Robin Schone (41 page)

to fuck an angel’s woman. Although, Mademoiselle Childers, I do apologize: I sincerely doubt if Delaney

here is quite
l’etalon
—the stallion—that our two angels here are.”

Delaney glared at Gabriel, his mouth petulant underneath the perpetually smiling mustache.

He was a jealous man, and he was a frightened man.

Both emotions were useful.

“How long have you lived within my walls?” Gabriel asked of the second man.

“Forester was quite clever, was he not?” Yves preened; his violet eyes were cold and calculating. “I do

not like the English climate, but I confess, watching you plan to entrap me these last months has provided no

end of entertainment. Come now, Gabriel, did you not feel my presence just once?”

Yes.

Gabriel had felt his presence every waking and sleeping moment for the last fourteen years, eight

months, three weeks and one day.

He had felt it when he woke this day.

Gabriel glanced away from the violet eyes, needing to know...

“Who wrote the letters, Delaney?”

Delaney’s chest swelled with pride. “Mary and I. It is a part of our game.”

A game to systematically destroy women’s lives.

“Why are you here?”

Delaney’s pride gave way to apprehension. He nervously shifted his feet.

Michael stepped sideways, synchronizing his footsteps to those of Delaney’s.

Did he realize the truth yet?

“I came to collect what is mine,” Delaney said with the aggression that comes with fear.

“But who suggested you come here tonight, Delaney?” Gabriel prodded, planting the seeds of dissent. “

Was it you, or Yves?”

“It doesn’t matter.”

But it mattered very much when a man was a pawn and didn’t realize it. Such men did not survive in

games of power.

“You’ll never have Mademoiselle Childers,” Gabriel said gently.

Victoria had been chosen for Gabriel.

“And who’s going to stop me?” Delaney sneered. “You are not in a position to stop your betters, my

good man.”

“I will stop you,” the second man said suddenly. “Your role is over, Delaney. You have played it aptly;

now it is time to take your bow.”

“I say_”

Between one heartbeat and the next, the second man swung his arm away from Victoria’s shoulder,

sighted the Colt revolver, and pulled the trigger.

Delaney slammed against the open door behind him; a round hole appeared in his forehead. At the same

time the explosion of gunfire ripped through the air.

A look of supreme surprise suffused Delaney’s face; his mouth beneath the smiling mustache was a

round O. He crumpled to the floor.

The stench of evacuation was immediate.

Victoria’s pupils dilated in black shock.

“Michael, if you take one more step, I will have to decide who to kill next,” the second man said

pleasantly “That is not a part of the play.”

Michael paused.

“What is a part of the play?” Gabriel asked carefully.

Every pulse inside his body beat a warning.

Yves had brought Delaney to show Gabriel that he had written the letters and not Yves; when Delaney

had no longer served a purpose, Yves had dispatched him.

Yves had sent Victoria to Gabriel; at what point would she no longer serve a purpose?

“Soon,
mon ange”
Yves murmured. “But first you will give me the Adams revolver you are wearing

underneath your jacket.”

Gabriel instinctively reached inside his overcoat and the wool day coat underneath; the silk lining

caressed his knuckles.

The butt of the rosewood pistol was a familiar grip. The weight a comforting burden.

He slipped it out of the holster. His middle finger automatically curled around the trigger.

“I could kill you,” Gabriel said provocatively.

Gabriel had waited almost fifteen years to do so.

The second man made no move either to defend himself or to fire the first shot. “But you won’t, Gabriel,

will you? By the time the bullet reaches me, Mademoiselle Childers will be dead.”

The invisible hand wrapped about Gabriel’s heart fisted.

“You think that her life is worth more to me than your death?” Gabriel asked, outwardly indifferent.

“Shall we find out, Gabriel?” Bright crimson blood dribbled down Victoria’s cheek, the knife cutting

instead of nicking. “Shall we show Michael and Mademoiselle Childers how little the touch of a woman

means to you?”

Victoria’s pain took Gabriel’s breath away.

