The Hunter (Victorian Rebels Book 2)

If she had to identify the most surreal moments of her life, Millie was certain this would be near the top of the list. It had taken her some time to charm the stoic Hassan into saying more than two words. But she’d done it, by Jove, and now he was expertly applying charcoal color to outline her eyes at her behest. Millie had done her own stage makeup for years, but the precision with which the Arab accented his chocolate eyes sent her into fits of envy.

It was certainly to her benefit that she had her own dressing room, as Hassan had garnered so much attention backstage at Covent Garden, she was certain they’d never make the curtain call.

Though his features were sharp enough to etch glass, his wide-set gentle eyes reminded her of the good-natured carriage horses of the West End. When he leaned this close to her, she inhaled the scents of sand and musk and a spice that reminded her of flowing white tents, veiled women, and strong, dark vagabond tribes.

She’d found him fascinating and instantly determined they must be friends.

The dark blue of his head wrap and multitude of robes blurred with each swipe of the brush he used to apply the kohl as the gentle pressure pushed her lid against her eye.

Another face, with large, breathtakingly blue eyes and hair the color of dark sand, leaned on her knee and watched the process with fascination. Jakub, her son. Her small, sweet, beautiful boy. The boy for which she’d give her life, because he gave her life meaning. The boy for whom she’d made a deal with the very devil, himself.

She couldn’t think about that now. About him. Christopher Argent. A mercenary, assassin, and her soon-to-be lover. He’d return for her. Soon she would be in his bed.

Or wherever he decided to have her.

Suddenly her skin budded with chills so exquisite they ached, and she let out a trembling exhale.

“Remain still,” Hassan commanded gently.

“Mister Hassan, why do you line your eyes with black?” Jakub queried, his wire-rimmed spectacles magnifying his eyes from innocent to owlish.

“Because, little rassam walad, in my homeland the sun is so close and so unrelenting that the kohl protects the eyes from its fire and allows a man to see far across the desert.”

Jakub nodded, plucking at the collar of his crisp shirt. “Mister Hassan, why do you call me rassam walad?”

The Arab never faltered in his task as he used a small piece of linen to expertly smudge the liner around her lid and draw it out to accentuate the almond shape of Millie’s eye. “In my language it means painter boy.” Hassam gestured his bearded chin toward Jakub’s pile of art supplies arranged compulsively in a little corner. “In my homeland, painting is a sacred profession, a gift bestowed by Allah.”

“Oh.” Dimples appeared on each side of the boy’s chin as his round cheeks pinkened with a bit of embarrassment and shy pleasure. Then his brows drew together as a thought struck him. “But Mister Hassan, the sun is not so close in London. It barely visits at all.”

“This is so, rassam walad, but when far from home, it does one good to maintain the traditions of one’s people, so that the heart can remain close to those he loves but must live without.”

Sadness swam up from the depths of the Arab’s liquid dark eyes as he paused to gaze down at Jakub with nostalgic affection. Millie caught herself wondering if Hassan had a little rassam walad of his own. Not for the first time, she wondered what the Arab was doing so far from his beloved homeland and who he’d left behind. Was he a refugee? A criminal? Could he be a hired killer like Argent? It didn’t seem likely, though she’d caught the gleam of the hilt of a long jeweled dagger hidden in his voluminous robes.

“Mister Hassan, do you—”

“Jakub, kochanie.” Millie cupped his little chin in her gentle hand. “Why don’t you give poor Mister Hassan a rest and set up your easel?”

Her son’s little mouth puckered and he looked down and to the side. “Yes, Mama,” he mumbled.

Jakub scrambled to his makeshift art corner and flung open his box of paints, gingerly selecting a few umbers, golds, reds, and blues for careful inspection. Next, he would mix them with the precision of an alchemist and the focus of a savant, all the world disappearing for him until he created the perfect pigment.

Millie offered an apologetic smile to their interim guardian, but his expression conveyed that it was not necessary. It was true that Jakub was an exceptionally intelligent child, and that came with a profusion of inquisitiveness, but in general his extreme shyness kept him from speaking more than a few words to strangers. She supposed the boy’s fascination with all things odd and new overcame his timidity with the imposing Arab.

