The Hunter (Victorian Rebels Book 2)

Christopher toppled over the rack of weapons against the wall in his ballroom. Picking up a weight, he hurled it through the window, the glass shattering in a spectacle of moonlit shards. A terror he’d not thought existed weakened his limbs, then the next moment his muscles would surge with strength and fury. His heart threatened to burn out of his chest. He felt feral and trapped and out of control.

Helpless.

He looked down at his hands, still red and sticky with Millie’s blood—no, no, not all her blood. A great deal of it was fake. A stage prop. He’d have known that if he’d been in his right mind. He’d had enough blood on his hands to recognize what was real and what wasn’t.

Christopher had pressed his palm to her side while the thick liquid overflowed his fingers as he’d tried to stanch the flow. He’d clutched her to him and chanted her name like a madman.

The medics had pried him away from her, and then the fucking surgery had been overflowing with wounded. He hadn’t caught the reason before he’d lost it.

A rage the likes of which he’d never before felt had engulfed him. He’d broken things, he’d almost broken people.

Then he’d remembered he and Blackwell knew of a surgeon, one of the best in the business, with a proclivity for gambling. Dorian had promised to forgive a fortune of debt if the doctor saved Millie’s life, so they’d brought her here, to Christopher’s home.

That had been an hour ago and the surgeon wouldn’t let anyone into the room. He had insisted that the more people present while he worked, the higher the rate of fatal infections.

It had still taken seven men to tear Christopher from her side.

So now he destroyed everything in his path. Because a helpless rage drove him to it. Picking up a staff, he broke it over a pommel. It wasn’t enough. Staggering over to the wrecked stand, he pulled it apart, embedding one of the metal legs into the wall, enjoying the splintering of the wood paneling.

“Argent.” Dorian slid into the room, emerging from out of the shadows.

Yanking on the leg, but unable to free it from the wall, Christopher kicked at the broken boards, shattering it beneath his boot, creating huge, fractured holes.

“Christopher,” Dorian said more sharply, surveying the carnage with his usual self-containment. “The doctor has finished, he’s ready to report.”

Christopher met Dorian’s eye and knew it was bad. He shook his head and held a hand up against whatever words were about to end his existence. “Not like this, Blackwell. I can’t lose her like this. I won’t survive this time.”

“I know.” Dorian rested a hand on Christopher’s shoulder. It was the first time the Blackheart of Ben More had ever touched him. “For those of us who’ve perpetrated so much death, the retaining of life seems even more elusive.”

“I don’t know what to do.” Argent’s neck could no longer hold the weight of his head, and he let it drop.

“Someone else has arrived,” Blackwell stated evenly. “Someone who needs you.”

Jakub.

A boy who could very well lose his mother. The thought drove Christopher forward, and he flew toward the French doors.

He found Jakub in the enormous, empty grand entry, small and clean in a long white nightshirt and a coat. The boy squirmed away from the rotund Mrs. Brimtree and ran to Christopher.

Braced for the child’s hysterics, Christopher reminded himself to be strong for the boy.

But young Jakub shocked him by stopping dead in front of his boots and blinking those gigantic eyes up at him, like he’d done that first night after Dorshaw’s attack. As always, it disarmed him completely.

“It’s going to be all right,” the boy said.

Christopher swallowed around a dry throat. “How do you know?” he asked hoarsely.

“Because you’re here.” The veneration in the child’s eyes broke his heart. “Everything always turns out well when you’re here.”

The doctor, Raymond Cromstock, was a middle-aged fellow with impressive jowls despite his lean frame. He descended the stairs with a carefully composed expression.

It was only after Jakub reached for his hand that Christopher realized it was still stained with blood. Fake and otherwise.

He tucked the boy against his leg, instead.

“The bullet went clean through,” Cromstock informed the assemblage. “And there is precious little damage to the organs, as far as I can tell. Her body didn’t react well to the shock, but as long as there is no infection or fever, it’s my opinion that Miss LeCour is out of danger.”

The surge of elation and relief he felt drove Christopher to his knees. He prayed in that moment. Thanked a God he’d never believed in.

“You see?” Jakub said, throwing his little arms around Christopher’s neck. “She’s going to be fine, as long as you’re with us.”

