by Anne Mallory
His father had been the personal butler to Lord Dentry. She put her hand over her mouth as bile rose to hit the back of her tongue.
“I’ll kill her.”
“Of course. That will be perfect.” Jeremy’s sarcasm hardly reached her, as horrified and sick as she felt. The reality of the situation, of Gabriel being the man in the book, really hitting her.
“Out of all of them, she is the only one that remains.”
“She never touched me. We left a week later. You succeeded.” Jeremy sounded tired, bitter. “You remained the buffer, took all of the pain. Left me free.”
“It should never have occurred in the first place.” The butler’s voice was filled with self-loathing.
“It did. None of this matters now.” Gabriel cursed fluently. Creatively. A string of obscenities that lasted a good ten seconds. “And now, I have to. A nightmare come true.”
“Have to what?”
“Alcroft, I need you to arrange an invite to the Dentry estate.”
“What?”
“The bitch is the obvious next target.”
“And you are going to save her?”
Gabriel remained silent. She felt the shock of the entire room. She wished she could see Gabriel’s face.
“Gabriel, you can’t possibly—” Jeremy started.
“I’m coming with you,” Alcroft said.
“No. I need you to stay here. To delay the trial. Marietta’s brother”—her vision filmed over at his words—“needs another day. Possibly two. Jeremy, I need you to help Alcroft.”
“But—”
“I am accompanying you, Gabriel.” Marietta felt the stillness in the air at the butler’s pronouncement. “You don’t need Alcroft to do a thing to get you onto the estate. You only need me.”
“N—”
“And I will not accept your refusal. Once is quite enough in a parent’s life to leave a child at mercy.”
“I’m hardly a child. Besides, I’ve seen the bitch since, more than once.”
“Nevertheless, you are not traveling without me.”
Another long silence.
“As you wish.” Gabriel’s voice was subdued, neutral.
Marietta heard the scrape of chairs, the footsteps across the floor. She ran back to the kitchen.
Alcroft appeared in the door a few moments later, surprise on his face to see her. “Miss Winters.”
Jeremy appeared behind him. “Marietta, we thought you’d left.”
She could hear the front door close. Gabriel and his father leaving on their task. To see the woman who had spearheaded the club. To save the woman who had abused him.
“No.” She met Jeremy’s eyes. “Tell me how I can help.”
Chapter 18
“I could hardly believe my ears, but here you are.”
Gabriel said nothing as the blond, willowy woman walked through the door. Icy, amused eyes took him in from tip to stern.
“You look as delicious as the last time I saw you, Gabriel. What has it been, a year now?”
“About.”
“Still as vocal as always.” She laughed lightly as she stroked a hand along the brocade of a chair.
He watched her, leaning lazily against the wall, his indolent posture at odds with his heightened alertness. All emotions concerning Marietta pushed far below the surface—too easily used as weapons otherwise. “I see no reason to be loquacious with you.”
“Oh, Gabriel.” She walked to him. “Is that any way to speak to an old friend?”
“You are hardly a friend, Melissande.”
“Mmmm…come, have a seat.”
He waited for her to move toward the desk before he pushed away from the wall. A few steps before she reached her desk she pivoted, smoothly turning into him, close enough to touch. He repressed the urge to clap at her strategy.
“Have you grown, Gabriel, since we last met?”
“Met? Is that your way of saying the last time you crawled into my town house, begging for me to pay you some attention?”
A laugh bubbled past her lips, her eyes glittering and focused. “You were always my favorite, Gabriel.”
Smarmy bitch.
“The only one to give me a marvelous chase.”
“I don’t recall there being much of a chase.”
“Chasing doesn’t always mean in the physical sense.” She tapped a long perfect finger against a button on his shirt. “Much too plebeian. No, the emotional element has always been more satisfying. The true test of character—who breaks last.”
She moved to circle him. He walked forward and sat behind her desk, in her chair. He idly picked up a handful of documents, then put his feet on the edge.
He could see her lips pucker. She strode to the desk and sat in the chair on the other side. “I’ve taught you well, Gabriel.”
“How to be a conniving bitch? Well, I can’t let you take full credit. But have at it, please.” He waved a hand over the papers.
“Though your manners have fallen.”
“What are a few emotional acts of violence among friends, really?”
Her smile was tight. “Our little avenging angel.”
He forced his muscles to relax. Her smile turned to satisfaction.
“You really did live up to the name. Ruined Celeste, Jane, and Abigail. Drove Tasia to drink. Ran Amanda out of the city. I’ll bet it has always grated that you have been unable to ruin me.”
She settled back in her guest chair, as if the hard back and seat were made of velvet instead of the purposely bony frame she favored—anything to keep her guests uncomfortable. “The coup de grace. The deviless. I was always flattered by the names you chose to call me. Drove Celeste crazy that you were angrier at me, even angrier at Abigail. Celeste always tried to think up new tortures to make you love her more.” She smiled fondly. “Celeste was always a bit mad.”
“She wasn’t the only one, was she?” He smiled coldly and flipped through the papers fisted in his hands. Bills, correspondence. Ah, a half-finished note to someone named Tom. He would have to investigate to see who Tom was—and how old he was. Damn his missing investigator. Too long missing for it to be a coincidence.
