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She stopped thinking about it. She looked past him, out the screened window to the Caribbean night sky with its lopsided moon. It was a beautiful evening, the time and place for lovers, not death.
When she looked back at Peter he was almost finished bandaging her up. “Not as bad as it looked,” he said. “There shouldn’t be any permanent damage. The next time you slam a wineglass down on a granite countertop remember to let go of it faster.”
Next time. He’d released her hand finally, and she pulled away, looking up at him.
There was an unexpectedly gentle expression in his eyes. “Stop baiting me, Genny,” he said. “It doesn’t do any good, and it only upsets you.”
“And you’re so concerned about my well-being.” No one called her Genny anymore—that name belonged to someone younger, happier, more hopeful. Someone who thought she could make a difference in the world.
That girl was long gone, and there wasn’t much to be hopeful about in the current situation.
“Actually, I am,” he said, his voice light. “Now, come back with me and eat something, or I’ll carry you back, tie you up and force-feed you.”
He’d do just that, and probably enjoy it, she thought bitterly. And she wasn’t about to give him that satisfaction, or any other satisfaction at all.
She rose. She was almost five foot nine in her bare feet, but he was much taller, and even in the cavernous bathroom she felt crowded, alarmingly aware of his closeness.
“You win,” she said. “But then you always do, don’t you?”
“Not always,” he said. And his icy eyes were bleak.
He did what he had to do, Peter reminded himself, watching as the night breeze drifted in from the patio and stirred her long thick hair. He followed orders and seldom had reason to question them, even in the ruthless days of Harry Thomason’s reign. Madame Lambert was a more pragmatic soul, and if the hit was ordered he could trust that it was with the best of reasons. He was well trained, a veritable artist at his job, and he could make Genevieve Spenser’s eventual demise his masterwork.
Demise. Stupid word for an execution. Did you even call it that when it was a case of collateral damage? More like the fortunes of war, not execution. But Genny was no soldier, just someone in the way.
She didn’t eat much, picking at the food he’d prepared. A few more weeks of this and she’d lose the fifteen pounds that curved her body so nicely. Unfortunately she didn’t have a few more weeks.
He knew women’s bodies well enough to know exactly what she weighed and how much she considered to be unwanted extra. She wanted to be an anorexic clotheshorse like Harry’s recent taste in sexual partners. He’d be better off if she was. Maybe.
There was no question that her strong, curvy body was rapidly becoming an uncomfortable obsession. Seeing her in that poured-on bathing suit had only made things worse, and in his role as Harry’s majordomo he knew exactly what kind of clothes and underwear she would have found in that room. Was she wearing some enticing bits of lace and ribbon beneath that ridiculous, nunlike caftan? Or was she wearing nothing at all?
Neither thought was particularly comforting. She was doing her best to ignore him, and he was happy enough to let her get away with it. Because her undeniably luscious body wasn’t nearly as involving as her spirit.
She was a bundle of fascinating contradictions. She used her little pills to stuff down any unwanted emotion. She had very little physical fear—she’d fought Renaud and tried to take him on without a moment’s hesitation. He knew she was currently without a relationship, and hadn’t had one for a long time, which suggested she got her satisfaction from sublimating her desires in her career. And yet every time he touched her, kissed her, she reacted with breathless intensity.
He never should have kissed her. He’d let temptation overrun his better judgment, and he was paying the price for it now. Because he wanted to kiss her again with a need so strong it was almost a physical ache.
He wasn’t going to touch her. He hadn’t been reckless since he was a teenager at the tight-ass boarding school his mother had sent him to. All the Wimberley men had grac
ed its hallowed halls, up to and including his grandfather, Dr. Wilton Wimberley, MBE. He was the one who’d seen to it that young Peter had the best education, one befitting the solid uppermiddle-class values so dear to his mother.
She’d married beneath her, and a day never passed when she didn’t regret it, which she made abundantly clear to her small family. He never could figure out what attracted a prissy, uptight creature like his sainted mother to a sullen bully like Richard Madsen. At least his father had found a natural outlet for his violent tendencies; when he wasn’t beating on his carping wife or his rebellious son, he could beat up criminals. He was a London policeman, with no pretensions or aspirations to anything higher, and to his mother’s fury he’d turned down promotion after promotion, just to spite her.
Emily Wimberley Madsen had done her best by her only child. She’d taught him to speak in a proper posh accent, though he would slip into his father’s rougher street tones just to annoy her. She’d cadged enough money from her father to send him to the best schools, never realizing that children could spot an outsider with unerring cruelty. He’d had to fight his way through school, and by the time they sent him off to Kent Hall, over his father’s objections, he was a danger to anyone who crossed him.
Most of the other students picked up on that as well, and gave him a wide berth. His mother could never understand why he was never invited to the country homes of his mates—she never understood that a misfit like Peter Madsen would have no mates.
He never bothered wondering what might have happened if things had gone differently at school. Daniel Conley should have known better, but his father was a Member of Parliament with too much money, and his son had an army of sycophants who followed his orders like good little soldiers. Daniel had been a big boy—heavy boned, leaning toward fat, whereas Peter didn’t reach his full height until he was out of school. At the age of seventeen he was wiry, small for his age and far more dangerous than hulking Daniel Conley would ever guess.
Daniel had outweighed him by forty pounds, and with two other boys holding him down there wasn’t much Peter could do but endure the pain and humiliation of Daniel’s assault.
He’d spent a week in the infirmary. No one asked any questions—Daniel’s father was a major contributor to the school—and he hadn’t offered any complaints. And the next time Daniel Conley tried to corner him in the third-floor washroom, he’d broken the bastard’s neck.
He’d wanted to kill him, and he would have if his rage hadn’t gotten in the way, making him careless. To this day Daniel Conley lived the plushest life a paraplegic could lead, supported by his father’s limitless wealth.
They’d hauled Peter away, covered with the blood of Daniel and a dozen of his cronies. He had no idea where they were taking him, and by the time the blood-red haze had left him he’d grown cold and still as ice, knowing that the huge sober men were taking him someplace quiet to kill him. Upstarts didn’t try to kill the privileged sons of MPs and face normal consequences. They’d bury him in some bog, and his parents would never know what had become of him.
He was right about the last part, if about nothing else. He never saw Emily and Richard Madsen again— merely a side benefit of his early recruitment to the shadowy group known simply as the Committee.