But the fever flared in a matter of hours. Christopher and Jakub looked on in helpless horror as she shook with uncontrolled tremors, her teeth chattering though her skin burned.

Despair didn’t begin to describe the pit into which he was thrown.

*   *   *

“I just tucked Jakub in,” Farah said gently to Christopher as she leaned on the bedpost in the bedroom Welton had furnished all those nights ago. Millie had thought it looked like a forest. “He still believes she’s going to wake up any moment. He believes in you that much.”

If only Jakub knew that God owed Christopher no favors. But Christopher owed the devil plenty.

“You should sleep and eat something. I’ll sit with her and come for you if anything changes.” She held out a bowl of soup.

“I slept,” Christopher lied as he leaned forward in his chair, the only one in the entire house, the one he hadn’t left in almost two days. He hadn’t taken his eyes off Millie. Couldn’t look away. As long as he stayed with her, watched her chest rise and fall, then he knew she hadn’t left him. He’d close his eyes when hers opened. Not before. “And I’m not hungry.”

Farah left it alone, handing the soup to Welton, who’d been hovering silently at the basin. “What did the doctor say this morning?” She brushed a dark curl from Millie’s pale forehead.

“Her fever broke.”

“That’s excellent news.” The harder Blackwell’s wife tried to sound encouraging, the worse Christopher felt. “She’ll be back to us in no time.” Her face brightened. “I’ve brought you more good tidings. Chief Inspector Morley closed the matter of Lady Thurston’s death. It’s not something you’ll have to worry about in the future. Also, the police rescued those boys. They were hungry and traumatized, of course, but they’re unhurt. We’re finding places for them, hopefully together, as they’re brothers.”

Christopher nodded, because he was supposed to. He wished he cared. Millie would want him to care about something like that. Maybe he would, later. When she awoke. If … she …

“The doctor said that if she was going to wake, she’d likely do it today,” he reminded himself aloud.

“Of course.” With a soft press of her hand to his shoulder, Farah drifted to the door in a ruffle of skirts. “I’ll be downstairs with Dorian if you need me.”

He nodded, his head feeling heavy and his neck tight.

In her sleep, Millie gasped, her chest hitching on a labored breath as her fingers twitched.

“Millie?” Christopher rose and searched her face for signs of a change, but found nothing.

Lying flat on her back in the giant bed on the dais, arms to her sides and tucked beneath a mountain of blankets, she looked small and helpless. The warm beige color of the bedding made her white skin even paler. Though her spark was diminished, her magnetic beauty was not.

He’d gone through a lifetime of emotion while she slept.

The last eternity of hours had been spent in this gray sort of daze. As she hovered in between life and death, Christopher also existed in that limbo with her.

But he ached with love. With longing. With profound regret. With a fear that never faded to numbness but lingered so close to the surface his skin hurt with it.

What if she never smiled again? What if those dark eyes never sparkled with mischief, with that light that Jakub had tried so hard to capture in his painting? What if the last memory he had of her truly alive was the moment she’d offered to love him and he’d left her in a puddle of tears and cold bedsheets?

He had to tell her. She had to know.

Sinking to her side on the bed, Christopher took her cold, clammy palm and held it in both of his rough, scarred hands, willing some of his warmth into her.

She made another sound, like a cough, but not quite. His heart stopped until she was still again. His eyes stung and burned and he didn’t breathe for what felt like a full minute.

Christ, he couldn’t take much more of this.

“Millie?” He whispered her name. “Millie, you were right. I do feel. It started the night I met you, the moment you blew me a kiss from the stage. It’s why I made that damned arrangement in the first place, because I had to touch you—” His voice broke and he had to clear emotion out of his throat. “Every time I said that I wanted you … I think I meant—I meant that I needed you. I need you, Millie. I need you to wake up. I need to hold you against my heart because it’s the only fucking time I feel it beating. If you go, it dies. The last part of what makes me human dies with you. I’ll disappear. If you’re not on this forsaken planet, it might as well stop spinning until we all fly off into the void. Because that’s all there is without you. Emptiness.”

He felt something on his face, something hot and itchy. He lifted one of his hands to wipe at it and it came away wet.

Tears? Fuck.

It didn’t matter. Nothing mattered.

