Too Wicked to Kiss: Gothic Love Stories #1

by Ridley, Erica

  The dead man’s jaw hung open, as if he’d died while snoring. How had he died? He’d left Gavin’s office with nothing more than a sore throat and a bruised ego. Well, and a scrape on his temple where the portrait had struck him. Was Gavin once again a killer, after all? Could that glancing blow have somehow caused Heatherbrook’s death?

  Gavin knelt beside the bed, allowing the insistent sun to shine above his head across the earl’s lifeless face. A folded handkerchief tied snug around the motionless skull, blood crusting the linen above the earl’s right ear. Gavin frowned. The earl’s right ear? The gilded frame had struck the opposite side! A patch of raw skin scratched across his left cheekbone where the painting had glanced off the earl’s face.

  Heatherbrook may well have died from a blow to the head, but it wasn’t Gavin’s blow. Someone else had struck him and left him to die. Someone else murdered him. Someone else had stood silent and allowed accusation and innuendo to surround Gavin once again.

  He began to wish Miss Pemberton really could converse directly with God. Perhaps she could ask Him for a hint as to who had dealt the killing blow. Gavin glanced at the doorway.

  Miss Pemberton was no longer there.

  She was crossing the room with short, quick strides, her slippered feet silent against the square of plush carpet, her hands fisted beneath the flowing silk of her gown, her full lips pressed together in an expression of fierce determination.

  “Move,” she said. Then, “Please.”

  Gavin moved.

  He rose to his feet, stepped backward to the bay window and sat on the lumpy crimson cushion. He immediately leapt upright again.

  “Wait.”

  She did not wait. She strode directly to the spot he had just vacated beside the bed. And began peeling off her left glove. Slowly, slowly, the delicate leather rolled down her arm and off her fingers, revealing pale skin covered in gooseflesh.

  “Wait,” he said again.

  The sight unsettled him, although he was unsure why. He glimpsed her bare fingers every time they gathered to eat, so his unease did not stem from the soft whiteness of her hands.

  Perhaps his pulse skittered in fits and starts because of the still-visible gooseflesh rising on her skin and the trembling of her slender fingers, or because of the pained resignation lining her eyes as though she faced something even worse than the sightless eyes of a dead man.

  “What’s wrong?” she said now, her palms paused a few inches above the earl’s gaping mouth. “Besides coming here to touch a dead man.”

  “I—” Hell. Gavin stared at the back of Miss Pemberton’s head for a long moment, unable to move toward her and unable to retake his seat. Her hands shook. “I forgot to summon the maids,” he said at last, remembering why he had spoken. “I promised an army of servants, not none. Just allow me a moment to tug the bellpull, and we’ll have—”

  “I prefer to be alone.”

  Her words cut through the stillness, cut through his speech, cut through the thick air, cold and heavy with the scent of death.

  “You…wish for me to leave?”

  She glanced over her shoulder, meeting his gaze for the first time since reaching the guest quarters. “No,” she said softly. “Stay.”

  “All right.”

  He stayed, but did not sit. For some reason, his muscles warned him to remain tense, alert, at the ready in case some unknown danger lurked nearby.

  Miss Pemberton nodded slowly. Her eyes were large, dry, weary. She turned back toward the man on the bed and squared her shoulders. “I doubt anything will happen, but if it does…if it does, you are the only one who can bring me back without making it worse.”

  Gavin frowned. He also doubted anything would happen, but…as before, something was off. Something in her tone, her manner, her words. She did not sound like a disciple about to commune with God. She sounded…nervous. Frightened.

  But if not of being alone with him, the supposed murderer, then what?

  “Back from where?” he asked, recalling her odd choice in words. “Where are you going?”

  “Nowhere. Here. I’ll be right here.”

  Her answer was logical, but a strange tremor distorted the words. Gavin had the distinct impression she was lying, but that made no sense. Perhaps she, too, believed in a fickle, vengeful God. Perhaps she feared He would speak to her. Or that He would smite her for daring to summon him like a common beast, leaving her as cold and dead as the corpse before her.

