The Hunter (34 page)

The boy snorted. “Stop teasing me.”

“I’ve never teased anyone in my life.”

“Then you’re lying.”

Christopher frowned, crossing his arms over his chest. “What makes you think that?”

“You won’t look at me.”

Their eyes collided and they glared at each other for a few narrow-eyed seconds before the boy’s mouth twitched, tightened, then broke into a smile.

Grunting, Christopher broke away from that smile, from the answering amusement it produced, and went to the basin in the corner and began to wash the sweat from his skin.

“Your trousers are funny.” Jakub trailed after him. “They look like a dress.”

“Aren’t you supposed to be at breakfast?”

“Do you use those weapons on people?”

Christopher froze with the cloth half dipped into the water. Jakub’s innocence did not belong in this house. Nor did his mother’s. And, bastard that he was, Christopher had taken hers last night. But the boy’s was worth saving. His lack of guile, his big-eyed curiosity, his exuberance.

Hadn’t he been that way once? Before …

“I do.” Shit, he should have lied.

“Couldn’t you teach me?”

“No.”

“But…” The boy’s voice dropped back to the solemn note Christopher had heard before. “There are people after my mother. Bad men. I could protect her if I knew how.”

Dropping the cloth back into the water, Christopher closed his eyes against a wave of something so intense, it locked his limbs. He recognized that note in the boy’s voice. A mixture of worship and fear, of a little boy’s fierce, protective love for his mother, and the anger big enough for a grown man that ignited when that love was threatened.

It didn’t matter that Millie’s body had never carried the boy. She was his mother. Love glowed between them, a love he’d seen before. A love ripped to shreds and lost in a pool of …

“You don’t have to worry about that,” he vowed. “
I
will protect her; I’m here to protect you both.”

“But will you always be?”

The question tore the breath from his chest and Christopher had to struggle to inflate his lungs. “Get that knife over there,” he ordered. “I’ll show you a few things.”

*   *   *

“Welton.” Millie ran across the butler marching through the empty dining hall. “Have you seen my son—What on earth is that?”

Welton foisted the prickly-looking oddity forward with both white-gloved hands, his chin rising several notches. “This, madam, is called a ‘pineapple.’ A gift to the master, from the Countess Northwalk.”

Reaching out, she tested the sharpness of the tufted stalks and the rough scales of the oblong fruit. “I’ve heard of these, someone told me the Duke of Milford had a hothouse that grew them—Wait … The Countess Northwalk? She sends Mr. Argent exotic fruits?” A twinge of displeasure stole through her. Lady Farah Blackwell, Countess Northwalk, an heiress in her own right and wife to arguably the most infamous and wealthy man in the realm, sent gifts of a morning to a reclusive assassin. Why? What sort of arrangement did they have? And, more importantly, why did Millie care where Christopher Argent procured his produce?

“Lord and Lady Northwalk are friends of the household,” Welton announced proudly.

“Indeed,” Millie murmured, wondering if it had been terribly unkind of her to assume that Christopher had no such thing as friends. In fact, hadn’t Argent said something the night before about a long-standing loyalty to Dorian Blackwell?

“Well, acquaintances, at any rate,” Welton amended.

Acquaintances, and yet here was a gift from a married woman … Was there something going on between her protector and the countess? If someone were to be brave enough to cross the king of the underworld, it would certainly be the master of this house.

“I was just going to add the fruit to the breakfast menu, but I’m not sure when Master Argent and the young master will be finished in the ballroom.” Welton looked down his spectacular nose at Millie, one brow cocked with insinuation.

“What are they doing in the ballroom?”

“I’m sure I don’t know.” It seemed this morning that Welton’s nasal haughtiness was tinged with something else. Not warmth, exactly, but a purposeful optimism, perhaps, that made Millie feel accepted.

“Thank you, Welton.”

“Very good, madam.” Turning on his heel, he resumed his soldierlike march through the empty dining hall, presumably to the small solarium in which they were to take their breakfast.

Millie wandered in the opposite direction, through the grand, desolate entry and toward the French doors, where the right-hand one stood ajar. The echoes of serious conversation filtered from the opening, and Millie paused to smooth the teal silk gown down her front and check her hair for any escaped tendrils.

