Passion (6 page)

Gabriella licked her lips again. “I do so
love a strong man who desires my sweet rewards enough to play by my
rules.” She smiled mysteriously. “Adieu, Marcus, until the week’s
end.”

His gaze tore from her mouth. His eyes glazed
before he bowed, exiting moments before Raith entered.

The lights were going down.

She sank into her chair, feeling Raith’s
black gaze regarding her. The seconds she had to gather herself
were not nearly enough. However, when the lights came up Gabriella
whispered, “He wishes me to come to him Saturday.” She relayed the
conversation.

“Good. Good.”

Gabriella played her role better than the
actors on stage. Between peeking at Marcus across the way, making
gestures he would read as flirtations, and teasing with a drag of
her fan across her bodice, the shifting of her seat as if
stirred—and also doing her part to give Raith her lover’s
attention. She was brittle when they finally left, and trembling in
the coach. Her eyes closed to stave off thinking of the next act,
until she was in private.

“Am I to be concerned at this late date, this
breath away from succeeding, that you cannot bear your role without
these…reactions?”

“Not now, Raith.”

His teeth were grit and voice icy, “If not
now, then when? We perform as much for the servants as for Stratton
and the world. There is no more rehearsal, no down time left,
Gabriella.”

Her lashes lifted, meeting his dark stare. “I
have thus far met every expectation we hoped for. You forget, Lord
Montovon that it is not only my mother he sent to hell, but myself.
I have not forgotten a moment of my suffering nor her
degradation.”

“Then learn to use it,” he snarled. “As I had
thought you would have these many years.”

“Be dammed with your scold!” She sat up and
gripped the fan whilst glaring at him in the passing lamplight. “It
is I who still lives, who has the very real nightmares and carries
those sights, sounds, the experiences in me daily. I—who must play
lover to the devil himself!”

The coach stopped. He got out and handed her
down, but she pulled from him in the foyer.

Raith caught her arm on the upper landing and
forced her to face him. “If you cannot heed my instruction and
advice, we must end this here. I will kill the bastard either
way.”

His grip smarted, but she held his gaze
unflinching. “I know what to do. I know what part to play and what
we have planned. And I bloody know what you think of my reaction—my
private reaction—to Stratton. Just because you haunt her steps and
shut yourself away with her ghosts, does not mean you have any idea
what it is like to be at his mercy!”

She jerked her arm free, trembling now,
because she had never, never in their years together, spoken, nor
challenged him this way. Though she knew it was Stratton she wanted
to lash out at, she continued, “I will not fail. I will use my
instincts, my hate, bitterness, and loathing, to achieve his
destruction. Nevertheless, I am not six and ten anymore. I have
lived with the very real nightmares for almost five years. I will
not explain to you, nor make apologies if my flesh crawls and my
stomach rolls at the sight of him. I hold myself together when it
counts, but I will not give him my soul as you have—“

She shook her head, her expression one of
utter contempt, “I want to go at him with claws and release this
blackness inside until he bleeds. But I cannot. I cannot do that
and extract the revenge he deserves to feel. So do not chasten and
scorn me, Raith. You have no clue what I think! We are a means to a
mutual end for each other. I am your gateway to avenge your wife, a
tool. Very well, you were mine. Either you trust me, or you do not.
Perhaps it is you, who cannot endure the role.”

Gabriella turned swiftly and headed for her
chambers. Once passed the door, she closed it and fell back against
it, with eyes closed and Raith’s black stare swimming behind her
lashes, his rigid face mirroring the cold anger she no doubt
stirred up in him.

She was shaking all over. Opening her eyes,
she held out her hands, seeing the tremor in her fingers. The
violence that rose in her was frightening. Had she been pushed an
ounce further she would have struck Raith. God knew, she sensed the
coiled need in him to lash out with more than his voice.

Christ. They could not do this. They could
not attack and destroy each other. For years she had held it in,
never telling her tale, never speaking of what she suffered to him,
just as he had not. They had gone through days and hours planning
for this. Now was the time, the day they worked and waited for, and
suddenly, the emotions were trying to burst out of her skin.

