The Highwayman (29 page)

With Dorian, it was ice.

It hardened his muscles and crackled through his veins, freezing everything that made him alive.
Human.
It expanded to fill the empty spaces and reinforced any brittle parts. It dulled pain until people could chip away at him again and again, only to be bit by shards. The cold kept him sharp. Alert. Fierce.

And didn't slow him down one bit.

With this many opponents, the fight would
need
to go quickly. Once a body hit the ground, another would replace it, and he couldn't take the chance that someone might stand up and come at him again. No time to waste with punishing or wounding.

Lethal blows. Open veins. No survivors.

As Bones's knife arced at his throat, Dorian crouched and wrenched the two long knives from their scabbards hidden against his back beneath his coat. He spun them so his thumb capped the pummel, and the blades rested along his forearms. On his way back up, he sliced through the meat beneath the pit of his attacker's arm.

The man dropped his knife immediately as he severed the muscle and rendered his opponent's knife arm permanently ineffectual. The piercing scream was cut short by Dorian's second knife embedding deep into his throat.

Dorian was too focused on the next threat, the cudgel held in the coffee-skinned man's leathery hand, to feel the warm arterial spray as he wrenched the blade out of Bones's neck. The bleeding man made a terrible gurgling sound as his momentum carried him forward, and the body landed somewhere out of view.

Dorian almost missed the flash of auburn hair as Christopher Argent materialized from the alley and struck like a viper. One moment, the bear, George Perth, was just behind Druthers readying his kukri to strike, and the next, his limp feet were disappearing into the black alley.

Another unsuspecting victim of Argent's famous garrote.

Dorian rushed the dark assailant, giving him a chance to raise his right arm for a blow that would have all the force of a speeding steam engine. That was, if Dorian had allowed it to land. Throwing his left knee into the unguarded torso, he heard the satisfying sound of the man's breath leaving his body as he collapsed at the waist over his knee. One strong thrust of the knife to the back of the neck was enough to sever the man's spinal cord.

He looked up from discarding the body, and found Druthers had pulled his pistol. “Not another move,” the brigand warned, his eyes peeled wide with fear. “I don't want to shoot you, it'll bring the coppers.”

“Then what do you propose?” Doran queried, fighting the need to look back and check on Farah. She'd never seen him kill before. What did she think of him now?

“Hand me the whore, she's mine, and I'll be on my way.”

“It's too late for that, I'm afraid.” Dorian shook his head, slinging drops of blood from his blade with a flick of his wrist. “A man like me can't leave an attack like this unanswered and hope to retain his place at the top.”

“I still have George,” Druthers threatened. “He's the deadliest man in Wapping. You can't kill us both before eating a bullet.”

Dorian's fist tightened on his knife, positioning it for what he needed to do next. “I'm assuming you meant George
was
the rather large gentleman with the kukri.”

Druthers didn't miss Dorian's use of the past tense, and his brow dropped with confusion as he did exactly what Dorian needed him to do. He turned his head and looked toward the empty spot from which the bear of a sailor had disappeared.

The moment Druthers looked away, Dorian let his knife fly. It embedded deep into the man's right shoulder, and the force of it drove Druthers to his knees. The slimy bastard tried to raise his gun, but the knife impeded all movement, and Dorian was on him before he could grab for the weapon with his other hand. Druthers's face made a satisfying crunch beneath Dorian's boot, and the man crumpled to the planks with a pathetic noise. After kicking the gun across the dock and into the river, Dorian crouched over Druthers with his remaining knife pressed against his throat, one knee grinding down on the pimp's uninjured shoulder.

Blood poured from Druthers's nose and mouth, leaking into his eyes and ears. A man once thought dangerous now squirmed and writhed like a trapped snake, emitting little mewling sounds of pain.

Feeding a mean-spirited impulse, Dorian reached out and twisted the knife still protruding from Druthers's shoulder. Pleasure speared through him at the hoarse noise that ripped from the pirate's throat. Sometimes the pain was too great to take in enough air to produce a proper scream.

