Page 96 of The Hunter
“I’m reading.”
“Then I’ll thank you not to slander your friend in front of his… his…” Farah stalled, and Millie wished she could help the woman. She didn’t know what she was to Argent, either. Didn’t know if there was a word for it, exactly. And all the ones that sprang to mind were distasteful at best and descended into criminal.
“Argent doesn’t have friends,” Dorian muttered. “He has people he’d find it a little more distasteful to kill.”
“He’s saved your life more than once,” Lady Northwalk pointed out. And, Millie remembered, Dorian had been there that terrible night to help remove the tar from Christopher’s arm.
“Only because I returned the favor and/or I paid him a great deal of money.”
“Oh tosh.” Farah turned back to Millie. “Ignore him, he’s an incurable grump today. Those two would die for each other and neither of them have the emotional capacity to admit it.”
The man behind the book fell silent and Millie found that more telling than a confession. Though she had the impression that if Dorian Blackwell were to truly wake up grumpy, they’d find a few more bodies floating in the Thames than usual.
“Christopherisan idiot,” Millie agreed with a little more vehemence than she’d intended.
Farah scooted to the edge of her chair, managing to make even that movement seem dainty and graceful. “Millie, dear, has he been cruel to you?”
“If you don’t count the three assassination attempts, then no.”
“Three?” The book snapped shut. Millie found herself the sole focus of Dorian Blackwell’s dark, unsettling attention. He studied her for a long moment, disassembling her and examining her for spare parts. Firelight glinted off hair as black as her own, the rest of him bathed in the waning light of the fading afternoon still spilling in from the open drapes.
Millie met his stare with an unflinching one of her own. She was an actress, and if she knew a thing about her craft, it was to hide the nerves she battled. It was not wise to show weakness to a man like the Blackheart of Ben More.
“Did you know, Miss LeCour, that Christopher Argent has neverattemptedan assassination in his life?” He delivered his words with the carelessness of a nobleman, but they landed with a mountain of meaning. “Once he marks a victim, their every breath is borrowed from a miracle. He’s gone into a building full of the deadliest men, and been the only one to emerge. Christopher Argent does notattemptassassination. He’s mastered it.” Unfolding his tall, powerful frame from his chair, he prowled to the dainty jewel-blue couch across from her, identical to the one upon which she sat, and claimed it. “And yet, here you are.”
Millie squirmed beneath his stare. Up close, Dorian Blackwell was more than unsettling, he was a force of nature. A force to be reckoned with.
“I think Argent is a secret romantic,” Farah said, looking inordinately pleased with herself.
Millie and Dorian both turned to stare at Farah as though she’d lost her mind.
“Or have you forgotten, dear husband.” Lady Northwalk smiled at Dorian as though she’d made a joke. “That Argent once held my own contract in his hands, and instead of collecting on it, he turned it over to you.”
Blackwell’s eye narrowed. “That wasn’t romanticism, that was self-preservation. He knew that if he didn’t prevent your death I’d have waged a battle that would have made Waterloo look like a mere squabble between spoiled children.”
Farah reached for Dorian, putting an ungloved hand over his. He looked down at it for a moment and what Millie saw in that look caused her to blink back emotion. There was more deferential veneration in Dorian Blackwell’s world for the slim woman’s pale hand than a zealot had for his god. How would it be, to be loved like that?
“He could have killed me and been rid of me and you’d have been none the wiser,” Farah pointed out.
“Iwould have known,” Dorian insisted.
“My point is, I believe Argent wanted us to find each other.” She tightened her hold on Blackwell. “And the point my husband is trying to make is that if he left you alive, if he took it upon himself to protect you, then you must be very special to him, indeed.”
Millie could never have admitted this to polite society, but there was something that told her these two would understand the nature of their arrangement. “I paid him for his protection,” she admitted. “He wanted me, and I… gave myself to him.”
Dorian shook his head. “He’s wanted things in the past. Women, included. And he’s paid for them or gone without.You. You are something else. And he is an idiot.”
“Why do you keep saying that?” Farah queried.
“Because, from the way you and Argent were acting when he brought you here, I surmised that she likely offered him her heart, and he quickly and thoroughly broke it.”
Millie studied the floor, again impressed by how perfectly it would have matched Christopher’s eyes. “Not broken, Lord Northwalk, but bruised,” she confessed.
“Do you know about the circumstances of his birth?” Farah asked.
“Yes.”
Dorian’s brows lifted. “Are you aware of how his mother died?”
