by Amanda Quick
She realized vaguely that he was unfastening his own trousers. Then she felt the hard evidence of his fierce arousal pressing against the inside of her leg.
She reached down and curled her fingers around his heavy length. He whispered something hot and dark and dangerous in her ear. She squeezed him gently.
He sucked in a deep breath.
Bending her head, she nipped his bare shoulder with her teeth.
A shudder went through him.
“Two can play at that game,” he warned.
He did astonishing things with his hand. She had to fight for breath. The delicious tension was beyond bearing now.
Without warning the gathering storm within her unleashed itself in dazzling waves of sensation.
She would have cried out with pleasure but before the sound could emerge from her lips, Gabriel pulled her down firmly, inexorably, onto his heavy erection. He filled her in a single, surging thrust.
She had been prepared for pain similar to what she had experienced the first time, but there was none. Only an exciting tightness that intensified the last fading pulses of her release.
All of her senses reacted to the glorious shock of the physical and psychical connection. She did not even have to concentrate to see the dark light of Gabriel’s aura flaring in the confines of the cab. It flooded the small space, infused with the energy of her own aura, creating a stunning, nerve-shattering intimacy.
When he climaxed a short time later the fierce, invisible fires leaped even higher. She felt rather than heard the beginnings of Gabriel’s exultant roar. It started as a low rumble in his chest. She realized that even though the driver of the carriage probably lacked the paranormal senses needed to perceive a flaring aura, his hearing was very likely quite sound.
In the nick of time she managed to cover Gabriel’s mouth with her own. The roar became a muffled growl of triumph and masculine satisfaction.
S OME TIME LATER she stirred in his arms. The sound of the carriage wheels and the steady clop of hooves assured her that they were still safely enclosed in the magic world inside the cab.
Gabriel, who had been reclining in the corner of the seat with the air of a lion well satiated after a successful hunt, reached out to raise a curtain. Gaslights glowed in the fog.
“We are passing the cemetery. We will soon be in Sutton Lane,” he observed.
It dawned on her that the only thing she had on was the white shirt. Panic snapped through her.
“Good heavens,” she yelped. “We cannot arrive at the front door in this condition.”
She extricated herself from his grasp, dove for the opposite seat and scrambled madly to collect her clothes.
It wasn’t easy donning a man’s attire in the cramped darkness of the carriage. Gabriel put his own clothes back together with a few practiced moves and then sat back to watch her struggles with interest.
After a moment or two of watching her fight with her bow tie, he reached out to knot it for her.
“Allow me to assist you, Mrs. Jones,” he said.
The emphasis on her fictional name brought her head up sharply.
“Gabriel—” she began, with absolutely no notion of what she was going to say next.
“We will talk about this in the morning,” he said.
His voice was oddly gentle but the words were a command, not a suggestion. A spark of anger burned away the anxiety she had been experiencing at the thought of arriving home half undressed.
“I do hope you are not going to fret about what has happened between us,” she said, stuffing her hair up under her hat. “It would ruin everything if you did.”
“I beg your pardon?”
She sighed. “You must know that when we were at Arcane House, I did my best to seduce you.”
“Yes, and you were quite brilliant at the business, if I may say so. I enjoyed the experience immensely.”
She knew she was blushing furiously.
“Yes, well, what I am trying to say is that while we were together at Arcane House I deliberately plotted to lure you into a night of illicit passion.”
“Your point?”
“My point being that things were different there.”
“Different?”
“We were two people alone together in a remote, secluded place.”
“Except for the servants,” he said.
She frowned. “Except for the servants, of course. But they were so discreet.” She was starting to ramble. This was dreadful. “It was as though we had been cast adrift on a tropical island.”
“I don’t recall any palm trees.”
She ignored that. “I explained to you that for that brief interlude I was free for the first time in my life. I did not have to worry about creating a scandal. I did not have to be concerned with shocking my elderly aunt or setting a poor example for my sister and brother. Arcane House was a place and a time that seemed to exist in another dimension, one that was far removed from the real world. You and I were the only people in that other realm.”
“Except for the servants.”
“Well, yes.”
“About the palm trees that I can’t quite seem to recall.”
“You are not taking this seriously, are you?”
“Should I?”
“Yes, this is extremely important.” She was growing more annoyed by the moment. “What I am trying to say is that tonight was a similar experience.”
“I’m not sure about that. For starters there were no palm trees.”
“Forget the damned palm trees. I am trying to explain that what happened at Arcane House and what happened in this carriage tonight are akin to the fleeting vapors of a dream, gone by dawn and not to be recalled in the light of day.”
“That all sounds very poetic, my sweet, but what the devil does it mean?”
“It means,” she said coldly, “that we will not discuss this matter any further. Is that understood?”
The carriage rumbled to a halt. Venetia seized the stylish walking stick and turned quickly to peer out the window.
There was a small but distinct thud.
Gabriel cleared his throat. “You might want to watch where you swing that stick.”
