The Dark One (17 page)

“Who was that?”

“Who?” Armond inquired of Gabriel.

“The pretty blonde with the bold eyes.”

“A friend, I believe, of Rosalind's. I saw them speaking to one another when I entered the ballroom at a recent social affair.”

Gabriel's mouth dropped open. “Good God, you're even making the social rounds these days? What has gotten into you, Armond? You know the more we keep to ourselves, the better off all of us will be.”

He was in no mood for another interrogation, and from his own brother. “I was lonely,” he admitted. “Don't you ever get lonely, Gabriel?”

“No,” he answered. “I don't get lonely because I don't allow myself to get lonely. I don't become involved with women because I don't allow them to get that close to me. You would have done well to follow my example, Armond. Being the oldest doesn't necessarily make you the wisest.”

Armond was glad to see the end of town ahead. They'd soon be at Queenie's. The last thing he wanted to hear at the moment was a lecture from Gabriel. He had enough worries on his mind, enough to deal with now that he'd married Rosalind. How in the hell would he keep her at a distance when he wanted to get so very close to her?

Queenie herself answered the door when Armond and Gabriel arrived. It had been a few years since Armond had visited the establishment. The woman looked old
without the help of face paint and dim lighting. Judging by the dark circles beneath her eyes, midafternoon was early for her to be up and about.

“Aw, come back tonight,” she grumbled upon seeing them standing before her door. “The girls have to sleep sometime, you know.”

The woman started to close the door, but Armond stuck his boot inside. “We're looking for our brother. We thought he might be here.”

Squinting, she ran her red-rimmed gaze the length of Armond and Gabriel. “I haven't seen you boys in some time, but your brother is upstairs.”

“Might we have a word with him?” Armond asked.

She sighed. “Come in then, but be quiet. The house is asleep.”

They followed the woman into a parlor where red velvet ran amok. “You know the way,” she said, indicating the direction of the stairs. “First door on the left. He's got stamina, your brother. The girls all like him. Fear they wouldn't collect from him at all unless I made sure of it.”

“That sounds like Jackson,” both Armond and Gabriel echoed.

“Let yourselves out,” Queenie instructed, scratching her broad rump. “I'm going back to bed.”

The woman ambled off in the direction of the back of the house. Armond headed for the stairs. “No need for both of us to intrude on what I'm certain is a delicate situation,” he said to Gabriel. “Wait for me here.”

Gabriel nodded. “Be quick about it. This place smells of sour liquor and, well, you know what it smells like.”

He was right. Their special gifts made the smells seem even stronger. Armond walked to the stairs and up them. The room where Queenie said he could find Jackson was dark when he entered. He'd knocked quietly, but the snoring in the room was so loud that he'd heard it from the
hallway, and he doubted the room's occupants would hear his knock over the god-awful racket.

He spied his brother in the bed, golden hair tousled, looking ironically innocent given his location and the fact that there was a woman sleeping beside him. A woman snoring so loudly Armond didn't see how Jackson could possibly manage to sleep . . . until he spotted the other two women also crammed into the bed. Only a man exhausted could sleep through the noise.

None of the women looked any worse for wear for having spent the night with his brother, Armond noted. He walked to the edge of the bed and nudged his brother.

“Jackson, wake up.”

Sleepy dark eyes looked up at him. “Armond? What are you doing here?”

“I might ask you the same, but it's rather obvious.” He indicated the sleeping women with a nod. “I know now where we get our reputation. From you.”

Jackson smiled, his boyish dimples doing nothing to dismiss his air of innocence. “I like women. Where's the sin in that?”

“I think the sin, Brother, is liking three at once in the same bed on the same night. Get dressed. I need to talk to you.”

“How did you know I'd be here?” Jackson asked, careful when he rose not to wake his companions.

“Gabriel is downstairs. Hawkins called the two of you to London over some business we will discuss when we reach the house. When Gabriel learned you weren't at the townhome, that I in fact had not seen you, we figured we could find you here, or at a place very much like it.”