  Gavin was gripped by the sudden urge to stop Miss Pemberton from touching the earl’s dead flesh. To protect her. To tackle her to the floor if need be, anything, anything, to keep her from laying her trembling fingers atop Heatherbrook’s flaccid gray skin.

  But the thought came too late.

  Her palms flattened against the earl’s pale cheeks. A quick inhalation whistled through her teeth. And then she froze.

  For several long moments, Gavin watched her, unnerved by how still she held herself, how statue-like she posed. Her body was as lifeless and beautiful as an ivory sarcophagus molded in her image.

  She stood so quiet and unmoving he might well have been in a room with two dead bodies. The unwelcome sensation of watching a pair of corpses had his muscles twitching in trepidation.

  Gavin shifted his weight, uncomfortable in his own skin, even less comfortable with the motionless woman a few feet before him. Her fingers no longer shook, so frozen did she stand. He could not hear her breathing, even in the unnatural silence of the dank chamber. Her breasts no longer rose and fell. Even the folds of her gown held no ripples, no motion, as if they too were carved of stone and impervious to both breeze and life.

  Feeling more nervous than foolish, he edged closer until her profile was a mere foot from his face. If she breathed, she did so silently. He heard nothing, smelled nothing, felt nothing. His breathing was erratic and overloud. She did not seem to notice. Her eyes were glassy and sightless. She didn’t move. She didn’t blink.

  Gavin passed a hand before her face. She gazed right through it. At nothing. He tilted closer, until the scent of her soap clashed with the stench from the bed. She didn’t move. She didn’t blink. He leaned in until the tip of his nose brushed the icy skin of her forehead. She jerked.

  He jumped.

  “Hhh. Hhh. Hhh.” Loud, frantic gasps choked from her throat. She sucked air into her lungs with shallow, wheezing breaths.

  Her eyelids fluttered closed, then back open. The irises rolled back into her head. Palms still flush against Heatherbrook’s pallid face, her arms trembled once before her entire body erupted into violent shaking.

  Whether or not she wanted him interrupting, Gavin had seen enough.

  He reached both arms around her hitching chest and yanked her to him. Fingertips still grazing Heatherbrook’s sunken cheeks, her body convulsed against Gavin’s.

  “Hhh. Hhh. Help. Hhh. Hhh. Help me.” With a series of shallow, staccato gasps, Miss Pemberton’s head jerked from side to side, clipping Gavin’s chin. His jaw snapped closed with enough force to bring tears to his eyes, but he only gripped her tighter.

  Her limbs twitched and flailed as she struggled for breath. The graceless jerking of her body reminded Gavin of the one and only time his father had taken him fishing. The fish—so beautiful and full of life before they’d hooked its lip and flung it from the water to the shore—had reacted in just such a way, gasping and convulsing on the dirt by Gavin’s feet until the last of its life leeched from its bulging eyes.

  He’d had nightmares for months.

  Gavin flipped Miss Pemberton around until she faced him. Her fingers slipped from the corpse’s face. He gripped her by the shoulders, ripping one of her sleeves in the process. She’d recover from that shock later. First, she had to breathe. A bluish cast tinged the whiteness of her skin. Phantom bruises cast a faint shadow about her neck. Terror widened her eyes, and no doubt his as well.

  “Miss Pemberton! Miss Pemberton!” Not knowing what else to do, he shook her. She sagg
ed in his arms as lifeless as a doll. Gooseflesh raced along his skin. “Breathe-breathe-breathe-breathe-breathe. Please. You’re scaring the devil out of me.” Again, he shook her. Again, her limbs flopped, offering no resistance and no response. “Breathe, damn it!”

  He sucked in great lungfuls of air and pressed his open mouth to hers, forcing the breaths into her body. He was certain that was wrong, that shared breathing was only for victims of drowning, but he knew no other way to help her. For the first time in eleven years, Gavin prayed.

  And as before, God ignored him.

  Miss Pemberton’s head twitched to one side. A drop of blood trickled from her unbreathing nose. She fell against Gavin’s chest with a thud.

  “Damn it.” He tossed frantic glances around the empty chamber. “Please, please, don’t die on me, too.”

  Gavin scooped up her limp body and stared in horror at the gray pallor of her face. He stumbled over to the window seat. He fell onto the cushion and hauled her into his lap, his arms still locked around her motionless chest in a desperate embrace.

