Dangerous Games. Charlotte MedeЧитать онлайн книгу.
on,” he directed Vesper with the crisp snap of his fingertips.
The doctor seemed to have recovered his confidence, having wrestled his conscience to the ground, but still studiously ignored the servant girl. From the first, Bellamy recalled with rising irritation, Vesper had refused to acknowledge the slattern in the corner.
“So what’s your first trick?” Bellamy’s insult was well aimed and timed. He tightened his cravat and his conviction to do absolutely nothing to salve the physician’s no doubt unruly principles.
Averting his gaze and ignoring the taunt, the younger man slipped the timepiece back into the pocket of his jacket. “He’s under my suggestion at the moment.” Then he straightened to his full height, hands behind his back, good soldier he was. “However you would like to proceed, only say.”
“No tea party tricks. Your idea, not mine, as you’ll recall.”
Vesper gave a tight nod.
Bellamy’s pulse quickened. His eyes locked on the somnolent man in the chair. Brought to life, he knew exactly how dangerous—and skilled—the man could be. Bellamy shoved a finger into his high cravat to loosen the fabric. “The ultimate of course,” he drawled.
Vesper, the limp coward, pretended not to understand. “You intend to have him assault her.” He punctuated the statement by smoothing back his hair with surprisingly steady hands, again refusing to glance at the woman in question. Whether he was playing for time or genuinely perplexed was difficult to tell.
What was the physician’s credo—do no harm? Bellamy smiled and crossed his arms over the superfine lapels of his chest. “Come now. You can do better than that, doctor.” He leaned a shoulder casually onto the watered silk-covered wall. To his left, the slut was stirring, a rodent twitching under a heap of rags.
“Surely you don’t mean assault of a sexual nature?” The question was delivered halfheartedly. While not a tall man to begin with, Vesper seemed to shrink a few inches against the ostentatious proportions of the room.
Bellamy’s breathing quickened. Things were becoming more interesting, what with the good doctor so studiously studying the patterns in the fine Oriental rug beneath his feet. And all the while Bellamy was beginning to feel the old stirrings again. His guts thickened like blood sausage, the back of his throat constricting with thirst. “What a lurid turn of mind you have, Vesper,” he said, the temperature in the room rising a few degrees. “While molestation might prove a mildly entertaining diversion, I had rather something more challenging in mind.”
The gas lamps hissed in the quiet of the salon. Stiffening his spine as though warding off a coming blow, Vesper summoned another barely perceptible nod, the fine furrows in his high brow deepening. It was inconvenient to have a conscience, not that Bellamy knew firsthand.
A second later, Vesper looked up from his meditations on the rug and, without glancing at Bellamy, turned his face to his subject. “Can you hear me, St. Martin?” His voice had reverted to its previous cadence, slow and calm.
A change came over the room, an energy slowly suffusing the four corners of the salon with a disturbing intensity. Bellamy’s breath came faster. The figure remained still, relaxed as if in sleep, and then the heavy-lidded eyes opened. Dark as pitch. Like the chasm of hell yawning before them.
“Please answer if you can hear me.” Vesper repeated.
“I can.” The voice was low, more of a growl, as though the man hadn’t spoken in years.
Bellamy hauled a breath into his lungs, preparing himself for the feast to come. He moved away from the wall, eager to get closer, listening intently for the doctor’s next words. And the man’s next actions.
“There is a young woman in the room with us. Please indicate that you see her, sir.”
The figure flexed his hands, still suspended loosely from the arms of his chair. Strong, elegant hands. Deadly. Bellamy knew from experience.
The twitching by the cold grate had stopped entirely. Even for that pathetic creature of a slattern, now fully alone in her predicament, self-preservation was a stern taskmaster. Bellamy sensed the tightening in his chest, heat rushing to his loins, the harsh euphoria of power, ultimate power, within his tight grasp. He recognized the feeling and welcomed its resurrection.
The gaslight threw the doctor’s shadow into sharp relief, a vibrating specter who knew enough not to hesitate. Because there was no turning back.
“That’s very good. You can hear me then,” he continued calmly. “And you can see the young woman by the fireplace grate.”
The man nodded.
“What I am requesting of you, sir,” Vesper said slowly, each word a nasty little pill, “is that you cross the room to her side.”
Bellamy’s gaze was fixed. He didn’t move save to grind his teeth against the spittle that was forming at the corner of his lips. The pressure was building, a rising tide of excitement that threatened to tear his lungs from his chest.
The doctor continued, using the same mesmerizing monotone, distancing himself from what he was about to do. “Once you are at her side, I want you to,” the barest of pauses that could not hope to bridge the reality of what was to come, followed by an inhalation as decisive as a knife’s thrust. “I want you to,” Vesper repeated, “kill her with your bare hands.” He paused then, awaiting confirmation. “Do you understand?”
In response and in one fluid motion, the man came to life, rising from the chair. He looked neither left nor right, and Bellamy was reminded of a Bengal tiger he’d once hunted in the grasslands of Uttar Pradesh. The man and the animal shared the same studied calm. The same lethal, wholly instinctive intent.
The slut resumed her whimpering. Bellamy licked his lips again. The man loomed over her. The rag over her mouth was sodden with tears and sweat and terror, her swollen blue eyes shrunken in horror. She tried to make herself small, to disappear.
But those large elegant hands inexorably wrapped themselves around her plump neck. And squeezed with no more effort than a sleek animal in the wild shaking its prey between its jaws.
It didn’t take long. Not long enough. The slut barely struggled, her face transformed into a caricature of a bloated balloon topped by a mop of tangled, matted hair. The scent of urine and feces filled the salon.
Through slitted eyes and short breaths, Bellamy watched the man drop the carcass of the girl to the flagstones in front of the fireplace.
And the stiffening, the hardening between his legs too quickly began to subside. Bellamy closed his eyes against the harshness of his breathing and bit down hard, saliva mingling with the renewed taste of blood in his mouth.
And against his closed lids, the image of Julian St. Martin burned. How easily he killed. Julian St. Martin, the cold-blooded assassin, who now belonged to him.
Chapter 2
“And what is your estimation of the situation in India at the moment, Mr. Seabourne?” Surrounded by six men, Lilly Clarence Hampton directed her question to the most senior of the gentlemen at her side. Having just returned from Lahore, Seabourne was a direct relation to the current governor general of India, Charles John Canning.
He eyed her speculatively before answering. “You do realize, my dear, that your interest in all things political and cultural is simultaneously refreshing and unseemly in a woman.”
Lilly smiled, the evening candlelight bouncing off the jet beads of her black mourning dress. “Indeed. As though the behavior of a middle-aged widow indulging her harmless interests could be of concern to anyone.” She tapped him on the elbow with her fan, pressing him further. “Or are you simply endeavoring to evade answering my questions, dear sir?”
The men chuckled heartily at her rejoinder. The Thursday-evening salons hosted by Mrs. Hampton had become one of the most coveted invitations in London society, each guest scrutinized by the hostess herself