“No!” She was shaking her head, her eyes were wide and dark and frightened, and all humor was gone from her face. “Don’t you see?” she said, and her voice sounded raw and painful. “That’s what frightens me the most. Sebastian, I can’t afford to be a free spirit. I can’t afford to leave my…my cage, as you call it. It isn’t safe for me.”
He didn’t understand. All he wanted to do was touch her again, run his fingertips over her soft skin, and then kiss her until she forgot about everything but being with him. Why couldn’t it be that simple? Why did they have to think about the future?
“Go. Please.”
“Francesca,” he tried one more time, and he sounded as raw as she.
“No, Sebastian.” She wanted to deny the night in the inn had ever existed. He was confused by her. One moment she didn’t seem to care a hoot about Victorian respectability, and the next she was pushing him away as if she was frightened of him. Of herself.
There was something here he wasn’t seeing properly, and perhaps if he discovered what it was, she would be his again.
Reluctantly, Sebastian climbed down from the hackney. “Drive on,” he told the driver curtly, ignoring the man’s smirk. The vehicle began to move off, one of the iron-framed wheels rumbling over Francesca’s bonnet, still lying on the road.
Sebastian left it there.
“This is your mess, you clean it up.”
He felt distaste sour in his mouth. Angela Slater was like a parasite, like something that, once fastened into his flesh, could never be gotten rid of. In a weak moment, a moment of desperation, he’d used her to escape a tricky problem, and he’d regretted that weakness bitterly ever since.
Would he go to his grave with this creature and her cohorts?
She smiled, and despite the changes in her, it was the same sly and wicked smile, and no doubt the same sharp intelligence behind it. She’d read his mind, and it gave him an uncomfortable shiver to know it.
“No, no, my fine gentleman,” she crooned, “you are in this up to your neck.”
“The girl means nothing to you. You have plenty more. Forget her.”
“But I can’t. I have a reputation to maintain. No one steals from me, especially not one of them chits I kidnapped for you all those years ago. That’s who did it. Miss Francesca Greentree. And she’s taken the child to her mother for safekeeping. Now isn’t that a fine joke?”
“Angela—”
“I know the truth of what happened, and why. Oh yes, I know why. I can tell, and I have lots of friends. And I have the letter. Don’t think of turning your back on me, sir.”
The cursed letter! What he’d like to do was take her skinny throat in his hands and squeeze. He’d never been a violent man, but she had driven him to it. But, pleasurable though it might be, killing her would do him no good. There were others to take her place, and no doubt they would see that her death was avenged. Besides, he’d never get the letter if she was dead.
“I’m not turning my back,” he said, as if he’d never thought of it. “I have as much to lose as you.”
“So will you see to Miss Francesca, or do you want me to do it?”
The evil in her was a palpable thing—fascinating.
“It may come to that, but not yet.”
If necessary he would be ruthless and deal with Francesca Greentree, but first there was someone else to tackle. Someone even more dangerous than Francesca—someone who knew the whole truth and suspected the rest. All these years he had watched her and waited to see when she would make her move, but she’d stayed silent. Until now.
“She’s hired Thorne to try and flush me out,” he said bitterly.
“Has she now?” Her voice was even more slurred than the last time he’d visited, something that had become increasingly noticeable with the advance of her illness. “After all this time.”
“She knows what’ll happen to her now. She must know. And yet still she did it. To be honest, I never thought she would. She had her suspicions but no proof.”
Mrs. Slater chuckled. “You sound almost as if you admire her for it. She knew what would happen if she took this step, so she’s only got herself to blame. Brave of her, yes, but reckless.” Her watery eyes grew bright with mockery. “Are you still in love with her? I remember you were, once.”
He didn’t answer. Denial would only encourage her. And anyway, there was a time when he’d been extremely fond of Aphrodite. More than fond, he admitted reluctantly. She’d filled his thoughts and his heart—she’d been an obsession that had nearly killed him.
Now he was planning to kill her.
It seemed li