Seduced by a Stranger

by Eve Silver

  Gabriel moved quickly, thrusting his shoulder forward to bolster Newton as he wove and dipped again, dangerously close to landing on his drink-sodden rump. He had little care if the man sprawled in drunken ignominy, but appearances must be maintained. A gentleman would not fail a friend in need, especially not one who was so clearly foxed.

  Of course, Gabriel was no true gentleman. No chivalrous heart beat at his core. But no one knew the man obscured by the veneer he cultivated, and he preferred to keep it that way.

  “Careful,” he warned as Newton blinked at him blearily.

  “Who’s that?” Newton demanded, peering up into Gabriel’s face. “Ah, St. Aubyn. Impeccable timing. Impeccable.” He caught hold of Gabriel’s forearm—Gabriel squelched the urge to jerk from the contact—just long enough to steady himself and then straightened and let go, weaving slightly where he stood. “Saw your cousin earlier this evening. Didn’t know he was back on English soil.”

  An interesting tidbit of news.

  “Neither did I.” Gabriel could feel the eyes of those in the bow window, and he suppressed a smile. He could not have wished for a more perfect circumstance. His presence on the steps would be noticed by all and sundry, but the auspicious timing of Newton and Pratt had saved him the bother of going inside the club. He could wander off with them and all would assume they had gone together to sample a fine brandy or to find a game of chance. Perhaps he would indulge in exactly that for an hour or two, before returning to his other, more interesting pursuits.

  Pratt stared at him a moment and then blurted sheepishly, “I must confess… I wagered against you, old man.”

  “Did you?” Gabriel murmured, but asked nothing more. Clearly, he had not escaped the betting book. His name was part of some wager or other, but he could not summon enough interest to inquire what it was. On his last visit to White’s, the odds were for Miss L. wearing blue to the Featherstone ball, and against Lord F. marrying Lady B.

  “I did. Wagered a nice sum.” Pratt bobbed his head up and down. “But I hope I am wrong. ’Twould be a sad thing for her to burn Cairncroft to the ground.”

  “I beg your pardon?” Gabriel asked, suddenly interested despite himself. “Burn Cairncroft?”

  “Surprised you dared leave her there unsupervised.” Newton slurred his observation enough that it took Gabriel a moment to understand the words.

  He narrowed his eyes and turned his gaze to Pratt, the less inebriated of the two. “Explain.”

  Both men appeared startled by his tone. “If you please,” he added, an afterthought.

  “Miss Weston. Baron’s daughter, though which one”— Pratt pressed his lips together and squinted his eyes as he tried to recall—“Ah, it was the Lord Sunderley,” he said. “Word is, she’s visiting Cairncroft. I heard it from my sister, who heard it from Mrs. Foxx, who heard it from Mrs. Northrop herself.”

  “So she is there, and you are here. In London,” Newton supplied helpfully. “Which means there’s no one there watching her.”

  Gabriel studied the two, his patience stretched taut. What game were they about? Their words circled around to nothing. “Sunderley died unmarried and without issue. In a fire, as I recall,” he said.

  “Yes, exactly.” Newton beamed up at him, as though he had offered some unique and brilliant insight.

  “Terrible thing.” Pratt shook his head. “But he was not Miss Weston’s father. The Right Honorable Lord Sunderley, Aubrey Weston, was. He and his wife died in a carriage accident some years back. His daughter is Miss Weston. Miss Catherine Weston.”

  Gabriel was silent a moment, trying to understand their inebriated logic. “You imply that Miss Weston is somehow responsible for the fire that killed the most recent Baron Sunderley?”

  “Well, yes… She didn’t kill her father… or perhaps she did… can’t be certain about any of that.” Pratt frowned and muttered under his breath as though trying to work out the logistics of the relationships. His expression brightened. “But she did turn the next Sunderley into a torch.”

  “After Sunderley died, then Sunderley… er… the newer… let her stay on. There was some issue of ”— Newton lowered his voice—“financial constraint.”

