He tilted toward her. Suddenly—distressingly—grave. “You terrify me, Mercy Goode.”
She had to swallow twice before she could deliver her question without sounding as breathless as she felt.
“Did you do it?” She leaned forward, bracing her elbows on her knees as she examined his features thoroughly. “Did you kill Mathilde Archambeau?”
“No.” He looked her in the eye as he said this. Unblinking. Unwavering. “She was dead when I arrived.”
The ache in his voice tugged at her and, she was ashamed to admit, uncoiled something complicated from around her guts. Something dark and unfamiliar.
Surely not jealousy.
Not for a dead woman.
Not because of a man like him.
“Why didn’t you call for the police, then?” she demanded.
He flexed his shackled arms, leveling her a droll look of his own. “I’m one of the most wanted men in the empire.”
Berating her own stupidity, she winced, causing the welt on her cheek where she’d been struck to throb. Testing the wound gingerly, she sighed, grateful her fingers were cold against the sore, swelling flesh.
“What were you doing there in the first place?” she queried impatiently.
He didn’t answer.
Instead, his gaze affixed on the spot where her fingers explored her own cheek. Every twitch of discomfort she made seemed to turn his eyes a darker shade of grey, as if a storm gathered within them.
“I will break every bone below that man’s elbow for the pain he caused you.” Shards of gravel paved a voice that had only just been smooth as silk.
“I abhor violence,” Mercy lied, if only to condemn him.
If only to escape the very visceral vibrations that shimmered through her at the ferocity in his tone.
She drew her fingers from her face and folded them as primly in her lap as her manacles would allow.
He snorted with disbelief. “Is that why you read the macabre mysteries of Detective Eddard Sharpe? They are always deliciously brutal. Which is your favorite?”
She set her jaw stubbornly against a little thrill at the idea of discussing the books with him, but refused to be drawn in. He was a criminal and a condemned man.
A foe. Not a friend.
“I shouldn’t think a man such as yourself took the time to read...or even knew how.” She was acting the spoiled baron’s daughter, but she thought it might make that illumination behind his gaze dull. That blaze of interest. The heat that hadn’t waned during their conversation, but grew in strength and brilliance.
He simply stared at her expectantly until she found herself blurting, “My favorite is The Legacy of Lord Lennox.”
His eyebrow lifted again. “If I’m not mistaken, it’s the most violent of the series. A man gets sawed into pieces and his bits are delivered to his family members. One of whom is the murderer.”
“That’s different,” she huffed, refusing to be impressed. Refusing to picture the man in front of her lazing about some chaise longue, his limbs slack and his shirt undone as his eyes traced rows of delectable words.
Did he nibble at his cheek as he read? Or perhaps thread those elegant fingers through his hair...
She snorted at her own absurdity. “Fiction. Entertainment safely contained in the jacket of a book.”
“In my experience, reality is ever so much more fantastic than fiction. And nothing is so dangerous as the written word. It is how power is usurped and ideas are spread. Literature is the most dangerous weapon a man can use. After all, it has been written that the pen is mightier than—”
“Are you afraid of the noose?” she interrupted him abruptly, for if he finished quoting Edward Bulwer-Lytton, she might do something ridiculous.
Like kiss him.
He shocked her with that effortless rumble she was coming to recognize as his chuckle. “I’m not going to hang, mon chaton.”
“Stop calling me that,” she spat. “If you are half of what they say you are, if you’ve committed half the crimes you’ve been credited with, I don’t see how you can escape execution.”
Raphael leaned forward, the light across his eyes following the shape of his brow, gleaming off the ebony of his hair and then settling on his shoulders like Apollo’s own mantle as he brought their faces flush.
Mercy had to force herself not to lean back.
Somehow that felt like a retreat.
“What things do they say I am?” he murmured.
She ticked them off on her fingers as she answered around a dry tongue, pretending his proximity didn’t distress her. “A hedonist. A libertine. A profligate. Scoundrel. Gangster.”
“Ah, for once, they are right,” he admitted wryly.
“A murderer?”
Cool air kissed her neck, but what caused her to shiver was the tantalizing heat of his breath as he bent even closer. “I have helped men to the next world, mon chaton. But I’ve never hurt a woman. I did not kill your friend.”
“Then I ask you again. What were you doing there? Were you Mathilde’s lover?”
A muted clang caused them both to jump, and Mercy let out a little cry of surprise as the back of the carriage dipped slightly.
She couldn’t say if it was the movement or her own instinct that shifted her body closer to his warmth.
To his strength.
Even though he smirked down at her with no little amount of masculine smugness, his gaze searched hers for something.
For permission?
An inner voice warned her that if she opened her mouth, it would be granted.
She lunged away then, scooting to the far edge of the bench in time for the door to swing open.
While they were still moving?
A mountain of a man in a dark coat and a hood slid inside and closed the door behind him. He turned his head toward her, but in the dim coach, she couldn’t make out anything that resembled a face.
Only a dark abyss was visible in the oval of shadow left by his low hood and his collar.
He stared at her from the darkness, though.
Nay, examined her like one might scrutinize an insect before crushing it beneath his shoe.
With wicked claws he scored that instinct that lived in every human. The one that screamed a warning into her soul that she was not safe.
Her bones veritably crawled beneath her skin to escape him.
If Raphael was dangerous, this man was...well, he defied description.
“What took you so long, Gabriel?” Raphael hissed. “Ten minutes more and it would have been too late.”
Raphael’s brother said nothing. He studied her for the space of two more discomfiting blinks and then gave her his massive back, bending toward his brother.
She’d been dismissed.
It would have offended her, were she not so relieved. It was as if she’d disappointed him, somehow.
As if he’d been looking for someone else.
He produced thin metal instruments from his coat and deftly—for a man with hands as large as his—went to work at the lock on his brother’s manacles.
Mercy could count on one hand the times she’d been rendered speechless.
Gabriel Sauvageau had picked the padlock of a police vehicle and slid inside while it was moving without raising the alarm or even alerting the drivers.
How was this done?
While he worked to free his brother, he muttered in barely perceptible French, his voice a rasping whisper that hinted at a baritone as dark, deep, and smooth as moonlight over marble.