“Just where the blazes have you been sleeping?” Loretta Teague-Washington flipped a long, peroxide-blond ringlet away from her face before planting her hands on her ample hips.
Guilty color tickled Millie’s neck as it crawled toward her hairline from the collar of the peach day dress she’d only just changed into.
“In bed,” she evaded, stepping to the side as Mr. Émile-Baptiste Teague-Washington hefted Loretta’s many bags and cases, disappearing down the hall that led to Millie’s dressing room.
“Whose bed?” the woman demanded. “His?” She gestured to Argent, who hovered over her like a storm cloud, heavy and threatening.
Millie pressed her hands to her burning cheeks, grateful Jakub was in the kitchen with Mrs. Brimtree having a snack.
Ignoring her mortification, Loretta stepped closer to inspect Millie’s skin. “I have to admit, you’ve never looked so dewy before. Never glowed with such … vigor. What have you been doing to your skin? Who have you been seeing behind my back? Are you stepping out on me, woman?”
Millie shook her head, having forgotten how Loretta’s smoky voice could fill a room nigh to bursting. “I—I don’t know what you mean.”
“Nonsense.” The buxom woman flapped a hand at her as she bustled over to one of her cases, flinging open the latch, and then turning back as though forgetting why she’d done so. Her perfect style and smooth, porcelain skin made it impossible to guess her age. She was either a mature thirty or an age-defying fifty. “Your eyebrows get all pinched when you lie to me. You’re either using something different or you’re getting that radiance from sharing a bed with this brawny Viking, here.” She winked up at Christopher, who remained unhelpfully stoic.
As adept an actress as she prided herself on being, Millie couldn’t hide her guilty look in time. Loretta’s smile slid over her cheeks with a sly languor. “You hussy.” She laughed.
“How did you—I mean—who else knows?” Millie pressed a hand to her heated cheeks. News in London traveled with the speed of a steam engine, but she hadn’t thought anyone had known she’d slept at Argent’s Belgravia mansion the night before.
“I wasn’t even certain you had a lover, until you just confirmed it.” Loretta gave Argent an appreciative once-over, her eyes touching on his broad shoulders straining the stitching of his expensive gray waistcoat. “And who could blame you?”
Mr. Teague-Washington gently nudged Millie with his elbow as he passed, which elicited a sharp breath from the assassin behind her.
“’Bout time you had a man to call your own, chère,” the coffee-skinned Cajun boomed in his luscious baritone, flashing her white teeth and charming dimples. “My lady and I hear of your troubles, and we say ‘ain’t right she got no man to protect her.’ But now we see she do.” Mr. Teague-Washington’s lips appeared extra dark on his Irish-American wife’s cheek as he wrapped a long, lanky arm around her plump shoulders and tucked her into his side. It was that disparity of skin color that had caused the couple to flee their home in America. That country might call itself the United States, but some divisions still ran so deep, it would likely take them centuries to progress past the rifts. Europe tended to be more accepting of interracial marriages, especially among the demimonde, and at the very least it was legal.
Loretta squeezed her husband fondly before advancing on Millie. “I only knew you hadn’t been sleeping in your own bed, or you would have been using the lavender and white lily tincture I gave you for the eye compress and you wouldn’t look so damn puffy.” Gripping Millie’s chin in her strong fingers, she lifted her face to the light and narrowed Irish moss-green eyes in observant disapproval. “Unless you’ve been crying.”
Millie grimaced, worried that the strain of recent events was beginning to show. “It’s been a trying couple of days.” Glancing into the mirror at her right, she gave herself a quick appraisal. Her hair did seem rather dull, perhaps missing its usual luster and bounce. The skin around her eyes and brow was pinched with tension and a little swollen from last night’s bout of tears. She did note the glow Loretta had spoken of. She could see the iridescence in her skin, the unholy knowledge in her eyes, as though the secrets of the darkness had been revealed to her.
And not all of them had been dreadful. They’d been wicked, though. So very wicked.
Behind her, Christopher’s reflection regarded her with that ever-present alertness. He stood too close, loomed too tall and wide.
Looked too fine.
When she’d first met him, she’d thought his eyes dead and cold and utterly indecipherable. But now, when he looked at her as he was doing, she read volumes in their depths. Beautiful things. Terrible things. Words and desires she dare not indentify, because they would set her entire world aflame.
