Robin Schone (12 page)

She felt a leap of relief. And despised herself for it.

She did not want to be dependent upon a man.

Not for food. Not for shelter.

Not for sexual satisfaction.

“For how long?” Victoria asked shortly.

“For however long it takes.”

For however long it took to hunt a man down, was what he meant.

And k ill him.

“How do you know that I am not this man’s accomplice?”

Horror welled up inside Victoria.

She could not have said what she had just said.
But she had.

“How do you know that I do not make this offer so that I may kill you when your screams are less likely

to disturb my clientele?” he returned reasonably.

Victoria kept her gaze trained on his eyes instead of the knife in his hand.

“Are you?” she asked steadily.

“This is a night house, mademoiselle,” he replied matter-of-factly. “If someone heard you scream, they

would think you did so in the throes of passion.”

The men on the street sometimes grunted when they coupled, like pigs rooting for food; the

streetwalkers silently endured.

“Do men ... and women ... often scream in your night house, sir?” she asked.

“The walls are designed to afford privacy,” Gabriel said politely, deliberately misunderstanding her. “You

will not hear them.”

“The men and women who . . . couple ... on the streets—they do not scream in the throes of passion,”

Victoria said more bluntly.

She saw his past reflected inside his gaze: the hunger.

The cold.

The sex.

The will to survive.

No matter the cost.

What would cause a man such as he to beg?

“The men and women on the street couple like they live, mademoiselle,” Gabriel said indifferently. “They

steal a few moments of pleasure here, a purse there.”

A life in between.

The wool padding of Victoria’s dress was wearing thin: her knees ached. The palms of her hands were

damp. She rubbed them on her thighs to dry them.

The wool was coarse, abrasive.

“I cannot give you the name of the prostitute,” she said.

Victoria could no longer call Dolly friend, but she would not be responsible for the death of another

woman.

She, too, had been a victim of circumstance.

“I told you, if she’s not yet dead, she soon will be.” The knife blade glinted in his hand, his fingers long,

elegant. “Her name would be useless.”

Victoria averted her gaze.

His silver eyes were waiting for hers.

He did not ask for her help. So why did she feel compelled to give it?

“The man who wrote the letters ...” Victoria licked her top lip, a rasping flick of her tongue. “He would

have no knowledge of the man who . . . abused you.”

“How do you know that, mademoiselle?”

Victoria was not fooled by the politeness of Gabriel’s tone.

“I know that because he would have no knowledge of
you,
sir.”

“Many men have knowledge of me, mademoiselle,” Gabriel said cynically.

“If he had knowledge of your house, sir,” Victoria retorted, “he would not prey on his children’s

governess.”

Not prey on his children’s governess
rang inside her ears.

There should not be any more blood left inside Victoria’s head to drain from it: there was.

The silver eyes were hard, uncompromising. “You are either a fool, mademoiselle, or a liar.”

Victoria glared at him. “I cannot help you, sir.”

If she gave him the name of the man who wrote the letters, the silver-eyed, silver-haired man would hunt

him down.

Victoria did not want Gabriel to know who her father was.

She did not want him to know about her past.

“I cannot help you,” she repeated.

“But I can help you, mademoiselle,” he said silkily.

With food. Shelter. A position.

Her choice.

Life.

Death.

But at what price?

Tears pricked her eyes.

Tears of exhaustion, she told herself.

And knew that she lied once again.

“Why do you want to help me knowing that I cannot help you?” she asked evenly.

He stood up, a sudden creak of leather.

Victoria’s eyes were on a levee with the juncture of his thighs. There was no mistaking his sex through

the tight, black silk trousers.

Are you that large, sir?

I measure over nine inches long.

Victoria threw her head back.

Gabriel’s silver eyes glittered.

“Perhaps, mademoiselle, because I, too, once said that I would not beg. Perhaps I would spare you that.

”

There was too much pain in his eyes. Too much death.

Had he ever laughed, this man who had been born in a gutter in Calais, France?

“Have you ever begged a woman for sexual release?” she asked impulsively.

The heat inside the bedchamber crystallized.

“I am Gabriel, mademoiselle. I whored for men, not women.”

“So that you could eat,” Victoria said firmly.

“So that I could become rich,” Gabriel softly countered. “How do you think I was able to build this

house?”

Victoria’s father had taught her that sin was ugly.

She had seen ugliness.

There was nothing ugly about Gabriel or his house.

Victoria realized she was in far more danger now than when he had caught her rummaging through his

drawers. Gabriel would forgive a trespasser; he would not forgive a woman who pried into his past.

He could kill her with a knife, a gun, a toothbrush ...

No one would mourn the passing of Victoria Childers, a virgin spinster.

Who would mourn Gabriel?

“You did not answer my question, sir.” Victoria’s voice sounded as if it came from a long distance

away. “If you do not answer my questions, then you cannot expect me to answer yours.”

For a second she did not think Gabriel would respond, and then ...

“No, mademoiselle, I have never begged a woman for release.”

“Has a woman ever begged you for release?” she persisted. Heart pounding.

Sex a seductive lure.

“Yes.”

“Did you enjoy it?”

“Yes.”

“Did you . . . cry out. . . with your pleasure?” Victoria asked. Unable to stop the questions.

Wanting to know more ...

About sex.

About a man called Gabriel and a woman called Victoria.

She wanted to know why it was she who had been sent to him and not another woman.

Long seconds passed, one heartbeat, three heartbeats, six... nine . ..

Victoria strained to hear—the men and women inside the house, a passing carriage outside of the house.

Finally...

“No, mademoiselle, I did not cry out with pleasure.”

But he had given pleasure.

Pleasure to make up for what he did not receive.