  “She was left destitute,” Pratt offered. “Sunderley was a good sort. Let her remain in her childhood home, somewhere north… perhaps Derby or Durham or Lancashire…” He waved one hand dismissively. “Then came the fire and circumstances being what they were, there was little doubt that Miss Weston was to blame.”

  “What circumstances would those be?” Gabriel inquired, tamping down the anger that settled in his gut like a hot lump of coal. The reaction was odd. Unfamiliar. Unwelcome. What matter was it to him if they gossiped about Catherine Weston? Why did their casual accusation send rage pounding through him? He was never one to succumb to temper. Not in nearly a score of years.

  “Well, they were… that is… she was there when the fire began…” Newton shook his head in confusion.

  “As was Sunderley and probably a houseful of servants,” Gabriel pointed out in clipped tones. “Why blame Miss Weston?”

  “Well…” Newton looked at Pratt and Pratt looked at Newton, confounded. Then Newton continued as though the question was irrelevant. “Sunderley died. Burned. The servants formed a bucket line but there was no hope. He was trapped. They saw him in the window, begging and writhing, but none could reach him. He lived for two days after that, alternately screaming or passed out cold.”

  “And they say she stood there, watching, calm as you please,” Pratt added. “Some say she smiled as he burned. Some say she smiled the entire two days he screamed.”

  Not to be outdone, Newton leaned in and spoke in a low, fervent tone. “They say she was not right in the head. There was talk of sending her to a private hospital near York.”

  That whispered tidbit edged Gabriel’s rage up a notch. He knew far too much of such places. The thought of her there—with her hair shorn or plaited and sewn to her head, her nails cut short, her body subject to the tortures they called treatments—made him want to reach out and close his fingers around Newton’s throat. Instead, he glanced down, veiling his thoughts, and flicked an imaginary bit of lint from his sleeve.

  “Given that she was free to travel to Cairncroft rather than incarcerated or hung by the neck until dead,” he observed, “may I assume that the authorities were in disagreement with your suppositions, gentlemen?”

  His companions exchanged baffled looks. “Hadn’t thought of it—”

  “Couldn’t say—”

  Pratt shrugged and reached up to sling an arm across Gabriel’s shoulders. It took particular concentration not to recoil from the contact.

  “I met her once.” Newton frowned in recollection. “At Mrs. Northrop’s soirée. She said very little. I can’t recall… fair hair? No, more mousy brown… She was utterly forgettable.” He shrugged, and let the memory go, uninterested. The topic had already exhausted his attention.

  Mousy. The description made Gabriel smile, his earlier anger dulling to a slow simmer. An image of Catherine Weston flashed in his mind’s eye, her features composed, her mask perfectly in place.

  She was anything but utterly forgettable.

  In fact, thoughts of her had haunted him the entire week he had been in London.

  And now he knew a great deal more about her.

  Carefully disengaging Pratt’s arm from across his shoulder, he cast an assessing glance at the window of White’s. Several sets of eyes watched their every move. Swallowing his distaste for prolonging his present company, Gabriel smiled and said, “Gentlemen, I have a fine bottle of brandy awaiting us in Berkeley Square. Shall we retire there and sample it?”

  But already his thoughts had drifted to Cairncroft and Catherine Weston. He had only to conclude his time with his current companions, then pay a brief visit to the companion who had occupied him earlier in the evening. Once that business was complete, he could be away.

  Likely, it would be close to da
wn.

  Generally, he preferred to travel at night, on horseback. Enclosed coaches and bright sunshine brought back memories he would have preferred to excise with a surgical blade.

  But just this once, he found that first light could not come soon enough.

  Gabriel was inordinately glad that he had come to his club tonight. Newton and Pratt had been founts of information. So much so that he was now possessed by a need to return to Cairncroft with even greater urgency than he had felt to leave it. London and all its dark lure paled now next to his curiosity about Catherine Weston.

  He had been right. There was far more to her than the face she presented to the world. Her mask was polished and perfected, her veil secure.

