“I do not know what to do with you,” he said.
“Take me to the ball?” she suggested with a hopeful smile that she managed to scavenge out of the hopeless dread. “You can have the first two dances.”
He studied her face then looked down. “I know what I must do, but I do not want to. Killing Mr. Wattlesbrook was one matter, but you are another entirely.” He met her eyes again. “Can you offer me a way out?”
“Yes! Of course. A way out. Let’s talk about it. What do you need from me? I’m a very reasonable person. I can be your partner in this secret. With pleasure!”
Her cheery speech was spoiled somewhat by the intense shaking of her hands and the sickly tremble in her voice.
Hold still! she commanded her hands. Be cool! she told her voice. They didn’t obey. Traitors.
Mr. Mallery’s frown deepened. He took a step toward her. She took a step back.
“I wish I knew I could trust you,” he said. “But are you as you seem? Or are you someone else entirely? So many secrets in this place. So many falsehoods.”
She heard a slick scrape as he pulled a knife from his belt. She barely processed the silver flicker of the blade before she turned and ran for the door.
Her finger slipped on the hidden knob, but on her second press, it opened. She leapt away from the swinging door and heard it collide with Mr. Mallery behind her.
Mary peered out her door and blinked at Charlotte, as if she had been expecting to see someone else.
“Run for help,” Charlotte pleaded. “Mallery killed Wattlesbrook.”
Charlotte barely got out the words when he grabbed her from behind and pulled her back into the room with such force that she tumbled across the floor.
She looked up to see Mary not running for help but holding open the door and staring at Mallery. Even in her thoughts, Charlotte could no longer muster up a “mister” title for him.
“Do you have need of me, sir?” Mary asked, her voice mostly breath.
“Mary, you’ve always been a very good girl,” he said. His hair had pulled free of its restraint and hung loose around his face. He looked wild.
“Mary, hurry!” Charlotte shouted.
Mallery approached Mary leisurely, and the girl held still, waiting for him, faintly trembling, a mouse caught in a cobra’s gaze. He moved Mary’s hair behind her shoulder and ran a finger along her long, white neck in a way that seemed practiced. Mary’s faint trembling escalated to a full-body shiver. She gazed at Mallery with wet eyes.
Oh no, Charlotte thought. Mary would throw herself into a volcano for him. That does not bode well.
He fingered the neck of Mary’s blouse and slipped it off her shoulder. Her collarbone was tense and standing out like a skeleton’s.
“Would you give us some privacy to take care of business,” he whispered into her neck. “And then I will come find you. To thank you. You have proven to me that you are the only woman I can trust.”
Mary seemed scarcely able to move, let alone speak, but she managed to nod jerkily.
“Mary, please, he’ll kill me,” Charlotte said, pulling herself to her feet with a grunt. The bruises she felt forming on her hip were added to her Things Not Regency Appropriate list.
Mallery held his face close to Mary’s and touched her lips with a finger. “You know how much I value your discretion.”
He kissed the corner of her mouth, a tease, the promise of more, then stepped back and nodded, as if giving her permission to depart. She took a deep, unstable breath.
“Excuse me,” Mary said shakily and shut the door on her way out.
Charlotte was trying to wrench open one of the windows when she heard a skin-crawling rasp behind her. Mallery had pushed a highboy to block the door. He considered his knife before putting it away. Maybe he wouldn’t hurt her after all! Maybe he just wanted to chat about stuff.
Or maybe he just preferred to kill her without a lot of blood.
“Hold still,” he said, sounding so reasonable. He came at her, and his hands looked as dangerous as any knife.
Charlotte dodged, putting furniture between her and those hands. He followed. He didn’t say anything. He was focused on catching her. And then what?
Charlotte didn’t think about what James’s reaction would be when he heard she was murdered. She only gave her children a passing thought before her mind fled in white-hot panic from the idea that she could be taken from them. Instead, she thought of Eddie, and how she very much wanted him to save her. Yes, if she could choose any man in the world to save her, it would be Eddie. But he wouldn’t, would he? Because no one knew she was here, except Mary, who’d been mesmerized into submission by the predator. Charlotte was starting to suspect that Mary was seriously messed up.
Stupid Charlotte, she screamed at herself. You believed you were clever, and that made you more vulnerable.
When the chase drew her near the window, she plucked a naked lamp from the debris and slammed it against a pane, hoping to break the window but only managing a few cracks.
“Help!” she screamed.
“You do not need to do that,” he said.
Mallery and his hands were coming at her. She ran from the window, weaving through clutter and broken furniture, trying to keep that man as far away as possible. But he kept following.
Stupid Charlotte, she screamed at herself again. Two minutes ago you considered falling in love with him!
Those fluttery feelings of new love—those lung-tickling, heart-kicking, squealing sensations of hot and cold and pulses snapping and lips wetting—they were as false as cravats and corsets. They were merely sensations, like the wrenching drop on a roller coaster that warned of impending death. She wasn’t really going to die on a roller coaster (probably not, though some were pretty scary). And just because she felt tangled up and swoony with a man didn’t mean she was in love or could be happy with him ever after.
Duh, Charlotte. Duh. You’re not going to die on a roller coaster, but you are going to die in this room.
“Help!” she yelled again.
Mallery lunged and missed. He would get her sooner or later. It would probably take several minutes to die by strangulation, his hands around her neck, her lungs burning like they had when she’d spent too much time underwater, her eyes wide open with the awareness that she was almost gone.
A sob punched her throat. Imagining how she was going to die wasn’t exactly helping her morale.