Robin Schone by Gabriel's Woman (10 ebook reader TXT) 📕

too hot. The hair

hanging down her back too heavy.

Victoria needed to get away from those piercing silver eyes.

Warily she circled around him and grabbed her cloak off the back of the pale blue leather chair.

She did not need her reticule—he could keep it. The poison. Her toothbrush. Her comb.

The hairpins.

He did not stop her.

The door was constructed of mirror-shiny wood that was neither brown nor yellow, but something in

between. The governess inside Victoria identified the wood as satinwood, indigenous to India and Sri

Lanka.

The door was not locked.

It did not need to be.

The waiter who had led her to the library stood at attention on the other side. Victoria did not doubt that

he, too, wore a pistol underneath his black coat.

“Bring up a tray, Gaston.” The all-too-familiar voice skidded down her spine, smoother than satin. “And

a pot of tea. Mademoiselle will be staying with us.”

“Very well, monsieur.”

Gaston gently closed the satinwood door in Victoria’s face.

She pivoted, dress tangling about her ankles, hair swinging, heart gorging her throat. “You cannot keep

me here against my will.”

“Au contraire. ” Gabriel faced her rather than the desk. “If your life were not dispensable,

mademoiselle, you would not be here.”

The callous dismissal of her life momentarily took her breath away.

“You don’t want me,” Victoria said compulsively, gripping her wool cloak as if a lifeline.

“You would be surprised at what I want,” he returned cryptically.

Watching. Waiting.

As if she were the one who were dangerous and not he.

“You never intended to lie with me,” Victoria recklessly accused him.

“No,” he agreed. Light and darkness glimmered inside his silver eyes. “I did not intend to lie with you.”

“You bade me undress,” she said. Knowing that you would not tak e me, she did not need to add.

He had seen her pitiful, makeshift garters and sagging stockings and threadbare drawers and worn

shoes.

His silver eyes remained cold. Impervious.

“Why?” Victoria’s cry bounced off the ceiling, skirted the pale blue enameled walls. “Why did you lie to

me?”

Why had he seduced her with images of entwined bodies dripping with sweat in the aftermath of shared

pleasure?

Why had he told her he found her desirable?

“I needed to know,” he said simply.

Before, she had mistaken the fleeting shadows inside his eyes as regret; she did not make that mistake

again.

“What did you need to know? How far a virgin would go in order to gain money?” Victoria fought to

keep the shrillness of fear out of her voice. “You have sold your body. I assure you, sir, I would have gone

a lot farther than standing over you with my breasts in your face.”

Her jaws snapped shut, hearing the echo of her words.

The pale blue enameled walls shrank until she could feel them pressing against her back, her chest, her

sides.

She would have taken him into her mouth.

She would have taken him into any and all of her orifices.

And he k new it.

It was patently clear that her virginity possessed no value to him. But it was all she had left.

He knew that, too.

“I needed to know if you possessed a weapon, mademoiselle,” he merely said.

“You bade me remove my drawers”—she gulped air—”to see if I concealed a weapon inside them?”

“Yes.”

“Where did you think I would hide this weapon—inside my vagina?”

“It is possible.”

Victoria stared at him.

“What a dangerous sex we women are, to be sure. And how very fortunate.” The bubble of laughter

that was trapped inside her chest inched up into her throat. She remembered the older brother of a past

charge who had devoured penny dreadful novels depicting the American frontier. “We do not need a

holster, we have our vaginas ready for the draw.”

The laughter traveling up her throat was not reflected inside his eyes.

“Men, too, have cavities, mademoiselle,” he said flatly.

The bubble of laughter burst.

Victoria remembered ... Empétarder.. . to receive something through the back .

Humiliation burned her cheeks. “I hardly think a woman’s—or a man’s—orifices are designed to

accommodate pistols, sir.”

“Knives are just as deadly, mademoiselle. And pistols come in varying sizes and designs.”

Yes, it was quite fashionable for women to wear necklaces or even earrings of miniaturized pistols with

moving parts.

“Do you feel it necessary to search all the women whom you purchase?” she asked tightly.

“I do not purchase women for sex.”

Did he purchase women to k ill?

“Then I am at a loss as to why you bid on me.”

“You have something that I want.”

“You have said you do not want my virginity.”

“I want the name of the man—or woman—who sent you to me.”

Irritation pushed aside her fear. “I told you that no one sent me to the House of Gabriel.”

Victoria had freely chosen to sell herself.

“Then tell me the name of the woman who gave you the corrosive sublimate.”

There was solid steel behind the silk of his cultured voice.

“And if I do?”

“I will find this person.”

“And if l do not?”

“That person will die.”

She would not give way to hysteria.

“And when you find this person? What would you do to her?”

“Whatever is necessary to gain the information I need.”

He would hurt her.

He would—

Victoria’s eyes widened in sudden comprehension. “You believe that my . . . friend”—she stumbled

over the word—”deliberately sent me here. To you.”

He did not respond.

He did not need to respond.

“You believe I came here to