If she stayed, if she allowed being with him to become an easy, nightly habit—even for a short time—it might become impossible to give up. He might become impossible to give up. The threat he already posed to her well-ordered world was bad enough.
Chapter Seven
The Angelstone family’s black sheep has returned with no ewe in tow. Apparently he has not been so lucky as to be invited into Mrs E—’s bed.
Tête-à-Tête, 12 October 1788
Philippe froze as the stair creaked. He lifted his foot, gingerly transferred it to the step above the warped one, creeping closer to his goal.
The inn was silent with everyone asleep. Even the innkeeper’s dog had settled before the fire, busy chasing rabbits in its dreams. An utterly useless beast, not worth the scraps to keep it alive.
His heart thumped in his chest. His hands began to shake. He’d pictured this night so many times…rehearsed it, hands locked about the throats of countless whores while their eyes pleaded then bulged, lips snarled and went slack, fingers clawed at him then stilled.
And, though the world was one dead whore the better, it wasn’t enough. The sensation of satisfaction wasn’t even close to what he felt tonight.
The bitch responsible for his father’s death was about to pay. Justice would be served. Six years late, cold as day-old piss, but justice all the same.
He’d stood outside the inn for hours, watching, waiting for her window to go dark, for the busy inn to subside into its nightly torpor. Every house, every inn, every palace had its own rhythm and its own pace, people coming and going like its life’s blood.
Philippe let his breath out in a rush as he reached the hall. This was it. Since he’d come of age he’d been busy hunting her down. Worming his way into her good graces. Lulling her into believing he was just another of her admirers.
Lord knew she had enough of those. She was like a bitch in heat with a kennel full of hounds sniffing around her, all of them eager for a chance at her.
Just as his father had been.
His father had been a whoremongering gamester. A weak man. Easily led astray, but he’d been a gentleman all the same. A peer of France. The whore asleep up these stairs had lured him to his death and nothing had been done about it.
Nothing.
His mother had barely mourned before she’d remarried. Before she’d gone away to live in Nice with her commoner husband. She’d left Philippe behind to be raised by tutors, ruled by guardians and solicitors. She deserved to pay for dishonouring his father’s memory just as the bitch upstairs should pay for his death…but she’d died only a few years after remarrying. Complications after delivering her new husband’s heir.
The continued existence of women such as these was an abomination. An outrage. A festering injustice that burnt as strongly within him today as it had in his fourteen-year-old chest. His father deserved better, and Philippe was going to see that he got it. He could do nothing more to his mother, but he’d see that the Englishwoman paid.
At the end of the hall, an unlocked door let him into a dark room. His quarry lay inside, asleep in the large bed that dominated the room.
Philippe shut the door behind him and crossed to the bed.
The fire in the hearth was nothing but ash. He could only make out the shape of her body beneath the bedclothes. The dark halo of her hair on the pillow. The soft sound of her breaths.
What a shame.
He wanted to see her face, for her to see his. He wanted her to know. Somehow, it wouldn’t be complete if she didn’t know why.
The woman in the bed pushed herself up groggily as he climbed atop her. The horsehair mattress cracked beneath them. She bucked up, opened her mouth to scream, but no sound came out as his hands locked around her throat, squeezed in, cutting off her breath.
She clawed at him, bucked her whole body, twisting, trying to throw him off, to catch a precious breath. Philippe tightened his grip, thumbs pushing in.
‘You’re a deceitful whore, Mrs Exley.’
Philippe took a deep breath and flexed his hands. They hurt. Every joint ached. She’d struggled longer than most. And once she’d stopped he’d still held on, unable to let go. He ran one of her curls between his fingers, wrapped it around his hand, and yanked it out. A memento…something to put inside the mourning ring his stepfather had sent him, to replace the lock of his mother’s hair he’d burnt years ago. Something more fitting, a touchstone of his triumph.
He stood, tucked the curl into his pocket, and fumbled with the lamp on the table beside the bed. He tossed the glass guard down beside the body, yanked the wick free, and shook the oil reserve onto the mattress.
The pungent scent of whale oil filled the room, greasy and heavy, almost rancid. He held his breath for a moment, then breathed carefully though his mouth. Even then he could taste it.
Philippe pulled a tinderbox from his pocket, dropped the enclosed char cloth onto the bed, and struck the flint against steel, sending a shower of sparks onto the bed.
The char cloth blazed brightly for a moment, illuminating the dead woman’s auburn hair, and then the bed went up in flames.
The sweetest feeling of bliss rushed though him. Stronger than lust, it quickened his whole body. Skin flushed, prick hard, he slipped from the room and out into the yard where his horse waited.
Chapter Eight
Lord St A— continues to haunt Mrs E—’s house. Another eligible bachelor fallen under her spell.
Tête-à-Tête, 15 October 1788
It was a full three days before Ivo reached London. He was