Indeed, Millie had to bite back a barrage of her own questions. Such as, how did the foreigner come to know Christopher Argent? What did he know about the assassin’s proclivities, sexual and otherwise? What had he gleaned about who was after her and why?

“I have finished, madam.” Hassan stepped back and squinted at his handiwork before dipping his chin in a satisfied nod.

Millie turned to the mirror and caught her breath. He’d done a splendid job. She’d never felt more like Desdemona. An innocent, virtuous woman, slandered by the whims of wicked men and killed for a sin she’d never committed.

Lord, who could better relate than she?

“Bless you, Hassan, you’ve performed a wonder.”

He gave another bow. “And I am certain Madam will perform a wonder upon the stage tonight, secure in the knowledge that I will give my life unto the safety of her son.”

Millie had to suppress the urge to throw her arms around the fatherly man with the gentle eyes and the dangerous knife. She had a feeling such contact would offend him, so she bowed her head to him, mimicking his previous gesture. “Thank you,” she whispered, before clearing emotion out of her voice.

“What do you think, kochanie?” She faked a relaxed smile she didn’t at all feel.

“You look splendid, Mama,” Jakub encouraged, never once glancing up at her from where he knelt surrounded by his paints and studying his canvas.

Sighing, she shook her head and stood, tugging on the front of her silk robe to make sure she maintained her modesty around the Mussulman. Her costume, a wine-red velvet dress with fake pearls beaded across little gold braids on the bodice, hung from a mannequin perched in front of a dressing screen. “Pardon me whilst I dress,” she murmured.

“Madam.” Hassan hesitated, his dark eyes cast at the floor. “I mean you no offense, but I am already skirting a sin, being almost alone in a room with an unmarried woman. Since your son is here, it is my hope that Allah, God, forgives me. But if you were to disrobe … even behind a screen…” He trailed off politely, keeping his judgment of her lifestyle to himself.

Embarrassed by her ignorance, Millie bit her lip. “Would you like to step outside the door? I’ll call you back when I’m finished.”

“That isn’t something either of you need to worry about now.” The dark voice sliced through her room like a sudden arctic chill.

Millie’s head snapped toward the doorway, where Christopher Argent filled its width shoulder to shoulder. Dressed in a fine gray suit, he again resembled Bentley Drummle, the man she’d met before. Charming, charismatic, affected with the same ennui bemoaned by so many wealthy Londoners.

But she knew better now, didn’t she? Beneath his unnatural stillness and enigmatic expression lurked someone much more sinister and, alternately, more intriguing.

“You may go, Hassan.” Argent pulled an envelope from his suit coat, and handed the graceful Arab what Millie assumed was payment for her protection.

With no small amount of curiosity, Millie wondered what her life was worth.

“Thank you, Argent.” Hassan dipped his head with respect as he took the envelope. “Convey my regards to Blackwell.” Turning to Millie, he bowed to her. “It has been an honor to know you and your son. Fi Amanullah. May God protect you.”

“Fare you well, sir.” Millie curtsied to him, and in a soft swish of blue robes, he glided past Argent and was gone.

Millie was alone with an assassin.

Again.

They stared at one another in silence, and only when Millie’s lungs began burning did she realize that she’d been holding her breath.

She released it in a tumble of words. “Mr. Argent, this is my son, Jakub. Jakub, come and meet Mr. Christopher Argent, our—guardian.” She’d explained their need for temporary bodyguards to him the morning she’d hired the McGivney brothers in as vague and careful terms as possible. It angered her that her son didn’t always feel safe. That he had to fear the shadows.

Even when he stood, Jakub’s little neck had to tilt back so far his head rested on his shoulders to look the towering man in the face. Though his spectacles always seemed to magnify his eyes, they were wide with obvious wonder.

“Are you a giant, Mr. Argent?” he asked.

“No.” Argent blinked, but showed no offense.

“Jakub,” Millie reprimanded, worried that a man who killed people for a living might not take care with the feelings of a small, inquisitive child.

Jakub straightened at the censure in her voice and wandered over to Argent, remembering his manners. “I mean, it’s a pleasure to make your acquaintance,” he amended.

Looking much like a barbarian in a gentleman’s suit, the assassin regarded the little boy’s upstretched hand with undue assessment before reaching down to take it with two careful fingers.