If he admitted how deeply Victoria had affected him, she was dead. If he denied it, she was dead.

The second man smiled smugly. “I thought so. It took Dolly three months to find a woman for you,
mon

ange.
I would have preferred that Mademoiselle Childers had pale blue eyes and mousy brown hair—you

were quite taken with Michael’s woman, were you not?”— out of the corner of his eye Gabriel saw

Michael stiffen at mention of Anne Aimes—”but the darker blue of Mademoiselle Childers’s eyes is rather

splendid, and her hair quite magnificent when properly cleaned. She’s intelligent—you would quickly be

bored with a woman who was not—so that was a prerequisite. And her eyes, regardless of their color,

fairly beg you to fuck her, don’t they? That was far more important than their color. It was necessary,

Gabriel, to find you a woman who hungered for a man’s touch. But you also needed a woman who had just

enough knowledge of the streets to make her sympathetic to your past, but not so much that she would

become inured to the story of a beggar boy who wanted to be an angel.”

Victoria defensively stiffened at Yves’s words; Gabriel prayed she would remain still.

He wouldn’t let her die. But he couldn’t stop the second man from killing her.

He wouldn’t let Michael die. But he didn’t know if he could stop his death, either.

“How do you know that I’m fond of Michael’s woman?” Gabriel challenged, buying Victoria time, buying

Michael time. Knowing that his time had run out.

Yves briefly nuzzled Victoria’s hair; Victoria’s gaze remained locked onto Gabriel. “She smells of you,

Gabriel. Your soap. Your desire.”

Gabriel’s finger tightened around the trigger. All it would take was one bullet...

Would Victoria die before or after the second man?

Yves lifted his head. “I know you had a yen for Mademoiselle Aimes, Gabriel, because I followed you. I

followed you when you watched over Michael; I followed you when you took Mademoiselle Aimes to that

cheap pastry shop. I was in my father’s house when you killed him. Now, Michael sensed me that night,

didn’t you, Michael?”

Prey and predator.

Gabriel did not have to see Michael’s scars to know they would be white with tension. “I didn’t know it

was you.”

“No, of course not, how could you,
mon cousin?”
Yves reasoned. “You didn’t know I existed. Gabriel

couldn’t very well tell you, now could he? You thought it was because my father hired a man to rape

Gabriel that he hated you; it wasn’t. My father actually hired me to kill Gabriel; that would have hurt you,

Michael, and that really was all that my father lived for, to hurt you. Understandably. After all, he was

crippled because of you. However, I couldn’t resist Gabriel, so perfect, so beautiful, so hungry for love. It

was I who raped him, Michael. Gabriel hated you because every time he looked at you, he saw me. And he

remembered that he begged me . ..
n’arêtte pas...
not to stop.

“Now empty the cartridge chamber, Gabriel,
mon ange,
and gently toss the pistol in my direction or I will

proceed to carve the letter ‘b’ on Mademoiselle Childers’s cheek—’b’ because I made you beg.”

Blue eyes locked with silver eyes as Victoria digested the past of the man whom she had sought to

redeem.

Gabriel couldn’t breathe.

He had thought the truth would kill him, and it had.

Gabriel emptied the chamber; bullets rained onto the carpet.

“Toss the gun at my feet.”

Gabriel’s fingers clenched about the rosewood grip.

“Gently, Gabriel.”

Fresh blood dripped down Victoria’s cheek. Her eyes were stricken with the knowledge of the weapon

that she had become.

Or perhaps she was stricken because of the man that he was.

Gabriel tossed the pistol; it bounced on the carpet, slid past the silver-handled cane, the white and red tin

of mints, disappeared underneath the desk.

“What do you want?” he asked tightly.

What could he possibly want from two angels to have made such elaborate plans?

“I want you to tell Michael why you hate him,” Yves said.

The tension stretching between Gabriel’s shoulders tightened.

He could not tell Michael. Even to save him, Gabriel could not tell him.