  Her skirts fanned out across his legs. Her head lolled against his shoulder.

  He pressed his ear to her lips, much as he had done that cold autumn night so many years ago, when his mother had been thrown from the pitching carriage before it tumbled off the embankment to the unforgiving river below. He’d reached his mother too late. He hadn’t been able to reach his father at all.

  Unlike the ghosts who haunted his nightmares, Miss Pemberton was not yet a corpse. Her breaths were faint, shallow, uneven. But at least she breathed.

  “Miss Pemberton,” Gavin whispered, his nose brushing against hers. “Miss Pemberton, wake up.”

  She did not.

  He held her, hoping to warm her with his body, to share his very breath.

  Her eyes flew open. They both stifled screams. Gavin jerked his head back with an odd, choking sort of laugh. She stared at him with panicked eyes.

  “L—Lioncroft?” she managed, her voice raw and unsteady. Her pupils dilated, then contracted. Her breath came stronger. “I mean…Mr. Lioncroft,” she corrected weakly, color returning to her pale cheeks.

  “Mister, hell. After that, call me Gavin.” He pulled her to him in a sudden, crushing hug. “Thank you, thank you, thank you for not dying. I don’t know what I would’ve done.”

  His cravat muffled her reply, but he thought he heard her say, “Thank you for not allowing my death.”

  As if he’d had any control over whatever the hell had just happened.

  Once he convinced his arms to loosen their grip on the trembling woman in his lap, Gavin leaned back against the window and fixed Miss Pemberton with his most dangerous glare.

  “What,” he demanded, “was that?”

  Wariness reentered her eyes. “Nothing. Nothing.”

  “Don’t insult me.”

  “I don’t mean to. It’s…complicated. I don’t know what to tell you.”

  “Tell me everything.” He fought the urge to shake her again. “For God’s sake, woman, I thought you were going to die.”

  Rather than smile or call him melodramatic, she shivered in his arms.

  “Me, too,” she whispered.

  The admission did nothing to calm his frayed nerves.

  “Well?” he said, when Miss Pemberton showed no signs of explaining further.

  “Well,” she echoed softly. Her gaze slid toward the body on the bed. “He was definitely murdered. I don’t know about the blow to his head, but someone…someone smothered Lord Heatherbrook. With a pillow.” Her gaze snapped back to Gavin, her eyes round and huge. “He couldn’t breathe.”

  Her breath hitched again, as if in remembrance. Her limbs twitched. Gavin pulled her closer, so that he leaned against the cold glass of the windowpane and she nestled atop the wrinkled linen of his shirt and the crumpled pillow of his cravat.

  Was she insane? Was he insane for half-believing her?

  Half-believing her, hell. After what he had witnessed, he absolutely believed her. He remained unconvinced God whispered the secret into her ear, but no skill at playacting could slow her heart to a standstill, render her lungs incapable of motion, and leech the pallor of death into her cold skin.

  Whatever had just happened with Miss Pemberton, he believed Heatherbrook had been asphyxiated. Gavin cast his own fleeting glance toward the bed. So much for his hopes of death by natural causes. Someone suffocated the sanctimonious bastard with his own pillow. Not a crime in Gavin’s book, except for one thing.

  Gavin was still the primary suspect.

  Chapter 14

  Miss Pemberton’s breathing had calmed, her limbs were now warm and steady. Her gaze still fixed on his. She seemed to be awaiting a response.

  “All I know,” Gavin said at last, “is that you didn’t get that news from God.”

  She shoved his arms, knocking them from their loose hug.

  “But I believe you,” he said softly.

  She paused in the act of rising from his lap. The tight muscles of her bottom still perched on his thigh, as though she were one heartbeat from taking flight. She turned, slowly, her parted lips mere inches from his. “You do?”

  “I do.”

  Before he could say more, a gasp and a chuckle clashed in the corridor. Dread encasing his stomach, he dragged his gaze to the doorway at the source of the noise.

  The gasp came from his sister, the chuckle from Edmund.

  “Guess the Stanton chit was right, eh, Lioncroft?” Edmund wiggled thick eyebrows. “Reckon we should’ve sent up a chaperone after all. What happened to the army of maidservants? They defect?”

