Sins of a Virgin (15 page)

Gabriel resisted the urge to call the recitation to a halt. He’d known the gentlemen of the
ton
to be rutting beasts under all their fine trappings, but as Lady Aphrodite revealed their secret perversions, his rage built. These were men Madeline was eager to attract?

Lady Aphrodite’s hand suddenly clenched on the paper. “Is Billingsgate still in the bidding?”

“He hasn’t bid for a few days, but I believe so.”

Lady Aphrodite’s lips puckered as though she might spit on the carpet, but thought better of it. “He’s an animal. He likes his girls tied and bleeding.”

Gabriel had heard the man was fond of violence. And his other lover from the ball had been scared of him as well. “He comes here?”

“No, that bastard knows I’d shoot him.”

“You know him personally then?”

Lady Aphrodite smiled coldly. “You could say that.” She pulled aside the neckline of her robe, revealing pale, puckered scars on the side of her breast.

“You were his mistress?”

“Only for one day. I wasn’t fool enough to stay with him longer than that.”

“Why did you accept him at first?” Gabriel asked.

“He’s handsome and charming. He hides his dark side well.”

“Charming?” Susan had said her suitor was charming.

“I think it adds to his sense of power to make the women infatuated with him.”

The hope that Gabriel usually managed to keep chained deep in his chest threatened to break free. “Didn’t his other mistresses complain about the violence?”

“He pays well, too.”

“Do you think he could get violent enough to kill?”

Lady Aphrodite twisted the ring on her index finger, hesitating. “Possibly. He needs to feel in power. If someone took that from him, he might overreact.”

“Was he ever violent in any other way?”

She shook her head. “Just with the knife.”

Gabriel’s teeth ground together. Even if the man wasn’t responsible for the murders, he’d see him dead in the street before he’d allow him near Madeline. “I could have him arrested.”

“Arrest a peer of the realm for roughing up a whore five years ago?”

Gabriel held her disbelieving gaze. “Even if the charges didn’t hold, it might take him down a peg.”

“You’d do it, too, wouldn’t you?” But then she sighed. “As tempting as that is, I won’t risk losing this place. But not many men would be willing to risk angering a peer.” She ran her index finger along her collarbone, then between her breasts. “Are you sure there’s nothing I can do for you this morning? It would be my treat. As much as I love Madeline, with her current ruse, she can’t be keeping you satisfied.”

“Ruse?”

“About her virginity . . .” She paused, her brows jerking together. “I shouldn’t have said anything.”

Gabriel ignored the betrayal slamming through him. It didn’t matter. He had access to his suspects. Whether she was virgin or whore didn’t matter.

Yet his tongue was suddenly clumsy in his mouth. “How do you know?”

“I—” Lady Aphrodite straightened a large ruby on her finger. “When she sat next to me on the curb. Her eyes. It’s why I never mistook her for a lady. In this profession you do things you wouldn’t wish on the devil himself.” She absently rubbed at the scars through her bodice. “And Madeline has the eyes of a woman who’s been through far worse than I.”

Chapter Fourteen

A
fter the laborious journey from her room, Madeline rested her head against the cool glass of the study window. The wound in her side throbbed in time with each breath, but there seemed some victory to be claimed in not heeding it. She trailed a finger absently in the condensation collected near the sash. The windows in this place needed to be repaired. But that was an expense for another tenant.

It was funny. She’d stayed in this house longer than anywhere else in the past ten years, but it didn’t feel like a home.

But then again, how could it? This was just another mission. Just another carefully arranged illusion.

When she was done with this, she’d buy herself a nice little cottage with a thatched roof and garden. Crochet doilies. Or did one knit doilies? Regardless, how much more homelike could she get than that?

She flicked a droplet of water off her finger. Or would that existence be another illusion? Her way of playing the role of a normal, boring country widow.

After fifty years, surely she’d begin to forget it was pretense. Glavenstroke had always warned that if a spy stayed too long in an identity, she might begin to lose herself.

Please Lord, let it be so.