Her smile continued its sunny path. “No, I don’t believe she was. Jane is still a half step from Bedlam.”
“Jane is firmly six feet in the dirt.”
Her face froze, then recovered. “Gabriel, dear, have you been naughty?” Her eyes quickly scanned the desk.
He raised a brow. “Looking for something, Melissande?”
She smoothed a hand along the stomach of her dress, her figure impeccable, as it had always been. “Not at all.”
“No weapon with which to defend yourself? Do you think your viper tongue will save you?”
At one time he would have fiercely celebrated the look of unease that crossed her face. Now he was tired. And angry.
“I’ll bet you haven’t heard from Celeste in a while? Or Amanda. Or dear, dear Abigail.”
“What have you been up to, Gabriel? Truly living up to your name, are we? And here I thought you had always found it distasteful, despite your proclivities to help wretched souls too poor and desperate to deserve a second thought otherwise.”
He crossed his ankles on the desk. “My, my, quite out of the gossip here, aren’t you, Lady Dentry? Anastasia even made the headlines in London.” He dragged his heels across the documents on her desk, skewing them as he halfheartedly searched. “Not even a recent paper? Has Lord Dentry finally caught on to you?”
“You wish it were so, Gabriel.” She smoothed her hair, and he saw her surreptitiously glance around the room for something to aid her. She was far from stupid, and far, far from helpless despite her delicate looks and wide eyes. “My husband cares more for his political intrigues than his wife. He wouldn’t notice if I chose to sleep my way through the ranks of the ton.”
“You mean you haven’t?” He feigned shock. “I’m disappointed.”
She leaned forward. “Only the young m
en, Gabriel. Though I will always make an exception for you. I hate to admit it to you, but you are unparalleled.” He watched how she leaned in, cocking her head just so, showing her best side.
Nausea stirred in him. He recognized that move. He had done it himself, just as he’d learned how to circle someone else and counter being circled. Something soul deep sickened at the realization. Other characteristics and gestures that he could identify marched through his head.
“You are next on the list, Lady Dentry.”
Her fingers gripped the arm of her chair, though she was trying to project ease. “I assume that is why you are here, Gabriel. You always did have such a flair for the dramatic.”
“I need the names of all the men who have received your ‘favor’ and perhaps been unhappy about it.”
She froze. Her fingers uncurled. “Dear Gabriel.” She laughed, relief flowing in her breezy voice. “You are here to save me. Oh how wonderful. The irony, the pain. Magnificent. Poor Abigail. Dead, you say? Pity. She would have reveled.”
It took everything he had to sit in the chair. To wait her out. He could leave her to it. Leave her to her much deserved death.
“A list, Lady Dentry.”
She leaned back, the relief strengthening her, and her innate confidence showing through. “Oh, but now that you are here and staying with me, we must renew our acquaintance. We have all the time in the world, Gabriel.”
He tossed the papers on the desk. “You have ten minutes. Then I walk out the door. I couldn’t care less if you live or if you die.”
She raised a brow. “Then you wouldn’t be here.”
“I’m not here for you.”
She smiled. “Do you know that out of all the young men we took under our wings, you were one of the few that didn’t return.”
“Somehow I doubt that.”
“Some returned for more, slaves to our plans, two returned just so they could take their lives here. As some sort of statement. A deterrent to us? To me?” She waved a hand. “So messy, really. And Lord Dentry was not pleased.”
“He knew?”
“Only that they stretched their necks, nothing more.” She motioned to the desk. “And correspondence? I receive it by the handful from others.”
He noticed an unopened stack in the corner and looked for an opener.
She waved. “My letter opener has been missing since last summer. I make Tom come in and open my mail.” Her mouth curved. “The best thing, losing that opener. You should see what he can do with his tongue. Oh, don’t look that way, Gabriel, Tom is twenty-two, plenty old enough to satisfy your absurd rules.”
He split the top missive with his finger.
“Your brother is nearing that age, is he not? Jeremy was always so promising.”
“You are nothing if not clever, Melissande,” he said calmly. “Say another word about Jeremy, and I will complete the Middlesex murderer’s final task for him.”
He read the first line of the note from some fawning admirer, expecting her to retort. When she didn’t, he looked up. Her face had gone white. A sliver of unease traveled down his spine. He finished reading the note, and by the time he was through, she had regained some of her color.
Her fingers shook as she ran a hand along the side of her hair, smoothing the imaginary escaped tendrils back into place. “What type of list did you say you needed?”
He twirled a quill and leaned back. “So compliant, all of a sudden? You’ll make me think you cowed. Melissande Dentry, cowed.”
“Mind your manners, Gabriel,” she said calmly, with obviously more calm than she felt.
“Melissande, tut tut. You don’t hold the power here.”
“Even if you don’t want your past uncovered?”
“I rebuffed your blackmail attempt at age twenty when you found me. It will hardly work now. I can simply play your game. I took what you so kindly ‘offered.’ A sixteen-year-old boy? Who would believe otherwise?” The bitterness and disgust made him twitch, and he moved his feet to the right. He smiled, a stock smile that he had learned from the master, one full of innuendo and guile. “Easy enough to make you the deviant in this story. Especially since all of your co-conspirators are dead.”