  Unless a storm wrenched it free.

  He could be that storm.

  6

  He returned to the place he had left her. Martha. She had laughed when he asked her name as they had walked through St. Giles, and said that he could call her anything he pleased. But he had wanted her name and so she gave it. Of course, he had known it before he asked, known she was the one, carefully chosen and watched for two days before he approached her. Luck had set her in his path, but if it had not, he would have found her nonetheless because of who she was and what her death would mean.

  He used her name now, calling out a singsong greeting as he let himself into the empty warehouse by the river and listened for the faint, frightened whimper that told him she had heard. Dust stirred as he strode to the back of the building, to the room beneath the teetering, rotted stairs. He dragged open the door, paused to turn up the lamp, and savored the sight before him.

  She lay on the makeshift table—a plank stretched over two wooden kegs—tracking him with wild, desperate eyes. She was clad only in her thin shift, so much of her skin bare to his touch and the kiss of his blade. Her hands were bound, as were her feet, and the rags he had stuffed in her mouth muffled her cries as he took up his knife and began to play. He would have preferred to let her scream, to free her limbs and let her flail. But London offered little privacy, and so he made do with less than ideal circumstances and the relative seclusion of an empty warehouse, the last in a long row of empty warehouses.

  He reveled in her muffled grunts and moans and the tears that tracked down her cheeks.

  It was not that he hurt her. Well, not more than a little. It was the fear that built and grew and he could feel it shimmering in the rank air, taste it and smell it. That was the thing he craved. Her terror. The ability to control her and elicit what emotion he wanted.

  There were points that she even accepted his comfort. No, not merely accepted it. Begged for it with her eyes. Such was his control over her and in so short a time.

  He enjoyed their game as long as he dared in this vacant warehouse filled with the mingled scents of the spices that had once been stored here and the fetid stink of the river.

  Time had little meaning. Moments or, perhaps, hours later, he stared down at her with febrile excitement. Sweat beaded his brow and trickled in an itchy line down his back. But he felt… right. For the first time in a long time, he felt right.

  She was quiet now. No more struggles or frantic mewling pleas lost behind the greasy gag. Emotion—terror, horror, the swell of her panic, or perhaps only the magnitude of her suffering—had overwhelmed her more than once, sending her across the boundary of consciousness. He had been forced to dip a ladleful of water from the bucket on the floor and splash her face to rouse her. The last time, he had left the ladle where it rested and left her in her swoon, for though he had enjoyed every moment of their association, it was time to bring about the grand end. This encounter had been better than his last. He was more controlled, better prepared for the tide of delight that crashed through him as he worked. And Martha, his partner in this macabre dance, had been more appealing than her predecessor—younger, cleaner, and more worldly wise— which had allowed her to suffer far more before she broke.

  He was quite pleased to have been guided to her.

  Reaching into his pocket, he withdrew the letter that had detailed Martha Grimsby’s name and general whereabouts, written in a lovely, crisp hand. He brought the corner of it to the candle and let the flame catch. A dark swirl of smoke twisted upward and then the paper flared with tongues of orange and gold. He held it as long as he could, finally dropping it to the floor and watching it burn to ash before scattering the remains with the toe of his boot.

  Then he turned back to Martha. Sweet, desperate, frightened Martha. She was barely conscious now, her eyes rolled back, her body still save for the occasional twitch or groan.

  Stepping close beside her, he stroked her hair back from her damp forehead, and waited until she roused enough to turn her head. She blinked, her eyes hazy and unfocused. Seconds ticked past, and she came around a little more, her brow furrowing, a moan sounding behind the gag.

  She saw him then. Truly saw him. The connection between them was gossamer as a spider’s web and stronger than forged steel. She was his. His.

  Placing a single, perfect white feather in her hand, he closed her fingers around it, curling his own tight to hers until she grasped the quill and held it. He suspected her hands were numb, for they had been bound for many hours.

