The Hunter (45 page)

Thomas Bancroft. It gave Christopher dark pleasure to imagine the top five ways in which he’d love to execute the man. Unbeknownst to the playwright, each fantasy became more bloody every time Millie laughed at one of his quips.

Seven times. She laughed seven times at the man. She touched him twice.
He’d
touched her five times whilst adjusting her stage position, putting his hand on her back when they looked over a script together, plucking an errant feather out of her bodice that had drifted there from her headdress. That time, he’d grazed the skin of Millie’s bare shoulder and Christopher could tell by the way Bancroft bit down on his lip that he’d done it on purpose.

Was this the kind of man Millie was generally attracted to? Dark curls, soulful brown eyes, lean and elegant with aristocratic features. An easy smile. A gentle touch.

It would be hard for Bancroft to touch her without a hand, Christopher mused, thinking of sawing it off the bastard’s thin wrist and tossing it in the Thames.

Christopher had made it almost a fortnight this time without having to see her. Well, half of a fortnight. Almost half. Five days. He’d made it five excruciating days without gazing upon the light inexplicably shimmering from her dark eyes. Without hearing the lilt of her mesmerizing contralto. Five days without taking a full breath into his lungs.

Before that the longest he’d gone was three, so … progress, he supposed.

Everything hurt. Everything hurt so much he’d begun to do what he’d watched countless others do in an attempt to alleviate pain. He’d sought comfort for what things he could control. He’d even taken to sleeping in a bed. It had been overwhelming at first, but once he’d had Welton procure some bed curtains that blocked out the spacious room, he drew them against the light and found that an enclosed bed was, indeed, better than the hard floor of his closet.

He hadn’t worked in a handful of weeks, not since his last night with her. He’d go to the theater instead, buy a ticket, sit in the shadows and drink in the sight of her, whisper her lines that he’d memorized. His hands would twitch when someone touched her. His jaw would clench when she was kissed.

Sometimes he’d wish he’d never met her, that he didn’t have the memory of her creamy skin singed into his fingertips. That she’d never reached into his soul and confirmed its existence. There’d been a reason he’d buried it in the first place. And now that she’d found it, it belonged to her.

And she’d offered to keep it.
God
, why would she do such a thing?

Now, as he stalked through the gray of the London evening, Christopher was careful not to blink. For whenever his eyes closed, he would see her naked in front of him, lily-white skin smeared with the blood he couldn’t wash off his hands. He would see her drowning in it. Tears of crimson pouring from her eyes as she begged him,
pleaded
with him to wash it away. The more he touched her, the more filth and gore covered her.

He dreamed about it at night. Held her dying heart in his hands while she looked on, horrified, knowing that her heart was just another one of his countless casualties.

For the first time in his life, he’d done the decent thing, hadn’t he? He’d pushed her away.

The truth of what he’d said to her in his training room hadn’t diminished. Just because he hadn’t killed her, didn’t mean he wouldn’t someday destroy her. What did he know about being a man? About being a husband or a father? She and her son were the first people he’d cared about in almost twenty years. The force of his newfound emotion for her would have damaged her eventually, he was certain of it. No one should carry the weight of his past. No one should have to share his empty life. Especially not Millie or Jakub. They were
alive
. And he couldn’t say that he ever truly had been. For surely he’d never had much of a life, and the one he’d lived was tainted with evil deeds.

So he’d let her go.

The reality of it stole his strength, and he leaned against a gate with his shoulder, willing his lungs to expand.

What a bloody lie. He’d not let her go in the least. He’d allowed
her
to let
him
go, because apparently, he couldn’t seem to stop himself from seeing her.

She’d hated him at first. He’d perched on the ledge outside her window on Drury Lane like a gargoyle and listened when young Jakub asked to see him, ached when she made up ridiculous reasons for them not to.

Her tears when she’d been alone had almost been his undoing. She’d cried. Over
him.
He’d never been a suicidal man, but listening to her soft sobs had nearly driven him to jump. That she or Jakub would have been the one to find his broken body was what had stopped him from acting on the impulse.

Saving her, protecting her wasn’t enough to redeem his soul. Deep down she had to know that, even if she didn’t accept it at the time.