“Likewise,” Argent muttered, letting the boy shake twice before snatching his hand back.

“Was your father a Viking?” Jakub resumed his interview.

“I couldn’t say,” the assassin answered blandly. “I never knew my father.”

At that, the little boy brightened. “Neither did I.”

Millie’s heart squeezed, but she couldn’t instantly identify the cause. Because her son was without a father, a fact he now stated with little to no sorrow? Perhaps because he had common ground with such a villain? Or because she’d never seen the boy so animated around anyone except for the two mysterious and dangerous men she’d been forced to allow into his life. Could the cause be that the stoic assassin had just been so gentle with her boy?

Lord, it would do her well to not notice such things.

“Maybe you’re half a giant,” Jakub assessed. “Like your father could have been one.”

Argent peered down at the child as though examining a queer sort of oddity. “I very much doubt it.”

“But you don’t know that he wasn’t, if you never met him.”

The assassin paused. “I suppose there’s a certain logic to that.”

“It’s only that you’re so big.” Jakub held out both of his hands to demonstrate the largest size he possibly could.

“Jakub.” Millie shooed him back toward his paints. “You’re being impolite.”

“Sorry, Mama,” Jakub mumbled, chastised. “Sorry, Mr. Argent.”

“Why don’t you finish your portrait, kochanie, while I get dressed?” Millie kissed him and turned to Argent, noting that she’d subconsciously placed her body in between her son and the so-called giant.

The assassin hadn’t missed it either, though if it bothered him, Millie couldn’t tell. His features were smooth and cool as pressed satin.

“Would you … like to step out while I dress, sir?” She gestured to the door, and again to her robe, beneath which she only wore her corset and underthings. As an actress, she wasn’t used to adhering to the rules of modesty as her life was full of backstage costume changes. But she suddenly felt quite shy.

“No.” His gaze sharpened and his features tightened.

Millie found herself breathless yet again. Something told her that to insist would be folly, and she certainly wouldn’t want to create a scene in front of her child. If they were truly going to be lovers this night, then why make an issue of diffidence?

Because he unnerved her. Because she’d been unprepared for him to invade her space and claim it as his own. Perhaps … because she’d forgotten how intensely compelling and frightening and awe-inspiring his presence truly was in the scant hours they’d spent apart.

“Then—may I induce you to sit, Mr. Argent?” Millie gestured to a chaise, one of the only available surfaces in the disarray of her dressing room. She silently wished he’d take it. He was an unusually large man, and somehow her dressing room had become too small with him inside it. As though he’d claimed all the air, the space, the notice of every little sensory nerve on her body. And while his eyes were arctic, his effect on her was anything but.

Her skin bloomed with warmth when he was nearby, even though he sometimes caused chills to spread through her. She found the paradox rather alarming.

He made no move to sit, just stared at her silently with those blue, blue eyes, and for a moment, Millie wondered if he’d heard her.

“Please,” she entreated. “Sit down? Rest yourself.”

His chin dipped in a nod, sending a gleam of lantern light through his thick auburn hair. Bending his long legs, he claimed the seat, looking almost ridiculous on such a dainty piece of furniture.

“Right. Yes.” Millie remembered herself, snatching her costume from the mannequin and dragging it behind the screen with her.

The cream silk of the screen did little to truly cover her, and Millie moved one of the lanterns from behind it so she would only cast a nominal shadow while she dressed. Not only because she didn’t particularly want to entice him further, but because his presence in her rooms caused little jolts of anxiety and awareness to sing along her veins. Everything she did took on a distinctly erotic undertone. The whisper of her silk robe over her skin when she slipped it off. The heavy warmth of the velvet dress. When she tucked, and tied, and shimmied into it, she could feel an extra tingle in her breasts, was aware of the feminine curve of her waist beneath her corset. She thought of all the places that might be bared to him later. All the places where he would put his hands.

Or his mouth.

Millie suddenly felt dizzy, and succumbed to her own need to sit down as her head swam. Though she didn’t look at him, she could sense the assassin’s eyes on her as she made her way to her dressing table. Somehow, she knew that despite her efforts, he’d watched her shadow behind the screen.

