Fearless (Scarlet Suffragette, Book 1): A Victorian Historical Romantic Suspense Series Read online

  Contents

  Title Page

  More Books By Nicola Claire

  Dedication

  The Scarlet Suffragette

  One: The Ripper Is Here

  Two: Right You Are

  Three: I Have Grave News To Impart

  Four: Out With It Then

  Five: How Strange

  Six: My World

  Seven: Let's Keep It That Way

  Eight: In Every Way But Reality

  Nine: To Equality!

  Ten: I Abhor Distractions

  Eleven: He Knows Me

  Twelve: Hear Me?

  Thirteen: Come On

  Fourteen: Until I Had No Voice Left

  Fifteen: Miss Cassidy

  Sixteen: This Had To Stop

  Seventeen: Not Really There

  Eighteen: I Owed It To Them

  Nineteen: Never Could Be

  Twenty: You Did Everything

  Twenty-One: Absolutely Not!

  Twenty-Two: Spare Me Your Winsome Talents, Miss Cassidy

  Twenty-Three: Except Myself

  Twenty-Four: Not I

  Twenty-Five: It Was All I Could Do Not To Smile

  Twenty-Six: Now You've Bloody Well Gone And Done It!

  Twenty-Seven: But Where Would The Fun Be In That?

  Twenty-Eight: Welcome To The Family

  Twenty-Nine: And All I Saw Was Scarlet

  Thirty: Out With It!

  Thirty-One: There Were Things Far Worse Than The Ripper

  Epilogue: I Almost Said It

  Review Request

  A Word From The Author...

  About The Author

  Fearless

  Scarlet Suffragette, Book One

  By Nicola Claire

  Copyright © 2015, Nicola Claire

  All Rights Reserved

  ISBN: 978-0-473-32632-6

  nicolaclairebooks.com

  This book is a work of fiction. The names, characters, places and incidents are products of the writer's imagination or have been used fictitiously and are not to be construed as real. Any resemblance to persons, living or dead, actual events, locales or organisations is entirely coincidental.

  All rights are reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission from the author.

  Cover Art by Nicola Claire

  Image credit: 123RF Stock Photo

  Image # 31941365 & 31379089

  More books by Nicola Claire:

  Kindred Series

  Kindred

  Blood Life Seeker

  Forbidden Drink

  Giver of Light

  Dancing Dragon

  Shadow's Light

  Entwined With The Dark

  Kiss Of The Dragon

  Dreaming Of A Blood Red Christmas (Novella)

  Mixed Blessing Mystery Series

  Mixed Blessing

  Dark Shadow (Coming Soon)

  Sweet Seduction Series

  Sweet Seduction Sacrifice

  Sweet Seduction Serenade

  Sweet Seduction Shadow

  Sweet Seduction Surrender

  Sweet Seduction Shield

  Sweet Seduction Sabotage

  Sweet Seduction Stripped

  Sweet Seduction Secrets (Coming Soon)

  Elemental Awakening Series

  The Tempting Touch Of Fire

  The Soothing Scent Of Earth

  The Chilling Change Of Air

  The Tantalising Taste Of Water (Coming Soon)

  H.E.A.T. Series

  A Flare Of Heat

  A Touch Of Heat

  A Twist Of Heat (Novella)

  A Lick Of Heat (Coming Soon)

  Citizen Saga

  Elite

  Cardinal

  Citizen

  Scarlet Suffragette

  Fearless

  Breathless (Coming Soon)

  For:

  My father.

  Lover of books.

  Lover of hugs.

  Lover of family.

  Rest in peace, Poppa.

  The Scarlet Suffragette

  This is not your average historical romance. You'll find no bad-boy earl deflowering his virgin lady here.

  It's gritty and twisted, authentic and a little dark. It's Whitechapel meets early settler New Zealand, Jack The Ripper mixed up with Suffragettes. It's the type of historical romance I've always wanted to read, but could never find. It's real. It's Victorian. It’s shocking.

  It’s the true and sometimes devastating vagaries of love.

  And like Jack, it will rip you apart in the end.

  But it is a love story

  …mixed up with a whole lot of mystery and death.

  - Nicola Claire

  One

  The Ripper Is Here

  Anna

  Auckland, New Zealand

  August 1891

  “The Ripper is here.”

  The whispered words somehow found their way through the cacophony of noise surrounding me. Wrapping around my chest in a vice-like grip, threatening to crush my ribs and pulverise my heart. I sucked in a shaking breath of air, smelling sweat and horse manure, coal and brimstone.

  Hell is Auckland city on a protest rally day.

  A scream rang out, and then another. The high pitched sound an unusual occurrence for Queen Street. The splash of boots through the nearby re-opened portion of the Ligar Canal accompanied the thunder of hooves upon gravel as they bore down on us. Bodies pressed in closer, even as arms flailed and the weaker amongst us fainted.

  I reached out to grasp the hand of Wilhelmina, but her glove slipped through my trembling fingers. Her body slumping to the dirt and grit coated roadway, the collar of her dress caught up in the straps of her sandwich board, threatening to strangle her as she lost consciousness.

