Authors: Kerrigan Byrne
“Argent, if I find out otherwise, I’ll have to put you down…” Like a dog who’d turned on his master.
Auburn hair glinted in the late-afternoon sunset as Argent turned his chin to his shoulder, but didn’t look back at Dorian. “You could try, Blackwell,” he challenged.
The moment darkened, suffused with masculine challenge. This had always been an unanswered question between them. Something they’d danced around since puberty. Who would survive a clash of the two? Once violence erupted, would it be Blackwell’s fire, or Argent’s ice that won the day?
Though they were surrounded by plush carpets and expensive furnishings, draped in tailored suits of the most expensive wool and cotton and silk, they both knew what lay beneath.
Animals, both of them. Predators. With the capability to rend flesh and rip at the throat with the precision born of experience and the lack of conscience that was required for survival in the wild. It was what kept them at the top of the food chain. What protected them from becoming prey. But if lines were drawn, and both of them bared their teeth at each other, striking for the jugular, the collateral damage would be astronomical. And the outcome uncertain. The difference between their lethality could starve a mouse.
The moment that had always shimmered in the air between them turned into a vibration. Dorian again sensed that weakness in Argent, a tension or a battle. A deliberation that split his focus. If he was ever vulnerable to attack, it would be now.
The question remained, was such an action warranted? Was Argent telling the truth?
“Dorian, my love.” Farah’s soft rap against the study door dispelled the moment with flawless timing. “I’m taking Faye in the pram about the park to watch the sunset. I thought I saw Lady Harrington, and would like to say hello. Are you interested in joining us?”
That was exactly what Dorian wanted to do. He’d like nothing more than to see the sun glint off his wife’s lovely pale hair as it dipped below London’s singular skyline. Tossing a perturbed look at Argent, he called through the door.
“I have some business to attend to here for a moment. Please take Murdoch with you and I’ll join you when I can, darling.” As honest as Dorian was with his wife, he didn’t necessarily want her to know Argent was here until he’d gotten to the bottom of this strange visit.
She paused. “Very well. Would you like me to send Gemma in with some tea?”
“Don’t bother yourself, dear. I won’t be long enough for tea.”
“But Dorian, did you offer your guest any tea?” Farah asked sweetly, a smile coloring her voice. “If I recall correctly, Mr. Argent is fond of oolong.”
Dorian grunted and pinched his forehead. It was damned difficult loving an intelligent, observant woman sometimes.
Argent shook his head.
“No, thank you. No one is in need of any tea at the moment. Enjoy your outing.” He turned from the door, then paused and called out. “Make sure you’re both warm enough. I’ll be along.”
“Good evening, Mr. Argent,” Farah called before her steps retreated down the hall, as she knew generally not to expect a response.
Dorian joined Argent at the window and they both looked out onto the corner on which Blackwell resided whilst in town. From one side of the house, white rows of opulent Mayfair homes lined the clean, cobbled street, buttressed by columns and lorded over by stalwart, titled society matrons. From the study, only Park Lane separated the Blackwell home from the perfectly manicured Hyde Park.
These days, more and more merchants and wealthy, self-made men like Blackwell acquired property here in the West End of London. Though a title certainly made the generations-long occupants more comfortable.
For an extended, silent moment, the men observed Farah and her middle-aged escort, Murdoch, another former guest of Her Majesty’s at Newgate, stroll through the neighborhood of well-dressed people in their furs and capes. It was a particular point of pride to Dorian that his wife was not only the loveliest, but also the most elegantly attired. His tiny daughter was wrapped in the softest furs to match her mother’s extravagant golden pelisse.
A strange anxiety rose within him. His entire life was taking in another beautiful evening, and he wanted to be with them. Now.
“What are you doing here, Argent?” he asked shortly, surreptitiously checking Argent’s transparent reflection in the glass. “Is this about the delay in fulfilling your contract?” A rather expensive one had crossed his desk today, this one calling for the blood of a rather famous actress. Dorian had only noted it because he’d heard days ago that Argent had taken that very job. A delay in Argent’s work was not only out of the realm of normalcy, it was unheard of.
