At All Costs: So Shall Ye Reap, #1

By David Jay

What would an Englishman on the lam who had just landed on American soil rather do, get in the middle of a knife fight, or rummage through a foul-smelling garbage can looking for something to eat?

When two hoodlums attack Joseph Hunter in an alley, hold a knife to his throat and demand his watch and all his money, a very large man charges to his rescue and soon dispatches the two thugs, one with a broken arm.

Brock "The Bull" Ackerman and his wife, Emma, have just arrived from England on the heels of a disastrous fight in which Brock nearly killed a soldier who tried to ravish Emma. To avoid jail, they used all their savings to book passage to America and ended up in a New York alley looking for food in garbage cans. Now this chance meeting with the grateful Mr. Hunter changes the course of all their fortunes.

When social climbers, Joseph and his wife, Alice, hire the couple as their staff (Alice always wanted a staff), to serve as bodyguard, valet and lady's maid, their lives are intertwined.

Emma's experience as a lady's maid in England makes her indispensable for Lady Alice, who sets her sights on becoming one of New York's Gilded Age grand dames. Emma's skills as a seamstress, etiquette coach, cook and all-around maid, show Alice how it might just be possible, even with her miserly father refusing to give Joseph a raise.

Alice will find a way to get the money she needs, even if she has to steal it.

• Language: English
• Publisher: David Jay
• Release date: Jul 1, 2017
• ISBN: 9781386367611

Book preview

Table of Contents

At All Costs (So Shall Ye Reap, #1)

Chapter 1 | A Squalid Alley

Chapter 2 | Alice Over the Moon

Chapter 3 | The Night Sweats

Chapter 4 | The Plot Thickens

Dead-Time Stories

Chapter 1 | The Diamond Necklace

About the Author

What is the chief end of man? To get rich. In what way? Dishonestly if we can; honestly if we must.

—Mark Twain, who used the term The Gilded Age to describe the late 1800s in America, a period marked by greed and corruption despite the glittering wealth on the surface.

Chapter 1

A Squalid Alley

New York City

May, 1893

Emma, hands trembling, tossed the moldy buns back into the foul-smelling, maggot-infested garbage can she found them in. She gathered the folds of her dress, which was torn, soiled and stained by human feces, and ran after Brock, for whatever good that would do.

There’s a man down there who needs help, Brock had said before he started running down the squalid New York alley. Emma screamed at him to stay put, but he loved nothing more than a fight.

Fear rose in her chest.

She wished she had never left that vile, stinking boat, bad as it was. Perhaps it would have turned around and taken her back home, where she desperately wanted to be.

Here they were, in their first day in this foreign land because Brock had nearly killed a soldier back home, and now he was about to get into another fight.

Emma could hear them—angry men yelling at one another. There, some fifty yards down the alley, a man had pinned another man to the ground. A third man was pressing what looked like a long knife to the neck of the man on the ground. They were screaming obscenities and threats.

Emma’s husband was tearing down the alley faster than a frightened fawn, though Brock Ackerman feared nothing and nobody. He stood five inches above six feet, and his frame was packed with 250 pounds of flint-hard muscle.

The assailants heard Brock yell at them, and they saw this bearded giant charging down the alley like a raging bull. The two thugs jumped to their feet. The man with the knife waved it in the air like a sabre, poised to strike, waiting for Brock.

He didn’t have to wait long. Brock was there in a second.

The knife wielder swung his weapon at Brock’s neck.

But Brock, with the reflexes of a slender mongoose, in one motion grabbed the attacker’s right arm with both hands, lifted the man’s arm and brought it down over his knee, like he would if he were breaking sticks for a campfire.

Emma could hear the pop! pop! of the ulna and the radius.

The knife fell to the ground.

The man let out a subhuman scream and staggered away, moaning loudly as he went, his broken arm hanging at an odd angle.

The second thug tried to flee in the opposite direction, but Brock caught him in three long strides, grabbed him by his hair and the seat of his pants, picked him up, whirled him around once, twice, then flung him