Well, Millie thought as she felt a wet cloth roughly swipe at her bare thighs before her dress was tossed back over her flanks. All in all that wasn’t … so bad. A bit of a pinch, is all, maybe a tearing sensation, but she’d experienced more pain removing a fake mustache and beard a while back when they’d accidentally used too much adhesive. That had brought tears spilling and her skin had been raw for an entire day. This didn’t even register on that scale.
The painful part, at least, was over rather quickly. Somehow, Millie had been under the impression that the actual act, itself, lasted quite a while. In fact, she was experiencing a troubling sense of unfulfillment.
Kissing Argent had caused an ache to bloom between her legs, a moist, throbbing, sweet sort of insistence that hadn’t yet subsided. His hunger, his need, even his foul language had created an answering call from inside her that she hadn’t at all expected.
From what she’d gleaned from the whispers of the other actresses and the bawdy scenes in performances, this business of intercourse was supposed to culminate in some sort of … climax. A rhythmic sort of affair with a very vocal to do at the end. She’d also heard that a certain pride came from bringing a man to his completion quickly, because it meant your skills as a lover were that much more advanced.
Millie decided to be proud. Her end of the bargain was complete, and she’d sealed the contract with her body. Nothing to it, really. She couldn’t even remember why she’d been so worried about it. Yawning, she remained prostrate on the fluffy counterpane for another moment, wondering what the silent assassin was about.
“Do you mind if I … can I sit up now?”
He said nothing. Had he left? The man moved about silent as a ghost, and could very well have slithered away without a word.
He’d better not have done.
Pushing herself upright, Millie turned to perch on the edge of the bed and came face-to-face with brilliant blue flame in the form of the wrath burning in Argent’s eyes.
He towered over her, wide as a Titan and just as dangerous, fists clenching and unclenching at his sides.
Drat. He knew.
“I could kill you,” he murmured through a tight jaw.
Millie blinked, offering him a charming smile, doing her best to diffuse a potentially explosive situation. “A man in your line of work really shouldn’t be joking about that sort of thing.”
He stepped forward, his leg pressing into the folds of her skirt, but he didn’t touch her, not yet. “You think I’m joking?”
“I don’t see what you’re so—”
“That boy is not your son,” he growled. “You lied to me!”
Millie narrowed her eyes, forgetting any thoughts about charm. “Jakub is my son.”
“You must think me an ignorant fool; you didn’t expect me to notice your virginity? You didn’t think I’d see the blood?”
“I didn’t think you’d care.”
The blue flames in his eyes sputtered and died, and his entire body turned to stone.
Millie stood and thrust her jaw forward, proving that it could be just as obstinate as his. That her eyes could contain as much fire as his could ice.
To her surprise, he retreated, stalking to the washbasin and bracing both hands on it, looking down into the sullied water there. She didn’t think he realized that she could see his face in the mirror. That the indecision and doubt broke through his marble façade, and behind it, something altogether bleaker shone through.
Millie stepped forward. “For the last five years I’ve provided a home for Jakub. I’ve loved him, I’ve cleaned up after him, I’ve stayed awake all night cooling his fever and washing his little body with my tears of worry. I assuage his fears, and I applaud his accomplishments. When there was little to eat, I went hungry so he would grow strong. I gave you my…” She paused, emotion clogging her throat and brimming in her eyes. “That. Boy. Is. My. Son.” She jammed a finger toward the door in the direction of the room where Jakub slept. “And I am his mother. And God can damn the bastard to hell who says any different.”
Lord, but what they’d just done had left her raw. Not her body so much as her heart. This was something she’d not expected. Something she’d failed to prepare for. She felt fragile in a way she’d never experienced, and for no logical reason. How dare he barter for sex and then punish her for giving him what he wanted? Just what did he think she owed him now?
“You should have told me.” He lifted his head as though it weighed a thousand stone, his accusatory gaze finding her through the mirror.
“I’m sorry I wasn’t a hundred percent honest with you from the beginning, Mr. Bentley Drummle,” she spat. “But up until you came into my life, this secret has kept us safe. And I’ve done what I had to to keep him safe.” Her voice broke. “To spare him the awful truth.”
Because the truth was too horrible. Too violent. She didn’t want Jakub to grow up afraid.
“That awful truth could be the key to this entire situation, have you ever thought of that?” He turned to lean against the heavy basin, crossing his arms over his massive chest, his shirtsleeve still rolled up above his bandage.
