The Hunter (Victorian Rebels Book 2)

Farah held Millie’s hand through the entire police interview. Had Chief Inspector Morley not been stabbed, they might have been able to keep the police out of the entire ordeal, but too much had transpired in one day to keep hidden.

Morley had indeed survived his wound. A doctor was seeing to him in his bachelor terrace mere blocks from the Blackwell manse.

Lady Northwalk’s soft blue receiving room, with its jewel couches and crystal lanterns, felt like a palace next to the pit Millie had been carried out of. She’d been allowed a tearful reunion with Jakub, and she’d tucked him in so sweetly, allaying his fears and his awful guilt. She hadn’t wanted him to overhear as she recounted the events of the night to the police.

The villains of this nightmare, it seemed, had both been defeated. Lord Thurston had obviously been ordering the deaths of previous lovers, of women who’d borne him sons, in the most despicable way imaginable.

Only a few troubling questions remained: what had happened to those boys, the illegitimate sons of a madman? What had Dorshaw done with them? And who had paid Dorshaw to kill Thurston? Lady Thurston? The dreadful St. Vincents? The murdered Mr. Dashforth?

The police were going to keep looking for the missing boys, but at this point, everyone knew they were searching for corpses.

Millie and Jakub, however, had escaped such a fate, thanks to Mr. Argent, and were safe to return to their lives as they wished.

Sometime after a very terse and awkward conversation with the police, Christopher had slipped away from the chaos. Millie felt his absence like a palpable irritant. An itch beneath her skin and a pang in her heart. One moment he’d been hovering behind her, big and silent and pulling curious glances from the myriad of coppers and criminals milling through the halls of the Blackwell estate. Though he didn’t excuse himself, and no one remarked at his absence, she felt the second he’d slithered away. The shadows were colder. The air less full of masculine potency.

She was alone in a room full of people.

Signing a few autographs and playbills after all was said and done, she thanked the police who had absolutely nothing to do with her rescue. She’d relied upon her practiced charm until they left, and sagged inside the coat Argent had given her as Dorian rudely ushered them out.

Was it truly over? Did things just … return to normal? How could they? Millie couldn’t even fathom what normal had been only days ago. She couldn’t remember what it felt like to be carefree. She couldn’t seem to consider the days before …

Before she’d been kissed by a killer.

“Millie dear.” Farah squeezed her hand, soft gray eyes full of understanding. “I’m going to insist you and your son stay here for the night. I’ve already had the staff draw a bath, as I’m certain you wish to wash that horrid place off you.”

As always, the countess looked as fresh as a spring orchard blossom in a high-necked lily-white gown bedecked with sage-green ribbons and stitched paisley skirts.

Millie could only nod, a melancholy exhaustion weighing her shoulders down. “You’ve been so kind,” she said. “I don’t know how I can ever repay you.”

“Nonsense.” Farah helped her to stand and looped an arm through Millie’s in a show of support. “Friends don’t think in terms of compensation.”

“Speak for yourself.” Blackwell sauntered into the room appearing much too relaxed for a crime lord covered in dust who’d only just been host to half the police force of the city. “I always think in terms of compensation.”

Farah rolled her eyes heavenward, as though praying for strength.

“The exception being this case, of course,” the Blackheart of Ben More amended, casting a chastised look at his wife. “You are most welcome to call upon us for anything you need, Miss LeCour. My wife has quite taken to you, and any means at our disposal are yours for the asking.”

Millie couldn’t think of a thing to say, and Dorian Blackwell seemed to understand as she stared at him, dumbfounded. He nodded, moved to kiss his wife on the temple, and merged with the shadows of the hallway, doubtless in search of his own bath.

“I wish to look in on Jakub one more time,” Millie murmured.

“Of course you do.” Farah guided her up the main flight of stairs, their steps muffled by lush ivory carpets, and down toward the nursery where Jakub slept in a small but well-appointed guest chamber. “He was so afraid for you, but he was brave. And so sorry. I hope you’re not terribly cross with him. Your son loves you dearly.”

“I’m not angry with him in the least,” Millie said. “It makes me sick to think of what could have befallen him, but I feel as though he’s chastised himself enough for slipping away. And he’s not the kind of boy to forget such a hard-learned lesson.”

“No, I don’t suppose he is.” Farah smiled fondly. “In fact I—”

Jakub’s agitated voice drifted into the hall, and Millie quickened her step, though she and Farah both paused at the contrasting baritone of Argent’s reply.

“I don’t think I’ll ever be able to sleep again,” Jakub confessed, his voice anxious and waterlogged.

