The Hunter (21 page)

No matter how badly they deserved it.

He shrugged and paused next to a luxurious conveyance with a resplendent matching set of dark stallions.

“Surely we’re not … absconding with someone’s carriage,” she whispered.

His look could have dried all the lakes in Cumbria. “This carriage is mine, and I’ve already had someone stow Jakub’s art supplies inside.
And
your cloak.”

Though the carriage had no footman, the driver leaped down and opened their door.

“Thank you, Mr. Argent,” Jakub called as he scrambled inside. “Mama, it’s soft in here!”

Millie faltered, peering into the blue silk and velvet interior with an impending sense of finality. She felt like the proverbial sacrificial virgin. This was the point of no return. The threshold from this side of her harrowing day, to the other side. To his domain. Or lair. Argent seemed like the kind of man who would have a lair. Like a troll, or one of the monsters from the penny dreadfuls.

Or the devil.

A glance back at him pressed her to take the driver’s hand and allow him to lift her inside.

She’d been a fool to even consider she’d had a choice.

C
HAPTER
F
IFTEEN

Now she was alone with a monster.

Or might as well be, for in the quarter hour it took to be free of the carriage traffic on Bow Street, Jakub had slumped into Millie’s lap, and the only sound that permeated the thick silence between them was his soft, intermittent snoring.

“We could have walked, you know,” she stated. “I reside on the next street over, and we’d be there by now.”

“We’re not going to your apartments. I’m taking you somewhere more secure.”

She’d known that, somehow, but she’d wanted to hear him say it. “But the Brimtrees, they’ll worry.”

“I sent word.”

“Of course you did,” she huffed. The highhanded lout. Lord, she would have some explaining to do when she returned home. “Did you warn them? Are they safe?”

“If you’re not there, it does mitigate the possibility that anyone else would attempt to collect on the contract, so yes, they’re safer.”

Millie peered at the man seated across from her in the carriage. There wasn’t a lantern illuminating the inside, so only the glow from the streets seeped through a few cracks in the velvet drapes and slashed pale shards of light across his still form. One of those shards drew a jagged line over his eyes, one ear, and the blue silk upon which he rested his head.

She’d been right in her earlier musings, that dark blue behind his head painted his disconcerting eyes an even lighter shade. Something like a glacier floating above water. They looked almost inhuman, in a way she’d not noticed before. It was as though darkness sought him out, as though shadows settled upon him, recognizing one of their own, and he siphoned strength from them. This was where he belonged. Cold, eerie nights full of danger and blood.

“Did you murder Mr. Dashforth?”

“Did you fuck them all, or just him?”

They spoke at once, but his question rang through the carriage, snuffing hers into oblivion.

Millie released a shocked gasp that resembled a cough and didn’t speak until the next time she heard her son snore. “I—
heartily
beg your pardon,” she spat.

“Thurston, did you only fuck him, or did you have Gordon St. Vincent as well? They’re a randy lot, and Gordon St. Vincent and his father, the earl, often have those masqueraded, orgiastic gatherings you described. Is that why they give so much to the theater? Do you pay them in trade … like you’re paying me?”

Millie could count on one hand the times she’d been struck truly speechless. In fact, most people made the context a somewhat ironic paradox because they spoke in order to point out their speechlessness. But outrage and disgust paralyzed her tongue to the roof of her mouth and she could only stare in dumb amazement.

“I don’t ask to condemn you.” He correctly read the unmitigated outrage on her face. “Only to clarify the situation. We’ve both obviously had intercourse—”

“I’ll thank you to keep your voice
down
.” She put her gloves over Jakub’s ear, and though he twitched, the rhythm of his breathing didn’t falter.

Argent’s lids shuttered his expression. “I’ll admit … I wanted to kill them, though they’d done me no disservice and issued no insult. I
wanted
to spill their blood. To break every part of them that had touched you, starting with their fingers.”

“Don’t.” Millie held up her hand against him.

“It’s why I had to make this bargain, I expect. Why I must have you. Because you make me want to—” He paused, eyes moving in their sockets as though searching for a word. “You make me … want.”

