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

to drain from it: there was.

The silver eyes were hard, uncompromising. “You are either a fool, mademoiselle, or a liar.”

Victoria glared at him. “I cannot help you, sir.”

If she gave him the name of the man who wrote the letters, the silver-eyed, silver-haired man would hunt

him down.

Victoria did not want Gabriel to know who her father was.

She did not want him to know about her past.

“I cannot help you,” she repeated.

“But I can help you, mademoiselle,” he said silkily.

With food. Shelter. A position.

Her choice.

Life.

Death.

But at what price?

Tears pricked her eyes.

Tears of exhaustion, she told herself.

And knew that she lied once again.

“Why do you want to help me knowing that I cannot help you?” she asked evenly.

He stood up, a sudden creak of leather.

Victoria’s eyes were on a levee with the juncture of his thighs. There was no mistaking his sex through

the tight, black silk trousers.

Are you that large, sir?

I measure over nine inches long.

Victoria threw her head back.

Gabriel’s silver eyes glittered.

“Perhaps, mademoiselle, because I, too, once said that I would not beg. Perhaps I would spare you that.

”

There was too much pain in his eyes. Too much death.

Had he ever laughed, this man who had been born in a gutter in Calais, France?

“Have you ever begged a woman for sexual release?” she asked impulsively.

The heat inside the bedchamber crystallized.

“I am Gabriel, mademoiselle. I whored for men, not women.”

“So that you could eat,” Victoria said firmly.

“So that I could become rich,” Gabriel softly countered. “How do you think I was able to build this

house?”

Victoria’s father had taught her that sin was ugly.

She had seen ugliness.

There was nothing ugly about Gabriel or his house.

Victoria realized she was in far more danger now than when he had caught her rummaging through his

drawers. Gabriel would forgive a trespasser; he would not forgive a woman who pried into his past.

He could kill her with a knife, a gun, a toothbrush ...

No one would mourn the passing of Victoria Childers, a virgin spinster.

Who would mourn Gabriel?

“You did not answer my question, sir.” Victoria’s voice sounded as if it came from a long distance

away. “If you do not answer my questions, then you cannot expect me to answer yours.”

For a second she did not think Gabriel would respond, and then ...

“No, mademoiselle, I have never begged a woman for release.”

“Has a woman ever begged you for release?” she persisted. Heart pounding.

Sex a seductive lure.

“Yes.”

“Did you enjoy it?”

“Yes.”

“Did you . . . cry out. . . with your pleasure?” Victoria asked. Unable to stop the questions.

Wanting to know more ...

About sex.

About a man called Gabriel and a woman called Victoria.

She wanted to know why it was she who had been sent to him and not another woman.

Long seconds passed, one heartbeat, three heartbeats, six... nine . ..

Victoria strained to hear—the men and women inside the house, a passing carriage outside of the house.

Finally...

“No, mademoiselle, I did not cry out with pleasure.”

But he had given pleasure.

Pleasure to make up for what he did not receive.

The only sound inside the room was the crackling of the fire and the beating of Victoria’s heart and the

truth lurking in the shadows.

“Did these women who begged you for release do so before or after you yourself. . . begged . . . for

release?”

“Before.”

Victoria was riveted by the starkness inside Gabriel’s eyes, dull gray now instead of silver.

The truth slowly dawned inside her.

It was too late to stop the questions, but she wished she could.

She had asked for the truth; it looked her in the face.

“It has been fourteen years, eight months, two weeks and six days since I begged for release,

mademoiselle.” The man behind the marble-perfect mask flared to heated life—a man who desired to

touch, to be touched, to hold and to be held; he was instantly locked away behind an alabaster wall of

beauty. “I have not touched a woman since.”

Chapter

7

“Why?”

Gabriel’s voice echoed hollowly inside the empty saloon. Guttering candles fought the darkness.

Reckoning time had come.

The two doormen stood stiffly at attention. Light and shadow played across their faces; golden blond hair

alternately turned into wheat, brown hair into fire and bronze.

Neither man met Gabriel’s gaze.

Neither man expressed fear or regret.

For a long second Gabriel did not think they would reply. And then...

“C’est—it was her eyes, monsieur.”

Gabriel’s head whipped toward Stephen; red fire flamed in his brown hair, died.

I told them I was in need of a protector, Victoria Childers had said.

“You violated my orders because of a pair of beaux yeux? he asked bitingly.

“Non, monsieur.” Amber eyes unflinchingly met Gabriel’s silver ones. “I violated your rules because I

remember what it’s like to be hungry and to have nothing to sell but oneself.”

“Your memory was not so acute six months earlier, Stephen.”

Stephen had been in Gabriel’s employment for five years. He had not once allowed a streetwalker or

dolly mop to cross the threshold.

Until tonight.

But Victoria was neither a streetwalker nor a dolly mop: she was a pawn.

Sent by the second man.

Cerulean blue eyes suddenly locked with Gabriel’s. “If we had turned her away, sir, she would not have

survived the night.”

John was a simple Lancashire boy who had come to London to make his fortune. One of the thousands

who annually flocked to the city.

His beauty had been the only quality that had distinguished him from the