The Hunter (4 page)

“Who are you playing to tonight?” Jane asked, assuming her place by Millie’s shoulder and peeking into the shadows of the Covent Garden audience. She referred to Millie’s habit of picking one figure in the crowd and delivering her lines through a connection she created just for that individual. Of course she performed to the entire audience, but through her awareness of that link with her chosen theatergoer, she was somehow able to convey more emotion, sentiment, and passion. If she ever lost herself, she would find her mark and it would ground her back in the moment. She attributed much of her success to the practice, and never failed to pick her ritualistic audience-of-one before each performance began.

“See that man there, sitting alone in the second box back on the second tier?” She pointed to the lone figure.

“My, but he’s a giant shadow,” Jane marveled. “Not hard to pick him out of a crowd.”

“No, indeed, and his eyes are so shockingly blue, I could see them from the stage when the houselights were up.”

“Giving Rynd a run for his money, is he?” Jane poked her in the ribs with a sharp elbow.

Millie poked back. “Of course not, since we’ve already established that Rynd and I aren’t involved.”

Jane smoothed her coiffure and sent Millie a sideways wink. “Sure you inn’t.
Anyone
just has to watch you on stage to know you’re setting each other’s bed linens on fire, you lucky wench.” She swept onstage for her cue, cutting off Millie’s chance at a retort.

“It’s
called
acting,” Millie muttered under her breath. Rynd was a startlingly handsome and unerringly friendly man, to be sure, but he was also self-involved and bombastic. No one would guess this, but Millie preferred quiet gentlemen. Someone with unimposing intelligence and unfailing kindness. Forgiving. Patient. Indulgent.

Safe.

Her notice returned to her shadow man. He’d taken off his hat, yet sat taller than most. And still. So impossibly motionless. But a sensation creeping over the fine hairs at her nape caused her to wonder if those eyes, pale and cold as a winter sky, were watching her right now. Something about the idea caused a wicked stirring inside of her laced with a delicious sort of anxiety.

She knew nothing about him, but had a feeling that he was neither unimposing
nor
safe. Something about his watchful stillness unsettled her. She took an involuntary step back into the safety of the velvet curtains and her own shadows, thinking that her bedsheets were a midnight-blue satin, and those eyes would glimmer from amongst them like crystalline stars against the darkest night.

Catching a sudden breath, she shuddered and brushed away the secret thrill from low in her belly. Best not even to fantasize. Everyone in her life was held at arm’s length but one. Marriage, or even a lover, was strictly out of the question.

Her secrets were simply too dangerous.

C
HAPTER
T
WO

Reconnaissance
. Argent answered his own internal question. That’s what he was doing at the gin-soaked club at midnight. The Sapphire Room was little more than a veritable mélange of shadowed nooks and private rooms sprouting from the main dance hall with no shortage of cushioned furniture from which to drape oneself.

The cacophony of the revelers packed beneath the crystal chandeliers all but drowned out the chamber musicians. Everything sparkled. From the gowns of the waltzing
demimondaines
, fashionable in their jewel tones, to the ladies’ intricate coiffures, to the champagne, all glimmered and winked like fallen stars beneath the new electric lights of the Sapphire Room.

Christopher had to suppress a wince as a woman’s high, fake cackle breached his eardrum. He never understood why people pretended amusement or hilarity. It was as though they believed that if they laughed loudly enough, they would create happiness where there was none. Their worthless lives wouldn’t seem so meaningless if they could drown out the sound of their own empty existence with enough champagne and laughter.

What fools
.

At times like this Christopher appreciated his uncommon height, as he could stand a head above the crowd, and scan the herd for his prey. It wouldn’t be difficult to find
her
here. Millie LeCour’s hair was an uncommon shade of ebony. Her eyes, though nearly black themselves, shone with such life, they reminded him of multifaceted volcanic glass.

Those eyes. He’d watched the abundant life drain out of them as Othello had strangled her with his large, dark hands. Above them, alone in his box, Argent had held his own breath as the light that captured all of London dimmed and extinguished to rousing, thunderous applause.

