Chapter 17
MARIETTA
“Gabriel!” Lucian’s voice cracked, but I couldn’t turn. I could only stare at the man in front of me. He had come through the kitchen door after all.
He didn’t move, but his gaze shifted behind me, much as Crane’s had when I’d peered from the window. “Sir,” he said to Orion Crane. “I can’t say I’m surprised to see you.”
I backed into the corner that kept all of them in view. All exits blocked. No weapon.
“You shouldn’t be,” Crane said. “You should have notified me immediately.”
Gabriel raised a brow. “It has been a long time since I’ve been under your control. I daresay I had no inclination to notify you at all.”
Crane closed his eyes in acknowledgment and pain. I felt behind me for a knife—not that it would do much good against a bullet.
“Lucian sent you a note, I presume,” Gabriel said.
“I didn’t need a note after reading the papers.”
Gabriel cocked his head. “No, I don’t suppose you would have.”
“You knew I would show.”
“There was little I could do about it.”
“You could have told me.”
Definitely pain this time. Crane practically exuded genteel pain.
“There was no need,” Gabriel said, carelessly leaning against the doorway as if he didn’t have a care in the world. “What was there to say? I ruled you out as the murderer a week ago.”
Ruled him out as—what?
The man took a deep breath and drew himself up. “I see. I suppose I should thank you for your confidence, if not for your consideration.”
Gabriel inclined his head. His eyes met mine, my wrist pulsed, and my hand froze its search for a blade. “A veritable meeting of the damned. Shall we sit and discuss this like proper citizens, or begin shooting and stabbing?”
Crane’s pistol lowered and he sat. Lucian shifted before sitting across from him. Gabriel continued lounging against the door. “Well, Marietta, what will it be?”
“I hardly have a pistol with which to start shooting.”
“No, no you do not. I can’t allow it, I’m afraid. Sit. There’s no reason to be afraid. Unless there’s a killer in the house.” His smile was all teeth and sneer. His eyes held a wound that had no reason to be there.
I sat at the end of the table, as far from the others as my position allowed. Gabriel dropped into the head seat.
“Well, isn’t this a happy scene.”
“Gabriel—”
“A happy reunion, no?” Gabriel said, cutting Crane off.
He looked like a vengeful god. Lucian like a battered one. Crane’s brows creased, just like Gabriel did when he…
The tabletop iced.
“Figured it out, did you?” Gabriel waved his hand and the ice melted and flew into the sink.
“Gabriel, leave her be.”
I barely registered either remark.
“Absolutely not. I saw and heard what was happening before I entered. Answer the question, Lady Winters.”
“He is your father,” I said, vision wavering. “The main butler at the Steelcrest estate. The reason you would have recognized Thorne Worley. You worked there with him.”
“A mere servant. Did I detect that realization in your voice?” Silky, dark, dangerous.
Lucian shifted. Orion Crane’s gaze never left Gabriel.
“No.”
“Mmm, I think I’m not the only one caught in a lie.”
A lick of anger climbed my spine. “Whatever your station in life, it doesn’t allow you to play with the lives of others.”
“I couldn’t agree less.” He leaned back, eyes hooded. “Your station in life directly impacts how much you can play with lives and on what scale.”
“That’s horrible.”
“Spare me your horror. The higher you are in society, the more you play. Own those people…” His eyes gleamed darkly. “…and you own everything.”
The air grew thinner, harder to breathe. “No.”
Gabriel, beautiful—and terrible in that beauty—leaned forward. “Oh, yes, Marietta.”
“Gabriel,” Crane barked. “That’s enough.”
“You are a guest in this house, Father. As mentioned before, I hardly need to take direction from you anymore.” The very air changed, all the household spells bending to his hand. There was something black in his eyes. “Not that you ever showed much care for my direction.”
Orion Crane straightened, but even I could see Gabriel had shot him clean through. “Your mother and I—”
“Do not mention her in this.” His voice turned deadly. “If you had left us with—”
“Gabriel, you cannot blame father for—”
“Really? And why not?”
Lucian’s face turned from white to red. “It’s not fair.”
Gabriel lifted a brow. “Fair? How interesting.”
He must have been born Gabriel Crane. The non-gilded could do that—start over, shed a name, become someone entirely new.
I assessed the distance to the door. Gabriel’s eyes met mine. “Don’t even think it.”
Magic spiked through me. “Just let me go.” My voice was barely audible. I clutched at the pulsing marks on my wrist.
The skin around his eyes tightened. “No.”
“Please.”
Pain flashed then disappeared. “I think you have something to ask me.” His tone was almost pleasant.
“No.”