“Stop,” she hissed in a dramatic whisper. This habit he had of chilling and concise honesty. It unsettled her. Disturbed her. She, who lived among people whose livelihood depended on being someone else a great deal of the time. Performers, the lot of them, much of their memorized rhetoric spilled over into their lives, and they borrowed from the minds of great thinkers and emotional writers to express their own needs, to seduce, and to survive. They were students and conveyors of the human condition, and a great part of that condition was deceit.

But not this strange and stoic man. He revealed what others wouldn’t dare. His uncommon fearlessness wasn’t contained to the physical, but also to the emotional. For someone so impervious to emotion, he certainly wasn’t oblivious to it. And Millie was starting to believe that he shared with her the entirety of his limited emotional experience, at least the ones that pertained to her.

A man who didn’t lie. Who didn’t flatter, or seduce, or elaborate.

Did such a man really exist?

“I’ve upset you,” he observed. “Perhaps because I’ve insinuated that you’re a prostitute?”

Millie glared at him, mostly upset because, in all honestly, she couldn’t say she wasn’t one. “Not that it’s any of your business, but I will tell you with absolute certainty that before tonight, I’d never in my life been introduced to those wretched people.”

“You seemed to enjoy their company.” His brow lowered, casting a shadow over his gaze. It was apparent that he didn’t believe her.

“It’s called acting. I was merely being polite. You can’t honestly believe I enjoyed a
moment
of that interaction?”

“I know nothing about what you enjoy.”

“Obviously.” The sharpness in Millie’s tone surprised even her. Was it wise to speak to a professional killer in such a manner? Likely not. But wisdom was never really something she’d been credited with an abundance of.

Unfortunately.

She had the habit of speaking before her thoughts told her the better of it, and maybe now was a good time to start working on that.

They were silent for a long moment, listening to the clip of the horse’s shoes against the cobbles, or the sound of Jakub sleeping the undisturbed sleep of the innocent.

“My mother was a prostitute.” The words were spoken so softly, Millie wondered if she’d imagined them.

“What?”

He leaned forward, releasing his features from the light. “Her name was Christine, and she was a whore.”

Millie blinked, her breath faltering as he leaned closer in the darkness. “Why would you say that to me?” she whispered.

He shifted. “I don’t know. I’ve never said it to anyone else. Perhaps I told you because I wanted you to understand that I meant you no offense. I don’t share society’s opinion of prostitutes. Because of the lustful nature of a man’s needs, or maybe because of the intrinsic beauty of the fairer sex, a woman’s body is a commodity, one that men barter for with land and titles and sometimes even kingdoms. So why then, when a woman sells her own body for food, or survival, or even pleasure, is it called a sin? Or a crime? What has marriage become but sanctioned prostitution, the buying and selling of female flesh for the begetting of heirs and so forth?”

Millie understood in that moment that Christopher Argent would never cease to astonish her. She couldn’t even begin to answer that question. Partly because his point made a great deal of sense, and partly because he’d left out so many variables. What about love? What about two souls, and
yes
, bodies, committing themselves to each other for the entirety of their lives? There was protection of joint properties, and the promise of a man to hold to one woman and care for the children they had together.

But, in all honesty, how many marriages did she know of that had more of a basis along his perception than hers?

Well. Drat
.

The carriage rolled to a smooth stop, blessedly cutting off the need for a reply.

But then, a new fear arose. They’d arrived … somewhere. The place he’d planned on stashing them until he could guarantee their safety.

Until she’d fulfilled her part of the bargain. Before they embarked, she had to know what had happened this afternoon. “Did you murder Mr. Dashforth?” she repeated.

His jaw worked over the answer before he gave it to her. “Yes.”

“Why?” She hoped—no—prayed that he’d give her the answer she needed, the one that could appease her smarting conscience. That would calm her growing panic.

Argent leaned forward, eyes leaving the slash of light and his great body invading her space, her air, until she could feel his warm breath on her chilled skin.

