by Anne Mallory
“Do you like that, sweetheart? Do you want a rolling wave or do you want to cap it off with an end like our table dance?”
She squeezed him again and something wild flashed through his eyes. She didn’t get a chance to say a word before he pulled back and thrust fast and deeply inside her. And then again. And again. She moaned something or said something or shouted something as she went flying through the air, convulsing feverishly around him as he continued to fill and stroke her.
And she thought, maybe…maybe she’d gone and done the stupid thing and fallen in love.
Chapter 15
Marietta was awakened by a door slamming. The ceiling of Gabriel’s room shot into view. Footsteps banged through the downstairs hallway, and she glanced at the empty pillow next to hers. Loud voices and something crashing against the floor had her pulling on her robe and running down the stairs.
She was surprised to see Jeremy and Alcroft in the kitchen, pacing back and forth in front of Gabriel. Even with their movement, Gabriel was the one who appeared to be on the prowl.
“This is serious, Gabriel,” Alcroft said.
“I know that, John,” he snapped.
She stood poised on the threshold, almost afraid to ask. “What has happened?”
Alcroft and Jeremy immediately looked her way. Gabriel did not, but she was sure he had known she was there. He always did.
Alcroft looked apologetic. “Another murder. A member of the ton.” He glanced back at Gabriel, then focused on her once more. “London is in an uproar. All of the suspicion that has lessened toward your brothers is completely gone. They are calling for their heads. The trial is set to begin, and it does not look good, Miss Winters.”
“Dammit, John!” His voice was harsh.
“She has to know, Gabriel.”
“Who was it?” She walked farther into the room, the cold floor seeping into her feet, and then felt nothing, numbness setting in.
“Anastasia Rasen.”
A pink fluttering bird flew across her mind. Marietta knew her. Not well, but she knew her. The whole situation just kept crawling closer.
“And they are blaming Mark?”
“They have no one else to blame. No other name on their lips.” Alcroft’s face was lined with sympathy.
“What about Jacob Worley?”
“We need to be hard-nosed with the papers. Whisper in the right ears. Reinvigorate the watch, put Dresden further on his trail. There is still a chance.” Marietta wanted to hug Alcroft in that moment.
Jeremy’s eyes were focused on the floor, but his gaze was vacant. Gabriel was staring at his brother’s bent head.
“Why Anastasia Rasen?” she asked, for wont of anything else to say, her hands knotted in her robe.
Jeremy’s mouth opened. Gabriel cut over the top of him.
“We don’t know. Get dressed.”
His voice wasn’t unpleasant, but it was firm and brooked no argument. Closed and unapproachable, not how she’d thought the morning would be.
Before she could say anything he looked at her. His eyes closed briefly. When they reopened she read pain there. “Please. We need to hurry.”
Alcroft and Jeremy’s faces lit with surprise. She nodded and hurried back upstairs.
Alcroft whistled. “You are enamored.”
Jeremy’s eyes were narrowed as he nodded in agreement.
“I don’t have time to deal with this,” Gabriel said, pushing aside their questions. Tell me, what is happening? What type of damage needs containing?”
“The ton is beside itself, as can be expected,” Alcroft said. “Would be even worse if they knew who all the victims were. Time is limited. They will figure it out shortly. You need to catch the man responsible.”
Gabriel didn’t look at his brother. “Jeremy, fetch the carriage.”
Jeremy stalked from the room without a backward glance.
Alcroft watched him leave, and Gabriel worried that his friend knew exactly what was going on. “Catch the servant,” Alcroft said, eyes serious.
“The servant is not responsible.” Knives scraped across his skin at the admission. “We would be condemning an innocent man.”
“An innocent man. Are you sure?” Alcroft asked, his eyes penetrating.
Gabriel stared at the scattered papers. “The net grows tighter. There is one place left to search. Two places, actually,” he added.
“You are going to have to make a decision soon. Will justice, protection, or revenge be your guide? Will you sacrifice the nobility you’ve always prized?”
“Justice has always been my guide.” He could barely get the words out.
“Sometimes revenge is justice.”
“I’ve taken my revenge. I did it without bloodshed.”
“But another choice is upon you now. One thing you value will need to be sacrificed. If you could just let go of your damn nobility—”
Gabriel smacked the table. “It is all I have. All I’ve ever had.”
Alcroft leaned closer. “You have justice. It doesn’t have to end the way you think.”
Gabriel stared at him. Alcroft was sympathetic, but he didn’t understand. The mere thought of discussing it with his friend filled him with horror. Alcroft had led an easy life of privilege and respect. He would never be able to understand the conflict and despair.
Jeremy too had lived a life of privilege after those first years in hiding. Gabriel had given him everything. Had tried to keep him innocent of the situation. To protect Jeremy as no one had protected him.
“It doesn’t have to end the way you are thinking,” Alcroft repeated.
He had blamed his father for his blindness—the activities taking place right beneath his nose. His own son in trouble. His father had never argued the blame, his passive, upright control in full evidence as Gabriel railed. Their relationship, always formal and somewhat strained, had never recovered. But Jeremy didn’t have that same strain. He visited their father often. He could have discovered any number of things during those visits.
