Robin Schone (40 page)

’t, people wouldn’t buy them.”

“Sir Neville Jamieson was shot through the head.”

Surprise raced down Gabriel’s spine. Neville Jamieson was a squire in his late sixties. He had never

visited Gabriel’s house.

Gabriel shrugged, pretending an indifference he did not feel. “That is unfortunate.”

Michael continued swirling brandy inside his snifter, violet eyes assessing, crystal glinting, amber liquor

sloshing. “He owns an estate in Dover.”

Gabriel froze.

Twenty-nine years earlier the nightmare had started in Dover. Two years later Michael had run away

and stowed on the boat that had docked in Calais.

If Michael had not run away, Gabriel would never have met him. If he had not met Michael, Gabriel

would never have met the second man. And he would have died from starvation and disease, or he would

have died from a knife or a bludgeon.

Gabriel owed everything to Michael.

“I don’t know Neville Jamieson,” Gabriel said truthfully.

Michael’s violet eyes were alert, seeking to pierce Gabriel’s shell. “Jamieson was an associate of my

uncle’s.”

An associate. . .

“How do you know that?” Gabriel asked sharply, aloofness pierced.

“Anne read the paper.” Candlelight flickering, amber swirled, violet glinted. “Anne told me.”

Anne Aimes’s estate was in Dover, as had been that of Michael’s uncle. She would know.

Gabriel struggled to piece together the play the second man had set into motion.

He had killed a Dover squire. But why?

“Who was the man who reportedly killed Jamieson?” Gabriel asked tautly.

“Leonard Forester.”

Leonard Forester was the name of the architect who had redesigned the House of Gabriel.

The fear coursing through Gabriel’s veins knotted his stomach.

The paper was wrong. Forester hadn’t committed suicide; he had been murdered.

The two men were both connected to the second man.
But how?

“Why did he kill Jamieson?”

“Leonard Forester is an architect,” Michael said, watching Gabriel for a reaction. Both men tied to his

past. “Jamieson owns the firm where Forester is employed.”

Gabriel remembered .. . the watching eyes that had awoken him. The scent that had lingered in his suite.

John’s report on what he had learned at the Hundred Guineas Club....
Lenora stood both Geraldine

and himself up, and that he had not seen Lenora since.

Lenora ...
Leonard.

Leonard Forester had rebuilt the House of Gabriel. He had built a secret passage for the second man.

And now he was dead.

The second man
had
been inside his suite earlier that day.

Delaney. The second man.

It didn’t matter by what name he called himself. He was inside the House of Gabriel.

He had Victoria.

Gabriel raced through the tables, pushing aside a chair, table tilting, silver candleholder flying.

“Gabriel!”

Michael’s voice echoed dully inside Gabriel’s ears, no time to worry about the truth.

He took the narrow stairs three at a time.

Julien was slumped in front of the satinwood door, auburn hair spilling around him like a silk scarf.

Crimson blood dripped over the wooden lip of the landing.

His throat had been slit.

Gabriel knew what Julien had last seen: he could feel the lingering surprise that survived death like the

residue of erased chalk on a board.

Julien had not expected to die inside the House of Gabriel; he had not expected to be killed by a man

whom he thought was a friend.

There was no time for regrets now.

Later.

Later
Gabriel would mourn the death of another homeless brother. But not now.

Victoria needed him.

Gabriel fumbled in the pocket of his trousers for the key to the door—
merde
—where was the fucking

key? Vaguely he was aware of footsteps pounding up the stairs behind him.

It was too late to protect Michael.

Too late to save Julien . .. Julien who had trusted too much and paid with the skin off his back.

Now he was dead.

Another casualty in a twenty-nine-year-old nightmare.

Finding the brass key, Gabriel thrust it home. The door was impeded by the bulk of Julien’s body; Gabriel

wrenched it open, dragging Julien forward in a slick slide of blood. He squeezed through the opening crack.

Chalk gritted underneath the soles of his boots. More white nodules were scattered over the maroon

carpet.

