Robin Schone (18 page)

“If your cock, sir, were no different than a mechanical apparatus, you wouldn’t be afraid to touch a

woman. Yet you are.”

Darkness glittered inside his eyes.

There was only one thing that could have put that darkness there.

If Victoria continued, there would be no going back.

He could kill her for what she was about to say. Victoria would not blame him.

But there were worse things than death.

Living without the comfort of touch was far, far worse than death.

Victoria knew that because she had denied herself that simple comfort for over eighteen years.

She said what had to be said.

“The man who raped you”—the warning inside Gabriel’s gaze stabbed through Victoria’s heart; it did

not stop her—”he gave you pleasure.”

Victoria was vaguely surprised that the crackling flames inside the fireplace did not freeze.

“He knew how to make pain pleasurable.”

Darkness obliterated the silver of Gabriel’s irises.

“He made you enjoy sex.”

“And you will never forgive yourself for it.”

Victoria’s voice rang out with feminine conviction.

Jamais.
Never.

Gabriel timed her breathing with the rise and fall of her breasts rather than the memories her words

evoked.

He could kill her. And she knew it.

Or he could let the second man kill her. And she knew that, too.

She was afraid. But she did not hide behind her fear.

She was the one woman who dared confront his past.

How had the second man found her?

Gabriel padded toward Victoria with calculated intent. She did not back away.

Purposefully he circled her.

Her hair the night before had been dull and lustreless—like her cloak. It now shone underneath the

electric light—a cold, wet, slick shield.

Victoria turned with Gabriel.

He could feel the heat of her nakedness. See his reflection inside her blue eyes, clouded with fear one

moment and glowing with desire the next. He could smell his soap and his shampoo on her skin and hair,

masculine scents femininized by the sweetness of her sex.

Stooping, Gabriel grabbed up her dress.

His gaze was on a level with her pelvis.

Victoria’s pubic hair was dark and curly. The lips of her sex were dark rose, like her nipples.

They were moist with arousal. Swollen with desire.

And he had not even touched her.

Damn Madame René to hell.

Victoria’s curiosity would build. As would Gabriel’s.

She would wonder how it would feel, to take a man one inch at a time. He would wonder how Victoria

would feel, slick wet flesh stretching one inch ... two inches ... five inches ... seven inches ... nine inches...

He would wonder what she sounded like when she cried out, first with the pain of losing her virginity,

then with the pleasure of obtaining her first climax with a man.

He would wonder what it would take to make Victoria beg.

Gabriel straightened.

“Yes, Mademoiselle Childers, he made me enjoy the rape,” he said coldly, deliberately. “Just as you

enjoyed reading the letters written by a man who terrorizes you.”

Gabriel turned his back on her—he could not remember the last time he had turned his back on either a

man or a woman—and threw her dress into the fireplace.

Black smoke curled up the chimney.

Gabriel tensed.

If Victoria tried to save the wool dress, he would stop her.

He didn’t want to hurt her. But he would.

“You have no right to destroy my clothing,” Victoria said tightly.

She did not try to salvage her dress. She, too, knew that he would hurt her if she interfered.

Right.

Whores did not have rights.

Blue fire skimmed a brown wool sleeve,
died.

“You have lived on the streets long enough to know that might is right,” he said bluntly.

“And your might is greater than mine.”

Anger laced Victoria’s voice.

She did not like having to rely upon a man.

Gabriel knew too well what it was like being powerless.

“Yes, Mademoiselle Childers,” he turned back toward her, “my might is greater than yours.”

The stench of smoldering wool permeated the bedroom.

Victoria’s blue eyes sparked fire. “I do not have any more clothes.”

Gabriel could give her that much.

“Madame René will send clothes shortly.”

Velvet. Silk. Satin.

Clothes of beauty as well as practicality.

Gabriel would do everything within his power in order to give her a life in which to enjoy them.

Victoria tilted her chin, lips chapped, cheekbones too sharp, the line of her jaw too vulnerable. “I do not

want your charity.”

No, a woman such as she would not want charity.

“What do you want?” Gabriel asked softly. Knowing the answer.

She wanted the pleasure an angel could bring.
Voir les anges.
But did she want the pain an angel could

bring?
La petite mort?

“You said you would assist me in obtaining a position as governess,” Victoria returned stubbornly.

Gabriel did not reply.

He did not want to see her working in another man’s house, supervised by another man’s wife, caring

for another man’s children.

Tension coiled about them.

Fear. Desire.

A drying strand of dark hair glinted auburn underneath the overhead electric light. “I do not think the

clothes that Madame René creates are designed to be worn by a governess.”

Gabriel wanted to reach out and touch Victoria’s hair, to feel the outward chill and the warmth of her

skin underneath.

She would not survive the streets, let alone the second man.

Would she survive Gabriel?

It was time to find out.

“But you are not a governess, Mademoiselle Childers.” Gabriel held her gaze. “Are you?”

Victoria read the truth in his eyes.

She squared her shoulders; fleeting regret streaked through Gabriel that her nipples were no longer hard.

“How did you discover who my father is?”

“Libraries are wonderful institutions, mademoiselle,” Gabriel said politely. “The births and deaths of the

members of the
ton
are meticulously recorded for the good of the general public.”

She stiffly walked toward him, breasts lightly bouncing. She stiffly walked past him, buttocks gently

swaying.

Gabriel watched her through narrowed eyes.

Victoria jerked the pale blue silk spread off the bed and clumsily wrapped it about her.

She was hiding from a past that she did not want to admit.

Gabriel listened to the rustle of silk, the pop of an ember, waiting for her to regain her courage.

It did not take her long.

