The Hunter (36 page)

He’d been silent to the point of infuriating when he’d scooped her and Jakub into his carriage after their late breakfast and deposited them at the Blackwells’ Mayfair mansion with terse instructions not to leave Dorian Blackwell’s sight. Of course, the Earl and Countess Northwalk had been delightfully accommodating, but the intensity of the morning, and the life-altering events of the previous night, had left Millie feeling drained and irritable. Helpless, and maybe a little bit rejected. This was all so new to her, this ledge upon which she balanced. One wrong move, one bad decision, and her heart could be broken or lost … and so could her life.

“Miss LeCour … Millie, are you all right?” Farah held the teapot poised in the air, her delicate features a picture of patience and concern.

“I’m sorry.” Millie summoned a brilliant smile. “What were you saying?”

“I was asking if I could refresh your tea.”

“Please.” Holding out her cup, she added a dash of genuine apology to her voice. “I didn’t mean to be rude. I suppose I’m still having a hard time believing my luck. I never imagined I’d be a guest of the illustrious Lord and Lady Northwalk.”

Farah, dressed in lavender and lace, her hair and eyes as stunningly light as Millie’s were dark, sent her a perceptive glace from beneath pale lashes. “Don’t you mean the
infamous
Lord and Lady Northwalk?”

“I prefer
notorious
.” A shadow stirred from the giant leather chair that had been pulled next to the fire, whereby Dorian Blackwell, the
notorious
Blackheart of Ben More, effectively hid his features behind a book.

Millie wondered if he held the book that close to spare her his startling visage, or because he could only read out of his one good eye. Millie had heard he lost the use of his other one in the Underworld War, and that it had lost all pigment, but the earl was now wearing an eye patch, and she had a hard time telling if she was disappointed or relieved. Even with the patch, Blackwell’s features were frightening enough. His one good eye seemed to ritualistically and ruthlessly assess and calculate. She felt as though only after a few moments in his company, he knew all her secrets, understood her weaknesses, and could dismantle her body and mind if he had the notion. He was large and dark as the devil and just as handsome, or would be if not for the permanently sardonic expression.

That all changed when he looked at his astonishingly angelic wife. Millie had liked Lady Northwalk immediately, and after watching her interact with her adoring, almost obsessive husband, all suspicion about Farah’s involvement with Christopher dissipated like the smoke of a snuffed candle.

“Yes, my love, you’ve succeeded in making yourself notorious, haven’t you?” she teased. Farah set the teapot down and offered Millie the sugar. “It’s so amusing that you should express your sweet sentiment, because I was only just examining my good fortune at hosting the one and only Millie LeCour, London’s darling of the stage.” She took a dainty sip. “Won’t all of society be green with envy when I tell them I had your exclusive company to tea?”

Millie beamed at her, then let her smile die in slow increments. “I only wish … that we’d become acquainted under different … better circumstances.”

“As do I.” Farah’s small, compassionate smile was artlessly genuine. She’d have made a terrible actress, and that endeared her to Millie quite a bit. “But I hope you feel safe and comfortable here, until Argent comes to tell us you and your lovely son are out of danger and takes you back with him.”

Millie stared down into her tea, her other gloved hand squeezing into a fist, mirroring the action of her heart. “I don’t think he’ll take me back with him. Once he … once everything is all said and done I think our … arrangement will be over. Our contract settled.”

The heart that felt strangled by a squeezing fist now dropped like a lead weight.

Gently, Farah set her teacup down and regarded her with the same excessive curiosity she had when she’d seen Millie and Jakub for the first time. “How long have you had an … arrangement with Argent?” Her arrested expression belied the casualness of her tone.

“Farah,” Dorian rumbled.

“Oh, I don’t mean to pry,” Farah rushed. “It’s only that I’ve known Argent for a few years now and I must admit this is unprecedented. He must be very fond of you and your son.”

Lord Northwalk turned his page with a forceful gesture and cleared his throat.

“I don’t mind the question,” Millie murmured. “I’ve only known Chr—Mr. Argent several days.” Though it did seem like a lifetime. Or perhaps the last time she felt as though she knew herself was a lifetime ago.

“He is handsome, isn’t he?” Farah asked conspiratorially. “And, despite being a bit phlegmatic, he really is charming at times.”

