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

Gabriel softly ordered.

The butler hesitated: he was afraid Delaney would dismiss him or he was afraid Delaney would kill him.

The more immediate threat to his life won out.

“Mr. Delaney, he ... he has a special place prepared in the attic.” Crimson red stained the butler’s

starched white shirt collar. “He brings women there . . .”

“My brother is a bachelor.” Moral outrage spiced Mrs. Collins’s voice. “It is none of our business what

women he brings into his home.”

Victoria had spent eighteen years at the mercy of women such as Mrs. Collins, women who hid behind

their virtue in order to be comfortable with their lives and their men.

Never again.

“Your brother terrorized my woman, madame” Gabriel said softly. “It is my business.”

The butler’s eyes widened in shock. The women whom he and his employer preyed upon were not

supposed to have men to protect them. To care for them.

To love them.

The approaching clip-clop of a lone horse’s hooves sounded out over the butler’s labored breathing. All

Delaney’s sister would have to do was scream .. .

“If my brother is guilty of nefarious practices, these women should have informed the police.”

Mrs. Collins continued to hide behind her wealth and her virtue.

The governesses were poor; Delaney was rich.

No bobby would arrest him.

“Do you love your brother, Mrs. Collins?” Gabriel asked impersonally.

The lone horse was even with the house; the faint grind of carriage wheels sang out through the evening

fog.

“Of course I love my brother!” Mrs. Collins exclaimed. “It is a virtuous woman’s duty to love her

family.” No matter their faults.

But she wouldn’t admit that, let alone confess it.

Gabriel wondered how Victoria, at the age of sixteen, had gained the courage to walk away from her

father.

The grinding echo of the carriage was obliterated by fog and distance; the horse’s hooves faded to a

dying echo.

“Then you don’t want your brother to be killed,” Gabriel said flatly.

“Of course not,” Delaney’s sister said on a loud intake of air. Unaware of the passing carriage that

could have been her salvation.

“But he is going to be killed—”

Mrs. Collins gasped; yellow fog curled around the butler’s livid face.

“—if I do not reach him before another man does.”

Gabriel lied. Or perhaps he did not lie.

He did not know if Delaney worked with the second man. Gabriel would not know until he found

Delaney.

Either way he was a dead man.

“My brother did not... he did not tell me where he went.”

Mrs. Collins spoke the truth again.

Knowledge glittered inside the butler’s eyes. Pale green ringed his dilated pupils.

“You know where he is, Keanon,” Gabriel said silkily.

The twin rings of pale green vanished; the butler’s eyes transformed into two black holes of fear.

“I don’t know,” he gasped.

Was Delaney a killer? Gabriel speculated. Who was Keanon more afraid of, Gabriel or Delaney?

“You do, Keanon,” Gabriel crooned. “But if you don’t, then there really is no reason why I shouldn’t kill

you, is there?”

“I don’t know!” Shrillness laced the butler’s voice.

Only cartilage separated the tip of Gabriel’s sword and the butler’s windpipe.

“Take a deep breath, Keanon,” Gabriel said gently. “It’s going to be your last.”

The last of Keanon’s loyalty dissipated in a surge of terror.

“He said he was going to get the governess!” the butler babbled. “That’s all I know! I swear, that’s all I

know!”

Ice raced through Gabriel’s veins.

Victoria was at Gabriel’s house. But did Delaney know that?

Or did he plan to collect her at the cheap room that had been her home?

“How does he know where she is?” Gabriel gritted.

“I don’t know! I don’t know! I swear to God I don’t know!”

So many people who didn’t k now.

“Are there women up in the attic now, Keanon?”

“No! No! Not now.”

But the attic was prepared for a woman.

It was prepared for Victoria.

“Do you watch while he rapes the women?” Gabriel asked softly. Time ticking, pulses beating.

“Mrs. Thornton—she watches!”

There were women as well as men who derived pleasure out of another’s subjugation. Gabriel could

very easily imagine Mary Thornton as being one of those women.

“Does Delaney give the women to you when they finish with them?” he asked.

“No—” Keanon thought better of lying. “Yes. But I don’t hurt them. I swear I don’t hurt them.”

Sweat poured down the butler’s pockmarked face; ice spread up Gabriel’s spine.

Wounds healed; memories did not.

But perhaps the governesses were deprived even of those...

“Do you kill the women for Delaney and Mary Thornton?”

“No, no!” The butler’s bulging eyes rolled round in their sockets. “Mr. Delaney gives them money to live

in the country. I put them on the train. I swear it. I can tell you where they bought tickets to ...”

Keanon’s head slammed against the wall; a half dozen silver-and-glass picture frames crashed to the

floor.

Gabriel stared down at the photograph of a man who stood by a tree; he had an arm about a woman.

He stood in shadow, she in light.

His features were blurred; his hair looked black in the shadow. The woman’s features were clear; her

hair was hidden underneath a straw hat.

Was the man in the photograph Mitchell Delaney?

Did Delaney have black hair?

Was Delaney the second man?

Pivoting, Gabriel gazed up.

Delaney’s sister stood on the eighth step.

She was the woman in the photograph, an icon of English motherhood. In her early thirties, she had pale

brown hair secured on top of her head in a loose knot. Her