It was not that which held his attention.

The mystery of Delaney and the second man was a mystery no more.

“Gabriel.” The second man perched on the black-marble-topped desk, black hair blue in the light of

the chandelier, violet eyes gleaming. A familiar smile spread over his face.
“Mon ange.”

My angel
grated across Gabriel’s skin.

The second man’s voice bore the same knowledgeable cadence as did that of Michael and Gabriel: the

voice of a man who had been trained to entice, to seduce, to gratify.

Victoria stood between his splayed legs, golden brown silk dress with its wine-colored velvet lapels and

cream-colored panels splashed with green, yellow and dull-red dye a sharp contrast to the stark black silk of

a dress coat and trousers.

A fist clenched inside Gabriel’s guts, recognizing Madame René’s creation. It squeezed his chest, seeing

the blue silk scarf that gagged her mouth and the green silk scarf knotted about her hands.

The second man caressed her cheek with a serrated Bowie knife.

It was Gabriel’s knife.

A knife whose sole purpose was to kill.

No doubt it had killed Julien.

A blue-plated pistol barrel toyed with the wine-colored velvet bow on Victoria’s left shoulder; long,

tapered fingers lightly grasped the double-action Colt revolver. It was cocked to fire a single bullet.

The violet gaze slipped past Gabriel.

“Michael.” The second man’s smile widened. “How nice of you to join us.”

Michael’s and Victoria’s shock was palpable.

In looking at the second man, Michael gazed at himself as he had been before scarred by fire; in looking

at Michael, Victoria realized that the man who held her was not the man named for his ability to please

women.

Gabriel was neither surprised nor shocked at the man’s visage. There should be satisfaction in

confronting him again: there was not.

“Close the door,
s’il vous plait”
the second man invited, pleased with the reaction of his audience. “We

do not want Mademoiselle Childers to catch her death.”

Amusement at his cleverness sparkled inside the violet eyes.

It would not be cold air that would kill Victoria. If Michael ran for help, the second man warned, he

would kill the woman who had touched Gabriel.
Now.

With a knife. Or a single bullet.

And there would be nothing that Gabriel could do to stop it.

The soft snick of a closing door bolted down Gabriel’s spine.

“I believe introductions are in order.” The second man spoke with charming courtesy; he had spoken

with the same beguiling courtesy when Gabriel had been chained, unable to fight either himself or the man

who looked like Michael but who had none of Michael’s humanity. “Gabriel, no doubt you recognize

Delaney; he bears a marked resemblance to his sister, does he not? Mademoiselle Childers, may I present

to you Michel des Anges, the man named for his ability to please women. Michael, allow me to introduce

you to Mademoiselle Childers, the woman who sold her virginity to Gabriel. Delaney, no doubt you’ve heard

of Gabriel and Michel,
les deux anges;
they really are quite beautiful, aren’t they? Although Michael is

unfortunately scarred now.”

The book-lined study shrank to a narrow attic room, gold-embossed leather to dull gray chains.

Deianey’s gaze nervously darted from man to man, woman to man, a pearl-handled pistol clenched inside

his right fist. His hair was black and greasy with macassar oil; his narrow mustache curled in a perpetual

smile. Unlike the second man, he hadn’t expected two angels.

Behind him, Gabriel could feel Michael’s circling thoughts. He knew the exact moment when Michael

realized the second man’s identity.

“You have guessed who my father is,
mon cousin,”
the second man said with unfeigned delight.

“William Sturges Bourne,” Michael said flatly.

The Earl of Granville.

Gabriel had killed him six months earlier.

“Your
uncle,”
the second man agreed smugly.

Michael’s uncle had been the first man; the son of his uncle— Michael’s cousin—was the second man.

The uncle had destroyed Michael’s life, then he had sent his son to destroy Gabriel’s life. All because of

the innocent love two thirteen-year-old boys had borne one another.

Violet eyes clashed with violet eyes.

