“But you just said you use—”
“It does me no good to incite terror of me, per se,” he clarified. “If I have an enemy, I find out what they already fear and turn it on them. I figure how to sow it among their own ranks until the right eye doesn’t trust what the left eye sees. I can make it so the heart and the brain fear each other, and then the muscles and blood don’t know whom to obey. When men fear what they used to love, that fear often turns to hate. And then they rip out their own hearts. They pluck out their own eyes... They devour themselves.”
“That’s...” To his abject astonishment, she was quiet for five entire steps before conjuring a word. “Diabolical.”
“That, mon chaton, is when I strike. When they are blind. When they’ll never see me coming.”
“Oh.” She looked off into the distance, melancholy sitting strangely on her face. As if it didn’t belong. “I do not think Mathilde ever saw her killer coming. At least... I hope she did not. That she wasn’t afraid.”
Lanced by the selfsame ardent hope, Raphael asked, “Why did you come seek me out when I’m wanted for Mathilde’s murder?”
“Because I...I don’t think you killed her.”
“You would not have kissed me back if you did.”
“I did not kiss—”
He interrupted her protestation. “What makes you think I am innocent?”
“I don’t have to tell you,” she said, still stubbornly refusing to look at him.
“Please.”
The soft word caused a hitch in her step. Perhaps she heard the desperation in it. The earnest grief he’d been keeping at bay.
Sighing, she relented. “For one, your shoes were impeccable and expensive, and the boot that left the mud on the window was grooved like that of a Brogan. A man’s military boot, but this one was higher, like a woman’s. I can make no sense of it.”
“I could have changed shoes.” He played the devil’s advocate.
“Unlikely.” She pursed her lips, chewing on the bottom one with a pensive frown. “Also, her neck was snapped in a motion that signified her murderer was left-handed, and I’ve noticed your right hand is your dominant one. And besides... I credit you with more intelligence than to stay at a crime scene long enough for the body to cool.”
Raphael did his best not to preen. She was a woman who didn’t give much credit. It was strange how much even a tiny compliment like that seemed to stir him.
“Who told you we were lovers?” he puzzled aloud. “Mathilde wasn’t the type of woman who revealed her secrets, not with Gregoire as a husband.”
At the question, she looked over at him, and the concern he read in her eyes almost caused him to stumble. “Don’t be cross with her. She didn’t use your name. Merely revealed to me that you were young, dark, dangerous, powerful, and that you were—”
She broke off, her gaze skittering away.
The color darkening her cheeks, still flushed from his kiss, intrigued him. “I was, what?”
“It doesn’t matter. It has nothing to do with the case.”
“I’d still like to know. If it was something Mathilde thought of me.”
At that, she conceded. “She intimated that you were...rather skilled.”
He snorted his disbelief. “Mathilde didn’t use such banal terms as ‘rather skilled.’”
“All right,” she hissed. “She told me you were capable of passion she’d never known a man to possess. That you knew a woman’s body as if you’d created it for your own skill. She said that no lover had ever made her perform such wicked acts. Had never made her want to.”
Raphael flashed her his most charming smile. “Well, Mathilde was many things, but she wasn’t a liar.”
“No. She wasn’t.” For once, there was something they agreed upon. “You revealed yourself by being there the moment her husband traveled away.”
“So I did,” he said, just realizing it, himself.
“Did you love her?”
She seemed as surprised to ask the question as he was to hear it, and he had to cast about his heart for an answer.
For the truth.
“I was...fond of Mathilde. But there is only one person alive that I can profess to love.”
“Yourself?”
Her clipped answer surprised a bark of laughter out of him. “You know me better than you ought to for only having met me twice before.”
“A detective is trained to make keen observations about people.” She tapped the spot beneath her eye with her fingertip, indulging in a satisfied smile.
“A shame none of the detectives they sent after me were women.”
“You’d be caught by now, no doubt.”
“I imagine you are right.”
She lifted her hand to her eyes, shading them from the quickly dissipating sun. “I’ve observed something else.”
“What is that?”
“We are being followed.”
Chapter 6
Mercy suddenly wanted Raphael Sauvageau to live up to his name.
He was just so unnervingly cool and infuriatingly collected. All loose limbs and unaffected insouciance, even as he checked their periphery for a threat.
As if finding one wouldn’t at all ruin his day.
If this man had as much sway over fear as he claimed, then what was it that could send him into histrionics?
Everyone feared something.
You terrify me, Mercy Goode.
Surely, he’d been joking.
He gave their surroundings a surreptitious examination. “Does the man following us have a billycock hat and a grey morning suit with the paper tucked under his left arm?” His lips barely moved as he peered off into the opposite direction of the man in question.
A lance of trepidation speared her gut. “You’ve spotted him, too?”
Turning, he lifted his hand in a wave at their voyeur.
Mercy almost slapped it out of the air before he informed her, “His name is Clayton Honeycutt. He’s one of my Fauves.”
“You’re being followed by your own men?” she asked in disbelief, blinking over at their shadow, who nodded in greeting.
“We tend to trail each other. To go very few places alone. Our backs are never exposed, and it keeps us honest—well—at least among our own.”
Something about the way he said this caused her to examine him more closely. He was being wry...and yet...a tightness appeared at the corner of his mouth that hadn’t been there before.
“You have a good eye,” he praised. “An admirable instinct for such things. Not many people can pick us out of a crowd like this.”
Mercy tried to hide that his words pleased her, and found it impossible.
So delighted was she, in fact, that she neglected her defenses against him for a rare, vulnerable moment. Forgot that his masculinity was honed to a razor’s edge, wielded with masterful ease. That his musculature was well-thewed and sculpted like that of a lean predator, one that relied on his speed and stamina as well as his strength.
One that moved about the world with nothing to fear.
And everything to claim as his own.
It became increasingly hard to believe that such a charismatic man, radiating a sort of godlike beauty, walked among mortals like her.