Robin Schone (24 page)

For long seconds she stared up at him, mouth open. Her jaw audibly clamped shut.

“Who are you?” she snapped.

There was no recognition in her eyes. No knowledge of the untouchable angel.

“I am a man who can slit your throat and leave you to die.” He allowed the truth of his words to sink

into her consciousness. “Or I can let you live.”

Anger. Fear.

Gabriel waited to see which emotion was the stronger in Mary Thornton.

“How did you get inside?” she whispered angrily.

“Your husband let me in.” There was no need to lie. “It was easier that way.”

Mary Thornton did not seem surprised at her husband’s betrayal. “What do you want?”

“I want,” Gabriel murmured provocatively, “your blood”—he nicked her slender white throat; liquid

black shadows beaded in the firelight—”but I will settle for information. Who do you pander for, Mary?”

Mary did not move. Her very stillness screamed her guilt.

“If you hurt me, my husband will go to the police.”

“Then I will kill him, too,” Gabriel said playfully. The fear and the anger crowding him grew.

Mary Thornton was alive.

But she shouldn’t
be
alive.

“I do not pander for anyone,” Mary denied.

Unlike Peter Thornton, she would not beg.

Unlike Victoria Childers, her bravado did not inspire Gabriel’s admiration.

Mary Thornton was a society whore who preyed on the weaknesses of those less fortunate than herself.

She had preyed on Victoria Childers.

“Tell me who wrote the letters, Mary.”

“I don’t know.” Mary Thornton convulsively wriggled to break free of the imprisoning covers; she

couldn’t. “Let me up this instant!”

“I know you’re lying, Mary.” Gabriel’s eyes were cold and deadly; his voice was deceptively seductive.

“Tell me who wrote the letters and I’ll let you up. Was it a lover?”

Mary stilled. “I do not have a lover.”

“My condolences,” Gabriel said sympathetically.

Mary was not fooled either by his seductiveness or his sympathy. “Why are you here?”

“You have been careless,
madame.
You shouldn’t have hired so many governesses through West

Employment Agency.”

The lingering horror of waking at knifepoint mutated to genuine fear.

“I don’t know what you are talking about,” Mary lied.

Women like Mary Thornton played with death, but there were worse things than death to women like

Mary Thornton.

“Imagine if there were an investigation,” Gabriel said lightly. “So many governesses for so few children.

What would the investigation yield, I wonder? Pandering. Prostitution. Murder .. .”

“We did not murder. . .”

Mary realized her mistake the moment the words were out of her mouth.

Gabriel smiled. There was no pleasure in it.

Had Victoria known how much pleasure he had derived from her unabashed eagerness over the new

clothing?

Had she known that he had ached for her innocence, that she could still be horrified by death?

“Who is
we,
Mary?” Gabriel asked caressingly. “A lover?”

“We have hurt no one,” Mary Thornton said angrily.

“I’m sure others would feel differently. Take Victoria Childers, for example. She feels that she has been

hurt. . .”

“We did not hurt her,” the woman repeated stubbornly.

But she would have.

“Who do you pander for, Mary?”
The man who wrote the letters? The second man?
“I think seeing

your name in
The Times
would hurt you more than if I slit your throat. Shall I go to the papers?”

Mary’s ruination flashed through her eyes.

Society would shun her. Friends would snub her. Banks could foreclose on mortgages. Business

acquaintances could call in IOUs.

“Will your lover help you, Mary?” Gabriel crooned.

In the end her husband would have no choice but to divorce her.

“Will your husband keep you?”

No
and
no,
her eyes said.

She would lose her lover.

She would lose her reputation.

Mary Thornton would lose everything that made life worthwhile to a woman such as her.

“What is worth more, Mary? This”—he rubbed the silk pillow against her cheek—”or your lover?”

He was not surprised at the answer in her eyes.

Gabriel had fucked women like Mary. She was loyal to herself alone.

He had never fucked a woman like Victoria. She had protected a prostitute who would have killed her, a

father who had emotionally abused her, and a brother who had abandoned her.

Defeat danced in Mary Thornton’s eyes like flame skimming over burning coals.

“His name is Mitchell,” she said bitterly. “Mitchell Delaney.”

Gabriel had never heard of the man. But he knew the type.

Some men preyed on fear. Some men preyed on innocence.

Some men hunted to kill. Some men hunted to fuck.

Men like the second man preyed on both fear and innocence; hunted to kill and to fuck. Did Mitchell

Delaney?

A picture of Victoria Childers flashed through his mind’s eye.

She was alone. She was afraid.

Victoria was not an idle woman. She would seek distraction.

Mary Thornton’s expensive perfume engulfed him.

Gabriel suddenly knew where Victoria would seek distraction. And he knew that she would find it.

She would find the transparent mirrors.

Sex. Murder.

Act two was about to be played out.

Fear accelerated Gabriel’s heartbeat. It was not fear that hardened his body.

He stared down at Mary Thornton and the steel that caressed her throat.

She saw the rage. She saw the desire.

Her eyes widened until they were twin pools of white terror.

Victoria stared at the ceiling. Crimson blood superimposed the white enamel paint.

She closed her eyelids.

Crimson blood stained the darkness behind her lids. It was punctuated with dialogue.

You won
’
t
see the man who has a gun trained on you ... Perhaps you’ll
see a flash of light when

he releases the trigger, perhaps not. One thing is for certain
—
you won’t hear the gunshot: you’ll be

dead.

Victoria’s eyelids flew open.

She did not want to die.

The scent of Gabriel engulfed her. It came from his sheets, his robe.

I
will not be a victim.

You already are.

An image of the silk napkin slashed with bold black ink flashed before her eyes.

