The Midnight Man. Charlotte MedeЧитать онлайн книгу.
in time, but in his own time. Right now, he was grateful for the lust drowning out the tortured thoughts he’d kept buried for the last two decades. He concentrated on that mouth, her long legs sprawled beneath him, and then just as he believed he was going to throw her up against the wall and shove into her, he heard the sound.
Coming from below, it was like the roll of a ship’s masts on a windy day. Except it wasn’t. Those were footsteps thundering up the narrow stairs to the top floor of A.R. Burrows Shipping.
He knew what was coming. And felt his blood run cold. In a few economical movements he’d pulled Helena’s skirts and cloak back over her body. She looked up at him, her eyes clouding first with confusion and then fear as she quickly assessed the situation. Bundling her hair into a knot, she grabbed at a few pins scattered on the floor.
Seizing her by the arm, he hoisted her to her feet. “They’re coming. For you, in case you haven’t already guessed. There’s no time for argument—you’re going to have to trust me.”
Chapter 5
Before she could reply, they’d crashed through the open door. Four of them, big brawny men swinging bats and brandishing pistols. She recognized none of them from Madame Congais’s.
Ramsay pushed her under the stairwell. Fury washed over her, a hot pounding in her brain that she didn’t stop to analyze. Head spinning and terror threatening to paralyze her, her vision contracted on Ramsay as gooseflesh chased up her arms and down her spine.
The numbers weren’t good.
Ramsay didn’t bother pulling the pistol from his waistband. Instead, he wound up and leaned forward, driving his weight into the momentum that lifted the first two men off their feet and sent them flying. He dove to the left, then staggered back, slamming his fist into the shoulder of the tall, wiry assailant barreling at him, his lips curled back in a snarl. He grabbed the bat from his hand, turned, and swung it at the last man standing. The wood splintered before it connected with flesh, making a sound Helena never wanted to hear again.
She watched as one of the men rose shakily from the floor, his face a rictus of pain. At the sound of his heavy tread, Ramsay turned, the move almost elegant, before throwing 200 pounds into an overturned easel with a thundering crash.
It was over before it started. The air hung with sweat, pungent and noisome, overpowering the lingering odor of paint and turpentine. Helena edged a step out of the stairwell, watching Ramsay’s heaving back, her eyes tacking back and forth, containing her panic while measuring how quickly she could get through the open door. Away from these men, now broken and battered, littering the floor. But more important, away from Ramsay.
Amid the strangled silence she could hear the clicking of a clock, miraculously undamaged. Her moment was now. She wouldn’t think about the heaviness between her thighs, the oil that still slicked her legs…Don’t think. If she waited, if Ramsay turned around…
Not daring to move her head, she spied the palette knife out of the corner of her eye, discarded, where he’d tossed it after he’d twisted it from her grasp. She wondered if she would have the courage to use it. As though it would protect her from him. He had disposed of four men in the space of a heartbeat, moving with preternatural swiftness and a lightning rapidity that shocked her.
There was nothing left for her to think about; she could only act. Sensing her intentions, like an animal in the wild, Ramsay swung around. He stared at her until she felt him looking through her, not at her.
It was then that she lurched toward the door. There was a swift movement of air as she closed her eyes. She was not going to go easily, willingly, but his arm snaked out in one efficient motion, halting her escape.
This time she didn’t struggle. He held her as though she were no more than a blade of grass, apparently relaxed, but his muscles were tight, ready to uncoil and attack. Towering over her, he was so close, she could smell the scent of blood, metallic and harsh, and the impact was of power and some deeply held fury that, she found herself praying, would remain beneath the surface forever.
He smiled in a way that didn’t reach his eyes. “You know, Lady Hartford, we can’t go on like this.” At the same time, his right heel slammed the door violently shut, undercutting the irony in his tone.
“You’re perfectly correct on that count.” She wrenched her arm away from him and, surprisingly, he let go. Then he was gone, in two strides across the room back to the front windows, where he glanced, through the curtains, at the alleyway below.
Helena took in the closed door and the motionless bodies scattered like broken dolls on the painted wooden floor. A small river of blood, its source unclear, began to soak the edge of the worn Persian carpet. She looked away and into Ramsay’s eyes, which were following her smoothly from across the room as his pistol had done earlier.
No chance of escape. Not now. Breathing deeply, she blocked it from her mind. Clearing her throat, she asked, “Are you hurt? There’s so much blood.”
He inclined his head before glancing back out the window. “Not to worry. Although a glass of water wouldn’t be amiss.”
She walked carefully, avoiding the debris, to the small pantry in the studio and opened a cabinet where a decanter of water waited, mercifully, undisturbed. With steady hands, she found two crystal tumblers and poured water into each.
Let him come and get it, she thought, a strange recklessness coursing through her, born of the knowledge she had little to lose.
Never taking his gaze from her, he took three steps and removed a glass from her hands. She moistened her dry lips and said nothing, but all she could think about was flight. There were four sets of stairs, narrow and twisting, and she knew instinctively that he’d overtake her in an instant.
She watched the corded muscles of his neck as he drank the water. His physicality, even in this simplest action, was overwhelming. The memory of his hands between her thighs, his mouth devouring hers, was like a hallucination. Her face burned and she hoped he couldn’t read her mind. She took a quick gulp of water.
“Do you have any idea who these men are?”
Helena shook her head, cradling the tumbler between her two shaking hands. “They aren’t familiar to me, but I have an idea as to who sent them.” Her eyes darted around the room. At any other time and in any other world, the mayhem and carnage would have sent her into a spiral of panic, but just thinking of Sissinghurst hardened her horror into pitiless determination. “Can we be sure they will stay unconscious for the moment?” Her cool tone, she noticed, almost matched his.
Ramsay shrugged carelessly. “They won’t cause any more trouble for a while.” She thought about what had happened, and about how quickly and ruthlessly he had managed the attack. It didn’t make sense that one of the wealthiest men in the empire handled himself like a felon in an alleyway ambush.
“I’d suspected they might come back looking for you,” he said, his voice clipped, revealing no more emotion or information than a complete stranger would. Gone was the pent-up fury, the monumental rage that had burned through her skin when he touched her. It was as though nothing between them, nothing intimate, had ever happened. He set down his water glass and halfheartedly smoothed the front of his shirt, now splattered with blood. “I’d found the atelier destroyed when I first arrived. Believe me or not. But do believe me when I say that somebody hates you with a passion.”
Her chin jerked up, unwilling to absorb his statement or his transformation. “You knew they were coming, and yet you allowed yourself to…” The words tumbled from her lips. “To engage in what we did, when you knew someone might…” She trailed off, her grip tightening on the glass to the breaking point.
The faint mockery in his voice was disquieting. “We can’t control everything in life, much as we might try. Besides which, I enjoy a certain amount of risk,” he said. “And I think you’re much the same, Lady Hartford.”
The formal use of her name peeled back another layer from her frayed nerves. She stared