“The butler said you had a case you wished to discuss?” Lynch asked without so much as a welcome.

Garrett hated to even say this—it smacked too much of begging—but his own pride wasn’t worth risking Perry’s safety. “No, it’s a personal matter.”

The echoing silence was answer enough.

“I wouldn’t be here if this wasn’t important. Or if I had anyone else to ask. After Falcone attacked me, my CV levels increased. I’m not used to dealing with the…side effects.” He looked Lynch dead in the eye. “I need to know if I’m a danger to Perry.”

A hint of consideration in those glacial eyes. “Why Perry in particular?”

At least Lynch intended to hear him out. “Matters have evolved between us.” Especially that afternoon.

“Do you think you might harm her?”

“I don’t know. I don’t feel as if I wish to, even when the craving hits me, but…can I risk it?” Garrett wet his lips. “When you were in the grip of the blood frenzy, the only person you responded to was Rosalind. You didn’t hurt her, even when you wanted to kill everyone else. I have hope—”

“Rosalind is my one exception. Even when roused, the darker half of me sees her as something to be protected. Someone to kill for—to die for.” Lynch frowned as he thought about it. “We blue bloods often speak as though the craving is a separate part of ourselves, but I do not think it is. I often wonder if the gentlemen of the Echelon use that excuse to deny the sheer primal need of their own nature. We are supposed to be men, in control of ourselves and not driven by our lusts, but that is what the craving is.

“Most of the time I am one with my rational self, and I love Rosalind more than anything. Therefore, when the primal part of my nature rises, I am incapable of harming her—for that primal part is still me. The craving virus is a constant dichotomy of character. Lust versus the intellectual nature of man. Both parts of me, primal and rational, need her. Even when I was drugged into a blood frenzy, my desire to protect her was still stronger than my blood-lust.”

“One might argue that falling in love comes from the primal side of one’s nature, rather than the rational,” Garrett countered gruffly. “At least, I find little that makes sense in any of this.”

The silence stretched out. A month ago, Lynch might have even jested with him about it. “In answer to your question, do I think you will hurt her? No. I do not. Your feelings for Perry while in control of your nature would only be emphasized when the primal side rises. Or at least, so I believe.”

“I have nightmares,” Garrett admitted softly. “Of what I could do to her.”

“Nightmares are often formed of what we fear most,” Lynch replied. “Perhaps they are simply that? Nightmares.”

For a moment Garrett was back in the past, talking through a case or a personal matter with Lynch, the way they used to. The way Lynch dissected the problem made sense somehow, in a way that Garrett couldn’t have worked through on his own.

“Was that everything you wished to ask?”

That sense of camaraderie evaporated as if it had never been.

No. “Yes.” Garrett squared his shoulders. “Thank you for seeing me.”

It was more than he’d expected. And more than he deserved, perhaps. With a clipped nod, he strode toward the door, but the moment his hand gripped the handle, he couldn’t seem to move any further.

Resentment was a hot flush within him, no matter whether he’d earned this dismissal or not. He couldn’t stop the words from boiling up, spilling over his lips as he turned around. “I never had a father. Only my mother, and she was lost to me far too young. There was no one to teach me the right of things…only you. You showed me what honor is. What a man could build in his life if he had the will for it.

“And then you asked me to stand by while you went to die. So yes, I told Rosalind what you intended when you set out toward the Ivory Tower. I couldn’t stand by and watch as you sacrificed yourself for her… I know that I failed you. I know that you’ll never forgive me for it, but I’m not sorry. I couldn’t just let you die. And telling Rosalind what you were planning—with the risk that she would sacrifice herself in your stead—was the only answer I had at the time. And if you want the full truth, I knew what choice she would make. I knew—I hoped—that she loved you enough to sacrifice herself for you.”

Another long silence. Lynch’s fingers tapped on the back of a chair, his face expressionless. “Rosa is something that I never thought I would ever have. She is my happiness. If I had died in place of her, then it would have been worth it.”

Garrett laughed humorlessly. “This might appeal to your sense of irony, but I understand that now. I understand what it’s like to almost lose something so infinitely precious that you can barely breathe for the near loss of it. I know”—he looked down—“why you hate me. I know you’ll never forgive me. I just wanted you to know… You asked too much of me.”

The words fell into the silence, seeming to echo in the small parlor, until Garrett couldn’t stand it anymore. He gave another clipped nod and darted through the door, feeling that overwhelming sense of censure following him.

***

“Well, that was interesting.”

Lynch’s hand jerked away from the curtains, and he let them fall as Rosalind entered the parlor behind him.

“Listening at the door, my love?” he asked.

“Of course. You only tell me the boring bits.” She crossed to his side, twitching aside the curtains to watch as Garrett disappeared into the traffic. “So Perry has finally made her move.”

“So it seems,” Lynch replied, glancing down at Rosa’s pretty, upturned features. “You did predict it, after all.”

“At least he has someone by his side,” Rosa murmured.

“That’s enough,” Lynch warned, sliding a hand over her elbow. Devil knew that she’d taken every opportunity in the last month to point out how stubborn he was being. He was weary of it.

“Far be it from me to point out that if Garrett hadn’t done what he did, you wouldn’t be alive right now to enjoy our marriage. I, at least, have him to thank for it.”

“That we’re both alive is a miracle,” he replied tightly. “We could both have died.”

“And I could have shot you when we first met and none of this would have happened, either.”

“That’s not a valid argument.”

“Then neither is yours,” Rosa pointed out.

He ground his teeth together.

“I think you’re feeling guilty,” Rosa murmured, reaching up to straighten the lapels on his coat. “He’s right, you know. Asking him to let you die was cruel. I remember the conversation he and I had when he told me the truth. You deliberately told him that if he tried to use the Nighthawks to rescue you, they’d be slaughtered. And you used Perry’s name in particular, because you knew he’d never risk her. Now you’re angry with him because you backed him into a corner and he took the only way out he had left. He came to me.”

