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

not here to discuss my appetite, sir.”

“But you are hungry.”

Her stomach roiled in assent.

“No,” Victoria lied. “I am not hungry.”

“But you know what it is like to be hungry.”

She would not admit weakness to this man whose beauty called to every feminine instinct she had ever

tried to suppress.

“I have missed an occasional meal, yes.”

Victoria had finished the crust of a quarter loaf of bread three days past.

“Would you kill for money, mademoiselle?”

Streetwalkers sometimes robbed and killed the clients whom they serviced.

Did he think she was a streetwalker?

A jagged fingernail penetrated her right palm. “I may prostitute myself this night, sir, but I am not a thief

nor am I a murderess. You need have no fear of me.”

“You have never before killed a man?” he persisted.

“No,” she said adamantly. But Victoria had wanted to.

Watching her meager savings dwindle day by day, she had wanted to hurt the man who was responsible,

as she had been hurt by his actions.

“Would you beg me, mademoiselle?”

The coldness fusing Victoria’s vertebrae settled in the center of her chest.

“No,” she said clearly. Decisively. Gaze holding his. “No, I will not beg you.” She would not beg any

man.

A burning log dropped inside the fireplace. Sparks shot up the chimney.

“Take off your dress.”

Victoria’s stomach growled, a betraying reminder of her mortality.

If he took her, she could die.

If he did not take her, she would die.

Of cold. Of hunger.

Or perhaps she would be killed for her cloak and shoes so that someone else might survive the London

streets another night, another week, another month.

Feeling as if she were outside her body, Victoria raised her hands to her bodice. She watched her actions

through silver eyes.

Fingers that were red and chapped released one button, two, three . . . Pale skin shone through the

widening gap of the brown wool bodice. The base of her throat. . . the valley between her breasts. . . the

curve of her abdomen, concave rather than rounded . . .

Taking a deep breath, Victoria shrugged. Harsh wool cascaded down her back, her hips, puddled around

her feet.

There was no chemise, no corset, no petticoats to hide behind.

They, too, had been sold on St. Giles Street.

She squared her shoulders, more aware of the baggy silk drawers that rode her hips and the wool

stockings that sagged about her knees and the half boots that rubbed her ankles than she was of her own

breath.

Forcibly she blanked her mind.

Heat licked at her skin while the coldness of his gaze roved over her body. Shoulders. Breasts. The silk

drawers covering the apex of her thighs.

Back up to her shoulders, her breasts.

He lingered over her nipples.

They were hard.

From the cold, she told herself.

And knew that she lied once again.

Victoria wanted to feel a man’s hands on her body.

She wanted to feel this man’s hands on her body.

She wanted to end once and for all the virginity that was both a woman’s prized possession and the

instrument of her downfall.

Purposefully, Victoria reached for the waistband of her frayed silk drawers. Then they, too, were gone,

lost inside the circle of her wool dress.

Goose bumps spread over her bare buttocks.

She did not have to follow his gaze to know at what he stared: the hair between her thighs was curly as

the hair on top of her head was not.

Heat followed the track of his gaze.

No man had ever seen Victoria naked.

No doubt this man had seen hundreds of naked women.

Women whose skin was soft and whose hips were full and supple. Women whose ribs did not stick out

like the whalebones sewn inside a corset.

Women who knew what to expect from a man such as he.

Victoria hurriedly leaned over to untie the makeshift garter belt circling her right thigh, back stretching,

breasts dangling—

“Stand up.”

She jerked upright at the harshness of the command.

Pale color suffused the man’s cheeks. It hardened rather than softened the chiseled perfection of his

face.

The air pulsated around him. Or perhaps it was the veins inside Victoria’s eyes that pulsated.

The silver-eyed, silver-haired man was not as removed as he pretended to be.

She was not as removed as she pretended to be.

“Step out of the circle of your clothes.”

Stomach somersaulting, Victoria awkwardly stepped out of the wool drawers and the collapsed fortress

of her dress. The twin strings holding her stockings in place bit into her flexing skin, right knee, left knee.

Her feet sank into the bog that the plush maroon carpet had become.

“Take down your hair.”

His voice was still harsh; the words were not quite as clipped as before. English with a trace of French.

Victoria’s breasts throbbed in time to the pounding inside her chest. Fleetingly she wondered if he could

see her heartbeat.

Lifting her arms, she searched for a hairpin, senses sharpening, breasts jutting, stomach tightening—

“Turn around.”

Victoria stilled, heart pounding, pounding. “I beg your pardon?”

“Turn around and take your hair down with your back facing me.”

With her back toward him, she would not be able to protect herself.

She had not been able to protect herself six months earlier, laced inside a corset hiding behind her virtue.

Victoria turned around.

A pale blue leather divan monopolized the far wall. Above it, a blue sea lapped an orange sunset.

Vaguely Victoria recognized the painting as being from the school of Impressionists, creators of dancing

light and shimmering color.

Carefully, she released the hairpins; behind her, the man’s gaze was a palpable touch.

On her buttocks. On the nape of her neck. Her shoulders. Back to her buttocks.

In the painting a shadowy man leaned over