Nerves fluttered in her stomach at the thought of seeing him again. Her might-have-been assassin. Her protector.

Her lover.

The manner in which he’d fled from her last night left her confused and uncertain. Two emotions particularly foreign to her, especially when it came to men.

In general, she found men easy to understand, charm, and read, thereby making them uncomplicated company. They were creatures of ego and artifice. They smiled with their wolfish teeth whilst scheming with their eyes. Their weaknesses included flattery, their virility, and challenge or conquest, power, wealth, and sexuality, respective and interchangeable throughout. Anything that made them feel like a predator was enjoyable, as long as they could master it without too much effort.

Some prized intellect. Others physical strength and prowess. And still more chased possessions or influence. Some were cruel, others were kind. Some jolly, others solemn. They loved to compete, and shamelessly display their wealth, power, or consequence over each other. They were fascinating creations of alternating primitive instinct and societal constraints.

Not Christopher, though. He was such a unique and complicated animal. An enigma, really. What was it that drove him? Money, it seemed, was important, as he made a great deal of it, but he didn’t seem to spend it on much of anything. Certainly not on creature comforts. He possessed a grand house, at the behest of someone else, but he slept in more distasteful conditions than the servants would. His clothing was well made, but far from ostentatious.

As for ego and artifice … he didn’t seem to understand either concept. He lied to kill. Or to survive. But not to protect himself from judgment or awkwardness. He accepted his strengths and skills at their value and correct measure, owned them without a speck of modesty, but also without ego. He never exaggerated, nor did he undermine. Seduction was an art he didn’t practice. Flattery was as foreign a language to him as Greek or Arabic. He kept his relationships, such as they were, confined to arrangements. Contracts, whether on paper or understood, ones with very set parameters of which he refused to step out of bounds.

So when he said he wanted her, when he told her she was beautiful, that he dreamed of her. He’d meant it. He meant it more than any of her admirers had ever meant a single one of their poetic words.

And yet he was tethered by nothing. A boy born in a cage, taught little but cruelty and survival. Then he was thrust into this world and had to make his own way, falling upon the only skills he’d ever mastered.

Violence and death.

But there had to be more to it, to
him,
didn’t there? Despite what he claimed, he was not without emotion. The tortured dreams he suffered. The things he’d said to her. Unapologetic illicit things at first, but then he’d given her needful words, and the most selfless pleasure.

All because he’d thought the only way she’d come to him was in a dream. The reason being, he believed nothing good ever happened to him while he was awake.

What if she changed his mind? What if she brought good into his world? Was there hope for a man with so much blood on his hands? Millie hadn’t thought so before, but after last night …

Lord, but she was thinking nonsense, wasn’t she? A romantic fool, that’s what her brother Merek had always called her. And he was probably right.

“They take my spectacles and then push me down.” Jakub’s voice carried through the door, distracting Millie from her thoughts. “I can’t see to take them back.”

What was this? Millie hadn’t known anyone had done her son violence. That he hadn’t confided in her stung, that he confided in Christopher now intrigued and concerned her.

He’d never had a father, nor had she provided him much in the way of male companionship. Certainly, he knew her fellow actors, and there was Mr. Brimtree, of course, but due to Jakub’s reclusive nature, he’d never connected much with any of them. Was it testament to her failure as a mother that the first man her son seemed to bond with murdered people for money?

Quite likely. She winced. But he had saved Jakub’s life … there was that …

“You don’t have to see them clearly.” Christopher’s voice rumbled off the ballroom walls with all the resonance of thunder. “You focus on the space between you and your opponent, no matter how blurry your vision may be. By not looking directly at them, you notice all of them. You can tell where the next strike is coming from almost the moment the thought is formed in their minds.”

“I want to try,” Jakub demanded.

“Like water,” Christopher reminded. “Take the path of least resistance, but don’t let anyone stop you.”

Shifting her weight, she leaned against the half-open door, remaining quiet and in the shadows.

What she saw stole her breath.

