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

gracefully turned, pale

silk gown swirling.

The gray-haired man stepped through the doorway.

The moment he disappeared from sight, Gabriel remembered who he was: he was a member of the

Hundred Guineas Club, an establishment that catered exclusively to homosexual men who assumed female

personas.

The blond-haired woman netted Gabriel’s gaze.

Recognition slammed through him.

They were not the eyes of a woman who stared up at him; they were the eyes of the second man.

Disguised as a prostitute instead of a patron.

A woman instead of a man.

Realization followed recognition.

The second man had not brought the cloaked woman to kill Michael, the dark-haired angel: he had

brought the cloaked woman for Gabriel, the fair-haired angel.

Smiling, the second man blew a taunting kiss and stepped back. Out of Gabriel reach.

Out of Gabriel’s house.

While Gabriel watched. Unable to stop him.

As he had been unable to stop him when chained in an attic while he taught Gabriel what the French

madam had not been able to.

Rage tightened his muscles.

He had set a trap, only to be trapped himself.

The second man would not kill Michael tonight, but he would kill. He would leave no one alive who could

identify him.

No one save the cloaked woman . . . if Gabriel took her.

“What does the note say?” Gabriel asked tautly.

“Il dite...” Gaston cleared his throat. “It says: ‘Gabriel, I quote to you from Shakespeare, a man who no

doubt would have been inspired by both your beauty and your expertise: “All the world’s a stage, and all the

men and women merely players.”

‘You have set a delightful stage, mon ange, now I bring you a woman. A leading actress, if you will.

Laissez le jeu commencer’ “

Directly beneath Gabriel, Michael perused the saloon in search of the second man.

His innocence knotted Gabriel’s stomach.

Michael had only ever wanted a woman to love.

Gabriel had only ever wanted to be like Michael.

A man with passion; a man with innocence.

A man with a soul.

The cloaked woman stood alone, seemingly impervious to the furor she had created.

Fear feathered Gabriel’s flesh.

I bring you a woman, reverberated inside his ears. It was followed by Laissez le jeu commencer.

London streets were cramped with streetwalkers; women slept on the steps of poorhouses.

Yet the second man had chosen this woman.

She was a virgin. Or she was a whore.

She had been hired to kill Gabriel. Or she had been hired to be killed by Gabriel.

She was the last living link to the second man.

There was nothing Gabriel wouldn’t do to catch him.

And he knew it.

“I bid two thousand pounds for the woman,” rang out over the volley of noise below him.

The voice belonged to Gabriel.

He felt the impact of two hundred pairs of eyes.

Gabriel had not been with a woman in fourteen years, eight months, two weeks and six days.

The patrons knew it.

The prostitutes knew it.

The man who would save him knew it.

The man who would kill two angels knew it.

The woman’s face was shrouded in darkness.

Gabriel did not know what she knew. Yet.

But he would.

Before the night was over, he would know everything there was to know about her.

He hoped, for her sake, that she was an assassin.

It would be far better for her if she were.

If Gabriel did not kill her, the second man would. It would be a far, far worse death than that which

Gabriel would deliver.

Laissez le jeu commencer. Let the play begin.

Chapter

2

Passion. Victoria gazed into silver eyes and understood why respectable men and women came to the

House of Gabriel.

They came to experience passion.

She had come to escape it.

“You may leave us, Gaston.”

The silky masculine voice pierced fog. Smoke. Wool. Flesh. Bones.

A whisper grated across Victoria’s skin, the sound of a door closing. Sealing her inside a library instead

of the bedchamber she had expected.

It would not alter the outcome of the night.

Victoria knew that a man did not need a bed in order to couple with a woman: a doorway or an alley

often sufficed.

Above her, an electric chandelier pummeled her with light; in front of her, a silver-veined, black

marble-topped desk and a pale blue leather Queen Anne chair stood between her and the blond-haired man.

Her hood blocked her peripheral vision; it did not blind her to the danger that crackled around her.

It did not shield her from the fact that she had sold her body to the highest bidder.

He did not move, this man who had purchased her virginity, a Greek statue garbed in a tailored, black-silk

dress coat and a white waistcoat, pale blond hair shining like spun silver.

A sharp pang stabbed through her chest.

He was so beautiful it hurt her to look at him.

Victoria tore her gaze away from his, heart racing, thoughts chasing.

She had seen him before: the high cheekbones, the sculpted mouth, eyes that saw through the most basic

desire . . .

His left hand rested palm down on top of the black marble, pale fingers long, slender, short nails buffed to

a polished sheen. A mound of white silk abutted his little finger.

Victoria had no illusions about what men did to women. The hand that caressed them could also hurt

them. Disfigure them.

Kill them.

Her gaze snapped upward.

Silver eyes were waiting for hers.

Victoria’s stomach clenched.

From hunger, she told herself.

And knew that she lied.

She was afraid.

But she could not afford to be afraid.

“You bid two thousand pounds for my virginity,” she said bluntly.

“I bid two thousand pounds,” he agreed