“Oh, yes. Ask me, Marietta. Ask me now.”
~*~
GAbrIEL
I tightened my grip on the pistol. Her pistol, which she had been ready to use. From the corner of my eye, I saw a cobweb dangling from the ceiling, missed by a cleaning spell. Unraveling now, like everything else.
I won’t implicate him.
So it had come to this. With me angrier at her than at my father, for reasons I refused to examine. I had deliberately withheld information from her. I had lied. And yet, her response felt like betrayal.
I had known this girl barely a month. Had spent nearly every moment with her since, yes, but she was a turn on the carriage ride of my life. And yet…
Yes, and yet.
Her lips pressed. “No.”
“Would you rather believe whatever your mind has conjured? Anything to get your brother released. Why go after Worley, when you can present Dresden with someone else? Someone he hates? Someone society would love brought to his knees to make up for his galling success. A lowly son of a butler and drift dancer. It would rectify the stain on society that I am. Another upstart removed.”
“You are mad.”
“A bit, I presume. Mad surely for believing anything of you.”
Her lips pressed together and her eyes filled. “Then we are mad together, aren’t we? For I feel the same. Mad for believing anything of you.”
Lucian and my father closed the door to the kitchen, their footsteps retreating through the house. Neither missed nor wanted at the moment.
“You were the one who came to me.”
“And you marked me.” She thrust out her wrist. “You bedded me. You used me. I thought I could trust you.”
“Don’t rewrite our relationship.”
“Is there such a thing? You have been leading me—lying to me—whenever it suits you.”
I leaned in. “There is little point doing anything other than what suits me.”
I watched the rage come over her face. The red and white mottled together, giving her color and depth and transforming the features I had never thought of as plain into a face that was active and alive.
“You even lie to yourself.”
“If it suits.”
“You think that a dozen good deeds, a hundred, will make up for your sins?”
“It depends on the sin.”
“Does it? Is that the justification you use?”
“That is the justification that everyone uses. Have you committed no sins to get your brother released, Marietta?”
“Yes, but I committed each knowingly. I didn’t delude myself into thinking myself blameless. I didn’t withhold information from you that was vital.”
“You didn’t have information that was vital.”
“But you did.”
“Nothing pertinent to you.”
“It would have been pertinent to know you were raped! By five now very dead women!”
Silence split the air.
My fingers hurt from their grip. “And your question? Are you going to ask it now?”
Her heavy breathing swallowed her silence. Strange, as I wondered if I would ever draw breath again.
“Those women. You had every reason to want them dead.”
“That isn’t much of a question.”
Her chest rose and fell, rose and fell. She wasn’t going to ask.
Unreality gripped me. The unpleasant sense of inversion. I was asking her to voice a question she didn’t want answered. Asking of her what I hadn’t asked of myself. Out of love.
Unable to ask Lucian. Unable to bear his response. Unable to do anything except run away.
“They raped you.”
I hated that word. The harsh sound of the long “a.” The way the “p” formed between puckered lips.
“Debatable, as I said before.” I kept my voice light, to fight the emptiness in my head, my chest, my gut.
“Not debatable. Not from Octavia Winstead’s own hand.”
“A madwoman’s rambles?”
“Mad? Quite possibly. Rambles? I think not.”
“You put too much stock in that book. Obsessed by it.”
“Little wonder, when the object of it was with me all the time. Sleeping at my side.”
“I seem to recall it being my bed we shared, not yours.”
Her color deepened. “I knew there was something about the book that called to me. Something in it I needed to read.”
I buried horror and anger beneath shallow disinterest. “I didn’t realize you were into the perverse.”
She reached out a hand to me and withdrew it just as quickly. Comfort automatically given, then consciously taken away.
“Believe me, I don’t need your comfort.” The pain and self-hatred were too difficult to fully hide.
She took a deep breath. “What they did was wrong.”
“Spare me your pity. I hardly need it, any more than I need anything else from you.” The tragedy of spite.
She looked down, clasped shaking hands together, then straightened her shoulders. “Very well.”
“Your question, Lady Winters?” I bit out.
Her eyes connected with mine. “Did you murder those women?”
I waited a few beats. “If not me, then who else?”
Her lips disappeared in a thin straight line. “That is not an answer.”
“But if I give you an answer in the negative, that leaves you without a scapegrace. If I give you an answer in the positive, what will you do about it?”
“You were the one pushing for me to ask the question. Now answer it.”
“Tell me, when would I have been able to murder the last two?”
She looked at the scattered papers. “You could have sneaked out to murder Anastasia Rasen while I slept.”
“So stealthy, am I?”