“I’ve thought of little else.” Millie focused on that bandage, not realizing she sat back down until the bed caught her. She studied the skin of his arm, freckled beneath light, copper-colored hair that didn’t quite match the dark auburn locks he’d swept out of his eyes. “But who have I to trust in this world? To confide in…? You?”
This time it was she who couldn’t bring herself to look him in the eyes, and so she stared at that arm, wondering if the freckles were caused by his time in the sun as he worked on the railway. An innocent boy doing a convict’s work.
“Tell me,” he ordered in a lower voice. “I’ll listen.”
It was more than she’d been offered from anyone else. “I hardly know where to start.” She sighed.
“Start with who gave birth to the boy down the hall.”
Millie nodded, her heart feeling very close to the surface of her chest, as though calling to anything sharp that would pierce it. It would take very little to break her at the moment, and she hoped that he couldn’t tell. The ruthless man leaning against the basin could do it without a thought.
Without remorse.
“My name is Millicent Karolina Lapinski,” she told his arm with an unblinking stare. “Agnes, Jakub’s birth mother, was my best friend in the world. She was born Agnes Mertenskya and she lived on the Polish side of Ripen Street in Whitechapel with me. We had strangely similar upbringings. My father died when I was young, hers abandoned them. My mother drank herself to death, hers took opium. We both had a handful of brothers, but she had two sisters, as well.”
Agnes’s face surfaced from the murky depths of the past, a ghost unavenged but not forgotten.
“We both left Whitechapel as soon as we could, and I forced her to join an acting company with me, even though she was painfully shy. We changed our names. I picked something I thought sounded Parisian and sophisticated. Agnes changed her last name to Miller, after the first man she fell in love with, who was the first of many to break her heart.”
Millie finally looked up into Argent’s enigmatic features. She’d never wished more fervently than she did now that she could see into someone’s heart. Read their thoughts. He gave her nothing, as usual. “You see, Mr. Argent, that is where Agnes and I differed. All she wanted was the love of a good man. And all I wanted was the love of the entire British empire, and I knew that I could not have both. I couldn’t allow myself liberties, or pregnancies, or marriages. So I never did. I remained unattainable, and I knew that would make me a star.”
A mirthless sound escaped her throat. “Compared to the struggle of fighting for my son’s life, I realize how trite all of that seems now. But … Jakub has changed everything.
“Agnes never told me who Jakub’s father was. Only that she loved him, and was convinced that he loved her. She said there were circumstances, ones she would never share with me, that kept them apart. I knew when she would go and meet with him because she would leave Jakub with me for the evening, and then she was melancholy for days after.
“One afternoon, when Jakub was four years old, she gave me a letter and asked me not to read it, but to keep it safe. She told me the letter was from Jakub’s father, that he finally was leaving his childless wife and legitimizing Jakub as his heir. I’d never seen her so happy, so delirious with hope. She kissed Jakub and me, and left him with me for the evening. She told me that she and his father were meeting to plan their future, that she would tell me everything when she returned but…” A catch of emotion broke her voice.
“She never came back.” Argent said what she could not.
Millie could feel her face crumple and hid it in her hands. “I was so angry with her that day because she’d taken my favorite pair of gloves. But I got them back when Chief Inspector Morley brought them to me, covered in … in her … blood. The gloves had my initials in them. They never found her body, only parts. Only … one part. Her womb. The place she’d carried dear Jakub for all those precious months. Cut out of her, like an animal. That’s when … when I knew he was in danger. I switched acting companies and made Jakub mine.” Her chest hitched on a few sobs, and her fingers caught a wave of tears. She thought she’d finished mourning for Agnes, but the pain and fear of losing her friend, the subsequent stress of five years of bringing up a child when she had no idea how to do so, broke upon her with the force of a building caving in. The weight was compounded by the near attack on Jakub this evening, her exhaustion, and the fact that she’d just given her virginity to a man and not three seconds later she was sobbing in front of him. Like a ninny.
“What if he’d been hurt tonight?” she wailed. “What if I’d been killed and he’d been taken God knows where? Who would have kept him safe? Who would have loved him if I was gone?”
Big hands cupped her elbows and lifted her to stand. “Stop this.” A cold but gentle command. “I—I don’t like to see your pain.”
She knew that about him, and her humiliation seemed to make her cry harder. “I can’t,” she said between hiccupping bursts of grief and fear.