“I would be your blade in the darkness,” he bartered. “So you and Jakub could stand in the light. I would never leave you again. I would protect you, support you, and give you the freedom you crave. I would follow you anywhere you wish to go, anywhere the stage takes you. For where you are, that is where my home is.

“I’ll take you dancing, Millie,” he bargained. “Every night for the rest of our lives. I’ll take you anywhere you wish to go. Nothing sounds better than seeing the world with your light shining on it.” He cast about for something else, anything that would tempt her back to him. “I’m taking a position with Morley. With Scotland Yard, if you’d believe it. It pays less but I have more money than I know what to do with.”

An idea occurred to him on that note. “I’ll let you fill my house with things, countless, useless expensive things. Until it’s a home, and not a shell. And I’ll try. I’ll try so fucking hard not to be a shell, either. And … I’ll give Jakub my name. Tainted as it is. No matter what happens, it’s his, it’s yours. Whatever you want is yours. I’m yours. And you are mine so just don’t…”

He couldn’t bring himself to say the word.

“Welton?” The name sounded like a rusty croak on Millie’s pale lips.

Shock turned Christopher’s limbs cold and he jerked his head toward his butler. He’d forgotten the man even existed, truth be told, let alone lurked in the corner.

Welton? Why the fuck would his name be the first on her lips when—

“Yes, madam?” Welton’s eyes were suspiciously bright, the rims red, but his cheeks were dry as though he’d wiped them on the pristine handkerchief he clutched in the hand at his side.

“Did you get all that?” Her voice was barely above a soft rasping whisper, and still it held the glimmer of dauntless spirit and merriment that Christopher recognized as purely her own.

“Of course, madam.” The butler’s voice was warmer than Christopher had ever heard it.

“Most especially the part about expensive things,” she said, sighing.

“Every word.”

“Thank you, Welton.”

“You’re very welcome.”

*   *   *

It amazed Millie that such a tiny bullet could make her feel like she’d been stampeded by a coach and four. Though any light at all seared her sore eyes and aching head, she knew she had to see Christopher to believe he was really there. That this was truly happening.

He’d professed his love.

She blinked her eyes open slowly. Her head felt muddled, as if she’d been given something that made everything seem like some gilded dream. Including the auburn hair of the man staring down at her as though she’d lost her mind, or he had.

He breathed her name and on that whisper she heard the echo of every beautiful thing that swelled in her heart.

It hurt to lift her hand, but she wanted to touch his face. He caught it halfway up and buried his hard, stubbled jaw against her palm. Pressing his lips to her fingers.

“I was never going to leave you,” she assured him. “I love you too much to let a paltry bullet keep us apart.”

The strong chin in her palm trembled, the ice in those pale, pale eyes melted into moist oceans of emotion. With a harsh sound ripped from deep in his chest, Christopher dropped his head down, burying it in her shoulder as he visibly fought for control of his lungs.

Millie lolled her head to rest against his, closing her eyes to savor his nearness. He’d come for her. He’d conquered his fear and his pain, and the chamber of ice around his heart. Could this be possible? A happy ending for two souls such as they?

“Did you really mean what you promised?” she asked against his lush hair.

He gave a surreptitious sniff against her shoulder. “About the expensive furniture, you mean?”

“No.” She tried to laugh, but it caused the dull pain in her side to turn sharp and burning. “No,” she said again, this time much more subdued. “The part about giving Jakub and me your name. Are you going to marry me, Christopher Argent?”

“I should have claimed you the moment we met.”

“And I won’t have to take another bullet to hear you say you love me?”

He pulled away just far enough to look down at her, to meet her eyes with his own. “I love you, Millicent LeCour,” he vowed.

“Good. But don’t forget what you said about the furniture.” Her breaths became deeper, as sleep tried to claim her again. Her voice was dreamy and light. Everything was golden and lovely. “Oh, and just be warned, my love, our wedding is going to be obscenely expensive, too.”

She welcomed the soft embrace of healing slumber, but not before her greatest wish was granted.

It was quiet and low with rusty notes of caustic irony. And yet, it was the most beautiful sound she’d ever heard or could ever hope to hear. One she hoped to provoke many times in the years to come.

Christopher Argent’s laugh.