That wasn’t to say he didn’t stop trying to guard her and her son. Couldn’t seem to help himself. He would fear for her if he didn’t see her for too long. He’d conceive dark and terrible things that might have happened to them both, unable to function until he found them, safe and sound, going about their day. Some instinct born of experience told him they were still in danger. That this wasn’t over. Though he knew he was being ridiculous, that he was creating an excuse for his obsessive behavior.

Lord, he wanted to be with her now. Wanted the impossible. Wanted to go back to the theater and wallow in the exquisite torture of her presence. But he knew that if he saw Thomas Bancroft put his disgusting fingers on her one more
fucking
time, he’d—

“Argent?”

Blinking away dark thoughts, he looked up, shocked to find himself in front of the Blackwell manse.

Dorian Blackwell descended his stairs with all the regal bearing of a royal. His head slightly turned to regard Argent out of his good eye, he approached the gate and pulled it open. “Has something happened?”

“No.” Left without much choice, Christopher followed Dorian up the drive, nodding to the four “footmen” along the path and in the yard.

“Then what, pray, is the reason for your loitering at my gate? You’d been standing there for minutes.”

Christopher shadowed Blackwell across his entry and down the hall toward his study, unable to produce an answer to Dorian’s question. His feet, rather than his intention, had brought him to Blackwell’s door. Yet, he now felt a sliver of ease in the dark presence of his oldest associate. Aside from the death of his beloved mother, Argent and Blackwell had shared the hardest and worst moments of their lives with each other. Perhaps habit had driven him to seek out the Blackheart of Ben More in a time of perceived crisis.

“Do you have something to drink?” Christopher asked.

Blackwell slid him a perceptive glance. “I thought you didn’t drink spirits.” He glided to the decanter and filled two crystal glasses without waiting for a reply.

“I didn’t.” Accepting the generous pour, Christopher tossed it back, taking three swallows to finish the burning fluid. It crawled down his throat and spread from his stomach to his limbs with a warm, pleasant liquidity.

Blackwell was there with the decanter, pouring him another before they each claimed the high-backed chairs by the fire. They sat in silence for a moment, each sipping their drinks, contemplating dark things in the flames. Argent wanted to say something. Wanted to unburden himself, to pour his pain and hatred and his love into the fire and be done with it. He wanted to be cold again, unfeeling. Because then he didn’t have to look at himself. Didn’t have this horrible yearning for a life that could never be. Wouldn’t have the words nagging at his thoughts, lighting tiny fires of their own within him.

Love and truth are stronger in the end than any evil or misfortune in this world.

Millie had believed in those words. Had offered him redemption, in her eyes at least.

Why couldn’t he bring himself to take it?

Because I’m a coward,
he thought.

“You’re an idiot,” Dorian stated softly.

“It would be unwise to push me,” Christopher replied, just as softly.

“You’re also like a brother to me,” Dorian confessed in a startling, uncharacteristic moment of unguarded warmth. “So, I can push you if I like.”

Christopher couldn’t look at him. “Men like us don’t have brothers.”

“I do, actually. More than one, or so I’m told.” Dorian’s voice held a note of curious complexity. Not mirth, not acrimony, something in between.

“Do you know them?” Christopher couldn’t stop himself from asking.

“Just one. A Scottish marquess. Keeps sending me this damned fine Scotch whisky of his. He’s been abroad fighting for the empire and all that, but we’ve been in somewhat infrequent contact since the death of our father.”

“I thought you had your father killed,” Christopher mused. He glanced at Dorian in time to see the rest of his drink disappear in one careless toss.

“So I did.” Blackwell smirked. “Quid pro quo, I suppose.”

Argent nodded, remembering that the late Marquess Ravencroft had paid to have his own bastard killed in Newgate Prison. Maybe not having a father wasn’t such a tragedy.

“At any rate, I consider my relationship with you more fraternal than with any of them. We’re bound by more blood, I think. Buckets of it. And, over the past decade you and I were the closest thing to family men like us can allow ourselves to have.” Dorian seemed to be having as much of a difficult time saying the words as Christopher was hearing them. “We fought and won a war together. We’re loyal to each other. We brawl and snarl at each other. And, in the end, we trust—we hope—all is forgiven.”