Lord, but this man was dangerous.
Loretta made a noise of appreciation and fanned herself. “Mon Dieu, but you two must set those bedclothes on fire.”
“Loretta!” Millie exclaimed.
“Well, hey now, if we were all planning on being polite, you’d have introduced me to your Viking ages ago.” Loretta winked again, showing that she meant no malice.
“Oh dear!” Millie turned to the Viking in question. “Mr. and Mrs. Teague-Washington, meet my—um—meet Christopher Argent.”
“A pleasure, Mr. Argent.” Loretta gave Christopher a handshake every bit as firm as her husband’s. “You’ve caught the woman every man would give an eye for.”
“So I have,” Christopher remarked without a crack in his enigmatic façade.
“I can see why; you’ve strength enough to handle her.”
“Loretta, please,” Millie begged.
“I know, I know, you stolid, persnickety Brits can’t stand a bit of bawd if it has any truth to it. Are these rumors I’ve heard circulating about true? That you survived not just one, but two attacks by a killer?”
Millie paused to consider her answer carefully. Of course, the madness the night before at the Royal Theater would have circulated through the late-night crowd of the demimonde rather quickly. And most people already knew about the time Argent had broken into her house and kissed her senseless. Though they now likely assumed Dorshaw had perpetrated both crimes.
Argent had been meaning to kill her at the time. She’d do well to remember that.
He was a monster. He had no qualms about it. So why couldn’t she see it when she looked at him? What was wrong with her, that his brutal features and dangerous skills somehow compelled instead of deterred her?
Perhaps because he was currently using those skills on her behalf, not against her.
“I have been the target of such a man, yes,” Millie answered carefully.
“You poor thing.” Loretta reached for her, and pulled her against a generous bosom, squeezing the breath from her lungs before releasing her just as abruptly.
“Sounds like some dark hoodoo to me.” Émile-Baptiste made a strange sign with his hands and then spat.
“Surely does,” Loretta agreed. “You know that gypsy actress, calls herself ‘Contessa’ and puts on a bunch of airs that don’t belong to her … I heard she put the evil eye on you that time you got the part of Carmen over her.”
“She need be looking to a holy man to remove the curse, and then she be safe from the evil,” Mr. Teague-Washington remarked soberly.
“Curses and superstitions don’t hire killers, people do,” Christopher remarked.
Loretta’s eyebrow, a dark confession to the pretense of her hair color, climbed her forehead. “Where’d you find this ray of sunshine, a morgue? Doesn’t have the doughy hands of an idle lord, he works for his fine suits. What do you do, Mr. Argent, are you an undertaker perhaps?”
Christopher’s shoulder lifted, though he remained unperturbed. “Close enough.”
The stylist smirked. “Can’t say there isn’t much to appreciate about a plainspoken man. Well, come on back here, Millie darling, and let me work my magic.” Loretta gestured toward the hall that led to the dressing room. “Not you.” She thrust a perfectly manicured finger at Argent, who’d made to follow them. “The time between a woman and her stylist is a sacred and mystical rite. You menfolk have no business interfering.”
Argent glanced at Millie. He looked very large and very out of place in this richly appointed, warm, and overstuffed home. Her handful of rooms seemed to contain enough furniture, knickknacks, antiques, and various oddities to fill his entire vacant mansion. Framed playbills hung next to Moroccan lanterns over Grecian table statues, which posed next to faux Egyptian papyri and a vase full of arranged peacock feathers rather than flowers.
Surrounded by such feminine bohemian chaos, Argent’s marble skin and monochromatic suit contrasted with the brilliance of his short auburn hair. He looked so hard. So brutal. A mysterious shadow caught within an explosion of color. The image was dynamic, and both women stopped to appreciate it for a moment longer than necessary.
“I think I’m going down for a nip and a smoke at the pub,” Mr. Teague-Washington cut in, obviously not amused. “Care to join me, Mr. Argent?”
“Thank you, but I’ll stay.” Argent claimed a corner of the olive-green couch.
“So long as you stay out of our way,” Loretta reminded, all but dragging Millie down the hall. “Je t’aime, mon cœur,” she called to her husband, as she had every week she’d visited Millie over the last two years.
