The Millionaire Rogue (31 page)

T
he Glossy was a far less pleasant place, Hope found, when one was bound and gagged and dragged none too gently down the stairs to a dark, smelly room behind the kitchens.

His senses returned slowly. He was vaguely aware of the murmured conversation between La Reinette and Cassin as they followed him into the basement; every word, spoken in crisp, clipped French, made the pain in his head pulse sharply.

When at last he opened his eyes, the darkened room swam languidly about him; he was suddenly aware of the chafe of rope against the skin of his wrists, his arms bound behind him to the rickety chair in which he sat. A handful of stray curls had fallen into his eyes, and the impulse to push them away made his fingers itch.

He managed a glance about the room. It was a pantry, its shelves lined with flour and turnips and cellars of salt; a trio of cured pig haunches hung listlessly from the ceiling, lilting back and forth, back and forth, as if they, too, were impatient to know what the
devil
this was about.

Aside from the pig haunches and turnips, the room was bare, illuminated by a single lamp La Reinette had placed on a nearby shelf.

Umberto, seemingly unscathed from his run-in with Hope's pursuers some weeks ago, was tying Hope's legs to those of the chair. Marie urged him
faster, faster
, then shooed him from the room when the task was done; quietly she closed the door behind him, turning to Hope.

Her eyes were alive, joyfully triumphant as if she'd wagered her last guinea on a no-count featherweight and won. Hope swallowed. He didn't like that look, not on La Reinette; it made her look wild, like she might do or say anything and Hope would be none the wiser.

From behind her, where Cassin moved in the darkness, there came ominous scraping sounds, metal against metal; he was sharpening something, a blade. Hope swallowed, his belly turning over. He did not care to know what Cassin was up to back there.

Not yet, anyway.

La Reinette sauntered toward him, crossing her arms over her chest. She wore a robe of watery Japanese silk that was so fine as to be transparent, showing every curve, every sinew, highlighting especially the hardened points of her nipples.

Hope looked away, annoyed. Had she come to slay or seduce him? How like her to confuse the two.

“Thomas, look at me.”

His gaze snapped to meet hers. “Don't call me that. I am not Thomas to you.”

The triumph in her eyes faded somewhat; she chewed the inside of her lip as she considered him. He gently tugged at his bindings, only to find they wouldn't budge. Umberto, it seemed, knew his way around tying innocent men to rather uncomfortable chairs.

Hope swallowed the panic that rose in his throat. He'd faced worse odds than these and had somehow managed to survive. Tonight will be no different, he told himself. Think.
Think
.

“So you and Cassin.” Hope nodded at the figure that moved in the shadows behind La Reinette. “What an unlikely alliance, considering you killed him eight years ago. Tell me, Marie, how'd you manage such a feat? The mind boggles. Really, it does.”

The madam twisted her lips into a sour smile. “I am perhaps a witch. That answer, does it satisfy you?”

Hope scoffed. “Don't insult me, Marie.”

She tilted her head; after a moment she uncrossed her arms and pulled up her sleeve, fingering a ribbonlike scar that ran up the pale flesh of her inner arm.

“It was my blood on his throat. I went to Cassin before, and told him you meant to kill him. And to myself I thought, let Hope think his enemy is dead; what a surprise it will be, yes, when he knows he is alive! And my friend Cassin. A very good actor he is.”

Hope felt the damp break out beneath his arms and along the edge of his scalp; if he didn't feel ill before, he definitely did now. Though he knew the answer, he asked the question anyway.

“Why?”

Marie smiled. She let down her sleeve, resting her hands on the arms of his chair.

“And you.” She bent over him and brushed her lips to his ear. “Do not play stupid. These things I do not want to say. Don't make me say them,
Thomas
.”

He winced. It was all wrong, that name on her tongue. Thomas belonged to Miss Sophia Blaise.

Thomas was dead.

He looked La Reinette in the eye. “Answer the question,
Marie
.”

The movement behind the madam stilled; she turned and murmured something soothing in French. After a beat, Cassin resumed his sinister doings, and Marie turned back to Hope.

He sensed her hesitate when she met his eyes; for a moment her own went blank, as if she were lost, under a spell.

“My God,” he breathed. “You can't still—no. Not after all these years. Surely there have been others.”

Marie blinked; her eyes went hard again. She rocked back on her heels, gaze trained on Hope's feet. “You. You I loved from that first time we met. There has only been you.”

Understanding rolled hard and heavy through him. “Marie. I made clear to you my feelings—”

“Your feelings.” She scoffed, meeting his eyes. “That is it, you see. You never had them for me. Not the feelings I had for you.”

Hope swallowed. The bindings at his wrists and ankles felt unbearably tight. “I'm sorry, Marie. I am. We had a jolly bit of fun, you and I, I thought we were partners, friends, even. I gave you everything I could—”

Her eyes flashed with anger now; for the first time ever he saw color rise to her cheeks. “What about that time, in the, how do you say?
Vignoble
.”

“Oh, God, Marie, that was
one
time. We were drunk. I was drunk. I should have never—”

“Yes. You should have never. I will make you regret it, Thomas. Tonight. You will regret what you did to me.”

Hope let his head fall back, closing his eyes. “It was a mistake. I apologized for it. I regret what I did, I do. Christ, Marie. Out of all the men who have loved you all these years. Kings and princes and tsars—you could've had any man you wanted, and still you wanted
me
?”

Again that wry twist of her mouth. “Ah, yes. I am always wanting what I cannot own. And you know the tsar, he was, how do you say it?” She made a pinching gesture with her first finger and thumb.

“Tiny.”

“Ah, yes, tiny.”