Dear, God. She let her hands drop and rolled
her head against the wood surface. She must prepare to be with
Stratton on her own in a drastically more vulnerable setting. She
was angry with herself for letting the feelings both men stirred in
her converge.

After a bit, the images of what might happen
with Stratton that revolted her were replaced by the “lessons and
training, Raith had put her through over the years. The reading of
plays and erotic materials was nothing. She had witnessed much
baser things on the streets. Nevertheless—he taught her seduction.
Detached himself, during the (lessons), yet that rasping voice
talking, analyzing, and instructing—her walk, her expressions, and
the way she should speak. He’d touched her, turned her head this
way or that, brought his face close, and stared with those black
intense eyes with his faux lover’s thrall.

She remembered the night they had gone to a
decadent but richly furnished brothel. They became the voyeurs to
every sort of fetish and act. He would speak in her ear, and she
would wonder…wonder, if he was stirred. There did come a point when
she discerned he was as susceptible as she, to arousal. One could
not help it. Nevertheless, those signs were more visible when he
taught her to fake pleasure, to simulate the act of masturbation
and climax she would perform for Stratton. His voice would change,
giving her a sense he was perhaps visualizing someone, remembering
someone else. Moreover, that sensual acting was night and day from
enlightening her to more depraved appetites.

Gabriella assumed she had filed that all
away, as she had the other tutoring. She could be as removed as he,
save for the worse done to her mother, she sometimes had nightmares
of those first months. She had been prey herself. She knew that
feeling of being powerless. Understanding now gave her the power,
the control, not being ignorant and feeling able to comprehend the
mind and lust of someone like Stratton—empowered her. She deduced
that was what Raith was aiming for. Otherwise, she could not
manipulate and control Marcus.

It was always understood what would get her
close to Stratton, what he would desire her for—what his only use
of a woman was. He was susceptible to his impulsive lusts. Once he
saw a woman he wanted, he found the means to have her. Since his
(tastes) and treatment eventually made his mask slip and turned any
desire they had for him to disgust and terror, he punished them for
it. He destroyed them. Moreover, if he took them against their
will, as she suspected he had Suzette, he relived some previous
experience with a woman through them—namely, he used Suzette to
punish and to take out his rage, toward Natasha.

It had been clear in time that her mother and
Raith had talked more than once. At first, it surprised her.
However, she came to realize that Natasha was astute and knew the
men of that world, and she discerned that Raith was born into it.
She doubted that Raith was honest about his purpose in taking her
in, but they, all of them, were bound by the darkest of passions,
the hungers born from pain and torment. Trust was based on the
contract itself, rather than each other.

Releasing a trembling sigh, she decided that
whatever weakness made her eroticize that preparation and remember
the intimacy with Raith personally—the pitch of his voice as he sat
himself in shadow, herself in light—she’d have to live with it.
Perhaps—it was the only normal part of the anomalous bonds they had
forged.

She breathed deep, calming herself, forcing
her mind to clear. Eventually she pushed away and wearily drew her
bath. The maid came, but she sent her away. Gabriella wanted time
to herself. Lazing in the water later, she rubbed her wet hands
over her face, stomach still tense knowing the worst was to come.
The scenarios, should something go wrong had been gone over and
over, and yet….

Giving up attempts to relax, she arose and
dried, drawing on a black silk robe and shaking her hair free after
removing the pens.

When she entered the rooms, she went to the
dressing table and combed her hair—muttering a mental curse as
Raith invaded her privacy. She was in a mood, nerves tight.

Gabriella mused that should she ever do so to
him, invade his privacy—he would likely respond with violence,
although his anger tended to be wintry.

Placing the brush down, she tucked the wavy
strands behind her ears and pushed the rest so that it fell mid
back, taking her time to rise from the vanity chair whilst watching
him go to the window and open it.

She examined his state of dress. He was in
black trousers and boots, but his black shirt hung open. He smelled
of whiskey. She gathered he had time to drink a whole bottle whilst
she was bathing. She should have done that herself, Maybe it would
burn some of the….