“I brought your mother back as I promised, and you’re both safe here. There’s no reason to be afraid.”

“Then why can’t I stop weeping?” Jakub hiccupped.

Heart clenching, Millie made to rush to her son’s bedside and sweep him into her arms.

“Do you want me to fetch your mo—”

“No!” Jakub cried. “No, don’t get her!”

Millie paused, hurt trickling down her ribs.

“I don’t want her to see me. I can’t face her! Not like this.”

“Why not?” In the face of the storm of youthful distress, Christopher’s cool, temperate voice was a strange and effective balm to her son.

“I don’t have a f-father.” Jakub sniffed. “Which means … I’m the m-man of our family. She has no one else. I’m supposed to protect her from distress, aren’t I? I’ve not done a very good job. I’m not acting like a m-m-man.”

Millie’s hands flew to her mouth; the shame in her son’s voice was too much for someone so young. Had she made him feel this way? Had she put the responsibility of her happiness, of her loneliness, on his tiny shoulders?

She ached for him, for he would not know that his sire died only this afternoon. That of anyone in this house, save Lady Northwalk, his blood was the most noble. He was the bastard son of an earl and an immigrant. Raised by a woman who knew nothing about children, who knew nothing but how to love him.

What if that wasn’t enough? What if she wasn’t enough? Again she wanted to dash in there, to scoop him up as she did when he was so small and would wrap his arms and legs around her and cling and cry until she cooed and kissed all his woes better.

Farah put a staying arm around her shoulders, giving the doorway a meaningful glance.

“I told you before, I don’t have a father,” Christopher said softly. “Never have done.”

“Did you even know who he was?”

The bed squeaked a bit under the stress of a heavy weight, as though Christopher had sat.

“No. My mother named me after herself. Told me that my father wasn’t the sort of man who deserved a namesake, and I believe she was right.”

“Your mother’s name was Christopher?”

“Christine.” The name sounded dusty on his voice, as though he hadn’t said it in a lifetime.

“Did you protect her?”

Millie closed her eyes, her trembling hands still covering her mouth as tears burned behind her lids.

“No.” Christopher’s voice was tighter, darker, but retained its infallible composure. “But you must understand something I didn’t at your age. Mothers like mine, like yours, they don’t gather strength from your protection, but from protecting you. Your mother needs you to be a child when you’re a child. And then a man when you become a man.”

It was true. He was so unbelievably correct. If it weren’t for her son, for her fear for him, her love of him, she’d never have had the ferocity and strength she did in the catacombs.

Jakub stopped crying, and was so incredibly silent for a moment while Farah and Millie clung to each other, each of them filled with an understanding of what this conversation might be costing the assassin. And what Jakub might be gaining from it.

“Really?” was her son’s watery question.

“Really. When I was your age, my mother thought of all kinds of clever ways to keep us occupied. To keep me happy, and—brave. She did it for me, but I think—I think it helped her as well.”

“My mother makes me teach her things that I learned at school, or from a book.” Jakub’s voice lifted, and Millie found it so bittersweet that he understood why. Sweet that he knew she cared, bitter that he’d found her out so young. “She pretends to misunderstand everything and repeats it back to me all wrong and we laugh and laugh.”

“There, you see? You mother … she’s…” Millie held her breath, her heart balanced on his next word.

“Mr. Argent?” Jakub asked.

Millie winced, wishing her son had waited one more moment, so that she could have heard the words Christopher hadn’t articulated.

“Hmm?”

“What did your mother do when you couldn’t sleep?”

A heartbeat went by.

“What does your mother do?” Christopher asked shortly.

“I don’t know. I always sleep.”

An eternity went by.

“She … she sang.” Christopher’s voice thickened. “We sang.”

“Sang what?”

“Songs, of course.”

“What songs?” Jakub asked with affectionate exasperation.

“I—hardly remember.”

“Not even one?”

The mattress creaked with a shift of movement. “Perhaps one.”

“Sing it for me?”

“No.”

“Please?”

“Absolutely not.”

“I refuse to sleep until you do,” Jakub cajoled.

“So be it. You’ll be quite exhausted for a very long time.”

“Will you at least tell me the name? Maybe I know of it?” Jakub was starting to sound like himself, and Millie couldn’t be more grateful.

“Very well,” Christopher consented. “It’s an old Celtic tune. She called it ‘Hush.’”

“I know just the one!” Jakub crowed. “Old Mrs. McMasters used to sing it to me when Mama was on stage. Are you Scottish, Mr. Argent?”

“Couldn’t say. It’s a possibility, I suppose.”