“I killed a man today,” Argent murmured.
“Only one? I take it business is slow?” Dorian smirked.
Argent’s reflection frowned and undid the top button of his coat. Then the next. “I killed a man because I wanted to. Because he deserved it. Because … he made me angry.” Apparently changing his mind, he redid the second button.
Dorian watched Argent fidget with a growing sense of alarm. “If you’ve suddenly developed a conscience and are inclined to make a confession, you’ve come to the wrong man.”
Argent made an irate sound so completely out of character that Dorian’s eyebrows climbed toward his hairline, as the assassin swung away from the window. Stalking to the sideboard, he poured a liberal splash of Ravencroft’s finest Scotch and downed it in one gigantic swallow. “I know who is killing those mothers.”
Dorian blinked, bemused by the abrupt change of subject. “And who is that?”
“Lord Thurston. At least, he is the one drawing these contracts against the lives of these women and giving them to men like me. Do you know him?”
Dorian searched through the images in his flawless memory, sifting through data like a clerk in a file room. “Lord Thurston, yes. I’ve never made his personal acquaintance, which is to his credit, I suppose. He married a St. Vincent, I believe. The St. Vincent family owns several ancient titles, including an earldom, but lives on overtaxed tenants, parceling family land, and the credit of unscrupulous men such as I.” Dorian pulled his seat out from behind his desk and claimed it. “What would Lord Thurston, by all accounts a respectable and wealthy peer of the realm, have to gain by ordering the murders of women, and likely children, from the West End to Cheapside?”
“I don’t know.” Argent tossed back another drink and set his glass down, stepping away from the Scotch with that legendary discipline of his. “I—killed his solicitor before I was able to extract that particular information from him.”
“Oh?” This was not the lethal man’s modus operandi. In fact, for Argent, this was incredibly erratic behavior. Argent might be deadly, but he was paradoxically imperturbable. He didn’t strike without reason. That reason usually being money.
“He hired me to get rid of Millicent LeCour.”
“The actress, yes, I heard.” Dorian’s sense of impending doom inflated. Something about the way Argent had said her name …
“I broke the contract, murdered the solicitor, and—” Slowly, Argent lowered himself into the chair opposite Blackwell’s desk, his impressive width dwarfing the leather monstrosity. He seemed about to speak, but the words wouldn’t pass through his tight lips.
“And?” Dorian pressed. If a man this notoriously fearless was nervous, then Dorian worried that an international incident loomed on the horizon.
“I claimed the woman.”
“The … you … what?” Dorian gaped. He couldn’t remember a time he’d been struck dumb in the last two decades. And he remembered
everything.
“I think I want her to be mine … I’m taking her.”
The somber veracity on Argent’s face caused Dorian to wonder if he were perhaps hallucinating. “But … you gave her a choice, yes?”
“Did you give Farah a choice?”
“Of course—eventually—after a fashion. See here, we’re not discussing Farah and me, the situation was completely different from this. She’s mine. She’s always
been
mine. And you—well…”
“I kill people for a living.” Argent stared at the globe on the desk with unblinking eyes.
“And that is merely the first reason that this is a very bad idea for you both.”
“I want her,” Argent stated again. His voice colored, not with passion, per se, but with something that could be painted with the same brush as need, or even desire.
“Do you … love her?”
Argent’s glacial gaze flicked about the wall behind where Dorian sat, as though he could find the answer in the expensive volumes lined on the shelves there. “I can’t kill her.”
Dorian let out a mirthless bark of laughter. “I suppose that’s more than some can say.”
“I’ve tried, Blackwell.” Argent looked at the space between them. “My hands were around her neck and then … I kissed her.”
Blackwell gaped, struck dumb.
Argent wasn’t known for his exploits as a lover. In fact, Dorian had it on good authority that Argent’s sexual tastes ran to the more … detached variety. According to Madame Regina’s whores, the assassin refused to face them, demanded they keep quiet, and never kissed, caressed, or even looked them in the eye. He finished on them, not in them, paid promptly, and left without a word. Dorian knew the secrets and proclivities of many powerful, important, and dangerous men; after a drink, a fuck, and a cuddle, these secrets would drip from their mouths.