“You and your son survived the night. I will ensure the safety of you both, as I vowed to do. Every threat to you will be decimated, I swear it.”
Giving in to a reckless impulse, Millie surged against him, throwing her arms around his torso and burying her tears in his chest. For every few that fell, one or two were tears of relief, of gratitude, of wonderment that a man would come into their lives to destroy it, and become their savior instead.
She’d expected him to be cold. To be still and frozen, or worse, rebuke her. But Millie didn’t care, she’d do enough holding for them both. She just needed to lean on something, on someone heavier and stronger than she was. If only for a moment, she needed to put the weight pressing her into the earth on someone else’s shoulders. And his were so large, so impossibly wide. Couldn’t they support her for just a moment?
At first he stiffened, his arms flaring up from his sides in surprise, and still she clung to him, her sobs already beginning to lose the strength of a tempest. Against her damp cheek and ear, a stirring began that turned into a thrum. The thrum became a beat, an ever-increasing rhythm, and listening to it soothed her, somehow.
Maybe because she’d truly believed him a man without a heart. And here was evidence of it, right beneath her ear.
Then he did something extraordinary. His fingers twined in her hair once again, but he didn’t draw her away. Instead he pressed her close, closer, cupping her head against his now racing heart. His other hand inched across the expanse of velvet covering her back. Were he anyone else, she’d call his movements tentative, hesitant. But Christopher Argent never hesitated. He was afraid of nothing, not even death. He’d said as much. So it bemused Millie when he couldn’t seem to decide on the correct place to rest his hand on her back.
His breaths were heavy, but measured, as though he controlled them. She could hear his lungs fill in the cavern of his ribs. Her breath began to coordinate with his. Short, deep inhales, hers interrupted by hiccups. Long, smooth exhales, each one releasing more and more tension from her shoulders.
Lord, but he was firm. Hard. A monolith of strength and power. She knew she could strike him, scream at him, push him and rail at him and he would weather it, unfazed. Unaltered. Unmoved. So she didn’t. She sank into him instead. And he stood there, silent and still, letting her fingers cling to the muscle of his back and her tears soak his shirtfront. He gave no meaningless words of comfort. No platitudes or humor to distract her from her feelings. Just silence, and breath, and an infinite patience she hadn’t known any man alive could cultivate.
He was so different from the beast who’d pressed her bent body into the bed a dozen or so minutes ago. Something had softened within him, as well. She could feel it. A tension was missing from his muscles, a fervency from his manner.
He seemed … relaxed. Like a bear in his den, drinking in the silence, reveling in the darkness.
He’d forgiven her lie.
Millie didn’t know how long they stood there like that, but her crying had ceased eventually and she was reduced to a few sniffles. It surprised her how much better she felt, and though she was embarrassed, she still didn’t want to let him go.
“Forgive my hysterics,” she ventured. “I think the events of this night have left me rather overwhelmed. Every time I think of poor Jakub alone with that man … he must have been so frightened.” Tears clogged her throat again, and she forced them aside. She was done with that.
“For such a young lad, your son was very brave.” Millie could hear Argent’s words in two ways, released into the room, and rumbling in his chest. She liked his voice like this, the way it sounded from the inside.
“Was he?” She let out a rueful breath. “I never thought of him as brave.”
“Why not?”
“Well, he’s not like other boys, rambunctious and rough. He’s so … so stoic and quiet.”
The sound of amused disbelief Argent made bounced her head off his chest a little. “I’m sorry, are we discussing the same boy?”
An answering smile coerced her lips to curl. “He’s rather taken to you.” She pressed her head against the hand in her hair and he allowed her to look up at him. “You don’t know how rare that is. He’s generally such a shy child, much like Agnes was, actually.” She let out a great sigh and brought her hand up to fix a button on his shirtfront. Enjoying the intimacy of their closeness more than she should, enough that she was loath to let go of him.
He didn’t release her, either. So they conversed like this, standing in each other’s arms.
“I worry about Jakub sometimes,” she confessed. “He’s so softhearted. So gentle and clever. At his tender age, he knows so much more about everything than I do. He reads more books, and remembers it all, I vow. I encourage him to go out and play, but he’d much rather be inside, painting or working his figures, practicing the piano or watching us rehearse.” She finished with the button, smoothed her tear stains, and had begun to fidget with his collar. Nothing was wrong with it, of course, not with Welton on the job, but Millie did two things when emotional or anxious. She talked and she fidgeted.
