The Hunter (Victorian Rebels Book 2)

It took an incomprehensible amount of time to prepare for death.

Millie sighed as she opened her costume dress and allowed two stagehands to strap skeins of warm crimson-dyed syrup to her corset, and made a vow that the next role she accepted, her character would live to see the end of the play.

It struck her in that moment behind the heavy black curtains off stage left how cohesive life could be sometimes, even if it was in the worst possible way. In her tenure as an actress, she’d portrayed the jilted lover, the temptress, and, of course, the tragic heroine. But this brilliant production had her acting all three parts. A woman who seduced a man, fell in love with him, and then was broken by him. Art imitating life, apparently.

She barely had to act. In fact, all she had to do was open her bleeding heart onstage for all of London whilst delivering Thomas Bancroft’s lines. She could already tell the night was a rousing success. She’d never felt this kind of energy from the audience before. Though the play was a bit melodramatic, it had just the right amount of sex, violence, and pathos for everyone to enjoy.

And now, thanks to Christopher Argent, she had a reference for the emotion evoked in each act.

Closing her dress and buttoning it, she tilted her head down so the makeup artist could check her hair, and pursed her lips so her rouge could be touched up. Lord, it was hotter than usual. She blotted her forehead and hairline with a handkerchief.

“Who are you playing to tonight?” Jane Grenn asked, striking a macabre pose as she fidgeted with the almost comically large knife she’d use to stab Millie to death in the final act.

Millie could only give her friend half of a smile. “Truth be told, I didn’t pick anyone tonight.” She already had someone to deliver her lines to. A man with ice-blue eyes and a cold heart. She conjured Christopher’s face every time she needed the anger to flow, the tears to fall, or the temptation to flare.

If only the man, himself, were so easily summoned.

“That’s odd,” Jane remarked. “Would this have anything to do with our delicious director?”

Millie smirked. “First I’m cavorting with Rynd and now it’s Bancroft? My, how I’ve moved up in the world.”

“Well, if you’re not with him, do you mind if I have a go?” Jane and Millie peered over to where the director in question pored over an issue with the prop master, pushing a lock of chocolate hair out of his eye.

“I’ve no designs on Thomas Bancroft.” Millie shrugged. Or any man, for that matter.

One would think after a month and a week’s time, the pain of losing Christopher wouldn’t be so fresh. That she wouldn’t have to fill her days with work and pretense just so she could keep the tears away. Jakub helped to keep her going as well, though she found it harder and harder to hide her sadness from the perceptive boy.

She wondered, not for the first time, if she’d ever see Christopher again. If he’d ever be aught else but a knight in tarnished armor she’d once chanced to love in the middle of a nightmare. She still searched the shadows for a glimpse of his auburn hair. And there were times when she thought she’d caught a glimpse of him.

“Millie, it’s your cue.” Jane almost pushed her out onto the stage, and Millie composed herself just in time for the lights to hit her with their wave of subsequent warmth. She delivered her lines with practiced artlessness. To those in the breathless audience, she was just a woman thrown to the whims of the world, who refused to accept her lowly place in life. Who captured the heart of a man who was not free, and lost herself to him. They loved her. They forgave her for tempting him into iniquity. She had to capture them completely before they lost her.

That’s how the tears were produced. How the tickets were sold. How the heart was won.

“Why did you leave?” she railed in her lonely misery after her fictitious lover had callously abandoned her.

Christopher, why did you leave?

“Was it that you were a man with a heart impossible to tame? Or was I a woman not worthy to do so?”

There, she’d done it. The temptress turned vulnerable. Now for the tragedy. Jane, in the role of the jilted wife—the real victim—would appear with the knife and—

Wait a moment, what is Lady Thurston doing backstage?

And what was that in her hand?

The countess stepped onto the stage, and several of the audience members gasped. Some with delight, but others in the peerage—those who knew Lady Thurston—couldn’t contain their shock. A lady of the ton as an actress? It just wasn’t done.

Backstage had been almost deserted by crew and performers alike.

The brilliant lights glinted off Lady Thurston’s pistol, the one she trained on Millie.

