Gin Mills and the Goods

Blackmail

The club is roaring like never before, that night.

Hort slips in late, and immediately has to duck as an empty glass goes sailing over his head, courtesy of someone who will not once wonder where their glass has gone and will wake up tomorrow with bigger concerns, like who took their best jacket, and having to work out exactly how much money they blew at the bar.

Sighing, he slips down the stairs and ducks into the crowd, heading for a table near the stage. It's even worse than the previous night, and he certainly wouldn't have come if he'd known it was going to be like this. Or he wouldn't have come sober, at least.

Preferably, he would never have returned at all, but he's got something to see.

He settles at his table from the previous night and stares closely at the dancers, and even though he can see several boys, none of them is who he's looking for. He doesn't look around for Sophie- not after his humiliation last time. Hopefully, he can stay unnoticed until he's sure she's forgotten, and Nicola has gone back to her own club.

Speaking of Nicola, she's here again- Hort can see her sat with three other women, two in black suits, the third in a green fringe dress, muttering together. There's a guy sat with them, too, burly and very obviously used to a punch-up.

Hort sincerely hopes that guy is not his replacement.

His eyes move quicker than is strictly necessary, which is probably why they snag onto the table beside them and it takes him too long to work out who's on it.

Lady A and Sophie sit together, watching the dancers- Sophie gleefully, almost with pride, and her sister poker-faced, as if she refuses to grant the luxury of her own opinion to anyone but herself. Sophie's in a new dress, tonight, midnight blue satin surrounded by furs and silks and pearls- she's impossible to miss, and impossible not to admire. It's undoubtedly the intended effect, and Hort struggles to tear his eyes away from her.

But you'd have thought that, even next to glamorous Sophie, her sister would have still been glaringly obvious. Lady A had plunged the club into silence just by walking in last night, and she and Sophie contrasted so sharply that it was almost jarring.

But no one around them has so much as shot a second glance their way. The waiters are tense and Hort can see the nervous glances that the dancers are exchanging, the extra effort they're putting into their spins and kicks, but the patrons simply don't seem to register her.

Hort gets the uncomfortable impression that Lady A can choose whether or not she is noticed, and the idea makes him nervous. Maye that's why he'd recognised her? Maybe she'd been around for weeks, in disguise. Maybe she was one of his father's bosses. Maybe she was one of the boys who hung around on the street corner, smoking and throwing stones at cars-

Get it together, Hort. He scolds himself. She wouldn't be masquerading as the head of a butcher's chain, for god's sake. She's Sophie's sister. No doubt she fleeces a much higher calibre of pigeon. Maybe a scammer, a pickpocket who's a little too good, maybe even on the same level as Arthur Pendragon, some military or government official with dodgy investments. She wouldn't be the first, or the last.

But speaking of Arthur Pendragon...

Hort tears his eyes away from Lady A, remembering what- or, rather, who- he's here for.