Prescott Street - White Chapel Courts


She was still running by the time she made it to the front steps of the Metropolitan courts, ten blocks from where she'd escaped near death. Ella's heart pounded, her legs were weak and her hands trembled as she walked to the doors and pulled one open. It took with it the last of her strength.

Inside of the building there was no one and nothing but silence, flickering kerosene lamps, and the distant sound of shuffling paper. She breathed deeply and walked towards the front desk where an older gentleman was sound asleep, snoring and drooling on his arm. Instead of waking him, she peered over and stole a glance at the book of room numbers and names beneath him, scanning until she found what she was after.

CHIEF INSPECTOR ABBERLINE, F. - ROOM NO. 382

"Third floor," she whispered to herself.

She snuck up three full flights without ever being caught. Ella tiptoed down the hallway of the third floor, eyes darting between doorways and name plaques until she found exactly what she was looking for and who. Chief Inspector Abberline. Somehow reading it or hearing it never seemed to get old to her and she smiled, quietly tapping on the door. She saw a light shining from behind the blurred glass, but received no answer.

Ella slid inside without a single witness to catch her. She was surprised to find that the room was freezing like the rainy night outside, despite their being half a dozen lamps and candles lit for warmth. She turned the corner from the door's alcove and saw something else she hadn't expected. Fredrick was there, but not working as she'd hoped or assumed by the light. Instead, he was half stretched across his desk, same as the man on the first floor, deep in sleep. All she could do was smile with a sigh as she walked towards him.

She wanted to reach out and brush the short curls from his eyes, or stroke the sideburns that grew to the middle of his cheek. She wanted breathe him in, the steady warmth of him, the dryness and exhaustion. But what she really wanted was a kiss. She felt sure she could have tried with the right kind of silence and the right kind of carefulness, but he interrupted her when he stirred awake and caught sight of her beside him. Abberline grumbled a little and rubbed his eyes. He fixed his gaze to be sure it wasn't a dream.

"I'm sorry. I didn't mean to wake you, Inspector."

He wiped the sleep from his eyes and mouth. "Eloise. Is everything alright?"

"Yes. Yes, of course it is."

He didn't believe her. He could clearly, even in tire, see the stricken fear in her green eyes. But he waited for her to speak it as he rose and offered her his own chair. She sat down, trembling from the rain soaked into her coat and hair. He pulled a blanket from a nearby cupboard, wrapping it over her shoulders and she thanked him profusely.

"I'm alright, I think. I—I don't know. There was someone."

"Someone, who?" he asked with concern, leaning against the desk.

"There was a man, in the alley."

Fredrick's eyes darkened and he leaned towards her, suddenly demanding of answers. "Who? What man, where?"

Ella gulped and wiped her cheeks of the rain still dripping from her hair. "It was behind the Bell Foundry, near the Ten Bells."

"What were ye doing there?"

She grinned. "Walking." Her reply, quick as it was and witty as it was, made him smile briefly too as he moved from the desk to stand before her.

"Walking t' where, Ella?"

"To Cecelia's studio. I wanted to dance tonight."

He nodded, seeing the desperation lingering in her eyes, but not knowing what it was for.

"Did he hurt you?"

Ella recognized how worried he was and she assured him, shaking her wet curls, eyes turned down low as she watched Fredrick kneel to the floor in front of her. He searched for her face. His hand moved to her cheek, to move her eyes to meet his, and she thought she would suffer the worst pain of all. The pain of needing to kiss him.

"Tell me wot' happened."

Her green eyes hunted for something in his. "I couldn't see his face, but he came after me. He chased me. And then I fell and he disappeared."

"You fell?"

"Yes, but it's nothing. My knee, that's all."

She touched her knee through the dirtied, emerald cotton of her dress and Frederick's eyes moved to the same place. Without thinking about what he was saying or why or what it could really mean at all, he asked her quietly, "Mind if I take a look? Make sure you're not bleeding?"

Ella smirked at the turn in the conversation, the one she felt swiftly coming on, and she moved her hand away to let him carefully, modestly, raise the hem of her dress and check her knee. There was a scrape alongside an existing scar—the one he recognized from her painful telling of ballet and surgery and losing Paris—yet there was no bleeding, only mud that he gently stroked away. He dropped the skirts of her dress then and when he found her eyes, they were heavy and timid and wanting, no different than he was sure his were.

