Toxic - Zoe Blake Page 0,7

more than one occasion my entire motivation for becoming an actress was to lose myself entirely in a long-lost period of time. Everything he did—the estate, the gowns, the servants, even the forms of discipline and restraints against my freedom—was all in a quest to immerse me fully in the life of a Victorian woman. There were no half-ways with Richard.

He had done all this for me! Because he loved me! And I threw all of it in his face. I had gone too deep in a game of my own making and had lost all perspective.

It was the only explanation.

If both Richard and Jane, the only two people in the world I was close to, said it was so… then it must be so.

What had Richard said when I had confronted him with the gun?

“You needed this, us, as much as I. Your soul is just as dark and twisted as my own. Don’t insult us both by pretending otherwise. Stop playing the innocent. It doesn’t suit you.”

He had been trying to warn me then that I was just as complicit in this game as he. Except I had changed the rules on him. I was to blame for the savage turn of events. It was my fault. I had taken a beautiful gesture of his love and devotion and turned it into something ugly with my confused thoughts and mistaken impressions.

These violent delights have violent ends.

Oh, God! What have I done!

Slapping a hand over my mouth, I turned back to Jane. “I shot him.” My words were muffled and indistinct through my palm.

Snatching at my wrist, Jane pulled my hand away and asked, “What?”

“I shot him,” I repeated, my eyes wide with fear.

“It’s fine. You didn’t kill him and I’m sure he’ll forgive you. That man would forgive you anything.”

Brushing off any further conversation, Jane hustled me into the shower with motherly admonishments about needing rest and some old-fashioned comfort food.

It wasn’t till much later that it even occurred to me to wonder how she knew I hadn’t killed Richard. I’d told her I shot him, but I hadn’t told her I missed.

And just where had she gotten the money for all the new clothes and fancy flat?

At least that was one question I already knew the answer to.

Jane

My hands shook as I pressed the numbers on my cell phone. A sickening rush of relief flooded my body when a woman answered instead of him. “Tell him I followed instructions. Please… he doesn’t have to do… please tell him, don’t do what he threatened. She’ll obey. Please, I don’t want her—”

The line went dead.

Sinking to my knees, slumped against the wall, I slowly turned my head to look at all the garish opulence I had sold my soul to possess. The devil came in many forms… and I had just convinced my friend that one of them was Prince Charming.

Because of me, she was returning to that monster and I knew, deep down in my bones, it would be the death of her.

Chapter 4

Richard

Moving from a terza guard position straight into a full, bent-knee lunge, I watched with dispassionate satisfaction as my polished steel rapier hit its mark and sank in deep, almost reaching the family motto etched in an elegant scroll on the blade, Si Vis Pacem Para Bellum.

If you want peace, prepare for war.

Dark crimson blood blossomed into a sickening rose pattern across the white linen jacket.

Taking a step forward, I stared down at the supine form at my feet.

Her long chestnut hair was a tarnished halo of tangled curls about Elizabeth’s head as her beautiful full lips drained of color. Thick fans of sable lashes rested against her deathly pale cheeks, hiding her mesmerizing green eyes from me.

“Goddamn it, Richard! Did you have to sink the blade in so fucking deep?”

Blinking my eyes, I shook my head, clearing the vision of Elizabeth from my mind. In its place was my sparring partner, Andrew.

Leaving for London moments behind Lizzie, I had waited till she was secure at Jane’s before returning to my home. Needing to burn off some aggressive energy as I waited for Jane to do as I’d bid her, I engaged in a no-holds-barred sparring match with Andrew.

I had known the Marquis of Greyhorn since our days at Oxford but wouldn’t consider him a friend. I didn’t have friends. I had acquaintances and business partners. Pawns. All of them.

The only person who mattered to me was Elizabeth. Everything I did, every breath I took,