She braced herself against the table and angled her body back, trying to wrest away from his grasp. “I”—she pulled, twisted, tugged, all to no avail. He wasn’t letting her go—“I don’t know where they are.”
He hauled her to her feet. “You’re coming with me.” He strode toward the door, strumpet in tow, her steps scrambling to keep up behind him.
“Don’t I have a say in the matter?”
“No.”
“You can’t just—” she protested at his back.
“Oh, but I can.” Hand on the door handle, he stopped. He couldn’t very well drag her through Number 9’s front entrance. The doorman would have something to say about that. “What is the back way out of this place?”
“I haven’t the faintest idea.”
Percy bit back a curse. It wasn’t unusual for brothels to hold their whores captive.
He tightened his hold on her wrist, jerked the door open, and ducked his head out. The corridor was empty. Instinctively, he chose the direction opposite of the way they’d arrived. Instinct paid off when he found a narrow servants’ stairway at its end. They were halfway down the first flight when they encountered a teary, slightly disheveled strumpet stomping her way up.
“Tilly?” asked the woman at his back. This night just kept getting better. “What is it?”
The girl—for that she still was, even if she was a strumpet—peered up, twin rivers of kohl streaming down her cheeks. “Oh, Izzy, Sir Felix broke it off, ’e did. Said I wadn’t fine”—foine—“enough fer ’im.” The girl’s eyes widened. “Oi, what’s this?” She jerked her thumb toward Percy. “Izzy, is ’e takin’ ye ’gainst yer will? Oi! Oi!” She began shouting the place down.
Before Percy could clamp a hand over the girl’s mouth, the woman at his back—Izzy, the girl had called her—squeezed past him. “Tilly!” she said in a whispered shout. “Stop that this instant!”
Tilly’s mouth snapped shut, even as her eyes grew wide. Percy might have had the same reaction, he couldn’t be sure. Izzy—how could that be this woman’s name?—held a quiet command he hadn’t noticed until now.
She grabbed both of Tilly’s hands. “Come with me,” she urged.
“Wait a—” Percy began.
Izzy rounded on him. “This has naught to do with you.” She returned her attention to Tilly. “Tell me. Is this the life you want?”
The girl swallowed and shook her head.
“Then come with me,” Izzy implored.
“Where are we goin’?” A baleful eye darted toward Percy. “With ’im?”
“I haven’t the faintest idea.” Izzy stabbed Percy with a hard glare. “But you’ll be with me.”
Tilly nodded, and the clouds cleared from her face that instant. Oh, the resilience of youth. “May we continue onward?” Percy asked, sardonic.
They had nearly reached the bottom step of the final set of stairs when the French doorman stomped into view, his brawny body filling the narrow width. Impassive eyes stared out from beneath a low brow, the man’s bald head the exact width of his thick neck. “You are free to go.” He jutted his chin at Izzy and Tilly. “But not them.”
Percy’s fists clenched at his sides. Still, he would try diplomacy first. “They could. Name your price.”
The man shook his head and widened his stance, ready.
Percy was going to have to fight his way through this massive wall of man. So be it. He occupied the high ground, therefore the advantage.
Strumpets to his back, he barreled down the stairs, pushing off the bottom step, the doorman taking a direct hit to the sternum with Percy’s left shoulder. The man whooshed out a great breath, but didn’t topple to the ground as Percy had hoped. In fact, the man barely moved.
Percy shuffled backwards and crouched low, reassessing. The other man smiled and cracked a few knuckles. Right.
Percy reared back his fist, but instead of striking the man as expected, at the last moment he changed tack and took a meaty shoulder in each hand before headbutting him, delivering a solid crack to the man’s nose, which had surely broken given the spray of blood that burst forth.
Percy felt not a whit of remorse. It couldn’t have been the first time the man’s nose had been broken. Or the last.
The doorman swiped at his face in an unsuccessful attempt to stem the flow. “If rough play is what you want.” He shuffled forward, fury in his eyes. “’Tis what you’ll get.”
Percy dodged the first fist, but wasn’t so lucky with the second, taking a blow to the left eye that was bound to leave a mark. He feinted right and dug into his bag of dirty fighting tricks. He’d landed on one—a footplant to the knee designed to dislocate it—when around him shoved Tilly on an animal roar. Before Percy knew what the minx was up to, she’d delivered the most solid kick to a man’s bollocks Percy ever had the displeasure of witnessing.
Time seemed to stand still as the doorman crumpled to the ground by heavy increments, until he rested on his knees, hunched over, a defeated shell of the man he once was. Tilly stood over him, breath coming in heavy gulps, radiant with triumph.
Percy found Izzy watching the events with wide eyes, as shocked as he. He grabbed her hand, slender and warm, and picked a direction. Down a short, dark corridor, they fled, Izzy’s other hand latched onto Tilly. He shouldered open a door and found himself outside in a narrow, abandoned alley, the rancid reek of London life and vice left with nowhere to go but up one’s nostrils. Izzy and Tilly rushed out onto cobblestones a step behind, while he located a plank of wood to wedge beneath the door handle, which should give the doorman enough trouble to buy them crucial seconds.
Three sets of breath puffed ragged in the midnight air. Percy glanced about to gather his bearings and met wide green eyes. Izzy was shivering, not from cold, he suspected, but from shock. “We need to move. Any idea which way?”
Her eyebrows drew together. “Left?”
“It’s as good a direction as any.”
At the end of the alley, Percy scanned up and down the street. Then he heard it: the thud of heavy footsteps. He glanced back and spotted the doorman limping toward them, murder in his eyes. One had to admire the man’s tenacity in the face of possible permanent injury.