Although at this rate, she might not live long enough to forget anything at all. She shivered and tugged her nightgown tighter around her, wincing at the increased pressure on the stitches. This was utter nonsense. Her assassin could sneeze and do away with her.

Well, curse him anyway.

Or her. Madeline was hardly one to discriminate.

She gingerly lowered herself into a chair by the window. Perhaps she should tell Gabriel about the threat. But he already knew someone wanted her dead. It wasn’t particularly important why.

Besides, if she told him, he’d undoubtedly do something noble and altogether foolish, like insist on staying with her. Her stomach fluttered at the thought of meeting him in the kitchen over a plate of coddled eggs, his shirt unbuttoned and his feet bare, a touch of stubble darkening his chin . . . Madeline rubbed her knuckles against her eyes. She didn’t even like coddled eggs, for pity’s sake.

The truth of the matter was that she couldn’t trust herself with him, which was ten times more dangerous than any doubts she had.

Thank heavens she was no longer a spy.

Madeline took refuge against the damp glass of the window, her breath adding to the droplets obscuring the view.

A dark cloaked figure turned the corner below, moving with athletic grace, his pace neither fast nor slow. Even the capes of his greatcoat couldn’t hide his strong, purposeful stride.

Gabriel.

Although his head remained straight, she could feel the way his attention spread around him, noting everything she’d seen from her window.

Most people were oblivious to the world around them. Anything that didn’t stumble directly into their path passed by unobserved and unnoticed.

But Gabriel had the finely tuned senses of a hunter, and even from this distance, she could feel the energy crackling around him. On some level, his talent for observation terrified her—she’d spent too long as a spy for it not to.

Yet at the same time, it had become increasingly hard not to ask him if he noticed the same things as she did. If he’d noticed the owl nestled at the top of the oak as they drove around Hyde Park or the footman who clanked as he walked because he was making off with his employer’s silver.

Madeline smoothed her nightgown as Gabriel mounted her steps. She should have left it in the recesses of her closet where it belonged, but she’d been tired and miserable. Now there was no way her legs would hold long enough for her to return to her room to change.

Well, he’d wanted to find out more about her.

Her smile faded. The dangerous part was that she desperately wanted to know what he discovered.

G
abriel paused at the entrance to the study. Madeline rested in a high-backed chair near the window. She was swathed in a high-necked, white flannel night rail. The thing had to have more material than three of her normal dresses combined.

All she lacked was a little cap and she’d be the perfect little wife awaiting her husband.

He exhaled, surprised at the hot rush of desire sweeping through him. How the hell had she known that image would be erotic? That he’d feel like she’d been waiting up for his arrival. That he’d feel he could go to her side, and she’d smile, then offer her hand so he could lead her to their bedroom. That he’d hardly be able to wait to rip the clothing from her and reveal the exquisite body beneath. A body that was his alone.

The surge of possessiveness brought him back to his senses.

Possessive? Of a courtesan about to wager away the virginity she didn’t even possess?

His hands clenched at his sides. What the hell was wrong with him that the picture she presented was even appealing? If he were fool enough to marry, he’d tramp in at three in the morning, knuckles bloodied from apprehending a criminal, the filth of the streets caked on his boots, and his wife would run revolted from the room. Or worse, cry copious tears because he’d missed her dinner party.

So there was no reason for Madeline’s picture of domesticity to affect him so. Not one damned reason.

There was also no reason for her to be out of bed. He latched on to the thought, his first sane one since entering the room. “What are you doing up?”

Her brows drew together. “I feel quite well. Thank you for asking.”

He strode to her side. As he’d feared, the skin around her mouth was pale from pain, and purple smudges lingered in the delicate skin under her eyes. “You do not. Can you even walk? Or did you push yourself too far?”

Her chin lifted a fraction. “I can walk.”

Gabriel offered his hand. “Prove it.”

She stared at his hand as if inspecting bread for weevils. “I’m the one with reason to be in a foul mood today. What’s your excuse?”

That Lady Aphrodite’s assertion about Madeline had tumbled about in his mind until he felt he’d go mad. Lady Aphrodite had no proof about Madeline’s background other than her assumptions, but something in it had rung true. He’d seen glimpses of haunted disillusionment in Madeline’s eyes when she thought no one watched.