“Did you get enough to eat, Jakub?” she asked, glancing toward her son in the corner as she lowered herself in front of the large mirror. “Jakub? Kochanie?”

Lost to his paints, he didn’t even acknowledge her.

Which left her only one companion for conversation, the terse giant with the startling eyes.

Drat.

Fumbling for her rouge, she refused to look at him as she added more color to her cheeks. Her hand paused just as the brush reached her face. Even beneath the makeup, it was obvious her color was unnaturally high. She reached for her lip rouge instead. Try as she might, she simply couldn’t ignore her assassin-turned-protector. It was utterly impossible. He sat so immense and motionless and silent.

She hazarded a glance at him, if only to make certain he still breathed.

Which, indeed, he did, his big chest lifting and flexing beneath his suit coat. He gazed at her with unparalleled intensity, watching the movements of her fingers with undue interest.

Clearing nerves from her throat, she met his eyes in the mirror and was startled to see that he was the first one to look away.

“Do you enjoy the theater, Mr. Argent?” She ventured a moment of civility.

“I’ve only attended the once,” he replied, seeming to study a wig of long crimson ringlets, going so far as to reach out and test its texture between his thumb and forefinger.

Millie had to look away. “And … did you like it?” she prompted. When she gathered the courage to glimpse at him again, she was surprised to see him seriously considering the question.

“Your performance was without a single flaw,” he said with no trace of flattery or farce in his voice. “But I find myself unable to suspend disbelief in the manner that is required to truly enjoy a production. I don’t understand why people dress in their finest to watch others pretend to be in love. To feign jealousy and cruelty and even death. Why play at fighting and killing? There’s plenty to be done out in the real world.”

And he’d done plenty of his own.

Millie swallowed audibly, trying to decide whether to be pleased at his honest compliment, or to be offended by his dismissal of her entire profession. “Not all of us live a life as exciting and treacherous as yours, Mr. Argent,” she said as she added a few more jeweled pins to her intricate coiffure, if only to give her restless hands something to do. “Most of us merely like to be kissed by danger or violence or death. Maybe even let it kiss us, upon occasion. We like to make it a spectacle at which to gasp and laugh, or cry. Though it is only the thrill we want to take home with us, not the reality. We still desire to return to our warm beds, all safe and sound, when the night is over.” She considered her words only after she’d said them. She was taking the danger home with her tonight, wasn’t she? There was a very good chance her bed would be anything but safe.

And, Lord forgive her, it was more thrilling than she’d like to admit.

“But not everyone makes it home safe and sound,” he rumbled.

Not with men like him about.

Millie’s heart stalled and her hand froze halfway to her hair. “True…” She drew the word out, searching for what to say next. “But we expect to. We hope to, don’t we?”

“I know nothing of hope.” He leaned forward and placed his elbows on his long, powerful legs. “So people attend the theater to feel afraid and safe at the same time?”

Millie chewed her lip, considering her words carefully. “Sometimes, surely, but mostly they go to play voyeur to the human experience. Drama, I think, does one of two things for a person, it allows us to be a little more grateful for the humdrum of the everyday, or makes us yearn for something above whom and what we are. It can remind us to not let every moment slip into the next without reaching for more. Whether we reach within ourselves or for something we want out in the world. A dream, a home, money, adventure … or love.”

Feeling impassioned, she turned in her seat to gesture at him. “Drama can make you experience the very extremes of emotion. A good playwright, Shakespeare, for example, can use language to allow an actor to convey an emotion that resonates with the audience. That allows them—sometimes even forces them—to feel. Coupled with the performance and the right music and lighting … I think that emotion is contagious and complex, and often a person doesn’t know which until they experience it under the Bard’s very own tutelage. It’s quite extraordinary, really, almost magical and—” Millie let her voice die away, noticing that Christopher Argent hadn’t blinked for an astonishingly long time.

In the middle of her dressing room, done in all shades of chaos and color, he was a monochromatic study in dove and granite. All but for his eyes and hair, both of which were uncommon in their variegation. His jaw was too wide to be called handsome, his mouth too caustic for its fullness, surrounded by brackets that made him look alternately cruel and somehow inanimate. His eyes made him appear ancient. Not so much in years, but in experience.