“It is going to end just as I think. Unpleasantly.”
The house on Wisteria Park was just as he’d expected. Frilly, pink, and gilded. Like a dying bird fluttering in its cage. He hated anything frilly and pink because it reminded him of Anastasia Rasen, and here he stood in the middle of her dollish kingdom.
The servants were blessedly absent, called to present themselves in front of their new master to see whether they would stay or go, but their absence wouldn’t last long. And the danger of curious callers was ever present. There had been two knocks to the door already. They had to hurry.
“Why didn’t Alcroft and Jeremy accompany us?” Marietta asked, poking through a drawer.
“I sent them on another task. We’ll meet with them later.”
He could barely look at Jeremy. He had never felt more of a coward. All it would take was a direct question to his brother. One question as to whether he was responsible and he’d know the answer. Whether or not Jeremy would tell him the truth, it would be apparent by the look on his face, the tone, the feel of his voice.
He’d never wanted to know an answer less. Jeremy’s whereabouts were unaccounted for during the last two murders. He hadn’t wanted to check the rest, the fear choking him. He hadn’t tasted real fear in years, and yet here it was like an old friend come to call and deciding to stay for an extended visit.
His brother was what had kept him going. The person he was trying to save all those years ago. To lose him now was unacceptable.
“She always wore pink, but I didn’t realize it was quite this level of obsession,” Marietta said as she sorted through Anastasia’s things.
He took a closer look. “What are you looking through?”
Marietta shrugged. “Her undergarments.”
Women were strange.
“Why?”
“Some women hide things where they think men won’t look. I’m hoping to find something here. What are we looking for, anyway?”
“Something t
o connect her to Jacob Worley. Anything unusual. Other than her overabundance of pink.”
They spent another ten minutes searching when Marietta exclaimed. “I found a journal.”
Cold seeped down his spine. “Let me have a look.”
She clutched the book to her chest. “No. This time you can’t use the excuse that she was a wretched woman.”
He could definitely use that excuse, but his lips wouldn’t form the words to connect her to him. He watched Marietta flip the first page. “Eighteen ten. She started her journal much sooner than Abigail, not that that has any relevance. ‘It has come to my attention that it would be to my advantage to join a group of women led by Celeste F—’”
A crash downstairs swiveled both their heads.
“Stay here,” he said, his heart drumming both from the words she read and the unexpected noise. Would this nightmare never end?
Marietta watched him leave. It was probably a servant returning. How they were going to explain their presence, she didn’t know. Gabriel had assured her he would take care of any servants, and if there was one thing Gabriel could do better than anyone else she knew, it was to charm someone to his way of thinking.
She looked down at the book in her hands. A group of women forming a group. A chill slid through her. She flipped the journal open to a random page toward the end.
Jane and I don’t hold with this new addition. Mr. Moreton knows the boy, and should anything be said we will all be in dire straits. There are too many ties. Dangerous ties. I wonder if we’ve become too arrogant, too complacent. But it titillates Amanda—the thoughts of what we could do. To see him with our avenger.
Dear God. The journals were connected.
To see our avenger’s extraordinary eyes darken to—
A hand covered her mouth and she was pulled back against a tall, hard body. “If you will kindly hand over the book?” a voice whispered against her ear.
Everything in front of her turned crystal and cold. The image of a man with a scar under his chin ran through her brain, colliding with the man gripping her, though she couldn’t see his face. Brisk fingers pried the journal from her fingers. “Thank you, Miss Winters. You’ve been a great help in recovering this.”
She stood as still as she could, not knowing if there was a knife near her throat or a gun at her side. The hand around her mouth pulled her face to the side. “There is a lot you don’t know about your loyal guardian. And what he will do. I’ll be interested to see his choice in the end.”
He shoved her and she fell face first on the bed. Complete terror raced through her and she pushed forward, throwing her body over the other side, falling onto her shoulder, scrambling to her knees to defend herself. There was no one there. The dark edge of a trouser leg disappeared through the connecting door. Faint footsteps treaded down the back stairs. She clutched the horrid pink coverlet, twisting it in her hands.
“Marietta? What are you doing?”
She whipped around to see Gabriel in the bedroom doorway, looking winded.
“There was a man. He grabbed me. Took the journal. Said—”
But Gabriel was already running past her, through the connecting door. Footsteps pounded down the back stairs. Surreptitiously, she looked around and backed herself into a corner to wait, staring at the rumpled covers, the divots and valleys in the clutched fabric.
He reappeared a few minutes later, disheveled and irritated. “He was already gone.”
She examined the lines on her palms, the crisscrossing creases.
“Did you see what he looked like? He spoke to you?”
“He was behind me the whole time. He whispered.” She traced a line. “He thanked me for finding the journal. They are connected, Gabriel. They were part of the same club.”
Hands touched beneath her elbows, pulling her up. Fingers lifted her chin and eyes examined hers.
“That man was the murderer,” she whispered, green eyes wavering in her view. “He had me.”
Arms pulled her into his chest. “I have you now.”