“As charming as a typhus epidemic,” Millie quipped into her teacup.

Blackwell’s book seemed to give a strangled snort.

“Oh dear.” Farah’s golden brows, a touch more golden than her pale hair, drew together. “Are you cross with him?”

“Of course she’s cross with him,” said the book. “He’s an idiot.”

“Are you reading, or having this conversation with us?” Farah asked her husband.

“I’m reading.”

“Then I’ll thank you not to slander your friend in front of his … his…” Farah stalled, and Millie wished she could help the woman. She didn’t know what she was to Argent, either. Didn’t know if there was a word for it, exactly. And all the ones that sprang to mind were distasteful at best and descended into criminal.

“Argent doesn’t have friends,” Dorian muttered. “He has people he’d find it a little more distasteful to kill.”

“He’s saved your life more than once,” Lady Northwalk pointed out. And, Millie remembered, Dorian had been there that terrible night to help remove the tar from Christopher’s arm.

“Only because I returned the favor and/or I paid him a great deal of money.”

“Oh tosh.” Farah turned back to Millie. “Ignore him, he’s an incurable grump today. Those two would die for each other and neither of them have the emotional capacity to admit it.”

The man behind the book fell silent and Millie found that more telling than a confession. Though she had the impression that if Dorian Blackwell were to truly wake up grumpy, they’d find a few more bodies floating in the Thames than usual.

“Christopher
is
an idiot,” Millie agreed with a little more vehemence than she’d intended.

Farah scooted to the edge of her chair, managing to make even that movement seem dainty and graceful. “Millie, dear, has he been cruel to you?”

“If you don’t count the three assassination attempts, then no.”

“Three?” The book snapped shut. Millie found herself the sole focus of Dorian Blackwell’s dark, unsettling attention. He studied her for a long moment, disassembling her and examining her for spare parts. Firelight glinted off hair as black as her own, the rest of him bathed in the waning light of the fading afternoon still spilling in from the open drapes.

Millie met his stare with an unflinching one of her own. She was an actress, and if she knew a thing about her craft, it was to hide the nerves she battled. It was not wise to show weakness to a man like the Blackheart of Ben More.

“Did you know, Miss LeCour, that Christopher Argent has never
attempted
an assassination in his life?” He delivered his words with the carelessness of a nobleman, but they landed with a mountain of meaning. “Once he marks a victim, their every breath is borrowed from a miracle. He’s gone into a building full of the deadliest men, and been the only one to emerge. Christopher Argent does not
attempt
assassination. He’s mastered it.” Unfolding his tall, powerful frame from his chair, he prowled to the dainty jewel-blue couch across from her, identical to the one upon which she sat, and claimed it. “And yet, here you are.”

Millie squirmed beneath his stare. Up close, Dorian Blackwell was more than unsettling, he was a force of nature. A force to be reckoned with.

“I think Argent is a secret romantic,” Farah said, looking inordinately pleased with herself.

Millie and Dorian both turned to stare at Farah as though she’d lost her mind.

“Or have you forgotten, dear husband.” Lady Northwalk smiled at Dorian as though she’d made a joke. “That Argent once held my own contract in his hands, and instead of collecting on it, he turned it over to you.”

Blackwell’s eye narrowed. “That wasn’t romanticism, that was self-preservation. He knew that if he didn’t prevent your death I’d have waged a battle that would have made Waterloo look like a mere squabble between spoiled children.”

Farah reached for Dorian, putting an ungloved hand over his. He looked down at it for a moment and what Millie saw in that look caused her to blink back emotion. There was more deferential veneration in Dorian Blackwell’s world for the slim woman’s pale hand than a zealot had for his god. How would it be, to be loved like that?

“He could have killed me and been rid of me and you’d have been none the wiser,” Farah pointed out.

“
I
would have known,” Dorian insisted.

“My point is, I believe Argent wanted us to find each other.” She tightened her hold on Blackwell. “And the point my husband is trying to make is that if he left you alive, if he took it upon himself to protect you, then you must be very special to him, indeed.”

Millie could never have admitted this to polite society, but there was something that told her these two would understand the nature of their arrangement. “I paid him for his protection,” she admitted. “He wanted me, and I … gave myself to him.”

Dorian shook his head. “He’s wanted things in the past. Women, included. And he’s paid for them or gone without.
You
. You are something else. And he is an idiot.”