But Argent never spoke, though he had secrets to tell. He never used the same whore twice. He had no type of female he gravitated toward. An anomalous man, this assassin, and one of his many anomalies was his penchant for telling the truth when other men would protect their pride.
“That poor woman, she must be absolutely traumatized.” Dorian had to work hard to keep his alarm for the accosted lady out of his expression.
“She kissed me back.”
“Are you certain?”
“I’m fair certain. At least … one of the times.” Argent’s expression turned pensive.
“Good God.”
“She’s agreed to my terms.”
“Which are…?” Dorian had a feeling he shouldn’t have asked.
“To fuck me.”
“Christ,”
he whispered, swiping a hand on his forehead.
“Just the once.”
“You have to be joking.”
“She has a son.”
“I don’t want to hear any more.” Dorian put up a hand. “Argent, I do appreciate the information you’ve supplied me about Lord Thurston, and I will, of course, look into it. The contract on Miss LeCour has been reissued, you know.”
Argent’s nostrils flared and his eyes flashed with a blue flame as he leaned over the desk. “I want you to let it be known that
no one
takes that contract.”
Dorian stood as well, placing both fists on the desk. For the first time their eyes clashed. “Do you presume to issue commands to
me
?”
“Only if you want your men to retain their heads.”
“Be careful, Argent, this is dangerous ground. Making a move like this is bad for business; not only yours, but mine, as well.”
Argent pushed off the desk with a guttural sound and hefted the bronze globe above his head. Smashing it down onto the smooth surface, he cleaved the wood in two.
It should have been physically impossible.
Dorian’s hand moved to the long knife sheathed beneath his suit coat.
“You may rule the underworld, Blackwell, but you were never
my
king,” Argent seethed. Red began to crawl from beneath his white collar and climb into his face, blood rushing beneath the skin with long-suppressed emotion. Dorian watched it with bemused fascination. And more than a bit of understanding.
“I’ve worked, suffered, fought, and killed beside you for many years,” Argent ranted on. “I kept your secrets and I came when you called me to your side. But you
never
owned me.” He knocked the large chair over with a fist, as though to punctuate his point. “So when I say to pull the fucking contract, you do it, because Millie LeCour is
mine
. She’s under
my
protection and may God have mercy on the man who gets in my way, because I don’t know the meaning of the word. So help me, I’ll flay the meat from his bones before I—”
“Christopher, I
know
.” Dorian interrupted his tirade, and the enraged man paused at the use of his given name. “I know,” he repeated, more gently this time. He recognized exactly what drove Argent in this moment. The primal, tight ache of it. The hot, needful possession. “I’ll pull the contract. No one will go near it without answering to one of us. And Thurston—”
“Thurston is also mine, to deal with as I will,” Argent gritted out.
Dorian nodded. “Fair enough.”
As he glanced at the ruptured desk, the overturned chair, and the discarded globe, Argent’s shoulders visibly slumped. “This isn’t—I don’t usually—”
Dorian waved it away with a knowing smile ghosting at his lips. “This is what a woman brings into the lives of men like us.”
“I’ll pay to replace it,” he muttered.
“Don’t bother.” Dorian stepped around the carnage. “I’m sure I owe you for one dead body or another.” Striding to the study door, he opened it and waited for Argent to step through, then followed the assassin to the entry and out into the chilly evening. He was looking forward to catching up with Farah. He loved to see the chill turn her cheeks red beneath the freckles she insisted she didn’t have anymore. He wanted to discuss this most intriguing turn of events.
Their breaths churned the air, all semblance of tension dissipated like the puffs of their exhales.
And they were allies again.
“What’s it like, Blackwell?” Argent squinted across the distance to the nearly empty Hyde Park, where a distant Farah glimmered like a silver fae creature in the rapidly fading sunlight.
Dorian stared in the same direction. Though she was too far to make out the angelic features of her face, he could tell that Farah was smiling. It reached out to him, as always. He puzzled over Argent’s question. It had been many years, and he’d read many books, and still the words to aptly describe his feelings for his wife didn’t appear to exist.