The countess looked like the proper society matron upon first glance, but when one was as close as Millie was to her, the inconsistencies became apparent. Her dress was just slightly askew, as though she’d slept in it. Her hair artfully arranged, but a little too wild, too undone.

The costume artists couldn’t have concocted it better themselves.

“Did you enjoy it, whore?” Lady Thurston asked as she advanced, her eyes glittering with malice and touched with madness. “Did my husband woo you? Seduce you? Or did he buy you like the common prostitute you are?”

The audience audibly gasped at her vulgarity, obviously riveted.

“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Millie stalled, entirely shocked. Why wasn’t someone doing something? Couldn’t they see she was in danger? That Lady Thurston was utterly mad?

“He was always the type of man who believed in tradition.” Lady Thurston sneered. “That a wife was for breeding and a mistress was for loving. Do you think you were special to him? Do you think that he didn’t have a hundred just like you? That he didn’t get bastards on them, too?”

Millie tried her best to compose herself. “It’s not what you think,” she said, putting out a staying hand. “Your husband was in love with my—”

“Shut up,” Lady Thurston hissed. “I don’t want to hear excuses from your whore mouth. This is the end of you.” She lifted the gun.

Desperation swept over Millie with such strength she could taste it. She felt abandoned. Deserted. As she frantically searched the darkness beyond the curtain for someone, anyone to rescue her. Finding no one, she turned to the audience. Unable to see more than the closest members, she dimly realized that they all thought this was part of the production. Fans fluttered like bejeweled leaves in an approaching tempest and hands clasped at heaving bosoms. The crowd sat in their silk and velvet, watching the spectacle unfold with breathless anticipation.

Perhaps tonight they’d get more than they’d paid for.

God, was she truly going to die in front of hundreds of spectators? Would they applaud as she bled out on the stage?

It all seemed too cheap and disingenuous now. Fame. Money. The love of a country who would readily call her a whore. While the murders of mistresses went unsolved and the injustices of men went unnoticed. Suddenly all the suffering and sadness of the world seemed to crash in on her, and Millie wondered if death might be less painful. A soul-deep agony drenched her in pain as she thought of Jakub, of all he’d lost. Of all the things she’d kept from coming to light, to protect him.

He’d have lost two mothers at such a young age.

Would he hate her then? Would he remember her as his mother?

“Don’t do this,” Millie whispered. “I have a child.”

She realized the moment the words left her mouth that it was the worst possible thing she could have said.

Lady Thurston actually snarled, the sound more evocative of a badger than a highborn woman. “You must have felt so smug meeting us in the foyer, introducing my husband to the son he’d thought he’d lost.” Lady Thurston drifted closer, insanity baring the whites of her eyes. “I did what every wife should do. I turned a blind eye to his infidelities, which he didn’t even have the decency to hide from me. I knew the name of every whore he kept.”

Millie shook her head in denial, taking a step back for every advance Lady Thurston made. “You’re mistaken. I never—”

“I said silence!” Katherine Fenwick screamed, swinging the pistol wildly.

Millie clamped her lips shut. She could see the copper heads of the bullets shining from the barrel of the gun. Fresh fear broke over her, causing her stomach to boil with nausea.

Time. She was running out of it.

“He was going to divorce me all those years ago when your precious son was born.” Lady Thurston’s voice took on an almost singsong quality. A lilt that only belonged to a toddler or the touched. “To shove me, a countess, into some middle-class London disgrace with the stipend of a pauper while he legitimized his Polack bastard. Said he was in love, with an immigrant actress. That she’d borne him a son, and that he was going to marry her and retire to the country!” She turned to the audience, the barrel of the pistol still pointed at Millie’s heart. “Can you imagine?”

No one answered, though a buzz had begun in the crowd. Uncomfortable shifting, questions whispered behind white gloves and sparkling fans. What was going on? Was this really part of the play? A new and gauche Continental performance art, perhaps?