  My switchblade was in my hand before I even registered the movement, aware that a jostle from a frightened protester could make the weapon lethal. I crouched down, fear of being trampled a real concern, perspiration beading my brow, but my hand steady as the blade sliced the straps in two, freeing Wilhelmina from her inadvertent self made noose.

  “Stand back!” I cried, swatting at the petticoats of a bystander. “Can’t you see a woman has fainted?”

  “There’s more to be concerned with, Anna Cassidy, than a girl who wears her corset too tight,” the woman, Ethel Poynton I realised, remonstrated. “Something has happened over on Queen Street Wharf,” she added, standing on the tips of her toes to see over the now silent crowd.

  Fear or curiosity had finally gotten the better of the mob. Now it seemed to be drawn to the distraction on the Wharf, as though pulled by a dray through a recently turned field. Resistance was futile. Soon Wilhelmina would be trampled under the hooves of the Suffragettes.

  I stowed my knife, and gripped Mina beneath her armpits, then dragged her backwards through the throng, using my bustle as a convenient mouldboard; instead of earth it parted women. The imagery was fascinating, but I had graver concerns.

  “Wake up, you silly chit!” I chastised through gritted teeth, my breaths punched out with exertion. But received only a small mewl of protest as her head jostled from one of my forearms to the other.

  One last inelegant heave and I had her out of harm’s way, resting under the frontage of the Bank Of New Zealand building. A gentleman glanced down from his superior height on the top tread with a disgruntled frown, but failed to offer any assistance.

  Instead he commented, in tone
s brooking no argument of his disapproval, “This is what happens when women concern themselves in the affairs men.” He harrumphed loudly and proceeded to push his way through my meddlesome - in his eyes - counterparts.

  “‘Tis gentlemen like you, sir, who make the necessity an imperative!” I shouted after him.

  “Did we make it, Anna?” a small, trembling voice said from street level. My eyes darted down to find Wilhelmina awake and rousing, pushing herself up to an amusingly ladylike position, despite the location and circumstance.

  “No, sweeting,” I said, glancing back at the crowd of women, now dispersing, or moving closer to the still chaotic scene and elevated sounds of shock from farther down the street. “But we came close this time.”

  “Perhaps Mr Entrican laid eyes upon us, understanding the gravity of our request, and has no need of the petition at all now.”

  “‘Tis wishful thinking, Mina,” I said with sadness. Two decades had not convinced the Government of our plight, I doubted one aborted protest rally would seal the deal. “But whatever the deputy mayor has registered this morning, I’d hazard a guess his attention is now elsewhere.”

  I glanced back down the street, a sense of unease settling inside my stomach.

  “Didn’t Margaret say she’d meet us at the stage?” I asked, chewing on my bottom lip nervously; a habit my father had tried unsuccessfully to wean me of.

  “She said she’d keep an eye on His Worship for us, ensuring he didn’t leave before we all arrived.”

  I took a step away, pulled by the allure of chaos which had already claimed so many of my contemporaries.

  “Stay here,” I said absently. My feet already taking me several yards down the street. The constriction of earlier inside my chest now the weight of a smithie’s anvil. I wasn’t sure why, but fear coated my skin in a fine sheen of perspiration.

  The crowd that had gathered at the end of Queen Street was larger than I had anticipated. The deputy mayor’s speech not the draw card, I was certain. The smell of refuse from the canal overrode the sea salt air sweeping up from the waterfront. Only minutes had passed since that first whispered sentence. Seconds, truth be told, while sweet Mina had fainted.

  Not even the Police Force had yet arrived, but order of some sort had been established. No doubt an enthusiastic volunteer from the Auckland Militia or members of the Fencibles. There was always someone from either establishment close at hand these days. Peace may have a tenuous hold over the nation, but Auckland was not such a pivotal political centre to go so unprepared.

  I pushed through the edge of the crowd of onlookers, noting absently a few of my fellow Suffragettes had gamely ventured this close to whatever had started the crush back on Queen Street. A line of militant looking gentlemen stood across the entranceway to a darkened alley behind the raised stand the deputy mayor had been about to commandeer. Crates and merchandise, not yet sorted from the wharves, stood on either side, several of which had toppled over, indicating an energetic scene had transpired.

  The closest guard held up his hand when a well dressed gentleman attempted to step forward.

  “No one enters until the bobbies make it,” he declared in an east London accent announcing his origins and recent arrival to the Antipodes. Or simply his desire to cling to the old and not embrace the new.

  A constant theme in our world of late. Change is disruptive. Consistency is so much cleaner.

  “What happened?” the gentleman enquired.

  “Murder,” the man reported with a devilish glint in his eyes.

  Murmurs ran through the crowd, as though the whispered fears of earlier had all been forgotten.

  The Ripper is here.

  I stepped through the now stunned immobile audience and moved in front of the gentleman.

  “I’m a surgeon,” I announced. “Allow me to determine whether the victim is indeed deceased.”

  “Surgeon?” another man to my side said derisively. “A woman indeed!”

  I turned raised eyebrows on the man, noting belatedly he was the banker from the steps of the Bank of New Zealand building, and said as clearly and loudly as I could muster, “My father was Doctor Thomas Cassidy. He trained me well, sir.”

