possibly can. She must have gasped, though, because the whore suddenly stops and looks around. She stands, slipping the severed fingers into her cloak pocket. Then she turns toward Jenny, the bloody knife still gripped in her hand.
    Jenny can’t tell whether the woman is young or old; she wears a vizard, a black fabric mask, that conceals the lower portion of her face. Above it, her eyes are enraged, terrifying. Jenny is too petrified to speak, even though she wants to. She wants to say that she has no money, no jewels. That she is not yet eighteen. That she has a little baby named Jack, her Jackie-boy.
    But all she can do is stand there and shiver.

Chapter Eight
    First week of Michaelmas term
    T HE MOMENT C LAIRE saw Hoddington Humphries-Todd standing in Nevile’s Court near the short flight of stairs leading up to the hall, she knew that, in essence, Andrew Kent had stood her up. “Darling!” Hoddy said, bending his lanky frame to give her a friendly buss on the cheek. “How lovely to see you. Something’s come up and Andy’s busy this evening. But he did say he’d try to make it up to you soon. In the meantime he’s asked me to be your escort. That’s if you don’t mind,” he concluded with an irresistibly lopsided grin.
    “Of course I don’t mind.” Claire was delighted to see the history fellow, and she sincerely hoped that he hadn’t noticed her fleeting look of disappointment.
    Possessed of a natural panache, Hoddy was looking exceptionally well, still radiant with a late-summer tan and dressed somewhat unseasonably in a dapper linen suit, as if he refused to believe that summer had ended. One glance at the sky would have convinced him otherwise. In the past few hours, the cold but clear autumn weather had been transformed by a bank of storm clouds that glowered with menace, casting a preternatural, rather medieval gloom over Trinity’s Tudor gates and stone spires.
    “I take it you’ve already had the incomparable experience of dining at High Table,” Hoddy said.
    “Yes.”
    “Given that you will have many other opportunities to do so over the next three terms, what say you we blow this joint and go out for a hamburger and a beer?” He folded his arms over his chest and shivered. “Someplace with a cozy fire,” he added. “Alitalia lost my luggage, and this is the only decent suit I’ve got.”
     
    “Now that’s a real burger,” Hoddy said as the waiter set down two plates with towering stacks of toasted bread, thick, juicy beef patties, and sides of