Home > The Hunter (Victorian Rebels #2)(15)

The Hunter (Victorian Rebels #2)(15)
Author: Kerrigan Byrne

There it was again. Desire. A thing as foreign to him as were warmth and kindness.

He wanted Millie LeCour with an intensity he’d never before felt.

But … why? He’d fucked plenty of women in his lifetime. Willing, trained, and uncomplicated.

Disposable.

Why her? Why now?

What was it about the actress that entranced and aroused him? What about her was different from everyone else?

His unerring eye for detail was a greatly relied upon attribute. Once his notice touched something, it was calculated, analyzed, prioritized, and then shelved in its correct location. Things, people, places, events, they were all part of the landscape and each held an equal measure of curiosity and emotional ambiguity. He thought the same of a lovely clock as he did about a lovely woman. They were both curious and complicated with cogs and bits that took a man’s intense scrutiny and precision to understand. Both of them served a useful function in the world.

And both were easily broken.

But for some perplexing reason, Millie LeCour refused to be shelved or classified. Her details were so … they were too … bemusing? Uncommon? Curious?

After his first attempt at her life had been thwarted, primarily by that thoroughly unexpected kiss, Argent had stalked her all night, suffused with fascination. How had she manipulated him with something as simple as a kiss? Why had he paused when a quick snap of her lovely neck would have uncomplicated things immensely? How had she recovered so quickly from their encounter when he, the man hired to snuff out her life, still itched with the memory of her downy skin beneath his hands?

A slew of noble rakes and roguish upstarts had vied for a word with her all night, for a touch, a dance, or a smile. And she’d given of them freely. Flitting from one admirer to the next like a coy butterfly, ever avoiding the net.

She was an expert at this subterfuge, he realized. At making every person in her scope feel as though they were singular to her, all the while treating them with abject equality. She never lingered for too long. Never said too much. Never touched more than was appropriate.

Except for him. Among her entire bevy of admirers, some handsome, others titled, and rich, she’d allowed him to lure her into the darkness. Allowed his hands to sample her soft flesh and softer lips. Why him? What draw had he over her that those others didn’t?

While she radiated warmth, each move was as calculated as his own. She was as unattainable as a beloved goddess. Remote as a tropical island.

And he was as dark and cold as the denizens of hell. Had to be. So whatever this mothlike fascination he had with her light and warmth, it was past time he snuff it out and return to the darkness that was his domain.

Millie LeCour had to die.

Tonight.

His cold musings had taken too long. Argent surmised that if anyone was in the tub, and they stayed below water that long, they’d be dead. So either way he could make his move.

Unsheathing a long, thin dagger from his boot, he shimmied it between the crack in the windows and ran it up the middle softly until he felt it brush against the latch. Angling it forward, he felt it give and pulled the window out. Turning his body sideways, he slid into the room and stepped down onto the flat of his foot, lowering his bulk onto the washroom carpet. Simultaneously, he pulled the window mostly closed and resheathed his knife. One of the many secrets to a successful assassination was economy of movement.

Now that he was inside, humid, aromatic warmth suffused his lungs and spread a bewildering heat along his frigid limbs. His shirt, made of the finest, softest linen, abraded his tingling nerves.

It would have been disturbing, if he was capable of being disturbed.

Everything about this contract had been a little skewed from the very beginning, and the need to have it done with was becoming more and more imperative.

Two doors mirrored each other in the southwest corner of the room. One on the west wall stood open, while its companion on the south wall was latched shut. Through dim lamps flickering on the other side of the open door, Argent could see a hallway stretching toward a parlor. Three doors stood closed in the hallway, two on the south wall, and one on the north. Argent guessed that the southern doors belonged to bedrooms, and the northern door to the stairs leading to the top floor.

Her staff lived up there. A married couple. Middle-aged, overweight, and slow moving. They wouldn’t be a problem.

A floorboard creaked in a distant room, having as much effect on the silence as a cannon blast. Argent ducked behind the silk screen, his ears straining for more noise.

A soft hum. A whisper. But nothing close.

Argent stood, again using the flats of his feet to walk lightly across the room and ensconce himself behind the hallway door.

This room was a small annex to a master suite. Many women would use it for a salon, or for entertaining visitors. Millie LeCour had decorated hers with dress mannequins, costumes, gowns, wigs, memorabilia, the large copper tub, obviously, and a vanity with a confounding amount of bottles and baubles strewn across every possible surface.

Argent was glad that only the lone oil lamp flickered in the room—which he’d dimmed further on his way to his current hiding spot—or the glitter and brilliance of it all would surely have blinded him.

After a few eternal minutes, a hall door opened and closed and the shuffle of feminine footsteps angled in his direction.

His timing must be flawless. One strike. One quick, decisive turn of the neck upon a gentle exhale.

And she’d be gone.

His chest constricted, but he ruthlessly ignored it, taking a few centering breaths.

   
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