Slowly, pale blue silk clutched in a knot above her breasts, Victoria Childers—daughter of Sir Reginald

Fitzgerald, one of the richest men in England—turned to face him.

“My father will not pay to have me returned,” she said with quiet dignity.

Gabriel believed her.

“I do not plan on returning you to him,” he said truthfully.

“Nor will he pay you to keep silent about my . . . my lapse of respectability.”

A pulse throbbed in the base of Victoria’s throat.

She had a beautiful throat. Long. Slender.

It would bruise easily.

“I do not need more money.”

Gabriel had more money than he could spend in two lifetimes.

Victoria did not believe him.

“Then why did you go to the effort of digging up my parentage if you do not plan on blackmailing me?”

she asked tightly. “Blackmail is the price of sin, is it not?”

His cynical words, coming out of her mouth, momentarily jarred Gabriel. It did not deter him.

“Have you sinned, mademoiselle?” he gently taunted.

Victoria looked him squarely in the eyes. “Not yet.”

Gabriel’s testicles tightened.

With anger. With desire.

He could not touch her. He would not let another man touch her.

Not as long as she remained in his protection.

“Your father could be indirectly involved with the man who sent you here,” he suggested.

A swift intake of air was his answer. It was followed by quick denial. “You don’t believe that.”

“Don’t I?”

Gabriel no longer knew what he believed.

I
think you are far more vulnerable than you want to think you are,
Michael had told him.
And yes,

I believe my uncle k new that.

But did the second man know it?

“No, you do not,” Victoria said emphatically.

The fear and the desire and the anger pulsing through Gabriel’s veins found an outlet.

He did not want to want this woman. But he did.

And yes, his desire did make him vulnerable.

“Then tell me, mademoiselle,” he said ruthlessly, “what I am supposed to think about a man—a wealthy

man, a man of reputation—who allows his only daughter to sell herself so that she might have food and

shelter.”

And never once caring if she were killed or hurt.

Emotion flickered inside Victoria’s blue eyes—eyes that had seen too much, felt too much, wanted too

much. “He does not know that I am here.”

“Are you so certain of that?” Gabriel bit out.

“Yes, I am certain of that.” Her knuckles clamping the pale blue silk coverlet about her breasts

whitened. “My father has no use of a daughter.”

The registrar had listed a son, Daniel Childers. Victoria had a brother four years younger than herself.

In a society that passed wealth and title through male progeny, it was not uncommon for men to favor

sons over daughters.

Gabriel wanted to spare Victoria; he could not.

Secrets killed.

Men. Women.

Whores.

“Why is that, Mademoiselle Childers?” he challenged. The stench of burning wool stung his nostrils. “

Why would a father allow his daughter to become a prostitute?”

Pain lanced through Gabriel—it came from Victoria.

She did not glance away. “Because my father believes that women
are whores, sir.”

Victoria had been a governess for eighteen years, she had said. She had become a governess at the age

of sixteen.

Either her father had driven her out, or Victoria, in order to escape her father’s rule, had chosen to live

the life of a servant rather than that of the lady she had been born.

There was an alternative reason: Gabriel did not want to think about that.

He had to think about it.

“He married a woman, mademoiselle,” Gabriel goaded her.

“And she was a whore,” Victoria returned, chapped lips drawn, chin high.

The registrars had mentioned nothing more than names and ranks.

“Your mother belongs to the untitled aristocracy,” Gabriel said sharply.

“My father believes that women are born into sin.” The bleakness darkening Victoria’s eyes weighted

Gabriel’s shoulders. “And he was right. My mother left him when I was eleven. For another man. I am like

my mother. I am a whore.”

Emotion killed. So why couldn’t he block this woman’s emotions?

Gabriel offered Victoria the only comfort he could. “You are not a whore, mademoiselle.”

“If I were not a whore, why did”—Victoria swallowed, holding on to the last of her secrets, her

employer’s name—”why did he have me dismissed from my post? Why did he write me those letters?

Why did I read them? Over and over I read them. Why?”

The second man called to Gabriel.

He was out there, waiting for Gabriel to find him.

For the first time, he had left a trail to follow.

Gabriel couldn’t leave Victoria alone. Not like this.

“We all want, Victoria.”

The words were ripped out of Gabriel’s chest.

Victoria stilled, cloaked in pale blue silk.

His woman, sent to him by the second man.

“When I was a boy, I wanted a bed to sleep in.”

The madame had given it to him.

“When I became a whore, I wanted to be successful.”

So that he need never go hungry again.

The madame had made it possible.

“When I became a man, I wanted to experience a woman’s passion. Just once I wanted to feel the

pleasure that I gave.”

Time slipped.

Gabriel remembered silky wet flesh weeping for release.

He remembered the taste of a woman; he remembered the scent of a woman.

Silk rustled; it immediately dispelled the memory of other women. It did not dispel the memory of his

desire.

After all these years, it still had not died.

Gabriel focused on Victoria’s eyes, Victoria’s body. Victoria’s scent that permeated the room,

overpowered now by the stench of burning wool, but there nevertheless.

“Did you?” she asked softly.

“No.”

The truth.

Gabriel had never lost himself in a woman’s pleasure.

The truth should no longer be capable of hurting; so why did it?

“You asked Madame René how to seduce a man,” Gabriel said remotely. “I’ll tell you. When he’s

hungry, feed him. When he hurts, offer him hope. When he has nowhere to go, give him a bed to sleep in.

In order to seduce, one must be able to create the illusion of trust.

“The man who wrote the letters made you dependent on him: you were hungry; he told you he

would feed you. You were afraid; he told you he would comfort you. And when you had nowhere to

sleep, he said he would share his bed with you.

“You’re not a whore. When one has nothing to lose and everything to
gain, Victoria, it’s very easy