“Et vous, mon âme,” he sang back to her, closing the door behind him.
I love you, my heart.
And you, my soul.
The ritual usually caused Millie to smile. Today it made her feel bleak, somehow, or guilty, as though she’d spied upon a private sacrament of which she’d never be a part.
Oddly depressed, she sank into the high-backed arabesque velvet chair Loretta pulled out for her, feeling like a wilted flower.
“I’ll start with your hair and work my way down.” Loretta said this at the beginning of every appointment. Taking the few pins out of Millie’s hair, she began her treatments with a concoction of rare oils and herbs native to the American continent like “jojoba” mixed with a tincture of yucca root and wild rose. Once she oiled the tips and the scalp, she wet the rest of it with her fingers and trimmed the uneven ends with a sharp razor.
Scents of musk and wild, unfamiliar earth infused the room with an exotic fragrance, and for the first time in days, Millie began to relax.
“Where did you find this Viking of yours?” Loretta asked, her voice transforming into something more melodious as her ritual took hold of them both.
“He found me, actually.”
“I see. Is this an affair of the heart, or of a more … conjugal nature?” Only Loretta could get away with asking such a blunt question, and for some reason, the relationship between the stylist and her clients was more circumspect than that of a confessor to his priest.
And still, Millie couldn’t conjure the words to describe what Christopher was to her, exactly. Assassin turned protector. Villain turned lover.
“We have an … arrangement,” Millie evaded.
“That arrangement have anything to do with the fact that you’ve been in danger and that brute out there looks like he could break a man in half with his big bare hands?” Loretta might be brash and brassy, and a bit uneducated, but she was anything but stupid.
“I’d be lying if I said it wasn’t.” Millie sighed.
“Well.” Loretta twisted her hair and pinned it to the top of her head and wrapped it, letting the oils sink in and do their job before she washed it out. “You wouldn’t be the first woman to invite a dangerous man into her bed in exchange for his protection … done it a few times, myself, before I found Mr. Teague-Washington.”
“Really?” Swamped with a strange sense of relief, Millie inwardly blessed the woman for not calling her a prostitute.
“Oh sure.” Next came a mask of honey, beeswax, white lily, and lemon juice applied to Millie’s face with a wooden applicator, to tighten the skin and shrink any pores or imperfections. “Protection comes in many forms. Money, food, shelter, strength, and sometimes just a dangerous know-how and a willingness to kill. Looks like your Mr. Argent out there could provide it all.”
“Indeed he can.” Leaning back, Millie closed her eyes and enjoyed the sensation of the warm, thick syrup spreading on her beleaguered skin. Many women in her profession took a “protector.” In most cases, the term only meant that she had a man who paid her as his mistress. The protection was from poverty, from starvation, and often from the fate of the cruel streets filled with foul men and, even worse, disease.
Now, when Millie confessed to having a protector, she’d mean it in a more literal sense of the word. Though the services rendered had been the same.
“You have to tell me,” Loretta whispered conspiratorially. “How are his skills in bed? Is your Viking any good? How many times did he give you la petite mort?”
The little death, that mysterious climax so many women went on and on about. The cause of the panting mewls and bellows she’d heard in her days of sharing thin walls with fallen women.
Millie fumbled to cover her inexperience with a shallow explanation. “I really couldn’t say. We’ve only—I’ve only lain with him once.”
The smooth movements paused before resuming more gently. “Don’t fear, darling, it often takes lovers a couple tries to learn each other’s needs. To become familiar with their pleasures and their desires.”
“Does it?”Millie queried before she thought the better of it.
“If I can give you one word of advice, never use your acting skills in bed. Do not portray pleasure you do not feel. You’re doing neither of you any favors.”
“Acting during—why would you do such a thing?” Millie wondered aloud.
Loretta’s voice was softer now, more motherly than it had ever been. “You’re not as worldly as you would have us all think, are you, darling?”
“I’ve not had many lovers,” Millie confessed.
A soothing noise of understanding purred from the older woman. “You’re one of the smart ones. I feel I must say, a man such as that, so large and so … well, I don’t imagine he’s gentle.”
Millie shook her head slightly, so as not to interrupt Loretta’s work.
