An Honourable Thief by Douglas Skelton EPUB & PDF – eBook Details Online
- Status: Available for Free Download
- Author: Douglas Skelton
- Language: English
- Genre: Historical Thrillers
- Format: PDF / EPUB
- Size: 2 MB
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London, October 1715
They called it Satan’s Gullet, and with good reason, for those unwary
enough to step into it alone often did not step out again with their purse,
virtue or person intact. St Giles entire was no leafy glade, but the Gullet
was a hellhole. It did not deter Bess from walking it every night, for it was
the quickest way between Covent Garden and her lodgings. She was known
here so she felt little fear.
She looked forward to reaching her room, even though it was a poxy
little box in a god-rotting tenement at the far end of the alley. Once there
she would recline on her bed, always reasonably clean, she saw to that, and
lose herself in the bottle she had just purchased from one of the many gin
shops in the vicinity. After a night of satisfying the lusts of a variety of culls
in the Garden she needed the spirit to wash out her mouth and throat, to
erode the memory of hands, both filthy and sweet-scented, touching every
part of her body. Men, women, old, young. They were all the same to her.
She might be used to such treatment – it was how she made her living – but
she still liked to salve her body and her soul with liquor.
The alleyway was ill lit and narrow, a ridge down its centre carrying
sewage and garbage thrown there by denizens of the tall buildings on either
side. It would rot there until the next heavy rainfall swept it away. Its
stench, like those of the culls she rutted, rubbed and, when she was
desperate, robbed, was so much a part of her life that she barely noticed it.
The man, though, she did notice, and the sight of him instilled fear. The
tall figure stood in the shadow of a doorway with a skinny boy at his side.
The lad, too, was familiar for she had often seen him around the Garden. A
sly little buz cove, he was, and a cull never felt his touch as his purse was
lifted. He was a cocky one and she had caught him more than once eyeing
her apple dumplings, but he had not the bunce to pay for a taste.
The man, though, the man.
She most certainly knew the cove for she had seen him in the taverns and
gambling dens around the Garden and beyond. He dressed like a Puritan,
his long greatcoat, his breeches, his knee-length boots all black. The cane in
his right hand was a flash of silver, and his wide-brimmed hat was brown
and adorned by a peacock feather which she always thought unusual.
Underneath that hat she knew his dark hair was close-cropped, for she had
never seen him favour a wig at the gaming tables as he took bunce from
dandies who were out of their depth. He wasn’t a sharper but he could turn
the boards and throw a dice with uncanny skill. She had heard talk of the
other side of him, the side that she suspected was employed this night, for
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