Dancing With Danger

by Kerrigan Byrne

  “Yes,” she clipped. “That is something I’ve heard before. Is it not easier to imagine that you are infatuated with my youth and beauty than with me?”

  “I cannot contest that you are the loveliest creature, but your sister is equally handsome and stirs me not at all. It is not only this chemistry between us that draws me to you. It is everything. Your entire bold, adventurous, domineering, warrior’s spirit. It is the life that spills from you, that radiates like a star in the middle of your own solar system. You don’t just tempt me, you fascinate me—obsess me—and no one has managed to do that in a very long time.”

  “Then...” She cast her gaze down and schooled the longing from her voice. “Why not continue this while we are inclined to do so?”

  “Because the moment I care for something...someone...it gives them power over me.”

  “Your enemies?”

  “Yes, but I was referring to...my men.”

  At that, she sat up straighter, folding her legs beneath the sheets to face him fully. “I don’t understand.”

  His face softened and his gaze touched every part of her face, as if committing it to memory. “That is because you are not part of this brutal world in which I exist, and I would not have it touch you. I will—die first.”

  Mercy’s brows crimped as she did her utmost to puzzle him out. One thing missing from the mysteries of Eddard Sharpe was this vagary of fate. The villains were dastardly characters motivated by hatred, greed, or any number of ugly impulses belonging to man.

  Rarely—never—were they noble or tender with predispositions toward generosity and kindness.

  This man, this wicked, rakish criminal was possessed of a conscience. A code.

  And yet...

  “Why did you become a Fauve?” she asked, knowing she tread on dangerous ground. “Furthermore, why lead them if they would so easily turn on you? What sort of life is that?”

  “It’s the life Gabriel and I inherited,” he answered simply, as if he’d resigned himself to such a disappointment long ago.

  “Inherited?” she echoed.

  “From le Bourreau.” He muttered the name as if it tasted of ashes in his mouth. “The Executioner.”

  He slumped against her headboard, the covers sliding around his lean waist. Broad shoulders rolled forward a little as if Atlas himself could not have contained such a burden. His eyes unfocused slightly, as he looked into the past.

  “He was an Englishman who married a Monégasque girl—my mother—leveraged by the debts her father owed him,” he explained in a voice devoid of emotion. “He kept her—us—in a villa in Monaco where he ruled the underworld there. Gaming establishments, brothels, and smuggling ships...” His fists curled in her bedclothes as his eyes glittered with a hatred so cold and absolute, she shivered with it.

  “Fighting rings.”

  Mercy covered his taut fist with her hand, and it unclenched beneath the pressure until he turned it to thread his fingers with hers.

  “Your father, he...died?” she asked gently.

  His jaw worked to the side in a show of gall. “My mother went first, suffered terribly from the syphilis he gave her, and he lingered—too long—disintegrating until parts of his body rotted away, to match the soul beneath.”

  Mercy hadn’t been faced with such animosity before, not really. Her relationship with her father was either cold or contentious, but all they felt for each other was a rather mild form of duty and disappointment.

  Raphael hated his father with a rage-induced loathing she’d not known him capable of.

  It frightened her.

  “Did he...was he...awful to you?” she queried.

  His expression was carefully impassive. “He was horrible to everyone. I was no exception.”

  “You should have been.” Mercy ventured closer to him, wanting to provide him comfort but feeling ill-equipped to do so. “You were his son.”

  “His second son.”

  “Did you resent that?”

  “Never,” he answered darkly. “I was glad to be a small, rather undeveloped boy even after fourteen or so. I was lucky that he ignored me. That he thought me too pathetic to much notice.”

  “Why would you be glad of that?” she asked, thinking she already knew she didn’t want the answer.

  “Gabriel was always so extraordinarily big and strong and as savage as my father had crafted him to be. He was heir apparent to the Lord of Louts. And the prince to those who called themselves the Fauves. And still, when my father needed money, he threw Gabriel to the pits.”

  “Is...that why he wears a mask?”