“Why do you keep saying that?” Farah queried.

“Because, from the way you and Argent were acting when he brought you here, I surmised that she likely offered him her heart, and he quickly and thoroughly broke it.”

Millie studied the floor, again impressed by how perfectly it would have matched Christopher’s eyes. “Not broken, Lord Northwalk, but bruised,” she confessed.

“Do you know about the circumstances of his birth?” Farah asked.

“Yes.”

Dorian’s brows lifted. “Are you aware of how his mother died?”

“I am.”

“And you obviously know about his … vocation.” Lady Northwalk tapped a tiny divot in her chin with the finger of her free hand.

“I’ve seen his scars,” Millie told them. “I realize what he’s done and what he’s capable of doing. He thinks he is damned, but … I still believe he’s worth redeeming. I’m willing to try, but he … he…” Millie swiped at a stray tear of hurt and frustration and wondered miserably if it wasn’t for the best. She could only give him her heart if he’d hold out his hand to take it. She wasn’t the kind of woman to toss it to someone who didn’t want it.

“Like I said…” Dorian kissed his wife’s hand and flipped open his book. “An idiot.”

Farah nodded, but leaned across to Millie and touched her knee. “Men like Argent … like…” She motioned to her distracted husband with darting eyes. “They need—”

“Miss Farah, Miss LeCour?” The nanny, a skinny pale woman with frizzy, ash-colored hair, rushed into the parlor, bony hands wringing her white apron. “’Ave you seen yer boy?”

Millie shot to her feet, followed by the earl and countess, a burning coal of dread ripping through her chest as though she’d taken it from the fire and swallowed it whole. “I thought he was with you,” she croaked.

“’E was, miss, ’e was, but I was changing Faye’s nappy and ’e begged off to the loo.” The woman, Gemma was her name, went impossibly paler, her big dirty brown eyes completely ringed with white. “I thought ’e’s gone too long, so I went about lookin’ for ’im, when ’e didn’t answer, I thought ’e came lookin’ for you.”

Icy fingers of dread squeezed all the air from Millie’s lungs. She turned to Blackwell. “Could anyone have gotten in? Could he have been taken?”

Blackwell strode to the door. “Does he have a penchant for hiding?”

Millie shook her head, the room spinning with the movement. “Not at all.”

“I’ll check the second floor, but the likelihood of anyone breaking into
my
home is slim to none. I have a man on each story and multiple guards.”

The door chimed down the entry hall of the house and Millie launched herself past Blackwell, her hope flaring. It was just a mistake; he’d been playing in the yard. She’d be so stern with him, so angry, but she’d kiss his precious face first.

Yanking the door open, she found a rough-looking man in a nice suit standing wringing his hat much in the same way as Gemma had. “’Ello,” he said in an accent that belonged nowhere close to the fine streets of Mayfair. He addressed his greeting above her head, so Millie knew Blackwell stood directly behind her.

“I don’t know if this is important or not, but Chappy seen a boy head down the street and head into the park. ’E thought the boy was carrying a knife ’alf his size, and up to no good. Did ’e come from this house?”

Millie seized the man. “Did he have on a blue jacket?”

“I fink so.”

Dorian said a few things Millie had never heard before and pulled her back into the house, thrusting her toward Farah. “I’m going to the park to look for him. I’ll take Harker here and Murdoch. You stay and lock the door. I’m leaving Mathias and Worden with you.”

“Sod off,” Millie hissed. “That’s my son and I’m going with you. Thurston is likely already taken care of, and with him gone I’m out of danger. But if Jakub is in Hyde Park by himself, anything could happen.” What on earth could Jakub have been thinking? He was such an obedient boy. It was so unlike him to go anywhere without telling her first.

Dorian shook his head. “Argent said—”

“We just agreed Argent is an idiot.” Millie threw his words back at him. “And so are you if you think you’ll stop me.”

Dorian glanced back at his wife, who was bouncing a fussy toddler on her hip and nodding to him. “Fine, but stay close.”

*   *   *

To assassinate someone during the day took more finesse than under cover of night. Christopher Argent stood in his casual suit coat next to Lord Thruston’s hedgerow at St. James’s and stifled a yawn. To maintain optimal conditioning, he generally kept strict sleep and training schedules. Last night had changed everything.