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

any, I want him to write the names or addresses down.”

Victoria might believe that she was a random victim of her employer; Gabriel knew better. Men who

preyed upon women usually had a history of previous victims. The household in which she had been

employed probably advertised for governesses on a regular basis.

“Très bien, ” Gaston said.

“Have David visit the employment agencies.” David could charm either man or woman, young or old. “

Tell him to say that a governess named Victoria Childers applied for employment, but he misplaced her

address.”

Gaston’s eyes widened, learning the cloaked woman’s name and previous profession.

“When Jeremy finds Fitzjohn’s address, tell him to search through the archives for the family name of

Childers. If he finds a Childers family listing a daughter named Victoria, take down the names and address.

”

“Très bien.”

Very good.

There would be no good from the night.

The killing had begun.

“Gaston.”

“Oui?” Gaston asked guardedly.

“I want this information by noon today,” Gabriel said softly. “Have a maid wake me when they return.”

Gabriel was suddenly dead tired.

The thought of sleeping on a leather couch was not a pleasant one.

Twenty-seven years ago he would have thought it a luxury.

No, he was no longer a boy.

He was a man, and he knew the price of life.

“Très bien, monsieur. I have appointed Evan, Julien and Allen to guard the woman. They will change

shifts every eight hours.”

“Merci.”

Gaston wrung his hands.

Gabriel wondered if the woman slept... or if she, too, worried.

No one has ever held me, she had confessed.

But she would have let him hold her . .. drenched with sweat and sex.

“Many men sympathize with the woman’s plight,” Gaston blurted.

Gabriel felt the hair on the back of his neck prickle.

“I will kill the man who lets her escape,” Gabriel said softly. Dangerously. “Tell that to the men who

sympathize with her.”

“They do not like to think you are punishing her.”

“And why would they think that, Gaston?” he asked, the softness in his voice barbed.

“Marcel did not discuss the note he found, monsieur,” Gaston said defensively. “But the men, they sense

there is something wrong. You could have stopped the auction, yet you did not.”

No, Gabriel had not stopped the auction. Instead, he had bid on the woman and now he had the woman.

By noon, word of the cloaked woman who had tempted the untouchable angel would have spread all

over London.

“Tell them that the man who wishes to kill me will also kill her.” Gabriel let the truth leak into his eyes

and his voice. “If she escapes, she’s a dead woman.”

Gaston’s gaze settled on Gabriel’s. In his brown eyes was a single question.

Why?

Why had Gabriel built a house where every desire could be fulfilled merely to lure an assassin?

Why would an assassin want to destroy two male whores so badly that he would willingly walk into a

trap?

What had the second man done to him—after twelve years of whoring—that Gabriel could not tolerate a

simple touch?

Gaston did not ask the questions. But Gabriel knew that Victoria would.

He had told her more than he had ever told anyone.

He had told her that he had begged, but he had not told her what he had begged for.

He knew that she would ask, though. In a day. Or two days.

Victoria would ask what he had begged the second man for. And Gabriel would tell her.

She deserved that much.

“We would die for you, monsieur,” Gaston said simply. “No one will go against your wishes.”

Yes, men—and women—would die. That was part of the play.

Gaston glanced away. “What I said about Monsieur Michel—”

Gabriel remembered his parting words to Michael.

“I don’t think we need worry about Monsieur Michel,” he interrupted, pushing aside the pain.

He thought of Victoria’s worn wool dress, tattered silk drawers and sagging stockings.

My virginity is all I have left, she had said.

But that wasn’t all that Victoria had left.

She had passion.

I wanted your touch; therefore, I am a whore, she had told him.

And he had let her believe it.

But it wasn’t passion that made a man or a woman a whore—it was performing sex when there was no

passion that made one a whore.

Michael had been a prostitute; he had never been a whore.

Unlike Gabriel.

Does that warrant my death?

“Send a message to Madame René,” Gabriel said abruptly. “Tell her that we are in need of a

seamstress.”

Chapter

8

Blackness pressed down on her eyes, a man’s hand— Gasping, Victoria fought to sit up, breasts

quivering, hair impeding.

Only to discover that the blackness was not a hand.

Victoria had gone to sleep in darkness; she awoke in darkness.

She became aware of the firmness of the mattress beneath her buttocks and the softness of the sheet

encircling her.

It was not her bed.

The room Victoria rented was equipped with a sagging mattress; it had no sheets.

No light penetrated a sooty window—neither gray daylight nor golden streetlight.

A rich, sweet flavor lingered in her mouth.

Chocolate.

Memory followed consciousness.

Victoria slept in the silver-eyed, silver-haired man’s bedchamber: it did not have a window. And the rich,

sweet substance coating her tongue came from the pot au chocolat that had been a part of her supper.

A supper she had eaten alone.

Underneath the scent of laundry soap and starch, she could smell a faint whiff of... him: the musky

clean scent of masculine flesh.

Victoria had slept between the sheets that he had slept between. A