Read Online Time's Mistress by Steven Savile - Free Book Online

leaving.
    She was, he thought, looking for someone. An expected rendezvous, perhaps? A pre-arranged tryst? Or business? He listened intently for another set of footsteps, the slow measured confidence of a tallyman come to collect her bawd’s cut of the night’s take.
    He cracked his knuckles one at a time and stepped out of the sheltering obscurity of the hanging gardens, pushing back the tears of a weeping willow. The melancholy leaves fell across his face, leaving smears of pollen on his lapel like poisonous kisses. The metal tip of his cane marked each step precisely as he crossed the cobbles toward the waiting woman, the harsh sound hanging in the air.
    Halfway across the square he heard the first chime of midnight from St. Giles’ church. It was taken up a moment later by the great bells of St. Pancras and St. Luke’s, and before the first chime had stopped resonating, by The Holy Trinity out by Lincoln’s Fields. The chimes were like a ripple of sound spreading out across the city. He paused for a moment, to listen to them. They were not an unpleasant last thing to hear …
    He smiled warmly, imagining himself in her eyes: tall, debonair, a dashing city gent both educated and cultured and a long way from his element, walking a lonely road at night, a fool in other words, waiting to be parted from his money. The tails of his Churchill topcoat swirled around his ankles like a clutch of yapping terriers. The cut of his suit was expensive, the threads exquisite, imported from the Far East. Seeing her half-turn, half-smile, he inclined his head and tapped the silver wolf’s head of his cane to the brim of his silk plush Waverley and returned her smile.
    He decided then that he would be merciful. It was curious how a simple thing like her smile could buy even that small relief from him. On another night, he knew, that same smile could just as easily have been reason enough for him to choke the life out of her with her own sex-stinking garter. But tonight it saved her pain.
    She made to offer one of the rather dejected looking blooms from her basket but a wry smile and a slight shake of the head stayed her hand.
    The light was indeed deceptive. Up close, stripped of the mask of shadows and the blush of youth betrayed itself. She could not have been more than eighteen or nineteen but already the curse of old London town had stripped away so much of her life. He could not give back her youth but he could bring an end to the relentless slide into decay her flesh was on. He had heard it said that eight years was the best a flower girl could hope to last on the streets. That was a sorry state of affairs. As the looks began to slide so the coin would dry up. Desperation would see to the rest. It was a devil’s deal if ever there were one.
    She curtseyed, lowering her eyes at his intent inspection, the blush in her cheeks was a lie painted on in-expertly with a thick cake of make-up.
    In the distance came a sad wailing strand of music, whisper-thin on the chill air. It reminded him of the life all around, and the countless eyes that could by chance glance the wrong way as he did for the flower girl.
    “It’s a cold night to be out alone, my dear,” he said, sketching a slight bow.
    She had bad teeth, he saw, as she smiled. They had been whitened with some kind of paste but the underlying decay was barely hidden.
    “Good fortune that I am not alone then, is it not?” Her smile was playful, but the cracked and broken teeth rendered it charmless. He could not imagine lying with the woman. “Can I interest you in a flower for your lady?”
    He leaned in close, as though drinking in the juniper, anise, and other more potent scents that prickled his sinuses, and inclined his head meeting her gaze at eye level.
    “Alas, I have no lady,” he said.
    “A shame, for sure, handsome fellow like yourself.”
    Her eyes were empty of anything approaching emotion. This was all theatre, the flower girl a player and he her hapless