  Raphael nodded, swallowing once. Twice.

  “My brother always protected me from my father and now, you understand, it is my job to protect him.”

  “I understand,” she murmured. And she did. It never mattered what kind of man he’d wanted to be. Because he was who his father made him. “So, like the monarchy, when the king of the Fauves dies, his sons inherit?”

  “Only if they are worthy. If they can command the respect of the men.”

  “What if you didn’t want to be a part of it anymore? What if you gave the mantle over to another?”

  He dragged a finger over her cheek, his gaze gentle and resigned. “Would that I could, mon chaton, but men in our world can only escape by dying. There are too many secrets between us, too much at stake. These men are often criminals because they have no one to trust, nowhere to turn for protection from poverty and despair. That sort of desperation turns a man into a beast. Men like my father turn those beasts into soldiers. Gives them a code. A family to die for. To kill for. A way to advance. And, like in the wilds, the pack will turn upon you if you show weakness. If they can no longer rely upon you to provide.”

  To be held captive by power, she could barely imagine it. “So...if you were not born into this life, you would not have chosen it?”

  “Never.”

  “What would you have done instead?”

  “I would have been a ship’s captain,” he answered without thought.

  “Oh?”

  He glanced at her astonished expression with a wry twist of his lips. “It’s the only part of my position I truly enjoy. When we transport overseas, I’ve taken to the mechanics and running of the ship itself...not that it matters now.”

  “Of course, it matters.” She squeezed his hand. “It’s significant to me.”

  He snorted. “Why? Because you can now imagine a different reality in which I am a good man?”

  “You laugh, but I’m not entirely convinced you’re a bad one.”

  A rueful sound escaped him as he drew a knuckle down the curve of her shoulder, following it all the way to her elbow. “Believe me, I am.”

  “Well, ironically enough, I’m not a good girl, either.”

  That cleared some of the ice from his gaze. “Yes, you are.”

  “Shows what you know!” she said. “I’m forever disappointing everyone. Making mischief, saying the wrong things, wanting what I ought not to...fighting to change the world.”

  “Please don’t ever stop,” he whispered, his fingers digging into her waist to nudge her closer. “Instead, change the world to suit you, Mercy Goode; if anyone could, it’d be you.” He lowered his head to nudge at her nose with his own. “I—I only wish I could be here to see it.”

  She blinked. “Tell me where you are going.”

  “Nowhere.” He tossed her a charming, brilliant smile and seized her, rolling them over until she was straddling his torso with her hands braced over his glorious chest. “At least not tonight.”

  Chapter 12

  Raphael just paid an enormous fortune for a lie.

  But no world existed where Gabriel would allow for his real plans to come to fruition, so he kept up pretenses for his brother’s sake.

  The man in question studied his identification papers with precise and methodical sweeps of his eyes, as if committing even the fine print to memory.

  “When I wake, I’ll b
e Gareth Severand.” Gabriel tested the words in his graveled voice and winced as if they tasted strange in his mouth.

  Dr. Titus Conleith leaned a hip against his desk where they’d gathered in his hospital office. “I was told by Frank Walters—who sends his regards along with your new identities—that keeping names somewhat similar in cadence and lettering helps one assimilate and identify easier.”

  While Gabriel folded his limbs into one of the chairs across from the desk, Raphael turned to pacing. The room was as warm and masculine as its master. The overstuffed furniture and landscape canvasses seemed incongruous with the sterile environs of the rest of the hospital.

  This was where Conleith took people to tell them that they or their loved ones were going to die, Raphael suspected.

  And in a way, that’s exactly what he was telling them now.

  Gabriel and Raphael Sauvageau would be essentially deceased after tonight.

  Once Gabriel went under the knife, Raphael was supposed to set a plan in motion to implode the Fauves from the inside.

  “You’ve barely glanced at your papers, Rafe,” Gabriel prompted, lifting his chin to peek over at his identification.

  Raphael screwed on a sardonic smile. “That’s Remy Severand to you.”

