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

thrust the head of his cane through the open door, silver shining in the yellow fog.

The woman approached, paused to give the cabbie her address. The front of the cab dipped, wood

protesting; seconds later the woman sank into the seat, worn leather creaking, velvet rustling.

A hip pressed Gabriel’s hip: he gritted his teeth. Cloying perfume drowned out the various other

stenches.

Leaning forward, the woman grasped the door handle. The darkness that closed around Gabriel had

nothing to do with the slamming door, and everything to do with the shoulder that suddenly rubbed his

shoulder.

There was no room to move, no space in which the side of the cab or another human body did not block

him.

The cab lurched forward.

Gabriel turned his head and stared at the blond head beside his while every muscle inside his body coiled

to kick open the door so that he could escape.

Back to Victoria. Back to the hope she promised.

“Did you discover anything?” he asked neutrally.

“Yes.”

The voice was not feminine; it was masculine.

Self-disgust resonated inside the cab.

A hand fisted inside Gabriel’s chest. He had done this to the man sitting beside him—he and the second

man.

“I told you that you did not have to do this, John,” Gabriel said quietly, fighting the sway of the cab and

the fear he had lived with for almost fifteen years.

“I have done nothing this night that I have not done thousands of times before,” John said tonelessly.

Ten years earlier, John had whored to survive; this night he had done it for Gabriel. John would never

forgive either Gabriel or himself.

Gabriel did not blame him.

Reaching up, John ripped the blond wig off his head.

“You did not have to take me in ten years ago.” John’s hair briefly shone gold in the light of a passing

street lamp; it was immediately dulled by shadowy fog. “I would still be there if it were not for you.”

They both knew better. John would not be a whore at the Hundred Guineas Club; he would be dead.

“I did not see Stephen,” he said instead.

“You are not supposed to see him.” John continued to stare at the cab door. “Stephen is surveying the

club, as you instructed.”

Whereas Gabriel had instructed John to play the whore.

John slowly turned his head; his eyes gleamed in the darkness. “They use feminine names. I could not

directly ask about Gerald Fitzjohn.”

John did not tell Gabriel anything that he did not already know. But Gabriel had information to relay to

John.

“Fitzjohn is dead,” Gabriel said remotely. And then, remembering Evan and Gaston’s horror, added, “He

was decapitated.”

John showed neither surprise nor horror. This night he had endured far worse than death. “A man said

that Geraldine had stood him up.”

Geraldine was the feminine version of Gerald.

Gabriel tensed.

Gerald Fitzjohn could go under the name Geraldine. But then again, he could use another name.

The cab rounded a corner. Gabriel grabbed the overhead strap. “What was the name of the man?”

“He called himself Francine.”

Francine ... Frances.

Viscount Riley bore the name of Frances. He was a crony of the Duke of Clarence, the heir to the

throne of England.

The royal duke signed in the club register with his mother’s name: Victoria.

“He said the night before that Lenora stood both Geraldine and himself up,” John continued

unemotionally, “and that he had not seen Lenora since.”

Lenora . . . Leonard.

Gabriel did not know offhand of a member of the ton or a parliament member who was named Leonard.

Did the second man?

Had the second man killed the man who called himself Lenora as he had killed Gerald Fitzjohn?

The questions rose with the throbbing pressure of John’s hip and shoulder.

Why had not someone followed Gabriel?

Why were the Thorntons still alive?

“Do you know of a man named Mitchell Delaney?” Gabriel asked, control slowly eroding from the

cloying smell of perfume and the closeness of John and the pleasure that continued to throb inside his groin.

Victoria’s pleasure.

What did the second man plan? For Michael? For Gabriel?

For Victoria?

“No.” John shifted in the darkness; he created as much space between them as he could, whether

because he could not bear the touch of another man after the night or to give Gabriel a reprieve, Gabriel did

not know. “Does he belong to the club?”

“I don’t know,” Gabriel said. The carriage wheels echoed his apprehension.

Gabriel was not a fool.

There were men who were more adept at hunting than he.

The men who guarded Michael and Anne could be bribed or killed.

A man could have followed Gabriel without his knowledge.

Any moment, now, the cab would stop.

Men could be waiting in front of John’s door. Men could kill John and take Gabriel.

The cab jerked to a halt.

John stuffed on his wig; his thigh and hip and elbow and shoulder unavoidably crowded Gabriel’s thigh

and hip and arm and shoulder.

“The woman who owns the flat does not know what I am,” he said stiffly by way of apology. “I would

rather she think a woman came to visit me.”

“You know the landlady?” Gabriel asked, hoping for John’s sake that he knew her carnally.

Hoping for John’s sake that he could find the solace the second man had deprived Gabriel of.

“She’s a widow. We occasionally take comfort in each other.”

“Take comfort