Lynch rubbed his knuckles along her jaw. She was right, damn it. And he’d known it for far longer than he’d admitted. He sighed. “How the hell do I deal with this mess?”

Eighteen

Perry stalked inside the Birmingham gentlemen’s club, her cap pulled low over her face. The servant at the door tried to stop her, until she showed him the harsh leather body armor of a Nighthawk beneath her coat. A flash of five pounds told her exactly where the Moncrieff was.

The library was located upstairs, a room crammed with floor-to-ceiling shelves full of ancient books, and plush leather chairs that gleamed with polish. The thick scent of cheroot smoke and cognac assaulted her nostrils, as well as an overabundance of cologne. It was the kind of place where rich blue bloods gathered to survey the papers and discuss the major political events of the realm in hushed tones.

A pair of blue bloods lingered in chairs near the door, murmuring over snifters of blood-laced cognac. Behind them, an armchair faced away from the door, the gaslight gleaming on the fine golden threads of the Moncrieff’s hair.

The usual gut-twisting reaction gripped her. I’m not afraid of him. I’m not. She didn’t know who she was trying to fool. Best to get angry. She jerked her head at the pair of blue bloods and gestured toward the door. One of them paled, the other opening his mouth to protest. Perry slid her coat open and eased a hand over the hilt of her knife.

They vanished, the door clicking shut behind them.

Be brave.

“What a pleasant surprise,” the Moncrieff murmured, turning the page of his paper. “I didn’t expect to see you here…Miss Lowell, was it?”

Her reflection gleamed in the window in front of him.

Perry strode across the room. “Enough games. I refuse to play them anymore.”

“Unfortunately, you don’t get a choice.”

She had the knife drawn, the blade pressed against her forearm to hide it, and the hilt warm in her hand as she circled him. “Do you think this is amusing? What are you playing at?”

He looked up then. “I’m reading the paper. You’re the one accosting me.”

“Don’t pretend this isn’t what you wanted.”

His lashes lowered as he examined her, his eyes turning soft and molten. Dangerous. “Put the knife away, my dear.”

“Or?”

“I’ll take it off you.”

Maybe he could, but maybe he couldn’t. And though ten years stretched between them, she could remember just how easily he’d snapped a blue blood’s neck back then. Moncrieff rarely displayed how dangerous he was, which made him all the more unpredictable. She wasn’t quite certain if she could best him.

Perry put the knife away.

“So you have finally come to see me,” he said, lowering the paper and looking satisfied.

“How did you find me?”

“One of my old acquaintances thought he saw you at the opera last month with a group of Nighthawks. Imagine my surprise when I opened that telegram.”

“So you came all the way to London for me,” she demanded.

“Don’t be arrogant. I already intended to reinstate myself here. I had no intention of staying in that wretched hellhole in Scotland. Your reappearance is simply a serendipitous moment I intend to take full advantage of.”

Then why all the subterfuge? Why? Unless… “That’s why you haven’t come for me yet, isn’t it? You wanted me to crawl here to you. You think you hold all the power.”

“I do hold all of the power. Do you know that this is the only gentlemen’s club in the city that will accept me?” He smiled, a chilling sight indeed. “Everybody believes I killed my thrall.” His gaze raked over her. “I don’t like what you’ve done with your hair.”

“What do you want?”

Moncrieff shook out the paper again and opened it. A grainy photograph of the queen stared out at her from the front page, endorsing the upcoming exhibition. “I want the truth to emerge.”

“The truth?” she challenged, snatching a fistful of the paper and forcing it down. “Or your version of it?”

He looked up. Slowly.

Perry let go and he shook the wrinkles out of the paper in a careful manner.

“You will return to my house and resume your duties as my thrall, as you agreed to do ten years ago. You will fulfill the terms of our contract, and I will see to your every comfort and continued good health for the rest of your life, as I promised to do in your thrall contract. You will attend balls on my arm, and we will let it be known that you are very much alive and well. As for everyone who accused me of dirtying my hands with your blood, I will rub their faces in the truth until it blinds them.”

She swallowed. “You think I believe you mean me no harm?”

“I don’t particularly care if you do or not,” he replied.

“And Hague?”

“Is unimportant.”

Her temper flared. “I know he’s damned well alive, Moncrieff. He’s responsible for the deaths of those two girls, isn’t he? Girls you brought into his sphere. He saw you with them, didn’t he? Saw them somehow and wanted them for his collection, the way he wanted me. You think I can look him in the eye and not want to cut his throat?”

“You didn’t do such a good job of it last time.”

That roused her ire. “How can you look the other way and ignore what he’s doing? All those girls… How many have there been? How much blood is on your hands?”

The duke’s eyes narrowed. He flipped a page of the paper. “I only need him for a little longer. He is a means to an end. Then the good doctor will have outlived his usefulness.”

“And until then? What of the girls he’ll take between then and now?”

“There won’t be any,” he said firmly. “I’m in London now, and I fully intend to hold his leash. I’ll choke him with it, if need be.”

“I’m sure that shall stop him,” she snapped. “You told him to keep his hands off me, did you not?”

The duke looked sleepy eyed. Dangerous. “Hague learned how much he cost me over that unfortunate incident.” His eyes met hers. “I hold both of you responsible for my exile. If you’d stayed, Octavia, you would have seen how I dealt with the matter…”

Despite her feelings for the monster, she almost shivered. “And the girls here? You wouldn’t have wanted him to draw attention to whatever you’re planning. How long has he been here? Why the hell did you let him off your so-called leash?”