Jackson stretched. “I was bored,” he explained. “And I have been thinking about a quest. I wanted to make certain I had my fill of women and spirits before I left.”

Armond could barely hear Jackson's remarks over the
snoring woman. “Get dressed and meet us downstairs,” Armond instructed, then quietly let himself out of the room.

It took longer than he anticipated for Jackson to arrive downstairs. Armond supposed by the sound of the squeaking bed upstairs that at least one woman had awoken before his brother could make a clean break of it. Finally, Jackson joined them, pulling himself together as he descended the stairs.

“About time,” Gabriel growled at him. “I don't suppose you considered we're stuck down here smelling all manner of foul deeds that took place here last night while you're up there trying to impress a whore, for Christ's sake.”

To irritate Gabriel, Jackson flashed one of his dimpled smiles. “Duty called. What could I do but answer? And I wasn't trying to impress the lady, but merely pleasuring her.”

“What for?” Gabriel snorted. “That's her job, I'm thinking.”

“Let's go,” Armond ordered his brothers before an argument broke out between them. He knew they were close, perhaps too close, since both were confined at the estate most of the time, at least until Jackson took it in his head to rebel.

Jackson spent a good portion of the ride home complaining of his swollen head. He gleefully admitted to getting so foxed the previous evening that he thought he was with the same woman and merely seeing triple and wondered why she was so insatiable. Armond might have found his brother amusing—he usually did—but darker thoughts kept him from enjoying the ride. He did not discuss recent events with Jackson. Better that conversation take place at the townhome in his study.

Hawkins had the door for them before they reached it, the grooms rushing out to take their horses when they'd
first ridden up. “Is Lady Rosalind all right?” Armond asked the steward.

“Napping, I believe,” the man answered. “There's been no trouble so far, Lord Wulf.”

Jackson drew up short, his brow furrowed. “Who the bloody hell is Lady Rosalind?” he asked.

“To the study,” Armond instructed.

“I'll have a bath drawn for you immediately, Lord Jackson,” Hawkins said, wrinkling his nose.

Once the brothers gathered in the study, Armond closed the door and moved to his desk. Jackson immediately went to the liquor cabinet. “Now, who is this Lady Rosalind, and what's she doing here?”

Armond steeled himself. “Rosalind is my wife.”

The glass Jackson held slipped from his fingers. It bounced against the thick carpet without breaking. “Your wife?”

Rarely did Armond see Jackson at a loss for words. Jackson stared at his brother as if he'd suddenly sprouted another head. Before the usual questions could begin, Armond launched into the same explanation he'd given Gabriel the previous evening and also told Jackson about Rosalind's stepbrother and his suspicions regarding the man.

Jackson turned up another glass and poured himself a drink. “And I thought I was the one who attracted trouble. Good Lord, Armond, even I am smart enough to stand by our vow to never marry. You haven't given your heart to this woman, have you? You aren't suffering the effects?”

“No,” Armond assured his younger brother. “She left me no choice. I will protect her, give her my name, but that is all I will give her.”

Jackson studied the amber liquid in his glass before he drained the contents. “I hope so, Armond. I hope for your sake that you can resist any deep feelings for this woman.
You're much too responsible to be cursed. I don't think you'd fare well at the mercy of the moon.”

Since Jackson had raised the subject, Armond asked, “And what about you, Jackson? Gabriel has expressed concerns about your behavior since your return from abroad. Did something happen while you were in Paris?”

The younger brother cast Gabriel a dirty look before addressing Armond. “Only the usual. Gaming, whoring, hunting, and not necessarily in that order.”

Armond wouldn't be easily put off. “Did you meet someone? Someone who became special to you?”

“Did I fall in love?” Jackson lifted a cocky brow. “Hell, I fall in love every night. I wouldn't worry about me, Armond. I'm not the one who has gone and gotten himself married.”

His brothers were not taking his marriage well, but then, Armond hadn't expected them to.

His expression serious, Jackson asked, “When do I meet your bride? I could use a nap as well. Maybe I should go upstairs, climb into bed with her, and introduce myself.” He smiled broadly at Armond.

