Page 335 of From Rakes to Riches

She scowled at him. “You’re mad!”

Threading fingers through his hair, he snarled, “What I am, is desperate.”

“I meant you’re insane if you think I’m leaving you now. Someone has to keep you from killing yourself, you bleeding idiot.”

He seemed to search the night for something, anything, to convince her. “What about the Duchesse and Mathilde? Who will crack the case after I am gone?”

Crossing her arms, she raked him with her most imperious glare. “You’re going nowhere, Raphael Sauvageau, I’ll not allow it.”

“You can’t stop me, Mercy. It’s already done,” he insisted.

“That doesn’t mean it can’t be undone!”

Seizing her, he bent so their eyes were close, his boring the reflection of the moon into her very soul with palpable agony. “You think I want this? It’s the only way out. The only wayGabriel lives. When my corpse is found, so too will be Gabriel’s mask. Dr. Conleith is hard at work this very evening, sorting out his injured face. The Fauves will assume we are both gone, and my brother can finally live with his new identity.”

Titus was in on this? Did Nora know?

“No.” She wrenched away, whirling so she didn’t have to face him. “I don’t accept this.”

“Wouldn’t you give your life for your sister?”

His question landed like a dagger in her back.

“Of course, I would! But there has to be some other way. Can you not have a new identity as well?”

“I’m too well known. I’ve too much money, infamy, and the men beneath me happen to be wealthy enough to search for ages, because as much as I’ve hated it, I’m damn good at what I do.”

She could feel him getting closer, and wished her knees didn’t go weak at his proximity.

“The world is only getting smaller, Mercy, and I would be found eventually. I have contacts in every port. I’ve eitherswindled or smuggled for half the known world, and to truly go into hiding, we’d have to find some place off a map, where the only thing to do is make our own swill and buggar local livestock. I’m not going to live like that. And I don’t want that for my brother. He’s already suffered enough. And...”

He broke off and they were both silent as footsteps plodded by. Someone opened a door to the next room and rustled around in it before heading back the other way, muttering about apron straps and extra mending.

“And what?” Mercy demanded when they were again safely alone.

“I’ve lived enough for two lifetimes.”

“No, you haven’t. No!” She shoved at him. “I’ll not allow it, you selfish bastard.”

“Calm down, someone will hear you.” He gently encircled her shoulders with soothing fingers, but she jerked away.

“I will not calm down!” She paced a few feet toward the bare walls and then spun back to him “Why did you kiss me then, if you were just going to do this? Why make love to me? Why the devil would you make me...make me care for you?”

His features collapsed then. Broke open like a shattered glass. “I kissed you, Mercy, because I knew your taste would be better than any last meal I could devise. I made love to you because Iama selfish bastard, and I wanted a glimpse of what heaven would be like before I join the ranks of the damned. I thought you knew better than to care. That you understood I don’t deserve it.”

Mercy didn’t realize what was welling inside of her until her hand flung out and struck him on the cheek.

God, that was satisfying.

The pain.

The blank look of shock on the beautiful bastard’s face.

Heat swirled inside her. A conflagration of rage fed by helplessness and...and something else. Something so profound and breathtaking it threatened to turn her to ash.

She wanted to scream at the idea of his loss. His death. This vital, tender, brilliant villain. This man who would dismantle his father’s tainted legacy for the love of his brother.

Who would give his life.

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