Robin Schone (37 page)

She pushed away from the desk—she had to grab the edge of the marble top to keep from catapulting

into the wall. Gabriel’s chair had wheels. Shakily she stood up.

Was Gabriel inside his house, attending business?

A different man guarded the door. He had thick auburn hair that flowed down his back.

Victoria was momentarily taken aback at his exotic beauty.

Was he a prostitute?

Stoically he returned her stare. “May I be of help, ma’am?”

There was no question of his origin: he was English through and through.

Victoria had never before seen anyone like him in England.

She wondered if Mr.—
Monsieur
Gaston had apprised him of the jar of cream she had requested.

Victoria did not doubt for one second that the emerald-eyed man before her was aware of the many

purposes for which it could be used.

She squared her shoulders. “I would like to see Mr.”—she would not be a hypocrite, no doubt every

person inside the House of Gabriel knew of her relationship with its proprietor—”I would like to see

Gabriel, please.”

There was neither approval nor condemnation inside his green eyes. “Mr. Gabriel is not here.”

Victoria’s stomach clenched.

He would come back.

The house was Gabriel’s home, whether he wanted to accept it or not. And the man before her was a

part of Gabriel’s family.

Victoria suddenly wanted to see Gabriel’s home and visit his family. “The House of Gabriel is very

beautiful.”

“Yes, ma’am.”

“I would enjoy seeing more of it.”

The guard’s expression did not alter. “That isn’t possible, ma’am.”

Victoria refused to be intimidated. “Why not?”

Men and women of wealth visited it every night.

“My instructions are to guard this door.”

“Your instructions are to protect me,” Victoria said firmly.

“Yes, ma’am.”

The knowledge of what had happened to one unprotected woman was foremost in both of their thoughts.

Victoria forcefully pushed aside the picture of crimson-stained gloves.

She tilted her chin in challenge. “Which are you instructed to do, sir, to guard this door or to guard me?”

“Both,” the auburn-haired guard said flatly.

The streets lurked inside his emerald-green eyes.

Family, Gaston had said.

Whores. Thieves. Cutthroats.

While she had not engaged in the two latter activities, Victoria had certainly embarked on the first

profession.

“What is your name?” she asked politely.

The guard did not so much as blink at Victoria’s question. “Julien, ma’am.”

“Are there guests downstairs?”

“No, ma’am. The House of Gabriel doesn’t open its doors until nine o’clock.”

Victoria tucked away the knowledge that Gabriel’s house had been open only three hours when he had

purchased her virginity.

“Monsieur Gaston said you are family,” Victoria said impulsively.

The guard blinked. She had surprised him.

“Yes, ma’am,” he said in a voice that said nothing at all.

“My family and I are . . . estranged.” Victoria fleetingly thought of her father and her mother, both

members of the untitled aristocracy.
Your mother left your father, just as you did,
Gabriel had told her.

Just as he forced your brother to leave.
“You are very fortunate to be surrounded by people who care

about you.”

The emerald-green eyes remained distant. “I cannot let you leave this room, ma’am.”

“Do you not trust your family, sir?”

Victoria had trusted her family—once.

“Yes, ma’am,” the guard said reluctantly, “I trust them.”

Victoria pounced on Julien’s admission. “Then there is no danger if I leave this suite, is there?”

“That isn’t for me to determine, ma’am.”

Victoria glanced at his shoulder. He did not openly carry a pistol; he must wear it in a shoulder holster

underneath his coat, as did Gabriel.

He would not shoot her; but she was certain that he could stop her.

She remembered the strength of the man who had grabbed her on the street.

The man who would kill her.

“I am aware that I am in danger, sir.”

The guard’s expression remained impassive. “Yes, ma’am.”

“I do not wish to put myself into further jeopardy.”

“No, ma’am.”

Victoria had had more success in persuading recalcitrant charges to study than she was having with this

man Gabriel had assigned as a guard.

“You know that Gabriel purchased my virginity.”

There was no way that he could
not
know, working in the House of Gabriel as he did.

The embarrassment burning up Victoria’s face was not mirrored by the guard’s face. “I am instructed

to guard you, ma’am, and I will do so.”

The electric light overhead drummed on Victoria’s head. “I want to know Gabriel.”

“You will not learn to know Mr. Gabriel through his house.”

How long ago it seemed since Victoria had followed Monsieur Gaston up the narrow steps behind the

guard.

“You are wrong, sir. Everything inside the House of Gabriel is a part of the man who built it.”

Victoria had gained the guard’s full attention.

“I want to please Gabriel,” Victoria said evenly. “I would like to visit the . .. the guest bedchambers to

see with what means other women please men.”

Objects she might not have noticed through the transparent mirrors.

The smirk she expected to see on the guard’s face did not appear.

Emotion nickered inside his emerald-green eyes; disappeared. “Perhaps, ma’am, it is not artificial aids

that Mr. Gabriel needs.”

“I will use whatever aids are available,” she said truthfully.

The guard glanced over her shoulders.

Victoria forcibly tamped down her frustration. She could not condemn an employee for his loyalty.

“How long have you been employed by Gabriel?” she asked politely.

He did not look at her. “Six years.”

Whereas Gaston had been employed fourteen years.

“Someone wants to kill him.”

The guard’s gaze snapped back to Victoria. “No one will harm him in the House of Gabriel.” Deadly

intent rang inside his voice. “We will protect him.”

Family.

“But he is not now in the House of Gabriel,” Victoria pointed out.

“No.” The frustration Victoria had earlier felt was reflected in the guard’s emerald-green eyes. “He is

not.”

Gabriel fought the love his family felt for him, just as he fought his need for a woman.

“Gabriel could die. If not today, then tomorrow.”

Just as she could die. If not today, then tomorrow.