“Because he threatened your life, hired Dorshaw to kill you, and take your child. He told me he wouldn’t relent.” His hand lifted, and Millie flinched, so it dropped back into the shadows. “I’m going to kill anyone who means you and your son harm.” His voice was hard as stone in the darkness. “Can you live with that?”

Millie considered for a few shaky breaths. Her son was draped limply in her arms, secure in the notion that she, his mother, would protect him. She was all he had in this world, and she had to accept that she didn’t have the skills or the necessary brutality to keep him safe during this nightmare.

“I—I can.” Millie wanted to take the words back, but knew she’d never be able to.

Knew that she’d meant them.

She started when he opened the door and leaped to the ground without the need of the steps. Turning, he held his arms out and gestured for her to hand him Jakub.

Millie hesitated, feeling as if she were about to put a bunny in the jaws of a wolf. But, she realized, she was in for a penny, might as well be a pound. He’d promised not to hurt them, and he’d proven himself by his treatment of Jakub thus far.

Lifting his shoulders, she rolled her son so Argent could lean in and take the boy, one arm beneath his knees, and the other behind his neck. Jakub twitched and snorted loudly, but settled into Argent’s heavy arms, and turned his head into his suit coat, where he promptly drooled on the lapel.

If Argent noticed, he paid it no heed.

The driver lowered the steps for her, and she thanked him as he steadied her until she was on solid ground.

Millie straightened the skirts of her costume, looked up, and gaped.

Pillars the color of rich cream provided a contrasting circle to the precise angles of stories and stories of pale stones. Neat hedgerows provided friendly cover to imposing iron gates. Millie reached out and used one of those stones to prop herself up.

“You …
live
in Belgravia?”

He nodded as the driver unlocked the gate and pulled it open wide enough for them to enter. “Blackwell thought it best if one of us were stationed at each end of the park whilst in London. He’s in Mayfair, and I’m here in Belgravia keeping an eye on things, as it were.”

“And this is
your
 … house?” At his urging, she stumbled through the gate and made her way on unsteady legs to the arched front door. To call it a house seemed like a sacrilege. A Grecian temple was more apropos.

He followed with his usual long strides. “I believe most of us here in Belgravia lease from Lord Grosvenor, the Marquess of Westminster,” he mused.

The door swung open on well-oiled hinges and a tall, white-gloved butler stepped out with the march of a soldier.

“Master Argent, welcome home.” His voice seemed to propagate mostly in his astoundingly large nose.

Argent nodded and climbed the few marble steps to the door. “Welton,”

The butler did not stand aside to let his employer pass. “It is customary, Master Argent, for the guest to enter the home first. Especially if that guest is a lady.” He flicked a meaningful, birdlike glance from dark glass-bead eyes, down to where Millie stood at the bottom of the stairs, her breath puffing from her open mouth.

“Oh.” Argent stepped to the side and waited.

Lifting her skirts, Millie hurried up the stairs and paused at the threshold before crossing it at the butler’s behest.

She didn’t know what she expected to find inside the stately mansion, but this most certainly wasn’t it. In the grand marble foyer, beneath the indecently expensive Irish crystal chandelier and lovely blue French wallpaper was …

Nothing.

Other than the faded rectangles and ovals on the paper, stained skeletons of a previous tenant’s art, Millie could find no signs of occupancy.

Her slippers echoed off the bare walls and floors with an eerie and empty sound. Where had he brought them? She turned to Argent with anxious questions in her eyes and he was looking about the place as though he’d never seen it before.

“Welton … I didn’t think about this, but I need you to find a place for the boy to sleep. I don’t think we have any—”

“Already done, sir. When you mentioned you might have guests I ordered a room for the little master here on the second floor overlooking the park. Follow me, if you please.” Hands clasped stiffly behind him, Welton took the left side of two grand staircases and Argent silently followed. He carried her sleeping son as if he were no heavier than an afterthought, and more precious than gold.

As she trailed them in the dim house, she couldn’t miss the way Argent’s muscles shifted beneath his coat, absorbing his movements and keeping the boy as comfortable and immobile as possible.