The Hunter (Victorian Rebels Book 2)

“An assassin?” Jane asked, reclining into the salt bath with a blissful sigh. “Are you certain that the chief inspector isn’t making more of this than is necessary? We’ve all had our share of overzealous pursuers. And you said, yourself, he’d done nothing but break into your apartments and kiss you.”

The steaming water caused Millie to take a few shallow breaths before she could finally settle herself into the bathing pool with a great exhale. “I also found that particularly strange about the attack,” she agreed. “He had his arm around my neck as though he planned to strangle me, but he just … stood there … holding me against him.” Millie tried not to think of the warm, hard body belonging to those cold, cold eyes. It upset her. It upset her because she should have been more upset about the entire ordeal. But sometimes the memory conjured heat, and that distressed the most.

Jane cast her a sympathetic look through the gathering steam. “You must have been terrified, you poor dear.”

“I was,” she admitted, pulling the pins from her hair and letting it tumble into the bath. “When I thought he might hurt Jakub, I nearly came out of my own skin. I wanted to die. I wanted to kill him. I believe I would have if he’d laid a hand on my son.”

But he hadn’t. He’d disappeared again.

“And then he just … kissed you?” Jane wrinkled her pert nose. “Doesn’t make a lot of sense, does it?”

“None at all.”

“Well, you know you’ve really made it to the top when those touched-in-the-head admirers break into your house to steal a kiss.” Jane had a way of making light of everything, even the horrible. It was how she kept such a sunny smile in a dark world. “Do you still have those two monsters following you and Jakub around?”

She referred, of course, to the guards Millie had hired for Jakub and herself the morning after the attack. Large Irish brothers with a preponderance of shoulders and little neck to speak of. McGivney, their last name was, and they smelled as frightful as they looked. Which added to their effectiveness, Millie decided. They came highly recommended, and Jakub liked that they stood still enough to let him draw them.

“Mr. McGivney is stationed at the entrance to the bathhouse,” Millie admitted. “And his brother is with Jakub at school. I had to charm the headmaster in order for him to allow it.”

It’d been three days now, three performances gone by, three sleepless yet uneventful nights had passed, and Millie had finally begun to feel safe again.

That was, until she’d been summoned to Scotland Yard this afternoon to talk to Chief Inspector Carlton Morley.

Millie’s troubled groan echoed off the cream-tiled walls of the bathhouse as she tried to reconcile the event and her strange emotions toward it.

She loved this place with its gold embellishments and Turkish ambiance. It very much could have been plucked out of a Jean-Auguste-Dominique Ingres painting. Greek pillars. Roman tiles. Turkish draperies. Moroccan lanterns. A taste of the exotic Mediterranean in downtown London. A place where anyone respectable could never be seen and anyone infamous simply must show their face. At night, it became an exclusive playground for wealthy men and expensive courtesans. But as their nights were spent at the theater, Jane and Millie frequented the establishment in the early afternoon when the water was clean and the baths all but empty. Jakub was at school, and they could meet, practice lines, gossip, and lunch at Pierre de Gaulle’s café on the corner and listen to him brag about having been the Countess Northwalk’s landlord once upon a time before heading to the theater for the performance.

Their Wednesday afternoon ritual just wasn’t the same when one had a rather offensive-looking Irishman the size of a small railcar following one around.

Better, though, than risking another encounter with Bentley Drummle.

But then, that wasn’t his name, was it? As Chief Inspector Morley had pointed out, Bentley Drummle was a lesser known Dickensian character, as was the contact name he’d given her at the after party, Richard Swiveller.

She’d felt like such a fool sitting there in Morley’s orderly office, unable to meet his pitying gaze across the giant mahogany desk. She’d been an utter ninny. Really, for a woman who considered herself so worldly, so capable of reading a man’s intentions and twisting him around her little finger, she’d certainly been played by the best.

By a professional.

An assassin, Inspector Morley had suggested.

Millie had a personal acquaintance with Sir Carlton Morley since the tragic death of her dear friend Agnes Miller not five years ago. Though the killer had never been found, he’d kindly kept her updated on any new leads regarding the investigation, and she had wanted to make certain that he never caught on to the most important clue.

Jakub.

“Jane,” Millie said carefully. “I want you to be … more careful, as well. Promise me.”

