Margo gulped, seeing abruptly where this was leading. “Malcolm . . . I—I’m not ready to guide that bunch by myself—“
Malcolm grinned. “Good. I’m glad you’ve the sense to admit it. I didn’t intend sending you alone. Tanglewood’s a good man, an experienced guide, and he’s been in the East End a fair bit.”
Margo frowned. “Isn’t that kind of an odd place for tourists to go?”
Malcolm merely cleared his throat. “Zipper jockey tours.”
Oh. “That’s disgusting!”
“It isn’t his fault, Margo. He’s a Time Tours employee. If he wants to keep his job, he goes where the paying customers want to visit. Even if it’s some back-alley brothel in Wapping.”
“Huh. I hope they catch a good dose of something nasty!”
“Occasionally,” Malcolm said drily, “they do. Spaldergate’s resident surgeon keeps rather a generous supply of penicillin on hand. There is a reason London’s courtesans wore death’s-head rings, even as early as the eighteenth century.”
Margo shivered. Poor women, reduced to such poverty they’d no choice but to risk syphillis and its slow, certain deterioration toward madness and death in an era predating antibiotics.
“Very well,” Malcolm said tiredly, “that’s settled, then. I would suggest you go in costume as a girl, rather than a street ruffian. You’ll be less apt to run into serious trouble, particularly in company with the members of the Ripper Watch team. But go armed, love. It’s no busman’s holiday I’m sending you into, out there.”
She nodded. “Believe me, I will be. I’ll watch over them, get them back here safe again, as soon as their equipment is in place.”