  Her vision had cleared and focused, and she stared at his face, her eyes wide, rolling in fright. He caught her hair in his fist and yanked her head back, administering two deep slashes across her throat so that the arteries and veins were cut clean through and the bones of the spine revealed.

  The wounds were fatal. He made certain of that this time. It would not do to repeat the debacle of his first foray so many years ago, when he had acted precipitously and, thinking the creature dead, had set to bury her body only to be confronted by a living corpse when she groaned and sat up straight in the grave.

  No, this time, he acted with forethought and care.

  Copper sweet, the smell of her blood was delicious, tantalizing. He set a wooden tub beneath the table to catch it, but some sprayed in a spurting arc as her heart pulsed and pumped in her breast for nearly a minute in a futile fight until the end. That blood was left to decorate the walls and floor.

  He found it lovely.

  Memories surged, of long-ago times and long-ago pleasures. A bird. A cat. Child’s play.

  He simply stood by her side, arms hanging loose, his full attention leveled on her form. He watched. He breathed. He reveled in the joy of this kill.

  At length, he roused and touched her wrists, her forearms. Cool, but not stiff. He moved his hand beneath the blood-dampened edge of her shift to the skin above her collarbone where the flesh was warmer, then ran his palms along her arms, her hair. Bending low, he buried his face in the curve of her shoulder and inhaled the fragrances of her skin and her blood. He straightened and stared down at her, memorizing every nuance of her face.

  For a time, he stood in quiet contemplation. The air was perfumed by the metallic flavor of blood, the only sound the quiet huff of his own breathing. This was the time that the beauty of her being belonged to him, solely to him.

  His. She was his.

  This body was his to control, to touch, to pose. She was subject to his will. The certainty of that filled him with delight. His lips curved in a smile, lazy, satisfied. The intense euphoria of the kill had faded, leaving him relaxed, almost sleepy, affected by a pleased and sated detachment.

  From a great distance came a boom of sound, and somewhat later a clatter and shout. Far away. The sounds had no meaning in this place. But at length, he recognized the change in the noise; it became louder, closer, the waking of the wharf, and he roused himself, for there was work to be done, bounty to be gathered.

  Reaching down, he opened the lids of the four wide-mouthed ceramic jars he had set on the floor by the table. Then he lifted his knife and turned to his task.

  Pinching the cloth of her shift between his thumb and forefinger, he drew it from her skin where the blood made it cling, and slit the cloth neatly down th
e middle, baring her torso and abdomen. He stroked the skin, still pliable, but not for long. That was the disappointing thing. They never stayed like this, so perfect, so smooth and warm. Never. A handful of hours and she would be stiff, a handful after that and she would be cold as marble; the heat of her leaked away as the seconds ticked past.

  But he would love her still. Even cold and stiff, and after that, soft and wet and rotted in the shallow grave he would prepare for her… even then he would love her. Because she was his.

  He wanted to linger, to extend each moment so it slid past in slow, silky brilliance. But as he saw the first whisper of dawn’s light snake through the crack beneath the door, he acknowledged that his time in London was limited. He could stay away only so long.

  Because, in the end, Cairncroft Abbey always called him home.

  * * *

  Cairncroft Abbey, March 1828

  Catherine descended to the dining room, her hand gliding along the polished banister as she walked. Madeline, as always, eschewed breakfast; she would keep to her bed until past noon.

  It was more than a week since Catherine had come to Cairncroft, and the house was more familiar to her now, though she was not inclined to explore. The place was large enough to get lost in, and she had already been warned that parts were showing their age with crumbling walls and rotting wood.

  “How do you do, Miss Weston?”

  Startled by the unexpected greeting, Catherine paused in her descent. Mrs. Bell crossed the wide hallway and waited for her at the foot of the stairs, her brow furrowed, her posture tense. She turned the large ring of keys that hung from her apron again and again, the clank of metal on metal loud in the quiet space. They had shared no discourse since the day Catherine had arrived at Cairncroft Abbey. Any contact between them had been limited to a brief look or distant nod. But today, the woman appeared bent on conversation.