maybe he did. Maybe…he’d done it on purpose. Some sort of serpentine mesmerism that had nothing to do with her unruly thoughts and desires, and everything to do with his villainy.
Yes that must be it.
Had he worked the same sort of magic on Mathilde?
That thought sobered her enough to redirect her panic into rage.
“May the devil fetch you if you killed her.” Though her eyes remained closed, she injected as much venom into her words as she could summon.
“He’ll fetch me regardless, but I… cared for Mathilde.”
Despite herself, the veracity in his voice drew Mercy’s lids open so she could study him for other signs of deceit.
His expression was drawn and serious.
Lethally so.
Daylight slanted in through the bars making his eyes glint like polished steel. Motes of dust frenzied in his atmosphere as if drawing energy from the electric force of his presence. A thin ring of gold glinted in his left ear, and sharp cheekbones underscored an arrogant brow.
He’d look stern but for his mouth, which was not so severe. It bowed with a fullness she might have called feminine if the rest of his face wasn’t so brutally cast.
Mercy hadn’t realized she’d been staring at his lips, gripped with a queer sort of fascination until they parted and he spoke.
“You were quite impressive back there.”
“What?” Mercy shook her head dumbly. Had he just complimented her? Had they just been through the same scene? She’d never been less impressed with herself in her entire life.
Would that she could have been like him. Smooth and unaffected. Infuriatingly self-assured.
And yet…he’d only been that way after breaking a few bones. The nose of the officer that had struck her, and possibly his jaw.
Lord but she’d never seen a man move like that before.
“I listened to your deductions,” he explained.
“From where you were hiding in the closet?” she quipped, rather unwisely.
Something flickered in his eyes, and yet again she was left to guess if she’d angered or amused him.
“From where I was hiding in the closet,” he said with a droll sigh as he shifted, seeming to find a more comfortable position for his bound hands. “You’re obviously cleverer than the detectives. How do you know so much about murder scenes?”
Mercy warned herself not to preen. She stomped on the lush warmth threatening to spread from her chest at his encouragement, and thrust her nose in the air, perhaps a little too high. “I am one of only three female members of the Investigator Eddard Sharpe Society of Homicidal Mystery Analysis. As penned by the noted novelist, J. Francis Morgan, whom I suspect is a woman.”
“Why do you suspect that?” His lip twitched, as if he also battled to suppress his own expression.
“Because men tend to write women characters terribly, don’t they? But J. Francis Morgan is a master of character and often, the mystery is even solved by a woman rather than Detective Sharpe. His heroines are not needlessly weak or stupid or simpering. They’re strong. Dangerous. Powerful. Sometimes even villainous and complicated. That is good literature, I say. Because it’s true to life.”
He’d ceased fighting his smile and allowed his lip to quirk up in a half-smile as he regarded her from beneath his dark brow. “Mathilde’s murderer now has one more person they’d do well to fear in you.”
She leveled him a sour look. “Does that mean you fear me?”
He tilted toward her. Suddenly—distressingly—grave. “You terrify me, Mercy Goode.”
She had to swallow twice before she could deliver her question without sounding as breathless as she felt.
“Did you do it?” She leaned forward, bracing her elbows on her knees as she examined his features thoroughly. “Did you kill Mathilde Archambeau?”
“No.” He looked her in the eye as he said this. Unblinking. Unwavering. “She was dead when I arrived.”
The ache in his voice tugged at her and, she was ashamed to admit, uncoiled something complicated from around her guts. Something dark and unfamiliar.
Surely not jealousy.
Not for a dead woman.
Not because of a man like him.
“Why didn’t you call for the Police, then?” she demanded.
He flexed his shackled arms, leveling her a droll look of his own. “I’m one of the most wanted men in the empire.”
Berating her own stupidity, she winced, causing the welt on her cheek where she’d been struck to throb. Testing the wound gingerly, she signed, grateful her fingers were cold against the sore, swelling flesh.
“What were you doing there in the first place?” she queried impatiently.
He didn’t answer.
Instead, his gaze affixed on the spot where her fingers explored