He’d leaned toward her then, gripping the railing of the box. Willing her to wake, truly wondering if he hadn’t just watched someone carry out his own charge to murder her in front of an audience of hundreds.

Argent had seen the real thing so many times he’d lost count, and she captured the dull lifelessness with such precision,
he
didn’t breathe again until the curtain lifted for a final bow. And there she was, her smile brighter and more prismatic than Covent Garden’s crystal chandelier.

He’d actually slumped back into his chair.

She’d turned to him, pressed her hands together, and curtsied with such grace, her eyes sparkling with unshed tears. Alive. Not only alive.
Full
of life. Brimming with it. Pressing her rouged lips to her hand, she’d tossed a kiss to the crowd. And again, he could have sworn, she turned and tossed one to him.

She’d been happy. He’d observed enough of humanity very closely to recognize the emotion. The true glow of transcendence. And as she’d waved at the boxes,
his
box, beaming that elated smile at him, he’d felt the most peculiar impulse to return it.

He’d become unsettled by that. Restless, chilled, and uncharacteristically prone to movement. His fingers curled and uncurled. His jaw clenched. His heart quickened its pace along with his breath. A pressure exerted itself against his heavy ribs and squeezed.

At first he’d considered apoplexy. Now he was altogether convinced it was something else, entirely.

He’d … felt. Not only that, the phenomenon hadn’t abated.

For the first time in more than twenty years, he’d been a victim of affect. Something he’d thought himself rid of indefinitely.

Even still, at this moment, he was searching the crowd for her with a stunning sense of … what he could only identify as anticipation. Not for the violence, but just for another glimpse of her dark and mesmerizing eyes.

Grimacing and shaking his head, he took up a silent guard against the far wall, hoping the odd sensation would dissipate. That she could affect him so was an impossibility. What sort of creature was she? According to Dashforth, Millie LeCour was a liar and blackmailer. A charismatic narcissist dancing with a death sentence. A mark with private rooms above Bow Street. It was all Argent needed to know.

Wasn’t it?

So … why was he here prowling amongst the crowds of common people like a serpent in a container of mice?

Oh yes.
Reconnaissance
. He’d do well to remember that.

A murmur of pleasure and surprise swept through the crowd, followed by a swell of applause directed toward the entrance.

The first thought that occurred to Argent was that Millie LeCour couldn’t be more porcelain white if she were, in fact, a corpse. His second, that the crimson and white striped dress accented her pallor so absolutely, she brought to mind the Countess Bathory, a woman famous for bathing in the blood of virgin peasants to maintain her skin’s youthful perfection.

Her smile was brilliant in every sense of the word, and Argent found himself with his hand pressed to the chest of his jacket. It happened again. That curious little jolt in the cavern of his ribs. It was the same when she’d smiled at him from the stage. A startle of sensation. A current of awareness that singed along the nerves beneath his skin with warmth and maybe a touch of pleasure.

It seemed, if she was the Countess Bathory, tonight he was Vlad Tepes, dead but for strange, lethal animation and his insatiable hunger for blood. Not for physical sustenance, like the vampire, but just as necessary for his survival.

For in the spilling of blood, he made his living.

Beaming, Millie LeCour let go of her foppish escort to execute a curtsy at the top of the stairs before descending down to her adoring public, rouged lips pursed to receive and return a plethora of air kisses.

Of all the jewels on display at the Sapphire Room, she gleamed the brightest. Christopher had marked the tired cliché that men would often tell their female companions. They would say that a woman lit up a room. In the past, it confounded him that such a sentiment would occur to either party as a compliment.

But now …

What was once a tepid room filled with the press and stench of people flirting with debauchery, now seemed to glow with whatever luminescence was contained beneath her nearly translucent skin.

Objectively, it was a shame to rid the world of such beauty. Such talent. Though her smile might just be an illusion, and her graciousness may amount to artifice, her loss would further tip the scales toward the desolation of humanity by means of mediocrity.

It wouldn’t stop him, though. If he fulfilled his vocation, she wouldn’t live to see the dawn. He could do it here, he supposed. Draw her into a corner and snap her pretty neck, drape her limp body across a chaise and disappear before the alarm was raised.