“Our journals—”
He idly twirled the quill again, not feeling the ease he was trying to project. “There is only yours left. And I wonder what it shows? No doubt it is no credit to you. There is little that could be, if it is of your creation.”
Her lips tightened. Fear and anger making her deceivingly lovely face twist into petulant lines.
He tossed the quill on the desk. “I grow tired of this. Whatever your ignorance of the fates of your ‘friends,’ you have obviously heard of the Middlesex murderer, judging by your reaction. I’ve never seen you so scared, Lady Dentry.”
“I’m sure you are enjoying the moment, Gabriel.”
He tipped his head back. “It would surely behoove you to think so.”
The dark thought continued to swirl in his mind that he was doing exactly what Marietta had accused him of—using the tricks he hated. “Now give me the list.”
She picked up the quill and dipped it. “I was so disappointed when we returned from London and you had disappeared. The club was never quite the same.”
“Good.”
“Your father was never the same either.”
He said nothing.
“I always suspected he helped you and your brother leave. I punished him for it. I told you that I would.”
“He accepted the consequences.” Gabriel remembered their conversation. His father’s anguish. His own mortification and anger, pushed onto a new target. There was still a part of him horrified that he hadn’t stayed and saved his father the pain. One victim to take the place of more.
“He was the one person I couldn’t directly touch.” She smiled humorlessly at his surprise. “A bit of a bluff on my part. Your father was too close to my husband. Relied on far more than I,” she said bitterly. “Still, I made things…uncomfortable for him. I’m quite good at that.”
Gabriel slit the next note in her stack with his finger, not answering.
“You were always so fun. Deporting yourself like royalty. Full of knowledge garnered from your mother and with all the secrets of your father. Running around the estate with all of your friends, from low to high, and every female enraptured by you. A ravishing prince. I’ve seen no one like you since.”
He continued to read. He knew that if there was one thing Melissande hated, it was being ignored. Her husband had never learned that truth, and therefore never learned why his luck changed whenever he slighted her.
“How is dear John? I haven’t seen him in nearly a year. Still thick as thieves, you two? A miracle you were able to separate.”
He could see that she was reaching the end of her tether, and decided to throw her a crumb. It was never wise to bait a dangerous animal. They had the tendency to find a way to bite you through the cage. “John is well. Ask him yourself.”
“Away at school while you were stuck here under my thumb. Must have been hard.” She continued writing. “Dentry’s ward. As untouchable as your father.”
John had been the lucky one. “With so many servants and village boys to choose from, I’m sure you didn’t suffer.”
“Mmmm. So who is the murderer?” She perked up a bit, either at the subject change or that he was responding to her.
“And I would know this, how?”
“Because you know everything, Gabriel.”
Not everything. He had obviously not even known himself. “Why would I ask for a list?”
“Morbid curiosity? A way to help my poor victims?”
“I’m terrible at sympathy. I did what I could by stopping your club. While lacking in sympathy, I’m quite good at prevention and revenge.”
“Lacking in sympathy? With all those pathetic souls you help? It’s terribly amusing. Do you think you can compensate? Do you find peace? I hope not. All my hard work gone to wa
ste.” Her eyes glittered. “My favorite creation destroyed. It would break my heart.”
“You give yourself too much credit. Abigail was far more terrifying.”
He watched the spark go through her eyes. “You are a terrible liar, Gabriel. But I will forgive you.”
“I feel indisposed to do the same.”
“Pity.” She pushed the paper across the desk. “There is your list. Woefully short. Most of the victims, as you deem them, quite enjoyed themselves.”
“Especially the ones with rope burns across their necks.” He scraped the list from the desk. “A pleasure, as always.”
“You are leaving? You aren’t staying here to protect me?”
Desperate for company as always, in the absence of her husband’s regard.
He lifted a brow. “Prevention, Lady Dentry. Other than that, you are on your own. Perhaps you should inform your husband of the circumstances?”
Her lips squished together.
“No? I bid you adieu.”
He found his father in the kitchen, chatting with the servants. He hadn’t wanted to stay out of the confrontation, but Gabriel had refused him. It would have been a show of weakness to have been accompanied. Unacceptable.
His father didn’t ask how he was, but he rested a hand briefly on his back as they walked, dropping it just as quickly. Still, the gesture filled Gabriel with warmth and shame. That he had blamed his father at all…
“What did you find, Gabriel?”
Names, familiar and unfamiliar, leapt up as he passed the list. There were a lot of things to do and people to contact, and not much time in which to do so.
“Two of these men were in London last I knew,” his father said. “Lord Dentry will be back tomorrow. Let me talk to him.”
His father still retained a relationship with the man.
Gabriel hesitated. Bringing in Dentry would complicate matters. “Very well.”
Their trip back to London was mostly silent, but comfortable for the first time in a long while. They usually went through bouts of cordiality and strife.
His father separated from him as they reached the drive. “I will make inquiries into these two.”
“I will see you back here later.”
