Page 76 of The Hunter
“Loretta,please,” Millie begged.
“I know, I know, you stolid, persnickety Brits can’t stand a bit of bawd if it has any truth to it. Are these rumors I’ve heard circulating about true? That you survived not just one, but two attacks by a killer?”
Millie paused to consider her answer carefully. Of course, the madness the night before at the Royal Theater would have circulated through the late-night crowd of the demimonde rather quickly. And most people already knew about the time Argent had broken into her house and kissed her senseless. Though they now likely assumed Dorshaw had perpetrated both crimes.
Argent had been meaning to kill her at the time. She’d do well to remember that.
Hewasa monster. He had no qualms about it. So why couldn’t she see it when she looked at him? What was wrong with her, that his brutal features and dangerous skills somehow compelled instead of deterred her?
Perhaps because he was currently using those skills on her behalf, not against her.
“I have been the target of such a man, yes,” Millie answered carefully.
“You poor thing.” Loretta reached for her, and pulled her against a generous bosom, squeezing the breath from her lungs before releasing her just as abruptly.
“Sounds like some dark hoodoo to me.” Émile-Baptiste made a strange sign with his hands and then spat.
“Surely does,” Loretta agreed. “You know that gypsy actress, calls herself ‘Contessa’ and puts on a bunch of airs that don’t belong to her… I heard she put the evil eye on you that time you got the part of Carmen over her.”
“She need be looking to a holy man to remove the curse, and then she be safe from the evil,” Mr. Teague-Washington remarked soberly.
“Curses and superstitions don’t hire killers, people do,” Christopher remarked.
Loretta’s eyebrow, a dark confession to the pretense of her hair color, climbed her forehead. “Where’d you find this ray of sunshine, a morgue? Doesn’t have the doughy hands of an idle lord, heworksfor his fine suits. What do you do, Mr. Argent, are you an undertaker perhaps?”
Christopher’s shoulder lifted, though he remained unperturbed. “Close enough.”
The stylist smirked. “Can’t say there isn’t much to appreciate about a plainspoken man. Well, come on back here, Millie darling, and let me work my magic.” Loretta gestured toward the hall that led to the dressing room. “Not you.” She thrust a perfectly manicured finger at Argent, who’d made to follow them. “The time between a woman and her stylist is a sacred and mystical rite. You menfolk have no business interfering.”
Argent glanced at Millie. He looked very large and very out of place in this richly appointed, warm, and overstuffed home. Her handful of rooms seemed to contain enough furniture, knickknacks, antiques, and various oddities to fill his entire vacant mansion. Framed playbills hung next to Moroccan lanterns over Grecian table statues, which posed next to faux Egyptian papyri and a vase full of arranged peacock feathers rather than flowers.
Surrounded by such feminine bohemian chaos, Argent’s marble skin and monochromatic suit contrasted with the brilliance of his short auburn hair. He looked so hard. So brutal. A mysterious shadow caught within an explosion of color. The image was dynamic, and both women stopped to appreciate it for a moment longer than necessary.
“I think I’m going down for a nip and a smoke at the pub,” Mr. Teague-Washington cut in, obviously not amused. “Care to join me, Mr. Argent?”
“Thank you, but I’ll stay.” Argent claimed a corner of the olive-green couch.
“So long as you stay out of our way,” Loretta reminded, all but dragging Millie down the hall.“Je t’aime, mon cœur,”she called to her husband, as she had every week she’d visited Millie over the last two years.
“Et vous, monâme,”he sang back to her, closing the door behind him.
I love you, my heart.
And you, my soul.
The ritual usually caused Millie to smile. Today it made her feel bleak, somehow, or guilty, as though she’d spied upon a private sacrament of which she’d never be a part.
Oddly depressed, she sank into the high-backed arabesque velvet chair Loretta pulled out for her, feeling like a wilted flower.
“I’ll start with your hair and work my way down.” Loretta said this at the beginning of every appointment. Taking the few pins out of Millie’s hair, she began her treatments with a concoction of rare oils and herbs native to the American continent like “jojoba” mixed with a tincture of yucca root and wild rose. Once she oiled the tips and the scalp, she wet the rest of it with her fingers and trimmed the uneven ends with a sharp razor.
Scents of musk and wild, unfamiliar earth infused the room with an exotic fragrance, and for the first time in days, Millie began to relax.
“Where did you find this Viking of yours?” Loretta asked, her voice transforming into something more melodious as her ritual took hold of them both.
“He found me, actually.”
“I see. Is this an affair of the heart, or of a more… conjugal nature?” Only Loretta could get away with asking such a blunt question, and for some reason, the relationship between the stylist and her clients was more circumspect than that of a confessor to his priest.