What horrors he must have seen in his life, some of them perpetrated by his own hands.

“Forgive me,” she breathed, entranced by the moment, as though he were a serpent and she his prey, mesmerized by his menace. “I do tend to get carried away.”

He once more brushed aside her words. “You have … experienced all these emotions?”

What an odd question. “Most of them, yes.”

“Are you—in love—with someone?”

She hadn’t realized that someone so still could become even more motionless. It was as though he’d stopped breathing in anticipation of her answer.

“No,” she answered honestly, and had the impression that his chest compressed.

“Have you ever been?”

“I can’t say that I have truly loved anyone, except Jakub.” She glanced at her son, still oblivious to the world around him, and then back to the assassin.

An expression flickered across his features, but was gone before she could identify it. This time when he looked at her, his eyes were gentler, somehow. Still frightfully opaque, but they had lost some of their frost.

“Do you wish to be in love?”

Had any other man asked, she’d have told him that it was no business of his. She’d have lied or misdirected him somehow, to avoid the question. But behind the callousness of Christopher Argent’s expression was an earnest curiosity. A lack of judgment or malice.

It was a sincere question that deserved a sincere answer.

“I—I’m never really certain. If there’s one thing I’ve learned from Shakespeare, from most any playwright, it is that love is just as dangerous an emotion as hatred or anger or the lust for power. I think love can make you a stranger, even to yourself. Maybe even a monster. It can be a wild creature just waiting to be unbound. A beast. A feral and selfish thing that will turn you against the world, against nature or reason, against God, Himself. And every time I’m tempted to allow myself to fall, I wonder … is it worth the risk?”

His brows drew together. “What if there is no risk? What if God, if He even exists, has turned away from you, and so to turn from Him would be no great sin? There would be nothing in the way of reaching for what you wanted.”

Millie blinked, startled by his bleak assessment. “Is that what is going on here? Do you believe God has forsaken you, and so you no longer fear Him? Is that how you’re able to…” She paused, checking on Jakub to make certain he wasn’t listening in. “To do what it is that you do?”

He lifted his massive shoulders in a dismissive gesture. “Perhaps. I have no fear of God.”

“So you do not believe in heaven?”

“This world is all I know.”

“What about hell, the devil? Are you not afraid you’ll have to answer for your sins, for the blood you’ve spilled?”

He shook his head, a more adamant gesture than she could remember him making—apart from the times he’d kissed her.

“I do not know what happens when this life is over; therefore it does little good to speculate. All I know for certain is that God and the devil are symbols. Beings greater than ourselves to be loved or feared, blessed or blamed. And to me it doesn’t matter which. It is an easy thing to commit a sin and say that ‘the devil made me do it,’ and then cast that sin on him. But this life has taught me that we make ourselves into the monsters that we are. That the blood we spill is on our own hands.

“I’ve been able to cast my burdens on no one’s shoulders but my own. Carrying them makes me strong, and I’ve needed that strength to survive. For God has never saved me from the evil I’ve seen in the eyes of men. And it’s hard for me to imagine that hell is worse than some of the places I’ve already been. So instead of fearing that which I do not know, I’ve made of myself a symbol, of sorts. A man to be feared, whose vengeance is immediate rather than ultimate, and for many so-called godly men, my form of justice is effective.” This time it was Argent who seemed to remember himself, and clamped his hard jaw shut.

Millie wondered if that might be the longest he’d ever spoken at one time. Even though his tone had been dispassionate, his words carried with them a cavernous sort of pain. Only hell could spit out such a cold and lethal man, surely.

“Do you mean for me to fear you, Mr. Argent?” she whispered solemnly, not for the first time dreading the devil’s bargain she’d made.

“I do not blame you if you fear me,” he answered, his eyes nearly meeting hers. “But for all that is unknown, you can be unequivocally certain that I do not wish you harmed.”

Mutely, Millie nodded and turned back to her mirror, unable to bear the intensity between them as he watched her smooth crimson color on her lips. A small vine of sadness appeared beneath her ribs and blossomed into compassion. What he must have endured to fashion him into the heartless killer he’d become, she thought.

Millie knew she understood him better now, but that didn’t mean she feared him any less.