“Why?” Jane popped a plump grape she’d pilfered from the fruit bowl at the edge of the pool past her lips and dipped her head back to wet her scalp. “This man’s after you, not me.”

“But if what Chief Inspector Morley said is true, then he’s after more than one woman. He’s killed many, it sounds like. In fact…” She trailed off, not really wanting to share the revolting news. Not wanting to make it real by giving it voice. If she said it here, the walls would echo it back to her, and that was almost like tainting one of her favorite places with the horror of it all. “He’s targeting women with children, it seems. Boys. They’ve found the bodies of the women, but they’ve not found the children. Those poor boys have all gone missing.”

The whites of Jane’s eyes glowed at her even through the steam. “That’s beyond dreadful!” she exclaimed. “How many?”

“Half a dozen, they think.”

“They … think?” Jane crossed the pool to sit next to her, and Millie was secretly glad. She’d suddenly begun to feel vulnerable. Chill bumps raised the fine hairs on her body, even in the steamy water, and sweat tickled down the back of her neck. The corners took on more sinister shadows, the walls pressing closer.

“Do they think it was this man in your apartments?” Jane seized Millie’s hand, taking the situation much more seriously now. “But he kissed you. He let you go. What do they think about that? Do they think he’s still after you? What are they doing to protect you?”

Her friend’s concern touched her, and Millie gave her hand a grateful squeeze. “They don’t know what to make of my assault. According to Chief Inspector Morley, he’s only just begun to make the connections. You see, these women didn’t all reside in the same boroughs. They didn’t frequent the same places. Their ages varied. And … they weren’t … murdered in the same manner. Some of the deaths were brutal, others … less so, if there is such a thing. Some were raped, others were spared that. They were strangled, stabbed, or … beaten. One was shot.”

“Good Lord.” Jane crossed herself.

“The only common link between the murdered women was their missing sons.”

Jane was shaking her head, a hand against her mouth. “Do you think those poor boys are … dead? Or worse?”

Millie saw moisture glimmering in the eyes of her softhearted friend similar to what gathered in her own lashes.

“No one knows. They’ve simply vanished.”

“How long have these—has this been happening?”

“Inspector Morley said there have been five in the space of two months.”

“Why haven’t we heard of this?” Jane demanded, her hand splashing the water in anger. “Why isn’t this story in all the papers, warning the mothers of London?”

“Because the deaths haven’t technically been connected until now. Some of them made the papers in their local boroughs. And one, I think, was the daughter of a local wealthy miner, Mr. Randall Augustine. I remember reading something in the Daily Telegraph about his grandson being missing, don’t you?”

Jane nodded, pale and teary. “I think so. I don’t usually pay attention to that sort of news. It’s so very dreary.”

“I didn’t mean to distress you, Jane.” Millie had forgotten how dramatic her friend could be, prone to hysterics and fainting couches. No one had had such a thing where Millie had grown up. She’d never fainted in her life. “I just wanted to warn you to be extra vigilant. Take extra care with your security.”

“Why?” Jane sniffed, though she wasn’t truly crying. “I don’t have a child.”

“I know, but … even so.”

Jane looked into Millie’s eyes, her mind working over a ponderous thought. “Millie, if this man who broke into your apartments was this assassin, why didn’t he take Jakub? Why kiss you and then … let you go?”

Millie put her head back against the edge of the bath and closed her eyes. “I don’t know, Jane.” She’d been asking herself that very thing since he’d vanished from her rooms. “I really don’t know.”

*   *   *

It was too late, Argent realized. Too late to go back now.

He’d taken too long to prepare. Too long to cleanse her fire from his blood and become like water again. Three days of nothing but training, fasting, meditating, and sleeping had cleared his mind and cleansed his body. He was cold again. Ruthless. Focused.

Ready for death to flow from his hands.

Or not, depending.

How apropos, then, that he should meet her at a bathhouse. That they should finish this in the water.

He climbed the stairs to the House of the Julii and nodded to Ellis McGivney.

“Weel, sweet baby Christ, if it isn’t Christopher Argent,” the Irishman sang in a voice surprisingly lyrical for such a grim-looking man. “Is it the stage dove ya’re after?”

“She’s mine.” Argent paused, wondering if the Irishman was daft enough to try and stop him.