. . .
I
bring you a woman.

A leading actress for a man who avoided men, women, love, pleasure.

I
learned to read English. Someday I hope to be equally proficient in French.

Michael had taught Gabriel to read.

Les deux anges.
The two angels.

I
loved a man, mademoiselle. If I had not loved him, you would not be here.

Was Michael an actor in this unscripted play?

The sin is in loving,
Gabriel had said.

He had been hurt through the love he bore his friend.

But loving was not a sin.

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

that I gave. Just once.

She had breathed in the heat of Gabriel’s body. Had tasted his breath.

Victoria didn’t know the touch of his skin.

She didn’t want to die without knowing if Gabriel’s touch was worth dying for.

Fear was a powerful aphrodisiac: the void it created demanded to be filled.

By knowledge.

By action.

By Gabriel.

Laissez le jeu commencer.

Flinging back the covers, Victoria slid out of bed.

A metal tin gleamed on the nightstand. It was filled with condoms. Flat rubber sheaths that were rolled

onto a man’s erect penis.

The seduction of an angel. ..

Dolly had told her that a man would not seek to protect himself with a virgin, and then she had given

Victoria the corrosive sublimate tablets.

Now Dolly was dead and Victoria was alive.

Gabriel’s silk robe clung to her breasts and her buttocks. It was floor-length. It would reach Gabriel’s

calves.

Were they covered with the same dark hair that matted his chest, she wondered, or were they covered

with the silver-blond hair that capped his head?

Cap ...
Hats.

Victoria hurriedly stepped into the ... study, he had called it. A library by any other name.

Ridiculous disappointment sliced through her. She had known he was not in his suite merely from the

throbbing emptiness inside her.

Victoria perused the gold-embossed books—and did not see one single title or author.

She saw blood. She saw Mary Thornton.

She saw Gabriel.

Victoria wondered what he was doing—waiting in the night, breaking into the Thornton’s town house, or

returning to his own house.

Victoria wondered if he would learn that the Thorntons were associated with the man he sought, or if he

would learn that they worked independently to destroy women’s lives.

Gabriel had said that he did not fear a bullet. He had also said he did not know what to expect.

Victoria wondered if Gabriel was still alive.

Victoria wondered how long she would live.

Gabriel had burned down the former House of Gabriel. Why?

So many whys .. .

Vigorously she prowled Gabriel’s study, steering clear of the pale blue leather couch.

The lone boatman riding the shimmering sunset and the glittering blue water silently watched her from

the safety of the painting.

A cabinet proved not to be a cabinet, but a door similar to the one leading to the bedroom. Victoria

pushed it open.

The plush maroon carpet inside Gabriel’s office gave way to flat, dark wool carpet. Dim electric light

illuminated a hallway.

Freedom.

Victoria stepped inside the narrow corridor.

The door swished closed behind her.

Gasping, she whirled around, images of the glove box filling her head.

The door had not locked behind her.

Victoria’s heartbeat did not slow down.

There was danger in the corridor.

There was danger in Gabriel’s suite.

Victoria faced the corridor and the danger.

The hallway was short, only forty or so feet long. Reflected light shone at the end. It was brighter than

the dim light that lit the corridor.

She realized another corridor intersected the short, narrow hallway. A corridor with windows of light.

Heartbeat outracing her feet, Victoria cautiously walked toward the lit corridor.

She reached the end of the hallway.

A long corridor ran diagonal to the short hallway. Light splashed the outer wall at regular intervals.

The light was not caused by windows.

Windows adjoined outer walls; the lit portals came from an inside wall.

There was no reason for the wave of fear that crashed over Victoria or the undercurrent of longing that

tugged her forward.

Pulses pounding inside her ears, she stepped up to the first portal.

Brilliant light illuminated a plush red bedchamber. The bedchamber was not empty.

She stepped up to the second window; the bedchamber on the other side was a lush green instead of

red. It was not empty, either.

The third bedchamber was decorated in gold; the fourth in blue . . .

Victoria saw men; Victoria saw women.

Victoria saw the world that Michael and Gabriel had ruled. A world where no touch was forbidden and

pleasure was the price of desire.

Victoria saw naked need in all of its guises ...

Victoria knew the moment Gabriel stepped inside the corridor. She felt him through the silk of his robe

and through the thin covering of her own skin: a burning awareness of what the French madame had made

him, and of what the man he sought had taken away from him.

They were two reflections in the glass, a dark-haired woman who had been taught that touch was

morally reprehensible and a silver-haired man who had indulged in the pleasures of the flesh without ever

once experiencing its beauty.

The man and the woman on the other side of the glass experienced both the pleasure and the beauty.

They touched, feminine hands skimming hard masculine flesh; masculine hands skimming soft feminine

flesh. They kissed, lips brushing, clinging, devouring. They embraced, breasts to chest, stomach to stomach,

thighs to thighs.

He was young, handsome; she was neither young nor handsome.

They were oblivious to the difference in their ages and their outward attractiveness. Passion made them

partners; need made them equals.

“Can they see us?” Victoria asked softly.

“No.” Gabriel’s voice was curiously taut. “They see a mirror.”

While Victoria and Gabriel saw a window. And inside that window, the man and the woman that neither

Gabriel nor Victoria dared to be.

“How is it that we see them but they see a mirror?”

“The mirror is only half silvered.” Gabriel’s gaze did not waver from the man and the woman. “Strong

light reflects off the silver, like in a regular mirror, so that a person will see their image instead of glass, but

if strong light were shone behind the glass as well as in front of it, it would become transparent.”

Victoria had never before heard of transparent mirrors.

“Can they hear us?” she asked softly.

“Not if we speak quietly.”