Page 70 of The Hunter
“Oh my God.” The letter shook in Millie’s hand. “Dfor David. It makes sense, doesn’t it?”
Argent nodded. “Sir Dashforth, the man who hired Dorshaw and… myself… to murder you and take Jakub, is the Fenwick family’s solicitor. And, though he also worked for the St. Vincents, his wife’s family, this bird here on the seal, the resting phoenix, is eminently displayed on the Fenwick family crest.”
“How did you know that?” Millie asked, wide-eyed.
“It is my business to know.”
“Your business…” she echoed. As if she were his business now, because payment had been rendered. Glancing at the bed, Millie took her time folding the letter and placing it back into her corset, unable to look back at him. “What—what do we do next? I can’t take this to the police, can I? I have no proof that it was he who hired Dorshaw, or even that he hired Dashforth to contract out to you. And… if they find out Jakub isn’t mine, they could take him from me.”
“That’s what you hired me to fix,” he clipped. “Speak nothing of this to the police.”
“You’re going to… kill him, Lord Thurston?”
“He murdered your friend, ordered your death, and wants who-knows-what with his son. He’ll be tied up in Essex tomorrow. I’ll kill him the day after.”
Scheduling a murder, as one would a hair appointment or high tea. “What about Chief Inspector Morley?” Millie suggested. “He said there were more women dead by the same killer. More children missing… You don’t think they were all connected with Lord Thurston, do you?”
“I think they were casualties of Dorshaw. I think he was the man they hired all those years ago to murder Agnes.”
Millie’s eyes widened. “Why do you think that?”
“Because Dorshaw likes to cut on people and leave organs behind. Especially women.”
She shuddered. “Then perhaps weshouldtell Chief Inspector Morley; he’s investigating what happened to all those other women. He’d want to know who’d ordered those deaths, at least to let the families know that Dorshaw has been captured.”
“You would have me give Thurston to the police? Their record is not exactly stellar when it comes to prosecuting a peer of the realm for the death of prostitutes. If you want to keep Jakub, keep him safe, what other recourse is there than the one I offer you?”
“Agnes was not a prostitute, she was anactress,” Millie huffed.
“That’s not what they’ll say at court, if it even makes it that far. You know as well as anyone that society makes only a minute distinction between the two vocations.”
Millie retreated from him, making her way to the window on unsteady legs. She was beginning to feel the aftermath of what they’d done. A dull ache in her loins and a stinging in her heart. “Must you be so cold all the time?” He was right, of course, and she resented him for it.
“I must be what I am,” he answered cryptically.
What this ugly world made of him,Millie thought, staring out into the night. The bright, late-winter moon sparkled off the frost that settled on the cobblestones and clung to the garden. This was a perfect time and place for him, this part of the city, this time of night. Still and so bitter cold, it drove everyone away. Inside.
For fear of catching their death.
Millie had never considered murder before, let alone ordered one. That made two things in one night she’d never done. Two sins she’d never committed, carried out in this very room.
She, too, must be what she was. And before everything, she was a mother, and a mother protected her child, even at the peril of her very soul.
“Then do what you must,” she murmured, a pang of insecurity slicing through her. “Is the price I paid… enough?”
“It was sufficient.”
She whirled to face him, her ego smarting. “Sufficient?” Damn his face carved of stone and his heart of ice.Sufficient!Honestly. If she’d received a review like that from a paper, she’d have torn it up and thrown it in the fire.
“It’s what we agreed upon, was it not?” he said carefully, studying her face with an arrested expression. As if he didn’t understand what she was thinking.
“Well… yes—” Technically, she supposed so. Then why did she feel so unsatisfied? What was she looking for from him? She knew he’d liked it.Sufficiently…
She should know better than to seek validation from a man like him, but something in her thrived on it. Had she done it right? Was that all there was to do? Just lie there until he finished… Was he disappointed at all? Did hefeelanything? Because she was little more than one pulsating, raw emotion wrapped in a pretty package. She’d thought she’d seen a crack in the glacier, a bit of frenzy followed by a few moments of intimacy. Not passion, per se. Nor tenderness, but a whisper of… something. Some warmth behind the bleak void of his eyes.
Had she imagined it? Was she creating it for the sole reason that her own feelings for this strange and lethal man were becoming more opaque?
“Sufficient.” She sighed, then nodded. It was enough. Either way he was still going to do what he’d promised.