He could not tell the boy he had loved as a brother that Gabriel’s body had betrayed him. He could not

tell Michael that he had looked into Yves’s violet eyes—Michael’s eyes—and had been made to
feel

desire.

And there had been
nothing
Gabriel could do to stop it.

“I want you to tell Michael that you stole the name of an angel.”

Gabriel blindly stared into black-fringed violet eyes.

“I want you to tell Michael whose name you cried out when you came, Gabriel.”

Gabriel remembered . .. crying out for the innocence that had been his for a brief time when Michael had

shared the loaf of stolen bread.

A harsh voice grated, “Don’t.”

In that one word Michael conveyed the knowledge and the pain that Gabriel had tried to hide from him

for almost fifteen years.

Violet eyes appraised violet eyes. “You love Gabriel, Michael.”

Michael did not flinch from the innuendo in his voice. Gabriel did. “I have always loved him.”

“Gabriel killed my father for you, Michael.” Silver light glanced off the serrated bowie knife; blue light

glanced off the second man’s hair. “What would you do for him?”

There was no pretense inside Michael’s eyes or voice. “I would do anything for Gabriel.”

“Would you kiss him, Michael?”

“Yes.”

“Would you suck his cock?”

Michael didn’t hesitate. “To save him, yes.”

“Kiss him, Michael, like a lover, and I’ll let the woman live. Suck his cock, and I’ll let all of you live.”

Time froze: Gabriel’s breath. The crackling flame inside the fireplace.

Gabriel finally understood.

. . .
Now I bring you a woman. A leading actress, if you will.

Laissez le jeu commencer.

Let the play begin.

“There is another choice, Gabriel.”

Gabriel knew what the man who went by the name Yves was going to say.

“Tell me to kill Mademoiselle Childers, and I will let Michael live,” the second man said lightly. Death

glittered inside his violet eyes. “Or tell me to kill Michael, and I will let Mademoiselle Childers live.”

Gabriel had not known that he had a soul; he did. “Why?” was wrenched from the very depths of him.

“Why?” the second man asked mockingly. “My father fucked an Algerian whore in 1849. Nineteen

years later a man approached me in a brothel and asked if I would like to travel to England and meet my

father.”

Michael and Gabriel had come to England in 1868.

“He said my father needed me.” The blue-plated pistol barrel toying with the wine-colored velvet bow on

Victoria’s shoulder was suddenly, dangerously still. “He said my father was rich. He said my father would

make me rich.

“I came to England. I discovered my father had always known of my existence. He reputedly sent for

me because an agent had reported that I looked like him. I didn’t know that you existed, Michael; I didn’t

know that it was because I looked like
you
that my father sent for me. I learned how to speak English. I

learned how to be a gentleman. I learned how to be
you,
Michael. So that I might better destroy you.

Slowly. Systematically.

“But when I saw
les deux anges,
the two angels who were the toast of both England and France, it was

you, Gabriel, whom I was most intrigued by. You were what I was: a homeless beggar—although I, at

least, had been given a name by my whore of a mother—a thief, a killer, a whore. But you didn’t enjoy the

wealth and the sex, yet you pursued it.

“I wondered why.

“In France I located women you had serviced, Michael. I learned to kiss the way you kissed. I learned to

fuck the way you fucked. I learned that because I wanted to see what it would take to destroy a fair-haired

angel. My father thought it was a splendid plan; he thought he could use you in the future, Gabriel. He

believed to the end that I had succeeded in destroying the—shall we say, brotherhood—that had grown

between two whores. Of course, you proved him wrong, didn’t you, Gabriel? As Madame René said, some

bonds can’t be destroyed.

“My father sent me back to Algiers with a handsome settlement. He summoned me again six months

ago. You were to kill Michael, Gabriel, and I was to kill you. Or perhaps not. Perhaps my father would

have turned me over to you. That was what he promised, was it not?” Yves shrugged, a sketch of

movement; the serrated knife blade skidded across Victoria’s bloody cheek.
“C’est la vie.
My father left a