Sweat glistened on his body, trailing into valleys and grooves made by mountains of strength. And still, for all his sheer size, she detected an almost preternatural grace in his movements, though whether innate or practiced, she couldn’t begin to speculate. She couldn’t believe that she’d traced that muscle with her fingers, followed the tight columns down his back as they rippled with rhythmic movement. She’d been pressed against the twin mounded cords of his abdomen, felt their distinct shapes lunging against her flesh.

Her fingers twitched with the memory of him, and the memories only served to awaken new curiosities. He stood in his domain of strange and indecorous tools, a
man
. Hard and dominant and overwhelmingly potent. Sinful and solid and scarred.

And gently patient with the almost ridiculously small boy lunging at him with artless, wild blows.

She should say something, do something, other than play voyeur to this moment. But, how could she when the ground beneath her was no longer stable? It rocked under her feet like a ship on the waves of an approaching storm.

What must it be like to possess the heart of a man like that? To even think it had to be some sort of blasphemy.

But his blasphemies were delicious, weren’t they? His wickedness brought her pleasures in the dark and—

“Mama?” Two pairs of blue eyes swung to where she stood with unsettling synchronicity.

“Jakub, darling, Welton has set out breakfast, it isn’t polite to keep him waiting.” Millie hated the breathless note in her voice.

“But we were in the middle of a lesson.” Jakub reared back, settling into some kind of fighting stance. “I have a center line, and no one can push me off it. Well, Mr. Argent can, but no one else. I can punch anyone who tries to touch me in the throat, or thrust the heel of my hand into his nose. Also, I can pry off a kneecap with a knife, even a jam knife, Mama. And—”

“Jakub,” she said more firmly, realizing Argent had taught her son the same things he’d shown her only yesterday.

He hid his mulish frown by looking at the floor. “Yes, Mama.” He slunk past her, his shoulders so dramatically slumped that she wondered if she’d also let him spend too much time in the company of actors.

“I’ll be along,
kochanie,
” she said more gently. “I need to discuss something with Mr. Argent.”

As he plodded down the hall she heard him mutter to himself, “I
knew
I shouldn’t have mentioned the kneecaps.”

Watching her son, her heart squeezed. Was he being bullied? How did she not know?

Christopher had moved to the basin and was wiping his flushed face, neck, and chest with a damp towel. Millie found herself transfixed again by the muscles rolling in great waves down his back, tapering into narrow hips and disappearing into those strange trousers with the most enticing curve at the backside.

The last time they’d been in this room together …

Blinking, Millie tore her gaze from that particular part of his anatomy, clearing her throat and her thoughts. Her embroidered slippers were soft-heeled and she could hear the swish of her heavy skirts on the floor as she approached him.

He tensed, but didn’t look at her. Aside from the bandage she’d placed on his forearm, his knuckles were wrapped as well, pinpoints of new blood seeping through.

“You’re going to resemble an Egyptian mummy before the week is out.” She tossed a smile into her voice, and mixed it with a pinch of genuine concern. “Are you all right?”

“Don’t do that,” he snarled, turning to pin her with a belligerent glare before his eyes darted away. Gone was the gentle teacher who’d only just shared the space with her son, and in his place stood a glistening god of wrath. “My mother used to do that.”

“Do what?” Millie stepped back, utterly confused. “Worry about you?”

“Pretend you’re all right.” He paced the floor in front of her, three steps to the right, and three back, glaring daggers at the space between them. “She’d fuck the guards for an extra piece of bread, then hide the bruises behind a split-lipped smile when she handed it to me. It sickened me then, and now it’s worse because I … I’m the one that…” Plunging his hands into his lush auburn hair, he gripped it tightly before planting his restless feet and towering over her. “I won’t have it, not from
you
.”

“I don’t have any bruises,” she told him softly. Of course, she’d felt a few twinges of use on and in her body, but they’d merely served as a reminder of their affair. She hadn’t minded them in the least. “You’ve done me no violence.” Millie reached out her hand, but he flinched away. Pressing her lips together, she knew she needed to tread carefully here. This was not the cold, calculating, ruthless assassin she’d come to know. The man in front of her was a different creature altogether, one with his armor and ice chipped away. Exposed, raw, and just as dangerous.