  Titus studied them from beneath his somber brow, his sharp bronze eyes always seeming to conduct an examination, even when one wasn’t his patient. “Have you decided where you’re going to land when this is all said and done?” he asked. “Not Monaco, surely.”

  “Too much past there to have a future.” Gabriel shook his head adamantly, adjusting his mask as if eager to be rid of the thing. “Perhaps someday we’ll return to Normandy or France, but I think for the time being, we’ll lose ourselves in the West.

  Raphael nodded in agreement.

  Titus bucked his hip away from his desk and reached for the white coat draped over his elegant chair. “I think it’s marvelous you get a fresh start away from your tainted legacy. I’m a firm believer in second chances.” He punched his arms into the coat and reached the door in a few long-legged strides. “I’m going to go make certain the surgical theater is prepared. I’ll leave you two to say your goodbyes before the procedure. It’ll be...lengthy.”

  Say your goodbyes. The doctor had no idea how final that sounded.

  Because it was.

  Raphael didn’t want to say goodbye. He hated them.

  It was why—even though every fiber that stitched his body together had felt adhered to the heaven that was Mercy Goode’s bed—he’d peeled himself away to vanish before dawn illuminated her cherubic face.

  Because he might have given in to the insatiable urge to have her once more.

  Or the impossible desire to stay.

  As Gabriel took another moment to study the papers in his hands, Raphael studied him.

  He’d a patchwork body, that was for certain. His ruined face wasn’t the only place he carried scars. His arms and chest had become a canvass of tattoos decorating a physique that was a monument to power.

  And to violence.

  But nothing felled his brother.

  Nothing.

  That wasn’t about to change. Gabriel had survived so many things that would have crushed most other men.

  He’d likewise survive Raphael’s loss. He would keep his word and go to America to spread Mathilde’s ashes.

  Then, he’d live the life they both craved.

  The one Gabriel deserved.

  “I’d like a final smoke before I go under the knife.” Gabriel stood, reaching into his jacket pocket.

  It occurred to Raphael, not for the first time, that his brother looked almost amusingly incongruous in such finery. His neck didn’t like a collar and his jaw always wanted shaving, even after a razor had been taken to it. Though his mask was meticulously crafted, it made for a sinister, unsightly spectacle.

  Better that than the terror beneath.

  Raphael followed his brother outside, watching Gabriel’s ritual of pulling the hood low against any kind of weather for the last time. When he woke—when he healed—he’d have a face he could show to the world.

  Raphael wished he’d be able to see it.

  Gabriel rested his shoulders against the grey stone of the hospital, bending his knee to prop the sole of his boot on the wall. A passerby might imagine that the towering man held up the building, rather than the other way around.

  This was harder than Raphael had expected. He wanted to stay. He wanted to run. He wanted for the thousandth time...a life that hadn’t been fucked before he was even born. “Do you want me to stay until you’re asleep?” He asked the question with a demonstrative fondness he wasn’t prone to.

  If Gabriel noticed, he didn’t say. “Nah. You’ve work to do.” He poked the tamper into the bowl of his pipe. The instrument looked comically tiny in his hands, something like a child’s toy. “Besides, that was always my responsibility.”

  Their gazes locked.

  Yes, Gabriel had always stood watch over him. Had taken the wrath of their father upon his gigantic shoulders. When they were boys, Raphael’s nightmares would plague him, and Gabriel would sit up with him, both a sentinel against and savior from the nightmares in the dark.

  The day he’d become so disfigured, it had been Raphael’s turn in the pits. He’d been so young and scrawny.

  Terrified.

  Gabriel had shoved him in a locker and taken his place in the ring.

  This was why Raphael would die for him...

  “Have you ever thought what we’ll do...after this?” Gabriel’s pensive question interrupted his reverie.

  Raphael blinked against the drizzle and a little confusion. “Do?”

