Tempting Fate Read online

  “A hero, he is,” Mrs. Pickering agreed. “I was dubious about him at first, but I’m glad you followed your intuition and hired the man. He’ll find the brigand behind this.”

  Suddenly, Felicity felt sorry for the brigand.

  Lord, he’d been such a gentle giant until now, she sometimes let herself forget what she’d hired him to do. He was a man who, by his own admission, claimed violence as his only skill.

  He’d conducted that violence efficiently tonight without constraint or hesitation. Seemingly without thought.

  Without remorse.

  In fact, she recalled the look of savage triumph as he’d crushed the third villain’s skull before the knife aimed at her breast could let fly.

  What sort of life must he have lived to amass such expertise? To kill with such ease?

  To kiss with such soul-melting tenderness.

  A paradox was Gareth Severand.

  One she should have feared after such a display.

  But she didn’t.

  Now what she feared was being without him.

  Chapter 8

  Gareth swiped a towel over his bloodied face before throwing it into the laundry heap. He paced the expansive washroom floor for several minutes, maybe longer.

  He knew the room was tiled in handsome blues and greens, with white marble floors beneath the ornate copper tub.

  But he could see none of that through the mien of red.

  The bloodlust refused to retract. His muscles remained engorged with violence, with the pure, carnal familiarity he had with it.

  He’d killed.

  He’d enjoyed it. He wanted to bring those men to life and do it again. Oh, but he’d take his time with them if he had his druthers. He’d baptize them in pain and blood before he sent them to face their eternal reckoning.

  His only solace was knowing that he’d meet them in hell, and then he’d teach the devil a thing or two about punishment.

  They knew better than to challenge him. At least, two of them had. Because they’d known him in a previous life.

  They’d once called him their master.

  Clayton Honeycutt and Richard Smythe. Both of them skilled killers. Both of them Fauves before the organization had fallen apart upon his and Raphael’s “death.”

  They hadn’t recognized him… until it had been too late.

  Christ, what did this mean? Had all of this been about him the entire time?

  Was Felicity in danger, not because of her inheritance, but because of his attachment to her?

  Had someone followed him as he watched over her? And if so, why decide to strike now when he’d been “dead” for a year?

  Gabriel stayed in London to make certain the last of the Fauves had been dismantled. To look for Marco. And to keep her safe.

  Had Marco, the wily Spaniard, somehow figured out his identity?

  Did her current nightmare exist only because of him?

  Had he stolen whatever peace of mind she had left only for a kiss?

  That kiss.

  What a revelation. He’d known kissing was something people did every day without thought. That lovers and spouses and sweethearts indulged in the seemingly innocuous practice on a whim.

  He’d always wanted, wondered, wished…

  But he’d never imagined the potent enormity of the deed. That by capturing his mouth, a woman could possess his entire body. That the intimacy of shared breath and rapturous tastes might liquify his muscle to molten iron and turn his blood into honey.

  Blood.

  He looked from the sink in front of him as streaks of red crawled toward the drain, to his face in the mirror above it.

  His face. He still didn’t recognize it. A man stared back at him, almost entirely whole and yet not any part of him as it should be.

  His nose might have been aquiline if not for the ragged bone beneath. Eyes that didn’t quite match in size were shadowed by an eyebrow split by a scar.

  The corner of his upper lip stitched together and healed into a slight divot, giving him an eternal appearance of cruel disdain.

  It was easier, somehow, when he had looked like a fiend. When his features terrified others as effortlessly as his reputation.

  When she’d fainted at the sight of him.

  Easier, because he’d woken every day a monster, and surprised no one by doing monstrous things.

  It seemed more honest. Man was often the worst kind of beast, and the most dangerous ones, he reckoned, were those who hid behind angelic features.

  Gabriel wet the edge of another cloth and wiped at the grooves branching from his eyes, the crease of his nose and the brackets of his mouth. He dabbed at the cut below his hairline, barely worth the trouble.