Jakub’s high, small voice broke through the night with heartbreaking sweetness.

Hush Hush in the evening,

Good dreams will come stealing.

Of freedom and laughter

and peace ever after …

“I … don’t remember the next bit.” Jakub sighed.

The hand that Farah didn’t have around Millie flew to her heart as Christopher astounded them both when he softly sang.

Ye’ll smile while you’re sleeping.

And watch I’ll be keeping.

Hush hush now my darling

No tears til the morning …

If her eyes had been dry, if her heart had been free, at that moment everything would have changed. But Millie learned something about her would-be assassin turned mercenary lover that it never would have occurred to her to know, regardless of the length of time he allowed himself to stay in her life.

Christopher Argent had the voice of an angel.

*   *   *

Dorian bade Chief Inspector Carlton Morley to sit before the man fell over. He looked as pale as the late-winter moon filtering in through the windows. Regardless, here he was, again, in Farah’s sitting room in the middle of the night with an emotionally unstable assassin whom the inspector had shot at only hours before.

Morley must have more between his legs than Dorian had given the inspector credit for, he mused.

Farah was busy seeing to Miss LeCour and, without her to mediate, Dorian wondered if he was, indeed, going to get blood on the carpets.

Either way, this ought to be interesting.

“To what do we owe the pleasure of your visit?” Dorian asked in a perfect mockery of his wife’s earlier civility.

The left sleeve of Morley’s gray wool suit coat had been neatly folded and tucked under, as his arm was held immobilized beneath it by a sling around his neck. He sat heavily, then winced. “I came as fast as I could.”

“Yes,” Blackwell acknowledged, lowering himself to the sofa. “But you’ve missed the party.”

Argent remained standing, regarding the chief inspector with his usual aloofness.

“I was pleased to hear that Miss LeCour had been recovered.” Morley glanced up at Argent. “And that Dorshaw was defeated.”

“No thanks to you,” Argent said stonily.

Agitation brought some color back to Morley’s cheeks. “If I’d have been apprised of the situation beforehand, I would have—” The inspector began to tilt over, and caught himself with his good hand, upon which he leaned heavily.

“You would have what? Fainted?” Argent snorted. “Don’t make me laugh.”

Dorian found himself searching his flawless memory for a time when Christopher Argent had ever laughed. He came up with nothing.

“I’ve seen a lot of blood,” Morley admitted. “But not my own, not like that. I’ve never fain—that’s never happened to me before.”

“An explanation you’ve likely kept to the bedroom up until now.” Blackwell chuckled.

Golden features darkening, a vein in Morley’s neck pulsed, but he remained as cool and composed as Argent, himself. Blackwell had to give the man credit, he was difficult to rile.

“I would have come to finish you off if anything had happened to her,” Argent threatened. “Everything that transpired today is on your head. Your useless men had Dorshaw in their custody and managed to lose him. I would have ended him then if you’d not interrupted.”

Dorian could feel the heat building inside of Argent, and it stunned him. For a man he thought was made of ice, the assassin certainly had a fire smoldering beneath it all.

And the intrepid Miss LeCour was the fuel.

“I. Know,” Morley said through clenched teeth.

“Let us speak plainly, Inspector.” Dorian leaned back in his chair, catching his chin in his hand and regarding Morley with abject curiosity. “Why have you come? Surely you didn’t drag yourself from your recovery bed to be castigated by us for the ineptitude of your institution?”

Jaw set, aristocratic features waxy and sweating from pain, Morley closed his eyes for a moment, as though gathering courage. “I’m drowning, Blackwell. Drowning in blood, the streets are awash with it.”

“As they ever have been.”

“Yes, but it is changing. There are machines, and guns, and men like us living on fine streets like this. Self-made men, with no noble blood to speak of. Men who’ve made their money from foreign wars, oppressive mercantilism, and American markets.”

Dorian chuckled. “Men like you perhaps. I’m an earl, or haven’t you heard?”

“A courtesy title afforded by your wife,” Morley argued.

“I’m the bastard son of a marquess, with more noble blood in my small finger than you’ve got in your entire body.”

Both Morley and Argent stared at him as though he’d sprouted horns.

Argent had known this, of course, but no one had dared speak of it out loud for over a decade.

Since he’d become Dorian Blackwell.

“A marquess?” Morley grimaced. “Who in the devil—”

“An old Scottish title.” Dorian studied the inspector, noting the moment the puzzle piece fit together in Morley’s mind. “One held by a Mackenzie, I believe.”

“Ravencroft,” Morley breathed. “I should have guessed. You look just like him. But—that’s impossible; he’s all of forty or so.”