Argent had yet to move, and she didn’t let herself stop to wonder if he thought her ridiculous. She spent all her time being charming and listening to others. No one had ever been interested in her thoughts and fears about being a mother.
“It’s really rather wonderful,” she continued. “Having him around all the time. But I’m beginning to fear that I’m coddling him too much. Or that I’m failing him, somehow. I suppose I should make him stronger, or tougher. The world out there is so difficult and cruel. What if I’m making him weak, how will he protect himself?”
Argent still had locks of her hair in his hands, and he rolled her curls over his fingers like one would a fine sand. “He has a mother like you to protect him. That is enough for now.”
His words lit a small glow of warmth in her heart, and she hoped that he could feel it radiating from her. “How could I not? Do you know what always made me glad that he didn’t have a father?”
“Hmmm?” Argent brushed the hair from her neck and arranged it down her back, exposing her throat and shoulder. She didn’t tremble in fear this time. She barely gave it a thought.
“A father, especially a nobleman, would want him to be a hunter, or a soldier, or something equally manly. He wouldn’t understand his artist’s heart; maybe even hate him for it.”
“Not every man would see things that way.” Something in Argent’s voice made it impossible for her to look up.
“I suppose it doesn’t matter. I never did find out who his father was. I don’t even know if he’s the one who’s after us.”
“That’s the reason you should have told me the truth from the beginning.” Argent said this as less of a rebuke this time, and more of a statement. “Because I think I know who Jakub’s father is, and I’m almost certain he’s the one who wants you dead.”
Millie’s lungs emptied of breath. As dramatic reveals went, his was unparalleled. She was afraid to ask. Unwilling to know. And yet, her ignorance had to be the worst form of torture.
As she opened her mouth to demand he tell her, Argent asked. “Do you still have that letter? The one your friend Agnes gave you from Jakub’s father?”
“I do.” With a sick sense of dread building in her belly, she reached down the left side of her corset, where’d she’d sewn pockets in each of her underthings to carry the two documents that were most important to her for years and years. The papers proving she was an English citizen, and the letter Agnes had given her all those years ago. She couldn’t remember the last time she’d needed to produce either document, but having them next to her skin always made her feel more secure, somehow.
After five years, the fine paper had faded and dark creases marred the masculine script, but as Millie pressed the two sides of the broken wax seal together revealing a phoenix at rest, something sparked in her memory.
Unfolding it to study as she had done countless times before, she turned her shoulder to Argent so he could read it along with her.
Dearest Agnes,
Too long have I allowed us to be kept apart by convention and society. What seemed so dire in the past years together now has become a trifle in the months I’ve spent without you. I’ve come to understand that life is fleeting, and we only have the one to live. How can I finish the rest of my days without you and my son next to me? That’s right, my love, more than anything I want to claim Jakub as my son, the legitimate and legal heir to my titles, lands, and legacy. I’ve already secured the proper papers from the crown.
I’m divorcing my wife and leaving her all of our assets in town. I am so miserable with her, so utterly unsuited. For once, I am glad that she’s never given me a child, as it makes leaving her excusable. I’ll take you to the country estate in Yorkshire where we will marry. And you will live there with me as my lady, and my wife, everyone be damned.
She’s become increasingly suspicious and, dare I say, unhinged, so we must do this quietly until we’re out of the city. Please meet me at the little tea room by St. Augustine’s at half past two and I’ll give you a train ticket and some money for you to make our plans. It’s safest that you tell no one until what’s done is done.
This is the beginning of the rest of our lives together, my darling.
All my love,
D
“So she never told you who this man was,” Argent stated.
Millie looked over her shoulder. “She promised she’d tell me when she returned that night, but…” She swallowed some fresh grief. “Are you saying that you know this man?”
“I’m saying you met this man and his family tonight. I believe this letter was written by Lord David Albert Fenwick, Earl Thurston.”
“Oh my God.” The letter shook in Millie’s hand. “D for David. It makes sense, doesn’t it?”
Argent nodded. “Sir Dashforth, the man who hired Dorshaw and … myself … to murder you and take Jakub, is the Fenwick family’s solicitor. And, though he also worked for the St. Vincents, his wife’s family, this bird here on the seal, the resting phoenix, is eminently displayed on the Fenwick family crest.”