Yet as angry as he was that she’d lied about her virginity, it didn’t begin to compare to the rage that consumed him at the thought of her suffering at the hands of other men.

But he wasn’t about to share that with her. Hell, he wished he could clear it from his own mind. “Besides not sleeping last night and prowling the bordellos of London this morning?”

“Bordellos? I would have thought that would put you in a better mood.”

“Not if it meant discovering Lord Plimpington has an unnatural fascination with feet.”

She grimaced. “What else?”

Gabriel listed what he’d found out at Lady Aphrodite’s as well as a couple other seedier brothels toward the docks.

Madeline nodded as he spoke, not once betraying a flicker of surprise or horror at any of the habits of her suitors. She tapped absently at her lower lip with her index finger. “Manton and Kramer are out of the running then.”

Only those two?

“How are you going to ensure that?”

“Using the same skills that encouraged them to bid in the first place.”

“And the rest? You’re fine if Lord Plimpington wants to suck on your toes? Or Sir John wants you to take a cane to his pudgy arse?” The fury that had been building inside him coated his words.

Color mounted on her cheeks. “For the fortunes they are willing to pay, I find myself most tolerant.”

He wanted nothing more than to grab her shoulders and shake her until her teeth rattled. Until she recoiled from what he’d told her like any other woman of his acquaintance would.

“What of Billingsgate?” she asked.

Gabriel hesitated. He was scheduled to meet with Billingsgate’s solicitor soon. He couldn’t risk having her cut ties with the man before he’d had a chance to view them. “I hope to have information on him by tomorrow.”

He exhaled and strode toward the door, using the movement to rein in his guilt. His duty was to his sister and the dead girl. He forced himself to picture the bodies, perfectly laid out on their beds, swathed in white with the damned brooch pinned at their throats.

Susan had been a blameless innocent when some bastard sullied her neck with those ugly, mottled bruises. She deserved justice. Her murderer deserved death.

He stared at the grid of fibers in a threadbare patch of carpet. He’d tell Madeline before the auction ended. Even if he hadn’t solved the case, he wouldn’t let her choose Billingsgate. So why did it feel like he was sacrificing one woman for the other? “Now that you know all the information I gathered, you need to return to bed. Shall I call for your maid?”

“What maid?”

He frowned. “You don’t have a lady’s maid?” He hadn’t thought about the lack of one last night, but now the absence was glaring.

“I’m hardly a lady.”

“Who changed your bandages this morning?”

“I managed.”

Gabriel swore. There was no way she could have secured the bandages correctly by herself. “Who helps you with your hair before you go out?”

“Is it so outside your realm of understanding that I can survive on my own?”

“Survive, yes. Get in and out of those contraptions you women dress in, no.”

A reluctant smile tilted her lips. “An observant point. I have a coachman and a butler. We have a maid-of-all-work, who comes in occasionally to help. When I want to do something elaborate with my hair or dress, however, Lady Aphrodite sends over one of her girls.”

“She thinks highly of you.”

Madeline snorted. “Lady Aphrodite simply admires that she found someone more mercenary than she.”

“Did you know about the statue in her entry hall?” Gabriel regretted the question as soon as the syllables tripped off his tongue. For it was impossible not to stare at Madeline and imagine her posing for it.

Then he no longer needed to imagine.

She tipped her head back, letting her eyelids drift half closed, her lips parting.

Bloody hell
.

Straightening, she dusted an imaginary speck of lint from her sleeve, but her ducked head couldn’t hide her grin. “What statue?”

A laugh escaped in a rusty bark. How did she do it? A moment ago he’d been furious at her. “Was it your idea?”

“What kind of vain creature do you take me for?” She peeked at him through her lashes. “I did, however, suggest she move it closer to the front door.” The curve of her lips widened, then twitched as a laugh escaped.

“Ow.” Her gaiety ceased and she pressed a hand to her side.

Gabriel lifted her into his arms before she could protest. “I’m taking you to bed.”