“A man like that spends his life giving orders and having them obeyed. Women submit to him and other men follow him, he’s only ever learned by doing because no one dares issue him a command.” Millie heard Loretta’s voice warm with a wicked smile. “Know what a man like that needs in bed? I can give you the secret to his pleasure, and yours.”
“What?” Millie asked, forgetting that she need never share his bed again. It surprised her how much she desired this information. Wanted to employ it.
“A woman to tell him just what she wants.”
“You’re joking.” Millie gasped.
“Not at all. Think on it a spell.”
She did. She thought about it the entire time Loretta let the honey mask dry on her face while she rubbed an oil mixed with sugar on her arms and hands to exfoliate and remove any rough skin.
It wasn’t enough, damn you.
Those words he’d gritted out at her the night before sent a secret thrill straight to her core. It hadn’t been enough. Though she knew he’d found his pleasure, she also understood that she somehow hadn’t … finished. That the twinge of pain she’d experienced as he’d entered her had been followed by little pulses of pleasure. She’d wanted him to move deeper. She’d wanted him to touch … somewhere else. That little bud of pulsing flesh that resided above where he’d entered her. It had bothered her late into the night, aching, tightening and clenching around nothing but emptiness. She’d wanted to touch it, herself, but didn’t dare. What if she told him to do it? Would he? Argent wasn’t a compliant man, to say the least, but Loretta seemed to know what she was talking about.
“Those hot-blooded men love it when you tell them where to touch you and how. When to use their tongues, how long and how hard to take you, and in the most explicit language you can muster.”
Millie’s mind snagged on only one thing. “Their … mouths?”
“Oh darling.” Loretta patted her hand with sympathy and went on about her business. “Tell me, do you think Mr. Argent is going to stay at your skirts for a while? That he’ll speak for you?” Loretta asked in a carefully neutral voice.
“No.” Her reaction to the answer surprised Millie, a sense of desolation coiled within her. “No, our arrangement is … finite.”
“Probably for the best,” the woman said gently. “Men with eyes that cold often come with a hot temper. You’d be wise to take care with him. Give and take some pleasure, and then say your good-byes before the first clash or snit makes everything awkward … or dangerous.”
Millie nodded, her mind racing too swiftly to form a coherent sentence.
Would a few failed assassination attempts count as a clash or a snit? It was impossible to tell, and inconceivable to ask such a question. Goodness, how had this become her life?
“Were you not engaged in a flirtation with that chief inspector over at Scotland Yard?” Loretta asked. “What was his name, Morrison, Morton?”
“Morley, Carlton Morley.”
“Yes, that’s the bloke. Whatever happened with him?”
Millie shrugged, conjuring the handsome, angular features of Sir Morley. “I only mentioned him to you because I thought he was charming, intelligent, and kind. We’ve known each other for a handful of years and I’ve always found him attractive and his presence … calming. I highly doubt the interest was mutual. He’s very focused on his work.”
“Attractive and kind is not a bad place to start.” The woman wrinkled her nose. “But charming and calming have nothing on that big, strong brute out there. Women like us, we need a little danger in our lives in order to keep it interesting. Sometimes what a woman needs is a man who can pick her feet off the floor and have her against the wall, if you understand my meaning.”
It took Millie a moment to capture Loretta’s meaning, and her eyes widened as the conjured image awakened that ache in her nether regions. Would Argent do something like that? Against a wall or maybe—Lord, why was she even entertaining such salacious fantasies about such a broken man? He was a killer. A murderer by trade. He was naught but a necessary evil in her life. The serpent king she employed to consume the vipers who would do her and her son harm. She’d do well to not mistake the way her nerves sang when he was close to be anything but a primal warning to her that danger was near. She shouldn’t let it entice and thrill her.
Oh, but it did.
“What my Émile said was the truth,” Loretta continued conversationally. “We do worry about you some nights. It might do you some good to find a man to settle down with. I can only work my magic for so long, you know, and no matter how much money you give me, time does get us all in the end.” She peeled the mask off Millie’s face as she said this, dabbing on a toner of rose water, brandy, and witch hazel once the skin was revealed.
Millie made a noise of affirmation in her throat, still locked inside her churning mind until she could finally voice her worries. “The difficulty is, there are plenty of men offering to warm my bed and line my pockets, but I’ve never received a legitimate proposal of marriage. I’m a woman men want to possess, to bed. They want me to tempt them, to seduce them, to fulfill their fantasies. Though, when they hear that I plan to remain on the stage for as long as I am able, none of them want such a woman for his bride. A wife is supposed to follow her husband and support him in his endeavors, not the other way around.”