The only sound inside the room was the crackling of the fire and the beating of Victoria’s heart and the

truth lurking in the shadows.

“Did these women who begged you for release do so before or after you yourself. . . begged . . . for

release?”

“Before.”

Victoria was riveted by the starkness inside Gabriel’s eyes, dull gray now instead of silver.

The truth slowly dawned inside her.

It was too late to stop the questions, but she wished she could.

She had asked for the truth; it looked her in the face.

“It has been fourteen years, eight months, two weeks and six days since I begged for release,

mademoiselle.” The man behind the marble-perfect mask flared to heated life—a man who desired to

touch, to be touched, to hold and to be held; he was instantly locked away behind an alabaster wall of

beauty. “I have not touched a woman since.”

“Why?”

Gabriel’s voice echoed hollowly inside the empty saloon. Guttering candles fought the darkness.

Reckoning time had come.

The two doormen stood stiffly at attention. Light and shadow played across their faces; golden blond hair

alternately turned into wheat, brown hair into fire and bronze.

Neither man met Gabriel’s gaze.

Neither man expressed fear or regret.

For a long second Gabriel did not think they would reply. And then...

“C’est
—it was her eyes, monsieur.”

Gabriel’s head whipped toward Stephen; red fire flamed in his brown hair, died.

I
told them I was in need of a protector,
Victoria Childers had said.

“You violated my orders because of a pair of
beaux yeux?
he asked bitingly.

“Non,
monsieur.” Amber eyes unflinchingly met Gabriel’s silver ones. “I violated your rules because I

remember what it’s like to be hungry and to have nothing to sell but oneself.”

“Your memory was not so acute six months earlier, Stephen.”

Stephen had been in Gabriel’s employment for five years. He had not once allowed a streetwalker or

dolly mop to cross the threshold.

Until tonight.

But Victoria was neither a streetwalker nor a dolly mop: she was a pawn.

Sent by the second man.

Cerulean blue eyes suddenly locked with Gabriel’s. “If we had turned her away, sir, she would not have

survived the night.”

John was a simple Lancashire boy who had come to London to make his fortune. One of the thousands

who annually flocked to the city.

His beauty had been the only quality that had distinguished him from the other boys looking for

employment.

John had been raised to be a farmer, simple, honest work. Whoring had gone against his every principle.

But he had done it.

John had been a whore for five years.

It had nearly killed him.

Gabriel had taken John off the streets, fed him, clothed him, employed him, educated him. He had been

with Gabriel ten years. Six months earlier Gabriel had trusted him to protect Michael and his woman.

He felt the dawn pressing down on him.

“You know the price for disloyalty, John.”

There was no remorse in John’s eyes. No protest.

Both John and Stephen had known what their actions would cost them.

Yet they had acted.

Why?

A fleeting smile glimmered in John’s cerulean blue eyes, died with a guttering candle. “She was quite

splendid, wasn’t she, sir?”

In retrospect. . .

“Yes,” Gabriel said. “She was quite splendid.”

The bloods and the politicians had been aghast that a whore claimed as much self-worth as their wives

and daughters and sisters.

“Stephen and I will collect our things and be gone before the house servants rise,” John said

matter-of-factly.

Gabriel could not afford to keep the two men on, not now that the second man had returned.

John, more than any other of his employees, understood that.

More than ever, Gabriel needed men whom he could rely upon.

By allowing the woman inside his house—a woman who could just as easily have been an assassin—

they had proven their unreliability.

He could never trust them again.

That knowledge did not ease Gabriel’s task.

“Gaston will issue you two months’ salary for severance pay,” he said neutrally.

Stephen’s amber gaze glanced off of Gabriel’s silver one. “Thank you, sir.” Turning, he walked away,

chestnut hair dark and lifeless in shadow.

“John.”

John paused mid-turn; gold glimmered in his hair. “Sir?”

Gabriel’s eyes narrowed, watching his face and his body for signs of tension.

For signs of betrayal.

“Was there anyone—anyone at all—who accompanied the woman?”

“No, sir.” John looked past Gabriel’s shoulder. “She came alone.”

He could be lying. Or he could be telling the truth.

Gabriel would never know.

John turned, footsteps soundless. He halted.

Gabriel instinctively reached underneath his dress coat, satin lining a warm caress, the grip of the

revolver hard and smooth.

John was armed as Gabriel was armed. As were all of Gabriel’s waiters and doormen.

The doorman’s arms remained straight at his sides.

“The fog was thicker than pea soup, sir,” John said evenly. “Truth be, I do not know if the woman came

alone or not. There could have been someone with her who waited outside the parameters of the lamp on

the door. All I can say for certain is that I did not see anyone with her.”

Gabriel’s chest tightened.

John told the truth. But had Stephen?

“Why did you do it, John?”

“She reminded me of Mr. Michel.”

Hungry eyes.

“And she reminded me of you.”

Gabriel’s eyes had never been hungry.

“She reminded me of all of us.”

Whores. Pimps. Beggars. Cutthroats. Thieves.

All who worked inside the House of Gabriel had survived the streets.

English streets.

French streets.

“I wondered where we would be now,” John continued, “had someone given us the opportunity to make

enough money, our first time out, to escape the gutters.”

John had escaped the gutters long before Gabriel had found him.

“Take your severance pay and buy some land, John,” Gabriel said quietly.

“It’s too late.”

Gabriel thought about Michael. He thought about Anne.

He thought about their upcoming nuptials.

Gabriel’s people,
Michael dubbed his employees, immigrants and homeless people all.

A picture of the gray-haired man flashed before Gabriel’s mind’s eye. It was followed by images of the

Hundred Guineas Club.