Armond leveled a look upon his younger brother that would send bigger men scrambling for cover.

Jackson merely shrugged. “I see that marriage has caused you to lose your sense of humor,” he said. “I hope that is all you lose, big brother.”

Gabriel, silent through much of the conversation, now spoke up. “What are we going to do about that nasty stepbrother of your wife's? I say we all go over there tonight and put an end to his threats.”

“Will it take all of us?” Jackson wanted to know. “Fighting is not my strong suit, I'm more of a lover, but of course if my services are needed in that area, I will rise to the occasion.”

“You spend too much of your time rising to the occasion,
Jackson,” Gabriel grumbled. “Maybe better that Armond and I handle this business.”

Suddenly Armond was given a glimpse of why his younger brother suffered from irresponsibility. Armond realized he and Gabriel had spent much of their adult lives taking care of anything that needed to be taken care of. Jackson, to the opposite, had been given nothing of importance to do.

“I can fight,” Jackson assured his brothers.

Armond made a decision in that moment, perhaps not the wisest one but one that went hand in hand with his position of leadership in the family. “This is my business,” he said. “I will handle it alone. I want both of you to return to the estate tomorrow and stay out of harm's way.”

Both brothers immediately put up a protest. Armond raised his hand to stop them. “I have a strong feeling now that the murders have started up again, they will continue. At least until I catch the man responsible. I will be suspect. If both of you are in London, you will be suspect as well. I'll think better if I don't have to worry about the two of you.”

“If you don't have to worry about me, you mean,” Jackson said. “Contrary to what you both believe, I can be responsible if need be, Armond.”

He saw that private counsel was needed with his younger brother. “Gabriel, will you excuse me and Jackson for a moment? I wish to speak to him privately.”

Gabriel wanted to grumble, Armond could tell, but in the end, the next in line to inherit should anything happen to Armond bowed to his older brother's authority. He left the study. Armond strode to his desk and leaned against it, indicating that Jackson take the chair before him. His brother slumped down into the chair.

“What lecture now, Armond? Do I drink too much? Yes, I suppose I do, but what of it? There's little in my
life to look forward to. Women, do I overindulge in them as well? Yes, but I do take precautions to keep myself from disease, and of course to see that not one drop of our cursed seed is spilled inside a woman's fertile womb. So you see I can be responsible, at least over what I can control.”

For a moment Armond was tempted to reach out and touch his brother's blond head. Jackson had been barely out of short pants when the curse took their father. When they also lost their mother as a result of the curse. Now Jackson was a man and Armond realized that he and Gabriel treated him for the most part as if he were still a boy.

“I must ask you a serious question, Jackson.” Armond didn't want to ask, didn't want to believe for one moment that Jackson could have anything to do with Bess O'Conner's murder or with that of the woman found recently in his stable, but he had to know for certain. “It's about the murders.”

Jackson, slumped in his chair, sat up straight. “Do you believe I might have come in contact with this person because of the company I've been keeping of late? That I might have seen something and not realized that it was of importance?”

Armond couldn't meet his brother's gaze. “No. I must ask you if you are in any way responsible.”

When Jackson didn't answer, Armond glanced at him. His brow was knit as if he was trying to understand the question. Suddenly his dark eyes focused on Armond. “You think I killed those women?”

“You were here when the first murder took place. Now, you are here again. And Gabriel is worried that you aren't acting normally. Do I think you would kill a woman? No, not you as I know you. Not as I love you,” he felt moved to add. “But if you aren't telling us the truth, and—”

“A drunkard, a womanizer, why not a murderer as well, is that it?” Jackson rose from his chair. His face had lost any appearance of youthful innocence his dimples might falsely provide him. “This is what I have to say to your accusations. To hell with you, Armond, and to hell with Gabriel as well.”

“Jackson,” Armond called after him when he stormed to the door and wrenched it open. The door slammed shut a moment later. Armond rubbed his forehead. He hadn't handled that well. Jackson had every right to be angry. He should trust his brother. Trust him regardless of what might appear suspicious to either him or Gabriel. That was not a mistake Armond would make again.