"Frederick."

It was his name and it kept him firmly planted in a kneel. His body, his breath and warmth and mouth all moving in closer to hers as he gripped the handles of the chair on either side of her.

"Ella," he murmured as her small hand moved out to touch his neck tie.

"Why are you here alone at night? Don't you have someone to go home to?"

He shook his head and she smiled inside.

"Don't you want someone or wish you had someone, at least?"

The sparkle in his eyes made her head swim as Fredrick eased closer to her mouth and replied, "Yeah. I do most days."

There was no warning from either one of them, no moment to pause and think or recharge or convince themselves that it wasn't right. When their mouths fell to one another's, it was only completely right. Ella leaned down into his lips as he swarmed her gently, his hands on the waist of her dress under her wet coat, pulling her body into his and out of the chair. She held his cheeks with worth, stroking through the soft hair on his face, behind his ears and down the curve of his neck, never willing to let go. The more her fingers wove through his hair, the harsher, more deliberate his mouth was upon hers.

He walked her carefully backwards from the desk to the wall of his office. And when she landed in his arms against the layers of information and facts and morbid case details, he pulled away to breathe soundly against her lips.

"I want you, Eloise."

She couldn't breathe like he could. She couldn't think or move or do anything but stare up at him and hold onto his wrinkled vest coat. He had every bit of her then, and that's what scared her most.

"Why?"

This startled him. But he held her more closely despite it. Her eyes sunk him, threw him for a lost cause into a forest he never wanted to escape. He pressed his nose, then his forehead to hers as he whispered, "There is no reasoning. I do. An' that's it."

"But-" Ella loosened herself from his arms. "But you can't just know something like that. You don't even know me yet, Inspector."

She tried to break away from him, tried to head for the door out of fear, and even that wasn't a possibility. Ella felt his hand wrap about the small of her waist and bring her right back beneath him at the wall, instantly meeting his wanting mouth a second time. And this time, there was no going back for her. There was no denying what she couldn't explain beyond feeling.

His tongue prodded desperately at her lips and she parted them willingly, drowned by the sensation once it reached inside for hers. The firm way he held her body to the wall, to him, kissing her like he might forget how at any moment, letting his tongue dance in manic circles about hers— all of it was so far from wishful wondering now. It was real. And Ella gave into it.

She clung to his neck as he raised her legs one at a time, wrapping them about his body. She felt the strain from behind his black pants begging for her alone. She was ready to give him whatever he wanted, the things she felt she wanted all the same. And she likely would have right there, on his desk of investigation details, against the wall of his office where criminals' paths were put to rest each day. She would have, if a knock on the door hadn't stopped everything so abruptly.

Her tiny boots hit the floor as she felt his hands tremble and fall away from her waist. His lips left hers when the door flew open with a large man's beckoning voice.

"Abberline," he bellowed. She saw the man's face, the Sergeant to Cecelia's case, days before. "I thought I told you to—Oh."

He stopped when he saw Ella at the wall and his friend in the middle of the room, scowling.

"Busy working then, eh?"

Fredrick just stared at him with a forceful eye and Godley smirked, tipping his wet hat.

"Sorry to interrupt, mate. Tomorrow?"

"T'morrow," he replied hastily, showing Godley from the room again. Fred turned to find Ella practically waiting on his heels.

"I should leave."

"No," he sighed and took her face in his hands, twirling his fingers about her wet curls. "Don't go."

"You're delirious from want of sleep," she whispered against his mouth with a small laugh.

"I'm delirious from want o' you, love."

She was bound in his delicately strong arms before she knew it, but only for so long. It was one lasting kiss of heat and comfort and promise that told her she needed to leave him, to clear her head and decide what it all could mean so suddenly. It was foolish of course. But Ella had never been very logical in manners of the heart, especially at the blinking eye of offering love.

She slid from his incomparable warmth, and left a small kiss on his cheek, then smiled and walked to the door of his office.

"When will I see ye again, Eloise? When can I see you again, there is?"

Her heart was twisted with the pain of turning from him. She sighed as she replied through the crack in the doorway, "Soon, I hope."