She realized that in her nervous agitation she had accidentally struck his leg.
“I beg your pardon,” she said, utterly mortified.
He rubbed his knee with one hand and opened the door with the other. “No need to be concerned. I doubt it will result in anything more than a slight limp.”
Red-faced, she followed him out of the carriage and hurried up the steps. Gabriel paused to toss some coins to the driver.
When she opened the door with her key she was relieved to discover that the rest of the household was abed. The very last thing she wanted to do tonight was confront her family and their questions about what she had discovered at the Janus Club. She needed time to recover her composure. A good night’s rest would put things to rights.
The sconce in the front hall had been turned down low. She saw an envelope on the table and picked it up. It was addressed to Gabriel.
“This is for you,” she said, handing it to him.
“Thank you.” He closed the door, took the envelope and gave it a brief scrutiny. “It is from Montrose.”
“Perhaps he has finally discovered something of interest in the membership records.”
Gabriel ripped open the envelope and removed the note. He looked at it in silence for a few seconds.
“Well?” she prompted.
“It is written in one of the private codes used by members of the Arcane Society for personal correspondence. It will take me a while to decipher it. I’ll work on it tonight and let you know what it says at breakfast.”
“But if it is a coded message it must be something very important.”
“Not necessarily.” His mouth curved wryly as he pocketed the note. “Given the obsessively secretive nature of the majority of the society’s membership, virtually every message sent from one me
mber to another is encrypted. This note from Montrose is likely nothing more than a request to meet with me tomorrow to discuss his progress.”
“You will let me know immediately if it is important, won’t you?”
“Of course,” he said easily. “But now I think we should both take ourselves upstairs to bed. It has been a long, eventful day.”
“Yes, it has.” She started up the stairs, trying to think of something worldly to say. “I believe the evening was quite productive, though, don’t you?”
“In a variety of ways.”
The amused sensuality deepened her blush. Thank heavens the sconce on the landing had been turned down.
“I was referring to the information that we garnered about Mrs. Fleming,” she said sternly.
“In that way, also,” he agreed.
She looked at him over her shoulder. “One cannot help but wonder what sort of secret Mr. Pierce’s friend possessed.”
“Probably best that we never learn the answer to that,” Gabriel said.
“You may be right.” She considered briefly and then shrugged. “Nevertheless, I think I can guess the mystery there.”
“You believe that the secret has something to do with the fact that Pierce and his friends belong to a club whose members are women who enjoy dressing up as men?” Gabriel sounded amused rather than shocked.
She whirled around, grasping the handrail. “You knew about the Janus Club?”
“Not until we got there,” he admitted. “But it wasn’t hard to figure out once we arrived that things were somewhat out of the ordinary.”
“But how—?”
“I told you, women smell different. Any male who finds himself surrounded by a large group of females, regardless of how they are dressed, is going to become aware of that fact sooner or later. I suspect the reverse is also true.”
“Hmm.” She pondered that briefly. “Did you know Harrow for a woman when you met her at the exhibition?”
“Yes.”
“You are far more perceptive than most,” she said. “Harrow has passed herself off as a gentleman in Society for some time now.”
“How did you come to meet her? Or perhaps I should say him.”
“I always speak of Harrow as a male.” She wrinkled her nose. “It is easier to keep his secret if I do that. To answer your question, he sought me out to commission a portrait shortly after I opened the gallery. He was one of my first clients, as a matter of fact.”
“I see.”
“In the course of the sitting I realized that he was a she, as it were. Harrow knew at once that I knew. I gave him my word that I would keep his secret. I don’t think he trusted me entirely at first, but after a while we became friends.”
“Harrow knows that you understand how to keep secrets.”
“Yes. He seems very intuitive that way.”
“I see,” Gabriel said again.
She frowned. “What is wrong?”
He shrugged. “I find it interesting that Harrow went to the trouble of seeking out a new, unknown photographer who had not yet caught the attention of Society.”
“I had already had a successful exhibition at Mr. Farley’s gallery,” she said, alarmed by the direction of his reasoning. “That is where Harrow first encountered my work. Really, sir, you cannot possibly suspect him of being involved in this affair of the formula.”
“At this moment I am inclined to suspect everyone.”
A strange chill went through her.
“Even me?” she asked uneasily.
He smiled. “I stand corrected. I should have said everyone except you.”
She allowed herself to relax slightly. “You must promise me that if you ever again encounter Harrow or Mr. Pierce or any of the other members of the club, you will not let on that you are aware of their secret world,” she said.
“I assure you, Venetia, I, too, know how to keep secrets.”
Something in the softly spoken words sent another disturbing frisson across her nerves. A warning or a promise? she wondered.
She stopped on the landing.
“Good night,” she said.
“Good night, Venetia. Sleep well.”
She hurried along the corridor to the sanctuary of her bedroom.