  The bleeding had stopped and revealed it was hardly more than a few layers of skin that’d decided to gush like a highland waterfall in spring.

  Most of the blood he’d just rinsed from his hands hadn’t been his own.

  And she’d witnessed the slaughter.

  Poor Felicity had barely been able to look at him after, had retched up a few organs in response.

  He closed his eyes for a long breath as a tide of regret swamped him.

  Berating himself, Gabriel wrenched open his vest and released the top buttons of his shirt, pulling it aside to assess the damage done by Honeycutt’s knife.

  Perhaps it was better this way, he conceded as he folded a towel and affixed it to his torso wound, applying firm pressure. Better she knew what he was capable of before anything else happened. Before he had the disastrous idea to hope for more than a kiss. To allow his thoughts and his hands to wander her body. To seek other experiences he’d thus been denied.

  He’d never meant for that kiss to happen. But the moonlight and her scent, the feel of her in his arms as she led him in a graceful rhythm. Their bodies in some perfect, graceful sync. The glimmer of feminine appreciation in her eyes.

  Her lips had sought him. She’d pressed that ghost of a caress against his mouth, and every tenuous chord he’d lashed to the final vestiges of his decency unraveled.

  He’d remember the taste of her as long as he lived.

  A knock on the door brought him from the mirror. The iodine, needle and thread he’d requested from the maids must have arrived.

  Replacing a few buttons back over his chest, he pressed his forearm to his side to secure the makeshift bandage in place before opening the door.

  Her nipples were hard.

  It shouldn’t have been the first thing he noticed. Not when Felicity stood there in thin layers of high-necked cream satin and lace. She held the stitching implements he’d called for in one hand and a mystery tin in the other.

  Thank God she couldn’t seem to bring herself to look at him, because it took a shameful moment to drag his own eyes away from the pebbled points peeking through her gown and wrapper.

  Damn summer nightclothes for being so thin.

  Damn his body for becoming hard as a diamond at the sight.

  “What is it?” The question emerged harsher than he’d intended.

  Though the scent of floral soap told him she’d washed, her hair remained dry, released from the braids of her coif and brushed into a glossy cloud of rioting fluff that fell in unruly waves past her shoulder blades.

  “I was told you requested stitching, and wanted to… to check for myself that your head wound is not too serious,” she told the doorframe.

  Touched by her concern, he reached for her medical offerings. “It’s nothing. It’s not even bleeding anymore.”

  At that, she flicked a glance up at him from beneath her lashes before lifting her chin to properly look at him.

  “Oh good.” Her shoulders peeled down from her ears. “No need for these then.” She brushed past him into the washroom, and discarded the needle and thread to the countertop. “I brought you a salve of honey, oregano, and goldenseal to protect it against infection.”

  When he reached for the tin, she pulled it from his grasp. “Please, let me
.”

  “That’s not necessary.”

  “It’s the least I can do since you were wounded in the line of duty,” she insisted. Gesturing to the wide ledge in which the tub was cast, she silently bade him to sit.

  “In here?” he queried dumbly, thinking of the discarded bloody towels and the one getting bloodier beneath his shirt.

  “We can go elsewhere if you wish,” she suggested. “Your room, if that’s more comfortab—”

  “No.” Anyplace with a bed was a terrible idea, injured or not. “No. Here is fine.”

  She looked at him askance. “Very well.”

  He lowered himself to the ledge, suppressing a grunt, and clasped his hands in front of him to make the protection of his torso appear natural.

  Felicity opened the tin and carefully bent to set the lid next to him, affording him a chance to take in the aroma of her soap and warm skin and lock it into his lungs.

  Straightening to stand in front of him, she dipped two fingers into the tin and frowned. “Oh dear, the salve is a bit less congealed than I usually make.” She rubbed her thumb and two fingers together, testing the texture of the stuff before lifting her hand to hover above his brow in preparation. “Here, close your eyes.”