  “He may have trained you, and more fool him,” the banker declared. “But that hardly makes you an appropriate choice for such a scene.” His gaze darted back to the alleyway, but I was sure he couldn’t see more than simple shadows. Fear and uncertainty filled his eyes, smoothing the harsh planes of his previously unforgiving countenance.

  Like those behind me, like the whispered fears of earlier, this man was merely panicked. Making his objections harsher than they may otherwise have been. Making his statement something far less than the immutable truth.

  I was a woman in a man’s world, but that did not mean I was incapable.

  “The victim,” I said to the Militia guard. “May I see to them?”

  “The Police will be ‘ere soon, miss,” the guard replied, shifting from foot to foot with mounting unease. The crowd moved with him, but their nerves were borne of urgency rather than uncertainty. The victim may well be still alive.

  I doubted it. Even from here, even with the filth funnelling through the nearby canal, wafting over the street and melding with the stench of dead fish, I could discern the scent of blood. A lot of blood to have risen above the miasma of a bustling metropolis.

  “Then they shall be angered by the lost opportunity to ascertain survival by a professional before their arrival,” I countered.

  The guard looked me up and down, taking in my full skirt, the crinoline petticoat beneath keeping the layers in perfect symmetry, the fashionable bustle at my rear hindering mobility. The fine lace of my cuffs. The pearls at my neckline, the matching earbobs. The wide brimmed, feather bedecked hat perched jauntily upon my coiffed hair.

  More than once a day I cursed women’s fashion.

  My saviour came in the form of my ever irrepressible Suffragettes. Several of whom had made their way to the front line of the milling assemblage. We may have lost our opportunity to impress the deputy mayor, but never let it be said that we’re not adaptable.

  “Doctor Cassidy is a fine surgeon,” one cried.

  “Let her through!” another added.

  “Be it on your conscience, boy, should the fallen require assistance and their angel of mercy arrive too late.”

  Perhaps that last was overkill, but Ethel was difficult to restrain under normal circumstances. And this situation could not be called “normal” by any stretch of the imagination.

  “Let her through!” someone repeated, in the recognisable tones of a Suffragette on the march.

  “Let her through!” the chant began, making the banker beside me huff out a disgusted grunt of bemusement.

  “Let her through!” the crowd intoned, even as I spotted the approaching curricle of the Senior Inspector for the Auckland Central Police Force over the heads of the now near-mobbing crowd.

  I didn’t have much time left to establish myself at the crime scene.

  I stepped forward, raised my voice above the melee, and said, “Well, you heard them. Lead on!”

  The guard had ten years seniority on me easily, but much can be accomplished with a straight back and firm words. My father had taught me that.

  “Very well,” he muttered, as my girls closed in, blocking the view back towards Queen Street and the righteously furious look upon one certain police inspector’s visage.

  I glanced back over my shoulder, noting the concerned looks on the few women’s faces I could make out, and the hard disapproval on the banker’s façade, matched by the shocked looks on several other gentlemen’s. But I could not see the inspector.

  Precious seconds had been granted me, I grasped them in a tight fist and stormed into the alleyway.

  The smell hit me first, as my eyes adjusted to the dimmer lighting. We’d have to bring in lanterns to truly dissect the scene. I lifted a gloved hand to my face, covering my nose, cutting of
f much if not most of the stench, and checked my surroundings. ‘Tis easy to forge headfirst into a crisis, my father had always said. ‘Tis far harder to backtrack from a fatal misstep.

  The alleyway was empty, save for the few crates left abandoned, the tall crumbling brick walls on either side, and the mish-mash of shadows, overlain with a reek of rotten fruit, discarded refuse, and death.

  I crouched down beside the pile of cloth that indicated a body. No movement of chest or sign of life. Not enough light to discern identity, but the material was fine, if not stained with copious amounts of blood, and the petticoat an indication of sex.

  The Ripper is here.

  I knew what I’d find when I finally raised the courage to move closer. I’d studied drawings of the five women lost in Whitechapel. I’d made a fine art of examining that man’s base skills. War and what happened on those woe-begotten streets are not so different. But for one singular and important distinction.

  The Ripper killed for his own desires.

  Soldiers kill on the orders of other men.

  I stood up and leaned over the form of the dead woman, making sure to keep my skirts well out of the immediate crime scene. With pure determination, I disconnected myself from the victim, and searched with my eyes alone for any indication of the mechanism of death.

  Stabbed. Brutally and viciously stabbed. I’d counted fourteen possible incision sites before my time ran out.

  The light from his lantern filled the alleyway, splashing illumination across the woman’s face as if blood spilled from a slashed artery.

  I sucked in a mortified breath of air, took a step backwards in unmitigated shock and horror, and rammed into the haphazardly stacked crates at my rear.

  “Damnation, woman!” a deep and angry voice sounded out over my shoulder. A large hand wrapped around my upper arm and steadied me before I fell. The sound of a walking stick coming down hard upon the toppling crates halted their trajectory. “How many times have I told you to wait until I arrive?”