Dorian knew that all too well.

“I'm going to slit your throat,” he murmured to Druthers in a seductive whisper. “I'm going to watch the life drain out of your eyes as you struggle to draw breath and your lungs only fill with your own blood.”

“Don't!” Farah's desperate plea stayed the draw of his knife across the throat. Light footsteps ran up behind him.

“Stay back, Farah. Let me finish this.”

“You can't kill an unarmed man.”

“Actually,” he gritted out, his knife nicking into the thin, stubbled flesh of Druthers's neck, “the killing goes more smoothly once I've disarmed them.”

“Dorian…” She let his whispered name trail into the quiet sounds of the river. “Please.”

“He
threatened
you, Farah.” The cold rage surged again. “He should not be allowed to live.”

“It would be murder.” Instead of censuring, her voice was gentle behind him, using warmth to slowly melt the ice instead of force to bash up against it. “If you kill him in cold blood, this horrid man will be another black stain upon your soul. Must you grant him that?”

Dorian stared down into the disgusting, broken face of Edmond Druthers, and knew he didn't want to add the man to the many that haunted his nightmares. Moreover, he didn't want to turn back around and have the blood that Farah saw on his hands be a stain of dishonor.

Retrieving his knife from Druthers's shoulder produced another tortured sound, but Dorian didn't stop there. He sliced through the tendon in the man's dominant arm. Edmond Druthers would never wield a weapon again.

“Dorian!” Farah gasped.

After wiping the blood from his blades on Druthers's coat, Dorian stood and faced his wife. “Not a stain, my dear,” he said while replacing his weapons in their scabbards tucked beneath his coat. “But what's one more smudge?”

Farah's seemingly unearthly moonlight glow intensified as the corners of her mouth trembled before she fought off the mirth and pressed them together, adopting a stern look.

“Lord, you're a wicked man,” she said wryly, as though she could think of nothing else and so she just shook her head in abject disbelief.

“So I've been told.”

A gunshot shattered the darkness. Shouting downriver echoed across the piers. A splash. Repeating shots.

Dorian thrust Farah behind him and backed them both toward the crates where Murdoch had drawn his pistol.

Irritation stabbed through him as he identified the dark shapes with buttons that reflected the brilliant moonlight spilling onto the Executioner's Dock.

The tavern slut had been right when she said the night was full of shadows. In fact, those shadows had been full of the London Metropolitan Police.

A tall figure emerged from the army of coppers, wearing an impeccable gray suit and an air of superiority. “Lieutenant?” Carlton Morley's pistol was aimed right where Dorian's heart would go, his finger caressing the trigger with sensual promise.

A large blond bobby stepped from the line. “Yes, Chief Inspector?”

“Arrest them.”

“Which ones?” the lieutenant asked, his eyes flicking from Farah with astonished recognition to Dorian with apprehension.

Morley wasn't glaring daggers at Dorian, but at Farah. “All of them.”

 

C
HAPTER
S
EVENTEEN

Farah clenched her hands in her lap and stared at the myriad of commendation certificates hanging behind Carlton Morley's intimidating executive desk. Next to her, Gemma sat in a similar posture, quiet and subdued.

Instead of taking his place of authority in the high-backed chair, Morley paced in front of it, his long legs eating up the space as he inspected the document held in hands shaking with rage. His collar was loosened, his unbound tie hanging limp around his neck. Without his jacket, Morley's gray vest accentuated the width of his shoulders against his lean waist. He was more disheveled than Farah had ever seen him, and guilt pricked at her skin and stuck in her throat.

Perhaps she should start with an apology. “Carlton—”

He held up his hand in a silencing gesture, not bothering to glance up from where his shrewd eyes flew across the official piece of paper.

Pressing her lips together, Farah winced. She hadn't wanted him to find out this way.

She thought of her husband and poor Murdoch stuck in the dank strong room directly below them. It cost so much for them to be locked away in a cell after all they had suffered, and she had to use her wits to get them released as soon as possible.

