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

Times detailed a

suicide and a murder.”

Gabriel did not have to ask who the victims had been. The second man had dispatched the Thorntons.

Locks were easily picked.

Either Delaney or the second man could have entered the house while the servants were otherwise

occupied.

“There are always articles detailing murders and suicides in the papers,” Gabriel fenced. “If there weren

’t, people wouldn’t buy them.”

“Sir Neville Jamieson was shot through the head.”

Surprise raced down Gabriel’s spine. Neville Jamieson was a squire in his late sixties. He had never

visited Gabriel’s house.

Gabriel shrugged, pretending an indifference he did not feel. “That is unfortunate.”

Michael continued swirling brandy inside his snifter, violet eyes assessing, crystal glinting, amber liquor

sloshing. “He owns an estate in Dover.”

Gabriel froze.

Twenty-nine years earlier the nightmare had started in Dover. Two years later Michael had run away

and stowed on the boat that had docked in Calais.

If Michael had not run away, Gabriel would never have met him. If he had not met Michael, Gabriel

would never have met the second man. And he would have died from starvation and disease, or he would

have died from a knife or a bludgeon.

Gabriel owed everything to Michael.

“I don’t know Neville Jamieson,” Gabriel said truthfully.

Michael’s violet eyes were alert, seeking to pierce Gabriel’s shell. “Jamieson was an associate of my

uncle’s.”

An associate. . .

“How do you know that?” Gabriel asked sharply, aloofness pierced.

“Anne read the paper.” Candlelight flickering, amber swirled, violet glinted. “Anne told me.”

Anne Aimes’s estate was in Dover, as had been that of Michael’s uncle. She would know.

Gabriel struggled to piece together the play the second man had set into motion.

He had killed a Dover squire. But why?

“Who was the man who reportedly killed Jamieson?” Gabriel asked tautly.

“Leonard Forester.”

Leonard Forester was the name of the architect who had redesigned the House of Gabriel.

The fear coursing through Gabriel’s veins knotted his stomach.

The paper was wrong. Forester hadn’t committed suicide; he had been murdered.

The two men were both connected to the second man. But how?

“Why did he kill Jamieson?”

“Leonard Forester is an architect,” Michael said, watching Gabriel for a reaction. Both men tied to his

past. “Jamieson owns the firm where Forester is employed.”

Gabriel remembered .. . the watching eyes that had awoken him. The scent that had lingered in his suite.

John’s report on what he had learned at the Hundred Guineas Club.... Lenora stood both Geraldine

and himself up, and that he had not seen Lenora since.

Lenora ... Leonard.

Leonard Forester had rebuilt the House of Gabriel. He had built a secret passage for the second man.

And now he was dead.

The second man had been inside his suite earlier that day.

Delaney. The second man.

It didn’t matter by what name he called himself. He was inside the House of Gabriel.

He had Victoria.

Gabriel raced through the tables, pushing aside a chair, table tilting, silver candleholder flying.

“Gabriel!”

Michael’s voice echoed dully inside Gabriel’s ears, no time to worry about the truth.

He took the narrow stairs three at a time.

Julien was slumped in front of the satinwood door, auburn hair spilling around him like a silk scarf.

Crimson blood dripped over the wooden lip of the landing.

His throat had been slit.

Gabriel knew what Julien had last seen: he could feel the lingering surprise that survived death like the

residue of erased chalk on a board.

Julien had not expected to die inside the House of Gabriel; he had not expected to be killed by a man

whom he thought was a friend.

There was no time for regrets now.

Later.

Later Gabriel would mourn the death of another homeless brother. But not now.

Victoria needed him.

Gabriel fumbled in the pocket of his trousers for the key to the door— merde—where was the fucking

key? Vaguely he was aware of footsteps pounding up the stairs behind him.

It was too late to protect Michael.

Too late to save Julien . .. Julien who had trusted too much and paid with the skin off his back.

Now he was dead.

Another casualty in a twenty-nine-year-old nightmare.

Finding the brass key, Gabriel thrust it home. The door was impeded by the bulk of Julien’s body; Gabriel

wrenched it open, dragging Julien forward in a slick slide of blood. He squeezed through the opening crack.

Chalk gritted underneath the soles of his boots. More white nodules were scattered over the maroon

carpet.

It was not that which held his attention.

The mystery of Delaney and the second man was a mystery no more.

Chapter

24

“Gabriel.” The second man perched on the black-marble-topped desk, black hair blue in the light of

the chandelier, violet eyes gleaming. A familiar smile spread over his face. “Mon ange.”

My angel grated across Gabriel’s skin.

The second man’s voice bore the same knowledgeable cadence as did that of Michael and Gabriel: the

voice of a man who had been trained to entice, to seduce, to gratify.

Victoria stood between his splayed legs, golden brown silk dress with its wine-colored velvet lapels and

cream-colored panels splashed with green, yellow and dull-red dye a sharp contrast to the stark black silk of

a dress coat and trousers.

A fist clenched inside Gabriel’s guts, recognizing Madame René’s creation. It squeezed his chest, seeing

the blue silk scarf that gagged her mouth and the green silk scarf knotted about her hands.

The second man caressed her cheek with a serrated Bowie knife.

It was Gabriel’s knife.

A knife whose sole purpose was to kill.

No doubt it had killed Julien.

A blue-plated pistol barrel toyed with the wine-colored