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

echoed in Victoria’s ears.

It was a woman’s voice, but it didn’t sound like Victoria’s voice. It came from far, far away.

Too far away to have come from Victoria.

One second the box laid on her lap, the next second it was gone.

Numbly holding the lid between her fingers, Victoria glanced up.

Gabriel’s face was dizzily close.

He had fine pores, she thought. His skin was baby-smooth.

Silver eyes captured her gaze.

A silky masculine voice bolted through her memory . .. If she’s not yet dead, she soon will be.

“It’s the prostitute’s”—Victoria could not bring herself to vocalize the body parts that had been

amputated—”it’s her.”

“Possibly.”

Gabriel straightened, face shooting back. He held the box between long white fingers.

Victoria dropped the lid. “It’s not Madame—”

“No, it’s not Madame René.” There was no emotion inside Gabriel’s eyes—no pleasure, no horror. “Her

hands are smaller.”

Victoria had never before fainted. She had never before wanted to faint.

She did now.

Victoria abruptly realized there had been one other person who would have known about her personal

artifacts.

“Doily knew that I wore silk drawers,” she whispered.

And now Dolly was dead. As Gabriel had predicted.

Victoria convulsively swallowed.

The room tilted.

“Put your head between your legs,” a sharp voice rang out.

Victoria looked at the other boxes—the three dress boxes were long enough to hold a torso. The three

round hatboxes were deep enough to hold a head—

The eggs and ham and croissant she had eaten earlier rushed up into her throat.

She lurched up, feet tangling. The silk tucked between her breasts slipped free, slithered down her body.

Victoria ran for the bathroom.

Gabriel had spoken of death, but it had not been real; it was all too real now.

Victoria wondered if Madame René would be disappointed in her weak stomach. And then she didn’t

wonder anything.

She dropped down on her knees before the porcelain toilet. And remembered more words—hers,

Gabriel’s.

Do you plan on k illing me, then, to spare me this. . . death?

You would thank me in the end.

Perhaps she would.

Gabriel opened up a hatbox. A crimson-stained hat cradled a woman’s head.

Death had erased Dolly’s pain and horror.

Gabriel opened the second hatbox. A smart Windsor hat with a short black veil resided within.

No death there.

Gabriel opened the third hatbox. The frivolous feathered confection inside held a man’s head, gray hair

smeared with dark crimson. Gerald Fitzjohn’s face was lax.

He saw Victoria’s pleasure. He saw Victoria’s horror.

For a brief moment he had shared her pleasure. He did not share her horror: Gabriel had lived on the

streets too long to be repulsed by faces of death.

Dolly and Fitzjohn had been slated to die; they had died.

The price of sin: blackmail. Death.

Have you sinned, mademoiselle?

Not yet.

Gabriel replaced the three lids. Straightening, he rounded his desk and pressed the buzzer underneath the

black marble top. Striding across the carpet, he flung open the satinwood door.

A man with rich mahogany-colored hair jumped to attention. “Mr. Gabriel, sir!”

“Remove the boxes on the couch, Evan,” Gabriel calmly ordered while rage rose within him.

He would have spared Victoria the reality of death. The second man obviously did not want her to be

spared.

Green eyes stoically met silver ones.

“Yes, sir,” Evan said.

Gabriel wondered if Evan sympathized with Victoria’s plight.

He wondered if he would try to set her free.

Gabriel stepped aside for Evan to enter.

Evan stooped to pick up a box.

“Evan.”

Evan paused.

“There are human remains in some of the other boxes.”

Perhaps there were remains in all of the other boxes, although Gabriel doubted it. The weight of the

boxes combined would have raised questions when they were brought up.

Evan stiffened in horror, proof that not all men who had lived on the streets had lost the ability to be

repulsed by death.

“Take the body parts and dump them into the Thames,” Gabriel ordered flatly. “Burn the clothes and the

boxes.”

Many people disappeared into the Thames. Gabriel did not want slivers of human bone inside his

furnace.

Evan did not question Gabriel. He picked up a weighted hatbox.

“Evan.”

“Yes, sir?” Evan’s voice was subdued.

He had been a sympathizer.

“Gaston did warn you to guard Mademoiselle Childers well, did he not?”

Evan did not turn around. “Yes, sir.”

“Tell Julien and Allen what is in the hatbox you hold,” Gabriel ordered blandly. “Tell Julien and Allen that

it could just as easily have been Mademoiselle Childers’s head if we had not protected her.”

Gaston came just as Evan left with the first load of boxes.

“What is wrong, monsieur?” he asked, puzzled. “Did not mademoiselle care for the clothes?”

Gabriel held out the glove box.

Gaston’s olive-brown face turned gray.

“When did the clothes arrive, Gaston?” Gabriel asked calmly.

“They arrived just before you did, monsieur.”

“Who delivered them?”

“Je ne sais pas. A man. Just”—horror momentarily creased his face—”the boxes were from Madame

René. I did not know, monsieur.”

Gabriel believed him.

He could warn Gaston to check any more boxes that were delivered to the house. There was no need

to.

The second man would not repeat a trick.

He wanted to tell Gaston what to look out for in the future. But Gabriel did not know what the second

man would do next.

He did not know who he would kill next: a man or a woman.

A friend or a foe.

“Give this to Evan,” Gabriel said instead. “And have Julien guard the door in Evan’s place.”

“Très bein, monsieur.” Gaston turned around.

“And Gaston.”

Gaston paused.

Gabriel glanced at the pale blue silk spread lying across the carpet where it had slid off of Victoria’s

body.

“Take the silk bedcover with you.”

Gabriel silently padded across his office, his bedroom, halted