She could die by the hand of the man who would kill Gabriel. Or she could die by the hand of the man

who had written the letters.

The guard did not respond.

“He is known as the untouchable angel,” Victoria desperately persisted.

Emerald-green eyes froze Victoria in her shoes. “We who are employed at the House of Gabriel know

what Mr. Gabriel is.”

And would not discuss him with an outsider.

Victoria felt the rebuff all the way down to the soles of her kid slippers.

“I think he deserves to be loved,” Victoria said quietly, hiding her pain. They both deserved to be loved

before it was too late. “I would like to love him. I would like you to help me.”

“I cannot help you, ma’am.” The emerald-green eyes nickered. “I would lose my position.”

But he wanted to
help her.

He wanted Gabriel to find love.

They all wanted Gabriel to find love.

“No one need ever know of this but you and I,” Victoria assured him.

“There are no secrets in this house, ma’am.”

“There are secrets in every house,” she corrected him.

There had been secrets in her father’s house, a man renowned for his sterling reputation.

“I do not have a key to Mr. Gabriel’s suite; if we leave, you cannot get back inside.”

Hope welled up inside Victoria. “Surely someone other than Gabriel must have a key.”

“Mr. Gaston does.”

Victoria crimped the silk of her skirt in her fist. “I will explain to Mr. Gaston the reason we need to

borrow his key.”

The guard no longer looked stoic; he looked trapped. Torn between the loyalty to guard the door as he

was instructed and torn between his desire to bring his employer some happiness.

His face cleared as suddenly as it had clouded. “Follow me.”

Victoria smiled.

For a second, her smile was mirrored in the guard’s emerald-green eyes, and then he turned and

clomped down the brightly lit, narrow stairway. He halted at the foot of the stairs, hand curving around the

brass doorknob.

Victoria remembered the terrified woman who had followed Gaston up the stairs two nights earlier. That

woman had believed she could engage in one night of sexual license and not be affected by it. It was not

the same woman who walked down the narrow stairs now to join the waiting guard.

The door opened into the saloon. A maid leaned over a white-silk-covered table inserting a beeswax

candlestick into the silver candleholder. Her graying hair was caught up in a black net. She halted at the

sight of Victoria.

Victoria had no doubt whatsoever that the maid knew who she was.

The maid smiled, lined face crinkling with warmth. “Evenin’, ma’am. Jules.”

She spoke with a broad Cockney accent.

The guard nodded, “Evening, Mira,” and hurriedly herded Victoria toward the plush red-carpeted stairs

that hugged the opposite wall.

The white enameled doors lining the first floor were plainly visible from the saloon. A maid in a large

mobcap pushed a wooden cart laden with linen and cleaning supplies down the upstairs hallway, her figure

striped from the surrounding banister.

Victoria slowly climbed the stairs, glancing down at the rows and rows of white-silk-covered tables,

twisting her head to view the darkly gleaming box where Gabriel had watched her, and from which he had

then bid on her.

Victoria had been told that sin was ugly; the House of Gabriel was as beautiful and elegant as its

proprietor.

The chandelier at the top of the stairs was electric; thousands of tiny crystals sparkled.

She had thought that the Opera House was the only public building to have electric lighting; she had been

wrong. All of Gabriel’s house was lit by electricity—the chandeliers, the wall sconces—all save for the

candlelit tables in the saloon.

Thick red carpet lined the L-shaped hallway at the top of the steps. At the end of the corridor that

veered to her right, a curved staircase leading upward to the second floor was lit by another chandelier.

The guard threw open the enameled door nearest the top of the saloon stairs: a gilded, ornate seven

numbered it.

The bedchamber had dark green carpeting; the bed was covered with a yellow silk spread. There were

no windows.

It was not intended to be seen from the outside. She had seen the bedchamber through the reflective

mirror the night before.

And there, directly confronting her, was the transparent mirror. It was gilt-framed, elegant as the room

was elegant. Innocuous in appearance as the room was not.

Victoria did not recognize the woman reflected inside the mirror.

The hair on the back of her neck stood on end.

Was someone watching her?. . .

Only two pairs of eyes studied her: one pair belonged to the guard who stood beside her, not behind

half-silvered glass; the other pair of eyes belonged to Victoria herself, looking inside the transparent mirror

instead of through it.

It wasn’t a stranger Victoria looked at; she looked at herself.

The cream-colored lampas underskirt with its green, yellow, and dull red figures added substance to

Victoria’s hips while the short, golden brown corded silk mandarin collar that plunged into a deep, narrow

V subtly emphasized her neck and bosom.

Madame René was a genius.

Acutely aware of the transparent mirror and the watching guard who stood beside her—did Julien know

what lay behind the glass?— Victoria stepped into the bedchamber.

A squat white bottle sat on the nightstand alongside a silver tin of condoms. The lid was stamped with

the words
The House of Gabriel,
just as the one on the nightstand in Gabriel’s bedchamber.

Julien silently watched Victoria’s every move from the door. Whereas she could see his every move in

the mirror.

Turning her back toward the half-silvered glass, Victoria opened the top drawer. And found the

penis-shaped devices that Gabriel had told her about.
Godemichés,
he had called them.

They were ... very lifelike.

One was small, one was medium, and one—a giggle bubbled up inside her throat, remembering the

Brothers Grimm fairy tale “Goldilocks and the Three Bears”—was just the right size.

Memory flashed through Victoria’s mind, a picture of her mother holding Daniel on her lap. He had been

four. Eight-year-old Victoria had sat at their feet while her mother had read a fairy tale to them.

She had possessed a musical voice, Victoria suddenly recalled. But Victoria could not remember the

fairy tale her mother had read, only the words,
I
k now it, said the angel, because. .. I k now my own

flower well.