  “No.” The word escaped him before he thought the better of it.

  She cocked her head. “But you must, you might get some of this in your eye and that would sting something horrible.”

  “No,” he repeated, more gently this time. “I’ll brave the sting if I must.”

  “But… but why?” She looked down at the tin. “I promise this is no ghastly potion. It’s only a salve of herbs gone a bit slippery with too much tincture and not enough beeswax.”

  “Do you remember what you told me about fear?” he asked, tilting his chin slightly to look up at her. “I cannot bring myself to close my eyes. I have this need. This… proclivity. No matter what, I must see what is coming at me. I must not be caught unaware.”

  “I understand.” He could feel her sympathetic gaze touching at the many parts of his ruined face, and he wished the caress was real. “You live a life where weapons fly at you from the dark. It’s no small wonder to me you don’t want to miss a thing.”

  After such an admission of his weakness, he couldn’t seem to summon a reply.

  She bent closer, her whisper both consoling and conspiratorial. “It is only you and me here. Nothing unseen. Nothing in the shadows.”

  That didn’t matter, his soul still itched to crawl out of his skin at the thought of giving up a sense that he relied upon to fight.

  “Trust me, Mr. Severand.”

  Trust. It was a word he didn’t recognize. A concept he never learned.

  “I would never hurt you. I promise.”

  She didn’t understand that she was the only person alive who truly could.

  Watching her retch in the garden, his heart had bled along with the rest of him. She hadn’t been able to look at him without being sick. What he’d done, who he was, repulsed and dismayed her. As it should.

  He’d murdered three men.

  “Please?” she pled, her expression beseeching. “You saved my life tonight, and I… I must do something for you. I cannot sleep if I think your wound might fester.”

  Denying her, it seemed, was something he was incapable of doing.

  Taking in a deep breath, he let his lids fall.

  He couldn’t suppress a flinch when she touched his shoulder, but as her hand rested there to steady herself, he found that connection of their bodies made him almost preternaturally aware of what she did. His other senses roared to life, experiencing her in ways he’d not yet done.

  Her scent imbued him with lavender and something sharper emanating from the tin. The scratch of satin against his trousers as she moved between his legs was possibly the most erotic sensation of his life. The soft feathering of breath against his hair. The chilly glide of the salve over the scratch, her touch barely more detectable than a butterfly’s wing. The throaty murmur of compassionate encouragement. Bereft of words but full of meaning.

  Gabriel swallowed a groan.

  “This is not so deep as I thought it might be,” she remarked, using a soft cloth to catch a drop of the salve before it ran into his eyebrow.

  “Head wounds tend to bleed more than others, appearing worse than they are initially.”

  “Oh.” She applied a second coat of the stuff, being exceedingly thorough.

  Or, perhaps, lingering? It’d no doubt been a traumatizing night for her, perhaps she was frightened to be alone. Perhaps she’d come to him seeking solace, something he’d never quite had to give.

  “What you saw tonight… what happened… I wish I could express how sorry I am that you had to witness—”

  “Can I tell you something?” she interrupted, her voice as steady as he’d ever heard it.

  “Of course.” He wanted to know everything about her.

  “Tonight was terrifying. But I wasn’t sick because of what you did. I mean, I was, but it’s the blood, you see. The sight of blood makes me ill, sometimes enough that I faint.”

  At that, his eyes opened. Could it be all this time, her reactions had not to do with him? Even when she’d looked upon his face after the Midnight Masquerade…

  He’d been splattered with the blood he shed to get her out.

  “But you volunteer at a hospital,” he wondered aloud.

  Her gaze skittered away. “I thought if I was around blood and such all the time, I’d inure myself to it. But after so many swoons, I was considered more of a risk than a help, and was delegated to sit with people as they recovered, and assist with paperwork.” She brightened as she reached for the lid of the tin. “I also create herbal tinctures that my brother-in-law Dr. Conleith uses as remedies for his patients’ more treatable ills.”