He was talking about losing Millie to Dorshaw that night, Christopher knew. About the fact that nothing had been the same since Christopher had attacked the Blackheart of Ben More in his own house.

And lived to tell about it. That, alone, was a testament to Dorian’s admiration for Christopher.

They were both staring hard at the flames again, but Christopher knew Dorian was right. And that he’d just articulated the very reason Christopher had found his gate.

“Brothers, then,” he clipped, moving uncomfortably in his chair. “But if you try to hug me, I’m leaving.”

Dorian chuckled. “Then allow me to give you some brotherly advice.”

“No.”

“I’ll do it anyway.”

Christopher growled. “For the love of—”

“Love,”
Dorian said firmly, which produced the effect Christopher suspected the Blackheart of Ben More wanted.

Christopher’s silence.

“Love is exactly to what I’m referring when I tell you that you’re an idiot,” Dorian stated, finally turning in his chair to gaze at Christopher. “Men like you and me, we don’t love like other men do. With patience and poetry and gentle deference. Our sort of love is possessive—obsessive even—and passionate and consuming and … well, fucking terrifying sometimes.”

Christopher gripped his glass so hard he was afraid it would shatter. “Why are you telling me this?” He wanted to run, but was glued to his chair.

“The walls behind which we endured so much, we carry them with us and I don’t think they ever come down. So if we are to love, then that person has to scale those high, solid walls, and once they do, once they go through all of that work … they’re trapped inside with us.”

“Which is precisely why—”

Dorian held up a hand. “The very least we can do is remove a few bricks every so often. Let the daylight in. Make the walls shorter. Do you see what I’m getting at?”

“All I see is that you’re beating a poor useless metaphor to death.” Christopher didn’t want to hear any more. And yet …

Undaunted, Dorian continued. “It takes a rare and resilient woman to withstand a life like ours. For most it’s just too much. We’re too … broken. Too brutal. They can’t swim upstream through these rivers of blood we’ve created.”

“Farah did,” Argent said bitterly.

“I still had to compromise. To make concessions.”

“Like what?” Argent asked. “You’re still the Blackheart of Ben More.”

Dorian cleared his throat. “Would you believe me if I told you … half my businesses are actually legitimate?”

“No.”

“It’s probably best you feel that way, I don’t particularly want it getting out.”

Argent gaped at Blackwell. He’d known the man was in love with his wife, that he’d searched for her for an eternity, even when she’d been presumed dead. But … to go legitimate? He was bloody king of the underworld. Second only to Argent, himself, for the amount of people he’d killed with his own hands. Now he had a daughter. A wife. A courtesy title, not unlike that of the queen’s own consort. A life outside of their criminal enterprise that expanded his possibilities.

And he seemed … happy. Contented. The sky wasn’t falling and the streets weren’t burning.

It was beyond conceivable … and yet …

“I don’t know what concessions to make. I can’t clean the blood I’ve already spilled off my hands. And, as I told her, I’m a hunter. I’m a killer. I’m afraid I need to be, that even if I try to stop, I won’t be able to.”

Dorian regarded him for a long time, that enigmatic eye of his processing his own thoughts. “I think it lives inside both of us. This darkness. This need to be a predator, or worse, play at being God.”

Christopher nodded, cursing Blackwell’s talent for identifying the crux of a problem.

“You could take Morley’s proposition, you know,” Dorian suggested.

“Work for the enemy?” Christopher snorted. “Not a chance.”

Turning his drink around and around in his hand, Dorian smiled a bit ruefully. “He’s not so much my enemy now.”

“Since when?”

“We’ve had mutual interests at times…” Dorian answered cryptically. “Prison reform, for one. Getting the same people off the streets, clearing scum from the gutters and the like. You’d be good at that. With your skills you’d probably be his biggest asset. Then, perhaps you and Miss LeCour…” He let the insinuation trail away, but the idea took root.

“Millie and I…” Christopher’s heart clenched. Hope was a dangerous thing. Once it was taken, regaining it was nigh to impossible.