  Gabriel made an impatient gesture. “You know, in America, or wherever we settle. What will we do with ourselves?” He struck a match against the rough edge of the stone and cupped his hand over the flame as he touched it to the fragrant tobacco in his pipe.

  “Live like kings, that’s what you’ll do. There’s fortune enough that your children’s children’s children won’t have to worry. You’ll do whatever you bloody well please.”

  Gabriel sank deeper into his hood as Honoria Goode dashed by, one arm shielding her lovely hat with a newspaper, and the other hand lifting her skirts as she nearly skipped up the stairs to the hospital to avoid the rain.

  Even she didn’t know what her husband was about to do. Conleith had agreed it was safer.

  Raphael’s eyes followed Mercy’s eldest sister, his eyes hungry for any sort of reminder of her. She and Honoria were as different in coloring as night was from day. The elder two Goode sisters had midnight hair and large dark eyes, but her jaw was crafted with the same sharp lines and stubborn angles. Her shape formed with the same delicate perfection.

  Raphael licked his lips, thinking he could still find hints of Mercy’s incomparable flavor on them.

  “Children...” Gabriel exhaled the word on a long puff of smoke. “I’ve never allowed myself to think of something like that. Even if I’d ever been able to convince a woman to— Well, I’d never thought to maintain our legacy. I suppose I’d hoped our father’s seed would die with us, perhaps his violence would, too.”

  Raphael feigned his usual irreverent mirth. “Likely not, I’ve probably got a million bastards out running around somewhere. Find you a handsome hazel-eyed tramp and I’ve probably boffed his mother.”

  “I know you better.” Gabriel’s solemnity wiped the smile from Raphael’s face.

  Because he was right.

  Raphael was as careful as he could be, even in his conquests. He’d never wanted to sire a child, to assign the poor thing a bastard’s status.

  A bastard that would have become an orphan.

  He’d always known he’d make a shit father.

  “Why are you asking about the future, anyhow?” he clipped, stealing the pipe from his brother and taking an uncharacteristically long inhale.

  He’d never been much of a smoker, but it certainly cou
ldn’t hurt to start on today of all days.

  His last day.

  “Couldn’t tell you.” Gabriel scanned the bustle of the streets. Streets they’d claimed to own, corners upon which they’d done business for ages. “Who am I, if not a fighter? Who are we, if not criminals, thieves, and smugglers? I’m going to wake up with this name, Gareth, and it tastes wrong in my mouth. Maybe it wouldn’t...if I had a purpose.”

  “Well, you’ll have a few bloody weeks to brood on it in the hospital while your face is gooping back together...I wouldn’t worry about it. Things won’t change so much.”

  Gabriel retrieved the pipe from him and took another draw. “You don’t know that.”

  “I know you’ll have all this gold to spend, and don’t worry, I’m pretty sure you’ll still be dog-fuckingly ugly, so that will at least be familiar.” Raphael punched him in the shoulder.

  Usually, a bit of banter cheered his brother, but not today. “The doctor said there would still be scars.”

  “Sure, but you’ll have a fucking nose, won’t you? Besides.” He waggled dark brows. “Posh birds who crave a bit of rough will ask to kiss your scars, see if they don’t.”

  Gabriel shook his head and shoved him back. “Get on with you, now.”

  Raphael knew his brother couldn’t smile. The scars wouldn’t allow it. But he remembered what Gabriel’s mirth looked like.

  And that was enough. He superimposed the memory over what was left of his brother’s face.

  Inside, he felt exactly how Gabriel looked. Destroyed by lashes, slashes...

  And scars.

  “Gabriel, if anything should happen—that is—if it takes me too long to get to the Indies, go to America without me. I’m having Mathilde’s ashes sent to—”

  Gabriel perked at that. “You’re leaving almost a month ahead of me, of course you’ll get there first.”

  “Of course, but you never know...plans go awry.”

  Pushing himself off the wall, Gabriel towered over him, staring down hard from his one good eye. “Are you thinking of staying for her? Because it’s not possible. It’s too dangerous for them both.”