“Ta kiss or ta kill?” Ellis asked, biting down on a well-worn cigar.

“That remains to be seen.”

A worry crossed the man’s craggy face. “I’ll only try and stop ya if ya’ve already been after Ely.” Though the look in the bodyguard’s bloodshot eyes said that he knew doing so would be the death of him, as well. But a man like Ellis McGivney didn’t leave the death of his twin unavenged.

“I have no quarrel with you or your brother,” Argent said. “I imagine he’s still at his post.”

Ellis’s shoulders relaxed a notch. “Then I’ll abandon my own post to ya. Though if ya don’t mind me sayin’, this isn’t good for business. How can one make a living as a garda if your clients end up dead?”

“Then best not to guard anyone I’m after.”

The Irishman’s jaw tightened with temper, his meaty hand curling into a hammer-sized fist.

Argent stared at him. Waiting.

“We backed Blackwell in the Underground War,” Ellis said quietly. “We’re still loyal ta him. Ta ya both. Remember that if ya have any jobs ta throw our way.”

“Blackwell never forgets.” Argent nodded. And I couldn’t care less.

Ellis glanced toward the colorful stained glass of the exotic bathhouse door wedged between two Roman columns. “She was kind ta us both. Fair. Good ta her boy. Paid us in advance. Don’t much like the thought of her screaming, with fear or with pain.”

“She won’t,” Argent promised.

“Very well then, I’ll be on me merry way.”

With that, Ellis McGivney jogged down the bathhouse stairs, light-footed for such a square-shaped man. He tipped his hat and flashed blackened teeth to a passing lady, chuckling at her gasp as he made his way into the afternoon.

The humid steam filled Argent’s lungs as he crept down the long hallway from the ladies’ dressing room to their baths.

Feminine voices echoed off the thick, unencumbered walls and bounced down the hall toward him. One high and sweet, the other soft and low.

Millie.

He cursed the increasing speed of his heart, the intensity of his breath.

There it was again, anticipation. There had to be something he could do to get rid of it.

Listening to the ladies’ conversation, Argent kept to the mist, unable to see them, his back against the far wall until he positioned himself in a dark corner, using the shadows and steam as a cloak.

The fact that she’d gone to Morley would frustrate Blackwell, but it didn’t surprise Argent in the least. He’d wondered how long it would take for the chief inspector to bring this serial killer business and lay it at the Blackheart of Ben More’s doorstep. As the reigning king of the underworld, Dorian Blackwell had taken his fair share of blame for crimes he’d not committed.

And had gotten away with plenty. They all had.

As far as Argent knew, Blackwell didn’t employ many assassins. Neither did he deal in the risky business of kidnapping. So who was murdering these women? And what had happened to the missing boys? In Argent’s experience, killers generally had a similar modus operandi for how they did their jobs. A pattern or habit they stuck to, whether on purpose or not. They raped, or they didn’t. They killed slowly, or quickly. Some favored guns. Others, such as himself, used closer, more personal means. Something the budding science of ballistics and forensics could not trace back to him. His garrote, his hands, sometimes a knife. All three his most deadly weapons.

So the fact that Chief Inspector Morley had informed Millie that these unrelated deaths were likely perpetrated by the same killer seemed extraordinary.

Fascinating, even.

Were the chief inspector correct, who could the killer be? Crowley? Maybe. The old bastard had been in the profession so long, why not take on five contracts in two months? His liver probably wouldn’t hold long enough for them to send him to the gallows. Dorshaw? Argent had assumed he’d retired. At least, the police had lately stopped picking organs and such off the cobblestones. Perhaps the Algerian. Or the Prussian.

Maybe someone new stalked the streets. His streets.

Something he’d have to discuss with Blackwell. And if other mothers of young sons were being murdered around the city, did they have something to do with the lawyer, Gerald Dashforth? Was Argent’s own contract against Millie connected? It could be a coincidence. But coincidences were rare in the underworld. His world. He had a few minions watching Dashforth, and the few clients of his who could afford to hire Argent. So he intended to find out.

“Millie?”

Argent’s ears pricked at hearing her name, and it wasn’t the only part of his anatomy that paid attention.

“I’m getting overheated, are you ready for lunch?”

“I’m afraid I can’t lunch today. I’m going to fetch Jakub from school after this and take him with me to the theater.”