Hope swallowed for what felt like the hundredth time. He straightened, opening his eyes. “We could've never been together, you and I. We were partners. An entanglement . . . it would've gotten in the way. I had a job to do, Marie. You knew I was running for my life. Mr. Lake saved me, but only on the condition that I help him—”

“Mr. Lake. Do not use him as the excuse, Thomas. No. You used me, my brain, my body, as if I was nothing to you, the dirt under your boots. My heart, you broke it. And so I decide to make the score even, make you bleed the way I bleed.”

Hope glanced over her shoulder. “So you went to Cassin. Allied with my enemy, plotted my demise in the most epic and medieval fashion you could think of, cursed my black soul. All the usual tomfoolery, yes? Except you didn't kill me. You could have, right then and there in that room in Paris, and been done with the whole business. Why wait until now?”

La Reinette's smile deepened. Turning to the shelf, she asked, “Wine?”

“Thank you, Madame.” Hope rolled his eyes. “But my hands are, at the moment, otherwise occupied.”

Madame shrugged, pouring red wine into a fine Murano glass tumbler. She brought it to her lips, her dark eyes dancing with glee. Damn her, she was enjoying this
a tad too much.

“I wait all this time,” she said, “because I believe in taking, what is the expression? Two eyeballs?”

Because it appeared he would not have them to roll much longer, Hope rolled his eyes again. “Eye for an eye.”

“Ah, yes, eye for an eye! I have been waiting all this time for you to fall in love, to love someone as deep as I loved you these years. I bide my time so that I might take from you what you take from me.”

Hope started, his vision blurring as rage engulfed his carefully practiced nonchalance. He gave his bindings a vicious tug, hardly feeling the rope as it scalded his ankles and wrists.

“Leave Sophia out of this,” he growled. “She did nothing to deserve your wrath. She is innocent. Punish me if you must, but leave Sophia alone.”

The viciousness of his defense of her, the wild pulse of his blood, the violent urge to do violent things to keep her safe—it shocked him. He loved Sophia, had loved her since he pressed her body against his in that dreadful closet; but now he suddenly, devastatingly knew just how much he
loved
her.

“She did nothing!” La Reinette threw back her head and laughed. “Nothing but steal the heart that was meant for me! No, Thomas. If I cannot have you, no one will. Especially not that silly girl Sophia.”

At the sound of her name on La Reinette's poisoned tongue, Hope lurched forward, straining against his bindings with all his might. So wild was his assault that Hope would have toppled the chair if Marie had not reached out a hand to steady him.

“It all was so perfect, yes,” she said. “Cassin at last was in London, here to seek his own revenge against you. And then you fall in love! It is too perfect. The missing diamond, I did not plan that, but it was, as you English say, the ice on the biscuit.”

Hope didn't bother correcting her. “Cassin is a traitor and a murderer, Marie. When he has his way with me, what the devil do you think he'll do to you?”

As if on cue, Guillaume Cassin's unshaven face appeared over La Reinette's shoulder. His wolfish grin revealed slimy green teeth—really, did the French practice any sort of dental hygiene at all?—and when he spoke, his cigar-ravaged voice raised goose bumps on Hope's arms and the back of his neck.

It was
him
. Understanding unfurled as Hope thought back to that first night in Mayfair, the night he and Lake had gone out looking for the French Blue.

It had been Cassin who'd given Hope and Lake chase; Cassin, who'd followed Hope up to La Reinette's rooms in The Glossy. Hope recalled La Reinette distracting Cassin as he and Sophia escaped. Now Hope understood that Marie had merely told her partner in crime to hold back, be patient, wait for the right time to strike.

Cassin, who'd penned that nasty note to La Reinette to throw them off her scent. He imagined them, heads bent over the page, cackling gleefully at their
savoir-faire
as Cassin scrawled his filth.

“He-
llo,
Mees
ter Hope.” Cassin stepped forward around La Reinette. He was bigger than Hope remembered; his teeth blacker, skin sallow. “What I am going to do to you, I have been saving, for only you. It has been many long years, after all. Many years to plan your pain,
Mee
ster Hope. You kill me, you kill my man. And I now—haha! You know the rest.”

He held something that glinted silver up to the low light, reverently fingering its surface as he would a woman's body. For a moment Hope was blinded by a metallic flash; blinking, he made out the long, pointy shape of a French-style rapier, complete with overly bejeweled handle that swooped out in a series of gilded loops and swirls.

Hope swallowed. Again. And somehow managed to muster a scoff. “Ah,
monsieur
, I admire your sense of humor! Does it have a name?”

Cassin swung the sword through the air in a high, dramatic arc; the weapon made an equally dramatic
whoosh whoosh!
noise as he did so. “Of course. In France, our weapons are like our women. Beautiful, lithe, very deadly. This one I have given the name Bernadette.”

“Bernadette?” Hope wrinkled his nose. “You're really going to kill me with a sword named
Bernadette
? Surely you can do better than that.”

Cassin pursed his lips, offended. “You insult her,” he said, polishing the blade of the rapier with his cape, “and you insult me.
En garde!
”

The Frenchman squatted into a lunge, and before Hope knew what he was about, Cassin charged forward, bringing the blade down on his face so quickly he hardly felt it slice through his cheek.

Hope did, however, feel the sting of the cut a moment later, followed by the warm drip of blood down the slope of his face. He smelled its sickly sweet scent above the must of the pantry; it filled his nostrils, thick, nauseating.

Two cuts, in nearly the same place: first La Reinette's hedgerow, poking his cheek that night weeks and weeks ago; and now Bernadette, making mincemeat of his face.

Maybe Cassin would poke his eyeballs out next. Soon Hope and Lake would be twins.

He would've laughed at the thought if panic didn't slam through him. It struck him, suddenly, that he faced death;
he would die here, tonight
. Before it had been petty games and witty banter, trading barbs with La Reinette as she told her tale of woe.