He’d have to charm her. To lure her into the darkness with him, into his realm. As a creature of the spotlight, she’d be vulnerable there. She’d be defenseless.

The idea shouldn’t excite him, but he’d be a liar if he didn’t admit having Millie LeCour to himself in the darkness didn’t arouse urges other than the one to kill.

Dangerous urges. Dangerous to him.

Though surrounded by people, Millie found him at once. Her head snapped up as though she’d heard his thoughts articulated above the drone of the crowd.

But Argent was certain she knew nothing of his intentions, because her eyes became warm midnight pools of delight the moment she noted him.

Excusing herself from her adoring public, she pressed through the throng as the orchestra began to play once more. She didn’t stop until she stood in front of him, unaware, or uncaring, that all eyes were on them both.

“I have found you,” she announced with a coy smile.

Argent had no idea what she meant. Maybe she knew why he was here. Maybe someone had warned her of the contract drawn against her life. Perhaps she was as unafraid and unfeeling as himself. A human free from the chains of pathos.

It still didn’t change anything.

“It is I, Miss LeCour, who have found you.”

And it is I who will end you.

*   *   *

Millie couldn’t believe her luck. Here
he
was, the night’s audience of one. She’d never had the pleasure of actually
meeting
one of them before. And to be in the presence of this particular man was an unexpected pleasure. Could it be that somehow he’d felt that strange, electric connection that she had experienced from the stage?

That would be terribly romantic, wouldn’t it?

“I thought this was a private gathering, Mr.…” She looked at him expectantly, offering her hand for an introduction.

“Mr. Drummle,” he answered, leaning over her hand, but not kissing it. “Bentley Drummle.”

Millie was unable to hold in a sound of mirth.

“My name amuses you?”

Everything about him amused her.

“Not at all.” She rushed to cover any offense. “It’s only that you don’t look like a Bentley.”

“Oh? And what name would you deem appropriate for me?”

Millie regarded him with gathering interest, somehow unable to answer his question. He didn’t look like he’d have a proper English name at all. He was nothing like the slim, elegant, fashionable men-about-town she was usually introduced to at these parties. Indeed, with his thick locks of hair the most uncommon shade of auburn, startling blue eyes, and raw, broad bones, he seemed as though he belonged on a Celtic battlefield wielding a claymore against Saxon intruders. Though his handsome features were relaxed into a mild expression, something dangerous shimmered in the air about him. Something … she couldn’t quite put her finger on. It wasn’t violence or anger. Nor was it anything unbalanced or wrong. Could it be that when he smiled, it didn’t reach those fiercely blue eyes?

She searched those eyes now, her smile fading just a little. They were like ice, and not only because of the color. A glacial chill emanated from behind them. Charm and geniality warmed the slight curve of his hard mouth, but looking into those eyes was like staring across an endless arctic tundra. Bleak and empty.

Suddenly she was anxious, and, truth be told, more than a little intrigued. “I fear I’m drawing a blank at the moment,” she admitted, surprised how breathless she sounded as she pulled her hand away from his.

He seemed to loom over her, a menace affecting a purposefully nonthreatening air. A wolf in sheep’s clothing, perhaps? Though he was fair-skinned and light-eyed, he evoked a current of darkness. As though he carried the shadows with him in case he needed their protection.

However, Millie was fair certain that there was precious little that didn’t need protection
from
him. A chill raised her skin, even though warmth suffused other parts of her. Parts she studiously tried to ignore.

“How did you say you came to be here?” she asked.

His expression changed from mild to sheepish, which sat uncomfortably on a face as brutal as his. “I was invited by a friend of a friend, actually. I forget her name. Quite tall, fair hair. Younger than she looks, but then older than she claims.” He winked at her, his eyes crinkling with endearing groves. Not yet a smile, but the promise of one.

“Oh, do you mean Gertrude?” she asked.

“That’s the one.” He nodded, then scanned the crowd as though halfheartedly looking for the lady in question. “We have a mutual acquaintance by the name of Richard Swiveller, do you know him?”