  “Oh? And what do you make?” She must be particularly good, as upon application of the salve, the smarting of his head wound ceased.

  “Well, mustard and comfrey poultices for chest ailments. Peppermint and wintergreen tinctures for sinus and lungs. Valerian and chamomile for soothing nerves. Fennel, mint, and licorice root for stomach remedies. Raspberry leaves and evening primrose oil for… well, for feminine ailments. And this, an antiseptic for wounds. Titus said it’s been a godsend.”

  “That is why you spend so much time in the greenhouse,” he realized, remembering a few afternoons and evenings he’d been brave enough to linger in the courtyard archway to see her tend her numerous plants.

  “That, among other things.”

  “What other things?”

  She wiped her fingers on the cloth, and he noted that she’d not yet moved from between his knees. “Just whatever strikes my fancy, I suppose. I like the speed at which things grow.”

  “Speed?” He lifted an inquiring brow.

  Her lashes swept down. “I suppose that’s the wrong word for it. Less speed… more fortitude. Plants are so fickle sometimes, so delicate, and often need very specific care. But at the same time, they can be so determined to bloom. To find a way. I like to think I can help. There’s something lovely about plunging my fingers in the soil. I appreciate the smell and the textures. I love tiny veins on the leaves and the imperceptible movements of the buds. Some follow the sun, but you never see them move. It’s a world so fascinating to me, one full of life and yet so still and silent. It is where I feel useful, but not necessary.”

  Retrieving a small sticking plaster from the sink, she returned to apply it, catching her tongue in the corner of her lip as she concentrated. “My secret for this salve is tea tree. It will help with scarring.”

  “What is one more scar?” he asked wryly.

  She puffed out a breath of mirth and it washed him in goosebumps. Her lips were right there. Every muscle in his body knew it.

  “Mr. Severand!” She grabbed at his sleeve, and he looked down to see a dark red blotch on it. “You’re cut!”

  “It’s nothing, I’ll look after it when
you’re done here.”

  “Why didn’t you say so? Oh, dear God.”

  The cloth he’d been holding over the slash had tumbled to the ground at their feet when she’d seized upon his arm. He’d bled through the thin material, as she’d stayed longer than he’d expected her to.

  “I’m— I’m sorry.” Her legs gave out suddenly and he caught her before she tumbled to the floor. Suddenly limbless, she slid down his body.

  Her blueberry eyes went almost comically wide beneath her spectacles as they each became abruptly aware of the erection pulsing between them.

  Gabriel forgot to breathe. She had no panels. No corset. Nothing but billowing fabric between her breasts and his cock.

  Christ. It felt amazing.

  Felicity, on the other hand, visibly lost control of her lungs, expanding and contracting her ribs against the insistently hard flesh between them. Her pupils dilated so large, the black threatened to swallow all that cerulean with a darkness that didn’t belong on her features.

  Was she astonished? Shocked? Displeased? Offended?

  Aroused?

  Certainly not.

  He reached for her shoulders, intent upon helping her to stand. Hoping she wouldn’t be sick.

  Instead, she fainted.

  Gabriel caught her and leaned her against his good side as he used his shirt to tie a bandage on the slash.

  Grunting in pain as he picked her up, he carried her to her chamber and settled her on the bed, pulling up the covers and tucking them beneath her chin.

  In every fantasy he ever had, he crawled in beside her.

  “Goodnight, Felicity.”

  Taking a liberty he didn’t deserve, he bent to plant a kiss on her forehead before escaping back to the washroom.

  Ripping off his ruined, knotted shirt, he went about the tedious and painful job of washing his wound and stitching it up using the mirror and one-handed magic. It wasn’t the pierce of the needle that set his teeth on edge, but the sensation of the thread running through the skin.

  He gritted through it, only requiring six stitches in all. Once he’d finished, he swiped some of the salve on the wound before layering gauze over it and wrapping a bandage around his rib cage to keep it in place.