“Sit down,” his voice wafted over.

She debated a split second, in her own
(mood,) before shrugging and walking to the bed and sitting against
the headboard. Her robe parted at the calf. Gabriella folded her
arms against her middle, watching him stretch his own arms to grasp
the casement, whilst leaning and looking down at the city. She
discerned he was more thinking than seeing.

Once more, her gaze moved over him
instinctively, unconscious of tracing the lines of thigh and
buttocks, taut hips that were clear in the snug trousers. The shirt
was fine enough so that the shadow of his torso, ridged in stomach,
fanning wider in the chest, was discernible. His hair was tucked
behind his ears, throwing that hard jaw and profile into light and
shadows.

“Have you the dirk you used to carry?”

“Yes.”

“Wear it on you.”

“I do.”

He turned his head, black eyes scanning her
then looking so swiftly away that she assumed he was not pleased to
have done so.

“If you…If he becomes violent, or you feel
yourself in danger, use it.”

“I plan to protect myself. If I am not alive,
then you would have to live with only the satisfaction of killing
him and getting it over with. I’ll try not to cheat either of us of
our goal.”

He turned, his hands dropping from the sill
though he sat on the ledge. His shirt fell open more, resting at
his sides. Glints of amber lamplight cast a sheen on his honed
torso, polishing the skin that stretched over lean, carved muscle.
It was his face though, that fascinated Gabriella because he made
every effort still to not look at her.

She watched, counted the seconds a muscle
ticked in his jaw.

“You must insist he not set you up in your
own house, but reside with him…”

“I know the strategy, Raith. You will play
the part of the obsessed and scorned lover, so that we may meet. I
provide you with the information I gather. He will want to kill
you—or rather arrange a convenient accident, because though you do
not have a relationship with them, you are the brother of the Earl
of Stoneleigh, and the Duke of Eastland’s son—he will want to be
rid of you. But, he will not do it. He will feed off your envy and
wish to parade me before your eyes. He will thrive off your
jealousy.”

“Yes.” His teeth were set when he uttered
that. Raith stood, restlessly walking to the hearth and then
reaching in his boot for a cheroot case. He lit it from the fire,
drew the smoke in, and released it, tensely. The firelight
flickered yellow and red over the blue black of his hair, enhancing
the fierce plains of his face. He was looking into the fire
hypnotically.

What a beautifully fierce sculpture of
torment, she mused morbidly. What a wrecked pair of souls we
are.

Gabriella murmured, “Is this the time of year
she died?”

“Was murdered,” he snapped frostily. Then,
“Yes, three weeks from now.”

Ah, she thought, exactly the time he planned
to have Stratton at his mercy.

Sitting up, she swung her legs to the side of
the bed, one foot on the floor whilst idly fingering the robe belt.
Half turned toward him, Gabriella whispered, “May I asked something
of you?”

He tensed and slowly turned to regard her,
his face and body like stone. Raith raised an inky brow over his
cold eyes. “Now is not the time to confuse our relationship. As you
say, we are tools for each other. I want nothing more from you. You
should expect nothing more from me. I have made it clear that
whatever wealth Stratton drained from your mother, will be
yours.”

She did not know whether to laugh at him for
assuming she wanted monetary compensation from him, or feel pity
for them both—because they were so cynical as to expect the worse
from people, even each other.

What she did was hold his gaze, “I was only
going to request, that should I die, or disappear, should
everything go wrong, will you have my mother buried on decent
ground…with a marker?”

Raith swallowed. Gabriella saw the movement,
her eyes scanning up and over that visage.

He stared at her intently for long moments,
before finally nodding.

“Thank you.” She shrugged. Her smile turned a
bit wry, watching the tension uncoil a bit in him.

“Should I embolden myself enough to enquire
if you have a similar request of me? Any last words, for your
father, or brothers.” God, she did not know what was wrong with her
tonight. She was pushing it and knew it, and she had seldom spoken
to him of anything beyond their mutual obsession with Stratton and
justice for their dead.