“His father raped my mother.”

Morley shook his head, disbelief glimmering in his bloodshot eyes. “You’re brother to the Demon Highlander?”

“Half brother.” Dorian shrugged, uncomfortable with the word. “You’re acquainted, I believe, fought in his regiment in the Second Opium War.”

Morley nodded, his eyes dazed with reminiscence. “Never saw anything like Ravencroft. Charged Chinese cannons like they didn’t exist. Bullets, cannonballs, knives, bayonets, they seemed to change their courses midair and curve around him. We all did things—killed people—but … Liam Mackenzie, he was … barbaric. Savage. Startlingly effective.”

The inspector blinked, as though shuttering doors to the past. Dorian found himself wondering what was back there that Morley didn’t want to see.

“Yes, well. Runs in the family, I suppose.” Blackwell didn’t want to talk about his brother. It led to their infamous father, and that was a conversation he wasn’t ready to have.

With anyone.

“We were talking about why you are here,” Dorian reminded him.

Morley nodded, agreeing to leave the past firmly where it belonged. “I’m here for Argent.”

The assassin uncrossed his arms and Dorian leaned forward, wondering if Morley knew how close he was to death. “And you didn’t bring an army?”

“Not to arrest him,” Morley amended. “To employ him.”

Dorian began to wonder if all his speechless moments were going to pertain to Christopher Argent.

Turning to the assassin in question, the chief inspector adjusted his sling. “You didn’t have to pull the servant’s bell. You could have left me to bleed out. You likely saved my life.”

Dorian turned in his seat to stare at Argent out of his good eye.

Argent, the bastard, wouldn’t lift his eyes above the fireplace. “The gunfire would have brought them regardless,” he mumbled. Whether explaining himself to Blackwell, or to Morley, it was unclear.

“That isn’t the point,” Morley stated.

“What is the point?” Argent asked with his usual bluntness.

Morley took in a deep breath and stood, swaying a bit before finding his bearings. “I’m putting together an elite contingent of men. Men with very … singular talents to help rid the city of criminals like Charles Dorshaw. To hunt for missing children and serial murderers, for anarchists and terrorists, for people beyond the arm of the law. To do … things the police simply cannot.”

“You?” Dorian gave a mirthless laugh. “A leader of vigilantes and mercenaries? Like the Pinkertons in America?”

Morley shook his head vehemently. “Not at all.” He addressed Argent. “They’d never serve private interests. Instead, you’d be a servant of justice. An agent of the crown. Think of how you protected Miss LeCour. How you saved her from the clutches of a madman, a villain. You could do that for countless others.”

Features arranged with incredulity, Argent finally looked at Morley. “I’d be the first villain on your list.”

“You’d be granted immunity from the crimes of your past, of course.”

Argent scoffed. “I already have immunity. You can prove me guilty of no crime. Hell, I even pay my taxes to the crown.”

“I could nab you for Lord Thurston’s murder.” Morley lifted an arrogant brow. “You were there. You had a knife in your hand.”

Dorian contained his wince, knowing Morley had just lost any chance he’d had with the man.

“You could try.” Argent’s voice should have frozen what little blood Morley had left in his veins. “I’ve spent enough time as a prisoner of the crown to ever do it any favors.”

“This wouldn’t be a favor, you’d be compensated.”

“You couldn’t afford me.”

Morley made a one-handed gesture of desperation. “I’m offering you emancipation from your current … circumstances. A different life. A better path. The chance to be a force for good. To be a better man.”

Argent made a low noise and stalked to the inspector, putting his face right into his. To Morley’s credit, he didn’t back down, even though the large assassin loomed over him a few important inches.

Dorian shot to his feet, ready to intervene.

“It was men in your position who put me on this path in the first place. I was innocent once. We were innocent.” He gestured to Dorian, who agreed wholeheartedly. “And good. But inside the walls of your cage, we lost the meaning of the word.” Argent shouldered past Morley, who paled further at the jarring impact.

The assassin paused at the threshold, but didn’t look back. “If there’s blood on the streets, you have no one to blame but yourselves.” With that, he disappeared down the dark hallway.

Morley turned to Dorian. “Blackwell, if you could talk to him. Make him understand that I’m trying to change all that. To ensure the future is not like the past.”

“Don’t look to me.” Dorian shrugged. “I’m not in control of his decisions.”

“Who is?” Morley asked.

Dorian squinted into the shadows of his own home; noting that Argent hadn’t left as he was wont to do, but gone upstairs toward the guest rooms. “That’s an excellent question, Inspector. One that remains to be seen.”