  With a strangled cry, Miss Pemberton leapt from Gavin’s lap and staggered forward. She glared at Edmund over her shoulder as she found herself trapped between two pairs of curious eyes, a murder victim, and the suspected killer lounging across the window seat.

  “Don’t be a bore, Edmund.” Lioncroft infused his voice with as much disinterest as he could affect. “As any young lady might do faced with mortality, Miss Pemberton merely fainted. I couldn’t very well lay her next to him until she recovered, so I made do with the window seat.”

  Edmund snorted, retrieved a silver flask from his pocket, and saluted Gavin with it.

  Rose shook her head. “Miss Pemberton, I’m not sure you realize…” She swallowed and pierced Gavin with her gaze. “I just came to see… to see that he was still dead. That I hadn’t imagined it.”

  Edmund smirked. “And instead, we came across you. God impart any good gossip before you wound up in Lioncroft’s lap, Miss Pemberton?”

  “Edmund!” Rose snapped, her face draining of color. “Enough.”

  She pushed past him, striding forward until she reached the foot of the bed.

  Miss Pemberton closed her eyes. She breathed slowly, deeply, as if to do so required every bit of her concentration. When her eyes reopened, she focused them on Edmund.

  “Yes,” she answered, one hand on the mattress as if for balance. “He did.”

  Edmund choked on a mouthful of whisky. From the shocked expression on his face, Gavin half-expected him to expire of apoplexy.

  “What?” Edmund staggered against the doorframe. “What did He say?”

  Miss Pemberton trembled slightly, as if her limbs were not quite ready to hold her upright again.

  Gavin rose from the window seat. “Leave her alone.”

  Edmund tipped back his flask with a shrug. Miss Pemberton glanced at the bed, winced, swayed. Gavin leapt forward.

  Rose reached out one hand to steady her. “Ignore Edmund. He’s a drunk and a fool. You look—”

  But the moment Rose’s bare fingertips brushed against Miss Pemberton’s still ungloved wrist, Miss Pemberton dropped to the floor in a dead faint.

  * * *

  Evangeline awoke in her windowless bedchamber with the worst headache of her life.

  A low fire crackled in the hearth, filling the room with flickering light and the faint stench of burning lo
gs.

  Anything but the scent of death.

  Never again. So help her, she’d never step near that cursed chamber again. Let Lady Stanton do her worst. Evangeline far preferred the poverty of life on the street to death by the fickle hand of her dark Gift. Was that why Mama made her swear to always use her talent to help those in need? Because the possessor of the Gift was doomed to a short life of violence, loneliness, and betrayal? Her heart twisted in grief over the loss of her mother.

  Not for the first time, Evangeline wished she were a typical girl from a typical family. Even if her family were atypical, they’d at least be atypical in a typical way.

  Like Susan, whose mother was determined to matchmake her to the first available bachelor. Susan, whose dearest desire was to escape her mother.

  Susan, who…was seated before Evangeline’s fire, flipping the pages of a small book.

  Evangeline no longer questioned Susan’s presence in her room, but she couldn’t help but wonder how Susan had managed to pry a real book from the false shelves.

  “What are you reading?” Evangeline croaked. She grimaced, swallowed, tried again. “What are you reading?”

  The book tumbled from Susan’s fingers. “You’re awake! Oh. This?” Susan’s head dipped as she bent to retrieve the fallen book. “De Re Metallica, a hideously boring treatise on the history of metallurgy in the sixteenth century. You would know better than me. Lioncroft says you dropped it by accident.” Susan made a face. “I’d drop it, too. Into the nearest river.”

  Evangeline bit back a laugh. The “novel” she’d filched from the library was a treatise on metallurgy? Mr. Lioncroft was no doubt as confused by her selection as Susan was, although it was kind of him to bring it by.

  Kind. Kindness wasn’t a quality she suspected the average murderer to possess. Nor was empathy or thoughtfulness. Although, from the first, Mr. Lioncroft had been anything but average. She would’ve died right along with the earl had he not been there to save her. He’d offered comfort. Ordered her to breathe. Bade her speak his name.