This was her fault, after all. She'd begged for their help.

After a moment Morley tossed the document onto his cluttered desk, thoroughly disgusted, and ran a hand through his already tousled hair. “Tell me this is some kind of joke.” He whirled on her. “Or a nightmare.”

“I can explain,” Farah soothed.

“You're goddamned right, you'll explain yourself!” he thundered, his blue eyes swirling with storms. “Starting with just where the
bloody
hell you've been for four days!”

“I was hiding at Ben More Castle on the Isle of Mull,” she answered honestly, her eyebrows lifting at Morley's uncharacteristic profanity. “There was a threat against my life.”

“Where you—
married
the fucking Blackheart of Ben More?”

Farah bit her lip. “Yes.”

Morley balled his fist and looked around his office decorated in a sort of organized chaos of paperwork, evidence, and a few intricate antique clocks that he had a passion for collecting and restoring. He obviously wanted to hit something, but couldn't find a place where the damage would be worth the cleanup.

That was Carlton Morley as Farah had known him for six years. Always considering the consequences of his actions. Calculating the risks and weighing the cause and effect of every decision.

Jamming both fists into his trouser pockets, he leaned against his desk and glowered at her. “Did he force you?”

“No.” She didn't want to lie to him, so she promised herself she would tell the truth.

“Hurt you?”

“No.” At least, not more than necessary, and not at all on purpose.

“Coerce you?”

Farah swallowed. “No,” she lied.
Damn.
She needed to get them out of this so that she didn't end up as corrupted as her husband before the night was through. “I'm sorry that I've been absent, Carlton. If I haven't already been sacked, I need to resign my post as a clerk for Scotland Yard, collect my husband and his … valet, and take Gemma somewhere safe.”

“The
hell
you will!” Carlton exploded. “Half of Scotland Yard witnessed your
husband
slaughter two smugglers. In addition, Edmond Druthers is being stitched up and having his broken jaw set by the surgeon.” He grimaced at the word
husband
as though it tasted foul. “Then there's the unexplained, and no doubt connected, death of George Perth, whose body was found strangled on Executioner's Dock. Did you have anything to do with that?”

“You don't seriously believe I could strangle a man the size of George Perth?” Farah asked.

Gemma chortled beside her, but wisely refrained from remarking.

“Do you know who killed him?”

“I can honestly say that … the man who is responsible for George Perth's death is no legitimate acquaintance of mine,” Farah hedged, certain she was digging her own pit in hell.

Morley's eyes narrowed to slits of pure skepticism. “That isn't what I asked.”

“Furthermore,” Farah continued, hoping to distract her former boss with more important things than the elusive and mysteriously frightening Christopher Argent, “if your men witnessed the encounter, they may add their statements to Miss Warlow's, Mr. Murdoch's, and mine that Mr. Blackwell was only defending himself, and Miss Warlow and me, against attacking dock pirates who deserved every bit of what they got.”

Morley's jaw jutted forward as he ground his teeth together. “I was too far away to see much of the particulars,” he muttered. “But I didn't miss the part where you barely talked him out of committing cold-blooded murder.” Morley pushed himself away from the desk with his hip. “You saved his life, because the moment he cut Druthers's throat, I'd have had the fodder to finally see him hanged.”

“I owed him for saving my life,” she replied carefully. “May I ask what you all were doing
en masse
at the docks at that hour?”

“We'd a tip that Druthers had a large shipment of smuggled goods arriving tonight. We'd staked out the position in the hopes of making a mass arrest.”

“And so you did.” Farah offered a solicitous smile. “Druthers and a large contingent of his smugglers are either dead or in your custody. The night was a success, and if you don't mind, I'd like to collect my party and go home.” She stood, gathering her skirts.

“Sit.
Down,
” Morley ordered.

Damn,
she thought with a sigh. She sat.

Morley studied her for a long time, and Farah resolutely met his gaze. She'd done nothing of which she was ashamed. Only, Morley, a kind and honest man, had been hurt in all of this madness, and that was her one profound regret.