S OME TIME LATER she awoke quite suddenly in the way that one does when the sleeping mind registers a change in the atmosphere of a house. She lay quietly for a moment, listening intently.
Perhaps Amelia or Beatrice or Edward had gone down to the kitchen for a late-night snack.
She did not know what it was that made her shove the bedclothes aside and cross the cold floor to the window.
She was just in time to see the shadowy figure of a man drift, ghostlike, through the fog-bound garden. The moon was out but the swirling mist was too thick to allow her to see the iron gate that opened onto the alley. She certainly knew its general location, however, and she could tell that the man down below her window was moving toward it in a confident manner. He is prowling unerringly toward his goal as though he possesses the night-hunting senses of a jungle cat, she thought. As if he can literally see in the dark.
There was no need to concentrate to see his aura. She knew it was Gabriel.
A second or two later he disappeared out of the garden into the night.
Where was he going at this hour, and why had he left the house in such a stealthy manner? Something to do with the message from Montrose, she thought.
Gabriel’s words came back to her. I assure you, Venetia, I, too, know how to keep secrets.
29
GABRIEL DESCENDED FROM the hansom and paid the driver. He waited until the vehicle had disappeared into the fog before he went back to the corner, entered the small park and stopped in the dense shadows of some trees.
He stood there for a time, watching the street. There was very little traffic at this hour in this quiet neighborhood. The gas lamps illuminated small circles of fog in front of each doorway but they offered little useful light.
When he was certain that he was not being followed, he left the park and walked through the mist to the entrance of the alley.
Moving into the narrow passage was like entering a mysterious small-scale jungle. The night and the fog were heavier here. A rush of small, scurrying sounds erupted as the local predators and prey got out of his way. Strange odors fouled the atmosphere.
He walked carefully, in part to avoid the echo of his own boot steps but also to be certain that he did not lose his footing in the noxious brew of rotting garbage that littered his path.
Mentally he counted off the iron gates until he came to the one in the middle of the row, the one that marked Montrose’s address.
He studied the windows. All but one were dark. The single window that was illuminated was upstairs and covered by a curtain. If it had not been for a thin crack in the drapes, it, too, would have appeared unlit. Montrose’s study.
As he watched, he saw the light shift subtly at the edge of the curtain.
He thought about the message that had been waiting for him in the hall at Sutton Lane. It had taken him a few minutes in the privacy of his attic room to decipher it. By the time he had finished the task, his psychical senses, already aroused from the heated lovemaking in the carriage, were in full sail.
I have come across some disturbing information. I think it best that we meet as soon as possible. Please come to my address at your earliest convenience, regardless of the hour. I advise you not to tell anyone whom you are meeting. It would be best for all concerned if you were not seen in my street. Use the garden entrance.
M.
Just as well he had not deciphered the note in front of Venetia, Gabriel thought. She was far too perceptive. He might have given away the secretive nature of the message, even if he had managed to keep the details to himself. She would have noticed his concern and immediately plied him with questions. Just to be on the safe side, he had waited until he was reasonably certain that she was asleep before making his way
out the back door.
He felt around the top of the gate, searching for the latch. His fingers brushed against cold iron.
Energy burned through his palm and skittered erratically across his paranormal senses. The shock of sensation shafted through him. The spoor was very fresh.
Someone intent on cold-blooded violence had passed through this gate quite recently. His hunting instincts thrilled to the challenge.
When he was relatively certain that he had all of his senses back under control he took his pistol out of his pocket and grasped the latch a second time.
The gate opened, squeaking only a little on its hinges. Pistol in hand, he slipped into the garden.
The light shifted again in the single illuminated window upstairs. He looked up just in time to see the lamp go out inside the study.
If that was the killer moving around up there, it was possible that Montrose was already dead. The villain would no doubt leave by the back door. The logical thing to do was to wait for him to exit the house and try to seize him by surprise when he emerged.
But what if the monster had not yet completed his mission? What if Montrose was alive? Perhaps there was still time.
Gabriel removed his boots and braced himself for the jolt he knew was coming. He put his hand cautiously on the knob of the kitchen door.
This time he was ready for the paranormal burn. The only effect it had on his psychical senses was to heighten them. The desire to hunt was as strong in him now as the desire to make love to Venetia had been earlier in the evening.
The door was unlocked. He opened it very slowly, praying that there would be no loud groan from the hinges.
In spite of his best efforts, there was a faint squeak but he doubted that anyone upstairs with normal hearing would have caught the soft sound.
He stood listening for a moment. There was no telltale rush of footsteps or creak of floorboards overhead. More important, there was none of the unmistakable taint of recent death. With luck, that meant that Montrose was still alive.
At this end of the hall there was only deep night. But when he looked toward the opposite end he could see the pale glow of the streetlamps filtering through the narrow panes of glass that bordered the front door. The main staircase would be at that end of the hall, but to use it, he would have to put himself into the weak light that radiated through the glass. No sense making a target of himself, he thought.