“Speak for yourself, darling.” Loretta snorted. “Émile does little but carry my heavy things, pleasure me senseless, and make me laugh. And that suits me just fine. The man would rather be fishing than working, but that means he brings home supper, at least, while I pay the banknotes. His people live off the land, and that’s hard to do when I drag him from city to city. I wouldn’t think of putting him to work in a factory so I could sit on my duff at home and get thicker.”
“But you and Émile are a rare and lovely couple.”
Loretta gave a fond half smile. “That’s as true as it is kind of you to say, darling.” She bustled over to her cases and extracted clippers, a block of beeswax, and a rough bit of leather she’d use to trim, shape, and buff Millie’s nails and cuticles with. “I brought up the idea of settling down because I was at an appointment a few days past with Lady Harriett Crenshaw, Viscountess Russell. And, as you may know, she is sister to His Grace Collin Talmage, the Duke of Trenwyth, who is recently returned from the Indies. Rumor has it that he’s looking for a wife, and Lady Russell informed me he is a great admirer of yours and is angling for a chance to make your acquaintance.”
“A duke?” Millie’s fingers twitched beneath Loretta’s masterful ministrations. Women like her, ones from the tenements of Whitechapel, never allowed themselves even the private fantasy of capturing a title as lofty as duchess.
“Rich as Midas, big as your Viking, and beautiful as a bronze statue of Adonis, so long as you don’t mind that he has only one hand.”
“Oh?” An article flashed across her memory. “I think I read about him in the paper. No one knows exactly how he lost his hand, do they? Didn’t he recently return from the Indies with that marquess they call the ‘Demon Highlander’?”
Loretta nodded. “Laird Ravencroft, the very same. Two more decorated officers than Trenwyth and Ravencroft never existed, though the Highlander returned with all his bits intact.”
It astonished Millie how little she actually wanted to meet this Lord Trenwyth. A national hero, a wounded soldier, and a duke, besides. “You’re forgetting, dear Loretta, that dukes do not marry actresses, it just isn’t done.”
“This one would. He famously, or perhaps infamously, does whatever it is that he likes. And, as something like fifth in line to the throne, he can afford to disregard convention.” Loretta let that thought linger in the sunlight and settle as she held up Millie’s finger to the light to check the evenness of a nail before buffing it. “If you’re of a mind, once you’re finished with your arrangement with the Viking, Lady Russell and I could set up an introduction, though I wouldn’t keep a man like him waiting.”
“Indeed,” Millie murmured. A duke. Could she give up her life, her career, to become a duchess? For Jakub, she could. Of course, he’d never be the heir to the title, but the life and advancement that kind of familial connection could afford him would be worth the price she’d willingly pay. Not that the price was lofty. There were worse things than becoming a duchess to a handsome duke, she supposed. Much, much worse.
“I do need to start thinking of the future, don’t I?” she mused. For the past week, she’d been so busy worrying about her own survival, she’d let everything else fall to the wayside. Argent had become a very large part of her life in such a very short time. Since the moment she’d seen him on that balcony, he’d dominated her thoughts. Since the time he’d pressed that hard, full mouth to hers, he’d overwhelmed her senses.
And now that he’d been inside of her, she could scarce think of anyone else. Here she was, presented with an opportunity to seduce a duke. The highest available peer in the empire. And all she could think about was the bleakness in Christopher Argent’s pale eyes that contained a void too deep for even her to fathom. The contrasting primitive ferocity of his desire.
Now that she’d shared a night with him, submitted to his strength and need, a treacherous curiosity pervaded her every waking moment. It was as though something that had lain dormant her entire life had been awakened.
She couldn’t bring herself to fantasize about a duke who was the equivalent of a Greek god. It was Christopher Argent who invaded her very evocative imagination. Hard, lethal, and brutal.
Except for the moment he’d held her, when he’d surrounded her with his strength and rested those lethal hands on her back with such tentative care.
She’d never forget that moment. She’d never be rid of the mysterious assassin, even when he walked out of her life and disappeared back into the shadows.
