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

and sucked the very oxygen from the air.

Hands trembling, Victoria pointed the snub-barreled derringer at the man on the floor.

Glazed violet eyes blindly stared up at the ceiling. A thin line of crimson oozed from the nose she had

broken.

He was dead.

And Gabriel... Gabriel cradled Michael, silver hair comingling with black hair. He rocked Michael back

and forth in a silent litany of grief.

Victoria dropped the derringer. “Gabriel,” she croaked.

He did not hear her.

Yves had wanted to strip away the inner core that had allowed Gabriel to survive poverty, prostitution,

and rape: he had succeeded.

Victoria knelt beside Gabriel.

Michael’s face was pale underneath the olive tint of his skin, the ridged scars edging his right cheek lax.

Thick black lashes darkened his cheeks.

Victoria reached out, wanting to hold Gabriel, to love Gabriel, to comfort Gabriel. “Gabriel. . .”

A crimson fountain caught her attention.

Blood pumped out of Michael’s chest.

Victoria the governess kicked in.

Blood did not pump out of a corpse. Pumping blood required a pumping heart.

“He’s alive, Gabriel!” Victoria grabbed Gabriel’s hand and pressed it against Michael’s chest to stop the

bleeding. “Gabriel, help me.”

Hot blood bubbled up through their fingers.

Gabriel lifted his head, his life flowing through his and Victoria’s fingers; his eyes were black with shock.

“Don’t,” he said flatly, voice remote, eyes dead. “Let me hold him.”

Victoria would not cry for an angel. Not now.

“Keep your hand over his chest, Gabriel,” she said furiously. “He’s alive. If you move your hand away,

he’ll die. Now hold your bloody bleedin’ hand there!”

The street cant worked.

Gabriel’s silver eyes focused: on Victoria ... on Michael.

On the blood bubbling up through their fingers.

On life instead of death.

“I’ll be back with a doctor,” she said.

The door would not open.

Victoria pushed with a strength she had not known she possessed; it opened.

Dark liquid pooled on the top of the landing, dripped down the wooden stairs.

Blood.

Julien’s blood.

Bile rose inside her throat; she convulsively swallowed.

There was nothing she could do to help Julien; there was something she could yet do to help a fallen

angel.

Victoria stepped in blood, slipped on blood, reached the bottom stairs. The door there was already open.

Candlelight flames lit the labyrinth of tables, silver candlesticks gleaming, yellow flame dancing. A waiter

wearing a short black coat paused at sight of her, the crimson sash around his waist bloodred against the

white of his waistcoat, match hovering over an unlit candle.

Victoria recognized him: he was the black-haired guard who had taken her breakfast tray two days

earlier.

“Jeremy!” he shouted. “David! Patrick! Charlie! A moi!

To me.

Suddenly men were racing toward Victoria, hands reaching inside their short black coats; they raced past

Victoria, blue-plated pistols drawn.

She incongruously wondered what they would think when they saw the second man.

What had Julien thought when he stared into violet eyes?

He had called out in surprise, “Mr. Michel,” when Yves had opened the door, and then there had been a

gurgle of watery breath and a dull thud of body impacting wood. Yves had shut the door, smiling in triumph.

“What is it?”

Gaston suddenly stood in front of Victoria, knife drawn, blade winking in the candlelight.

A cutthroat instead of a manager.

Victoria shrank back.

Gaston grasped her bound hands and cut through the silk knotted about them.

She licked her lips. “They’re dead.”

Gaston’s brown eyes widened. “Messieurs Gabriel and Michel?”

“No. Julien.” Tears filled her eyes. “Julien and ... two other men. But not. . . Gabriel. Michel is hurt.”

For Gabriel’s sake, Michael could not die. “He needs a doctor.”

“Andy!” Victoria noticed a young boy peering over a table. He could have been five, or he could have

been fifteen—some of the children born on the streets never gained full growth. “Bring Docteur Francois.

Tell Peter to fetch Mademoiselle Aimes.”

Mademoiselle Aimes. Michael’s woman. The woman whom Gabriel had liked and whom the second

man had tried to find a look-alike for.

Instead, he had found Victoria.

Andy skipped away to do Gaston’s bidding.

With difficulty Victoria pushed aside the pain and horror of the last few hours. “The police should be

summoned—”

“There will be no police, mademoiselle.” Gaston’s face was shuttered. “Mira, take Mademoiselle

Childers to the kitchen. Pierre will care for your wound, mademoiselle.”

And then Gaston was gone.

Mira stared at Victoria with hard, bright eyes, the friendly warmth that had been in her eyes just hours

earlier replaced with the knowledge of cold and hunger and death.

Victoria wondered where Mira had come from—the kitchen? She had not been in the saloon, and then

she was there. There was no doubt inside Victoria’s mind that she had once lived on the streets.

Had she been a beggar, a prostitute, a thief, a cutthroat? And then, incongruously, she wondered how old

Mira was. Her face was set with wrinkles that could have come from age or they could have come from

deprivation. Only her eyes—the color of perfect blue sapphires—were bright and vivid.

“I didn’t”—Victoria swallowed, hurt him, she had wanted to say, but she knew that she had hurt Gabriel

merely by coming to his house; she had hurt Julien by not mentioning what she had seen in the transparent

mirror—“I have to go to Gabriel. He needs me.”

And she knew that she lied.

Gabriel did not need Victoria; he needed a miracle.

“Mr. Gabriel’s not ‘urt?” Mira asked sharply.

“No, he’s not hurt.” Hurt was not a word Victoria would use to describe Gabriel. “Mr.—Jules is dead.”

Tears scalded her eyes. “I couldn’t call out to him.”

The second man had stuffed the scarf into her mouth at the same time he