“I do not claim William Sturges Bourne as a relative,” Michael said contemptuously.

A log collapsed in the fireplace; sparks shot up the chimney.

The smile did not fade from the face that was a slightly younger, unscarred rendition of Michael’s. “And

yet you have inherited his title, the Earl of Granville.”

A title Michael had not claimed.

Gabriel’s fingers tightened about the silver knob of his cane.

Violet eyes suddenly pinned Gabriel. “Drop the cane, Gabriel, or I will carve your initials into

Mademoiselle Childers’s cheek. A ‘g’ for
garçon.
A ‘c’ for
con.
An ‘f’ for
fumier.”

Boy. Bastard. Piece of shit.

Victoria’s gaze sought Gabriel’s.

Thoughts flowed between them: the pounding of water, the slap of driving flesh. The echo of Gabriel’s

confession.

The knowledge that the second man had heard their every discussion and witnessed their every intimacy.

Her cries of pain, her cries of pleasure.

The needs of a male whore.

He had demanded that she share the light of her pleasure, and he had brought her to this.

A dark line of blood welled on Victoria’s cheek, a small warning nick of the Bowie knife.

Victoria held perfectly still, unable to escape the consequences of touching an angel.

The second man would give no other warning.

Gabriel had promised he would give up his life in order to keep her alive. And he would.

He dropped the cane.

“Very good,
mon ange.”
The second man smiled, white teeth flashing. “Now kick it across the room

toward me.”

Gabriel kicked the cane toward the black-marble-topped desk; it collided with a small red and white tin

stamped with ALTOIDS, struck a satinwood leg.

It dawned on Gabriel that the gritty substance underneath the sole of his boot and the white nodules

scattered over the maroon carpeting were mints.

Anger pricked the hair on the back of his neck.

“You said you wouldn’t hurt her, Yves,” Delaney burst out; glaring light glinted off his greasy hair. “You

said you would kill Gabriel, and then we would take her. You didn’t tell me there would be another man.

This is not what we planned.”

Yves.

It could be the second man’s name. Or it could be an assumed name.

It didn’t matter.

After fourteen years, eight months, three weeks and one day Gabriel could associate a name other than

Michael to his face.

“Delaney, you must learn to be more considerate, old chap,” Yves said, gaze never leaving Gabriel’s.

The serrated knife caressed instead of cut, smearing a line of crimson blood across Victoria’s paper-white

cheek. “Gabriel quite likes Mademoiselle Childers, don’t you, Gabriel?”

A pulse throbbed at the base of Victoria’s throat; the V of her bodice revealed a hint of shadow, the

valley between her breasts.

The Adams revolver weighted Gabriel’s shoulder.

He remembered the taste of her cry as he brought her to orgasm just scant hours earlier.

“Yes,” he said in an emotionless voice that belonged to neither a boy who had wanted to be an angel nor

a man who had wanted to be a part of a woman. “I like Victoria.”

Laughter crinkled the violet eyes. “Gabriel, you think I brought the mints. I’m sorry to disappoint you, but

they belong to Mademoiselle Childers. I believe she intended to use them on you, but dropped them in her

excitement when she saw me. It was quite amusing,
mon ange,
watching the two of you, a governess who

had never touched a man sparring with a whore who was afraid to be touched. You were both so very

eager to be seduced.

Relief coursed through Gabriel, that Victoria had not been forced to perform fellatio. It was followed by

anger.

For the first time in almost fifteen years, he had taken what he wanted. Now it was time to pay the price.

“You said he couldn’t fuck a woman,” Delaney protested, pearl-handled pistol belligerently pointed at

Gabriel. Clearly he was not a stranger to the weapon; he expertly held it between short, effeminate fingers.

“You said she would still be a virgin.”

Fuck a woman
raced up Gabriel’s spine; it was chased by
still be a virgin.

Would Victoria be safe if she were still a virgin?

“Now, now, old chap.” Yves did not spare Delaney a glance. “Think how much more amusing it will be