“How did you know that?” Millie asked, wide-eyed.
“It is my business to know.”
“Your business…” she echoed. As if she were his business now, because payment had been rendered. Glancing at the bed, Millie took her time folding the letter and placing it back into her corset, unable to look back at him. “What—what do we do next? I can’t take this to the police, can I? I have no proof that it was he who hired Dorshaw, or even that he hired Dashforth to contract out to you. And … if they find out Jakub isn’t mine, they could take him from me.”
“That’s what you hired me to fix,” he clipped. “Speak nothing of this to the police.”
“You’re going to … kill him, Lord Thurston?”
“He murdered your friend, ordered your death, and wants who-knows-what with his son. He’ll be tied up in Essex tomorrow. I’ll kill him the day after.”
Scheduling a murder, as one would a hair appointment or high tea. “What about Chief Inspector Morley?” Millie suggested. “He said there were more women dead by the same killer. More children missing … You don’t think they were all connected with Lord Thurston, do you?”
“I think they were casualties of Dorshaw. I think he was the man they hired all those years ago to murder Agnes.”
Millie’s eyes widened. “Why do you think that?”
“Because Dorshaw likes to cut on people and leave organs behind. Especially women.”
She shuddered. “Then perhaps we should tell Chief Inspector Morley; he’s investigating what happened to all those other women. He’d want to know who’d ordered those deaths, at least to let the families know that Dorshaw has been captured.”
“You would have me give Thurston to the police? Their record is not exactly stellar when it comes to prosecuting a peer of the realm for the death of prostitutes. If you want to keep Jakub, keep him safe, what other recourse is there than the one I offer you?”
“Agnes was not a prostitute, she was an actress,” Millie huffed.
“That’s not what they’ll say at court, if it even makes it that far. You know as well as anyone that society makes only a minute distinction between the two vocations.”
Millie retreated from him, making her way to the window on unsteady legs. She was beginning to feel the aftermath of what they’d done. A dull ache in her loins and a stinging in her heart. “Must you be so cold all the time?” He was right, of course, and she resented him for it.
“I must be what I am,” he answered cryptically.
What this ugly world made of him, Millie thought, staring out into the night. The bright, late-winter moon sparkled off the frost that settled on the cobblestones and clung to the garden. This was a perfect time and place for him, this part of the city, this time of night. Still and so bitter cold, it drove everyone away. Inside.
For fear of catching their death.
Millie had never considered murder before, let alone ordered one. That made two things in one night she’d never done. Two sins she’d never committed, carried out in this very room.
She, too, must be what she was. And before everything, she was a mother, and a mother protected her child, even at the peril of her very soul.
“Then do what you must,” she murmured, a pang of insecurity slicing through her. “Is the price I paid … enough?”
“It was sufficient.”
She whirled to face him, her ego smarting. “Sufficient?” Damn his face carved of stone and his heart of ice. Sufficient! Honestly. If she’d received a review like that from a paper, she’d have torn it up and thrown it in the fire.
“It’s what we agreed upon, was it not?” he said carefully, studying her face with an arrested expression. As if he didn’t understand what she was thinking.
“Well … yes—” Technically, she supposed so. Then why did she feel so unsatisfied? What was she looking for from him? She knew he’d liked it. Sufficiently …
She should know better than to seek validation from a man like him, but something in her thrived on it. Had she done it right? Was that all there was to do? Just lie there until he finished … Was he disappointed at all? Did he feel anything? Because she was little more than one pulsating, raw emotion wrapped in a pretty package. She’d thought she’d seen a crack in the glacier, a bit of frenzy followed by a few moments of intimacy. Not passion, per se. Nor tenderness, but a whisper of … something. Some warmth behind the bleak void of his eyes.
Had she imagined it? Was she creating it for the sole reason that her own feelings for this strange and lethal man were becoming more opaque?
“Sufficient.” She sighed, then nodded. It was enough. Either way he was still going to do what he’d promised.
“I’d slaughter every soul in this city if it meant you’d let me fuck you again.” That blue fire had returned to his eyes, the flames licking at her from across the room. “If you would just—” His mouth clamped shut, and he shook his head, whether at her or to himself, she couldn’t be certain. “It was sufficient, it was what we agreed upon. But it wasn’t enough, damn you.” Turning on the heel of his boot, he stalked to the door, slamming it behind him and leaving her alone in a shaft of cold moonlight.