It was her voice, Argent decided. It … did something to him. Physically. Unlike most women, her voice took on a low resonance that carried—no—enthralled. To listen to her speak was like being chained, but sweetly. One couldn’t escape the rich vibrations, but why would one desire to do so? It conjured wicked curiosity. What would her moans of pleasure sound like? Her cries of release?

“It makes me anxious being away from my son even long enough to send him to school,” she was saying. “I know I’m being overprotective.”

She wasn’t. Someone wanted her dead, and maybe the boy, too.

“I don’t blame you.” A long, lean form stood and stretched in the sunlight. The moisture blurred her lines and angles, but Argent wasn’t interested in seeing a naked woman at the moment.

At least, not the golden-haired one.

“I’ll pick up something for you and Jakub to eat at Pierre’s,” the woman named Jane offered. “I’ll put it in your dressing room.”

“Thank you, dear.” The blonde bent to receive a kiss on each cheek from Millie, who was only a dark head above the pool of water from his vantage.

At the sight of Millie and her nude friend kissing, he had to brace a hand on the wall as his body surged to life and lust flared with an entirely new level of intensity.

Jane climbed out of the bath and retrieved a wrap and towel before padding toward the hall leading to the ladies’ dressing rooms.

She passed not three spans from him and didn’t even bat an eye.

Argent waited until she was gone to creep closer to his prey. He felt like a true predator. Hungry, impatient, but aware that waiting for the precise moment to strike made all the difference in capturing his quarry.

Millie’s delicate hands gathered long and heavy ebony hair over a shoulder slick with water and oils, uncovering the flesh of her bare back to him. When she shifted to scrub suds into the slick length, Argent caught sight of the two columns of sleek, small muscle that bracketed her spine.

Blood rushed right beneath his skin in an almost tangible race to his core. Once congregated there, it made a distinct journey south.

And then she stood.

For a moment he couldn’t draw breath. He opened his mouth and took a gulp of air, and drowned in humidity and desire instead.

Never in his life had Argent known that one could be paralyzed by lust. Up until the moment he saw her nude form, he’d always regarded sex as a biological imperative. Something he did because his cock wanted him to. Because it afforded release, pleasure.

One by one, his fingers curled into tight fists of need.

The droplets of water sluicing down the curves of her body and into the water took on a musical lament, melancholy as the rain. What moisture clung to her seemed to do so with desperation, reflecting the thin shafts of afternoon sunlight in such a way that the illumination transformed from gleam to a sparkle.

She was a creature of the sunlight. Where the bright illumination painted so many women with a sickly pallor, she wore it like a golden cloak, a sun-kissed warmth that embossed the rich warm tones in her dark hair.

When she bent to reach for the soap on the ledge, he almost tripped.

Three days. Argent gritted his teeth. Three days he’d prepared for this. He was a man of ultimate patience and discipline. He wasn’t brave, he was fearless. His will wasn’t strong, it was iron. He’d been burned, whipped, stabbed, and beaten without so much as a moan of pain.

So why did the sight of Millie LeCour’s glorious ass have him swallowing a whimper?

She sank back down just before his knees gave out.

Her ebony head disappeared beneath the water to rinse her hair, and Argent seized the moment. If he’d made any sound, the fact that her head was submerged would smother it.

But he didn’t.

This couldn’t go on. He had to end it. Now. Sweet or no, chains were chains, and Argent had long since promised he would never be imprisoned again. Not even by the velvet ropes of Millie LeCour.

The water barely made a ripple as he lowered himself into the bath, reached down, and pulled her naked, glistening body up from beneath the surface.

She came up fighting.

Gasping for breath, she made a wild swipe at his face. The force of it, combined with the water, actually stung.

Argent barely stopped himself from bending her over and taking her against the edge of the pool. He was hard as a diamond.

Turning her, he subdued her easily, shackling one arm around her middle, chaining her arms to her sides. This time, instead of wrapping his arm around her neck, he clamped his hand over her mouth.

He could drown her. It would only be fair. For, though he had her in his clutches, he was the one being pulled under. Her skin, made slippery by water and soap, created a delicious friction even through the layers of his wet clothing.

Her bare bottom rubbed against the hard sex straining behind his wet trousers, letting it rest in the cleft between the two supple curves.

They froze. Both unsure of what he would do next.