She hugged herself inside the carriage. She was glad they had taken the carriage for once. “Why do you think he let me go?”
Gabriel watched her. “If the journals are connected, then likely for the same reason that Kenny was left alive. That it is only his victims he intends to harm.”
“He said—” She clutched the dress material under her fingers. “—that he would be interested to see who you choose in the end.”
Though he hadn’t been moving other than with the rocking of the carriage, his body stilled.
“What did he mean?” She watched him. Watched the flurry of emotions flit through his eyes.
He leaned forward. “Do you trust me, Marietta?”
Her fingers curled further into the material. Did she trust him? She had put all of her trust into him. If he betrayed her too, she didn’t know what she’d have left. “Yes.”
He ran a hand up her arm and loosened her fingers, pulling them away and into his own. He repeated the gesture on the other side.
She let him pull her toward him, and he placed soft kisses on her neck, along her jawline, on her lips. He was trying to distract her, but at the moment she didn’t care. She didn’t want to think, just wanted to accept what he was offering.
He rapped on the trap five times in succession. They turned a corner, going in the opposite direction of the house.
He pulled her on top of him, so she was straddling him. The carriage rocked over the cobblestones, the swaying brushing them together. A thrust of her dress to the side and flick of his fingers across his own clothing and he was pushing inside of her, filling her, her body already ready. She kissed him fiercely and he clutched her hips, pulling her closer.
If he betrayed her…but no, how could he? Silly fears rearing like spitting snakes.
He hit that lovely spot deep inside. Over and over. And what was she doing thinking about trust and betrayal? She had hired him, she had come to him. He might not be hers forever, but he was at this moment.
He attacked her neck and she let her head dip back, clutching the hair at his nape as they rode to the rhythm of the stones. He kept pressing exactly where she needed him to, a lethargic, heavy, hot feeling overtaking her as she reached for that peak. She let him wash away the itchy skin and disgust of Anastasia Rasen’s pink dollhouse, the sheer terror of the murderer’s hands. Cleansing waves, but no answers.
She closed her eyes and let him push her over the edge, stifling her breaths into his silky hair as she clutched him to her. He followed a second later, washing the lingering ill traces away.
She rested her forehead against the velveteen seat back. A mixture of drugged laxity and energy encompassed her. “There must have been something in Anastasia’s journal.”
He stiffened underneath her. “Do you really want to talk about that right at the moment?”
She smiled against the velvet, unable to see his expression, though she had no doubt it was put out. “I suppose not.”
His whole body sighed. “There are a few places where we can inquire. Then I’m going to take you back to the house and make sure you can’t walk for a week.”
Marietta walked through the market, hair back in proper place, clothes back together. Gabriel was chatting with a crone selling trinkets in a ramshackle stall. He had stopped to chat with at least ten different vendors, none of whom would talk while she was present. Too highborn, one had said.
Gabriel had joked that she was bad for business. She couldn’t help but begin to seriously agree. Any woman could take her place, following him around and going from tavern to tavern. Most women would do a long sight better at it than she. Her crisp accent did little to endear her to the lower classes and she was an anathema to the upper classes.
She was quite useless. And feeling quite maudlin, it appeared.
She sighed and touched a checkered scarf slipped over the edge of a stall, her eyes skimming Gabriel as the crone handed him something. It seemed
impossible that such a man could move between different levels of society so easily. Starting with only a smile—no, it was not hard to believe he could have started with his charm and succeeded with his intelligence and hard work.
Gifted by the heavens. Blessed beneath a star.
Though the shadows in his eyes, the expressions he sometimes tried to hide, said otherwise. Shadows she hadn’t managed to breech. What would—
A hand gripped her arm and tugged her behind the stall and into a shallow alley behind the colorful rows.
Jacob Worley stood before her. Brown eyes containing a mix of earnestness and insanity.
She stepped back.
He stepped forward, and she readied herself to bolt. He held up his hands. “Don’t leave.” His voice was gravelly, unlike the night before. And his stature was somehow less. Smaller, less firm.
“Why would I stay? You’ve murdered five women.”
His eyes grew watery. “I didn’t. I’d never do such a thing, unless they asked it of me.”
“Asked it of you?” The man was a bedlamite if she’d ever seen one.
“Following the rules. Always. So important. Miss Winstead and Mrs. Fomme and Lady—”
A flock of ravens cawed through the opening of the alley. Worley shook his head. “One more and then you are next. You must kill him before he kills you.”
Hot terror flowed through her. “What?”
“Noble will kill you. Just like he killed the others.”
Her jaw dropped. “You’re mad.”
He leaned forward and she pressed against the wall. “My ladies. Gone. His fault. Hates them. Wants revenge. Can’t let him get the last. Melissande. Head of them all.”
She couldn’t gather breath. One part of her was screaming to run, the other was watching him in horrified fascination. He was like Abigail’s twisted journal, only in reverse, the victim pining for the master.
“Kill him first. It’s the only way. I tried. Too well protected from the outside. Must do it from within. You must. The only way. Must protect Melissande.”
“Who is Melissande?”