“Turns out I erred when I ordered the death of the wrong Polack actress all those years ago. I thought I was rid of all of my husband’s whores by now, that I’d collected all his bastards.” She pulled back the hammer of the pistol, the thrill of victory speeding her breath. “After tonight, I will have done. I was going to use one of them, make him say he was mine. But in the end, I think it’s best that my husband’s line ends. That his title not be held by a bastard.”

“You … ordered Agnes’s death?” Rage surged through Millie, thundering through her veins and clearing her throat of fear and tears. The anger felt good, reminded her that she was yet alive. She gained strength from it, and courage. No matter what happened to her, this woman would not win. Agnes, her dear sweet friend, would have justice, and the boy they both loved more than life would at least be left his birthright.

“I have evidence your husband wanted Jakub to be his heir,” Millie stated coldly. “It’s right here.” Pulling Lord Thurston’s letter out of her bodice, she held it up to a thousand witnesses. “He’s officially legitimized Jakub. What’s done is already done. The moment your husband died, my son became an earl.”

Katherine Fenwick screamed, but no one heard it above the gunshot. A puff of white smoke rose from the barrel and several women added their shocked screams to the countess’s before all fell eerily silent.

Time. That most precious commodity. It slowed almost to a stop. Everything took an eternity, and yet happened so fast.

Millie expelled a relieved breath as the door to the back of the theater burst open and a man flew down the aisle, hurling himself on long powerful legs. Other men followed him in, ushers and someone in a dark suit with ebony hair. Theatergoers surged to their feet, but Millie could only see him. Taller than all the rest and fast, so incredibly fast for someone so broad and thick.

“Christopher?” She whispered his name and the rage faded. She wanted to call it back, to direct it at him, but she couldn’t seem to summon it. Instead, her throat clogged with tears and her traitorous heart leaped with joy.

His lips formed words, but she didn’t hear them. His eyes, his beautiful blue eyes locked on her, but didn’t rise above her torso.

Look at me, she begged. Look into my eyes.

He didn’t. Instead his lips pulled back in a vicious snarl, and he reached into his jacket as he surged forward, producing a gun of his own. He pointed it toward the stage.

And pulled the trigger.

Millie felt it then, an ache in her side, a twinge in the muscle and then a burn. Her hand flew to her middle, and came away sticky. She made a startled noise, and then another.

Katherine Fenwick dropped to the ground beside her.

Oh thank God.

“It’s not mine,” Millie whispered, holding her slick hand drenched with crimson up for him to see. “The blood, it’s not real.”

“Millie! No!” Christopher Argent’s cry boomed above all the others.

“It’s not mine.” Millie lurched forward on feet unsteady with fear. She needed to tell him, but her face had grown cold, her tongue thick and heavy. She could feel the packages against her dress. They’d just been punctured was all. The warm sticky liquid was merely honey and coloring.

But how? She paused. Confusion furrowing her brow. Jane had never come out with the knife.

The burn intensified, feeling more like a tear.

Christopher vaulted over the orchestra pit and onto the stage.

Millie cried out, stumbled, and then his arms surrounded her. Those arms were just like she remembered. Hard and strong. He was warm and solid as a brick wall as she slid against him, letting him hold all of her weight that had seemed to become too much for her liquefied bones. He lowered her gently to the ground, bellowing for help, for a doctor.

She’d never seen him like this. His cold, brutal features a mask of terror and pain.

“You’re not afraid of anything,” Millie reminded him, blinking away black spots from her vision.

“Yes, Millie,” he said, panting. “Yes, I am. I’m afraid of losing you.”

A cascade of hot tears flowed down Millie’s face as she reached up for him with a cold, pale hand. “But you let me go.”

“No, I didn’t.” He shook his head, grasping her to him; clutching her with a hard desperation of which she hadn’t thought him capable. “I thought I could, but I was wrong. You can’t leave me, Millie. Because I’ll never let you go.”

Millie’s hand went limp and slid to the ground, landing in a puddle of warm, sticky liquid. She could feel it spreading out beneath her, reaching toward his knees. I don’t want to go, she pleaded to the light above her head. I don’t want to leave him.

What a tragedy, she thought as the lights above no longer warmed her. That the man she loved had to lose another like this. Kneeling in a pool of her blood.