Page 74 of The Hunter

A legitimate name for her son, perhaps?

Whatever her reasons, if she married, she’d belong to another. Christopher’s jaw locked with such force, he felt a slight headache prick at his temples.

“You’re rather quiet this morning,” Millie observed gently. “Is anything amiss?”

His eyes swung back to her, and he let out a few cyclical breaths, hoping to use his control over his energy to calm the thumps his heart seemed to insist upon whenever his gaze rested on her genuine smile.

The mild concern in her gentle gaze was the direct reverse of the woman she’d been at dawn. In fact, she’d been the picture of bright-eyed courtesy ever since she’d wandered out of her bedroom at ten, teacup in hand. The contrast somehow disturbed Christopher’s very sense of equilibrium.

“I’m delaying any conversation until noon,” he informed her. “Until I can be certain that the hour is safe.”

Millie tilted her head in a questioning way as, next to her, Jakub’s eyes widened with warning. “Safe?” she echoed. “Why wouldn’t it be safe?”

“The last time we spoke, you threatened to pâté my liver,” Christopher reminded her.

“That’s ridiculous, I don’t even like liver pâté.”

“You also promised to murder my elderly butler.”

Her eyes widened. “Welton? Why ever would I do such a thing? I adore Welton, andI’mnot a murderer.” Her features conveyed the unmistakable message in her words.

She was not the assassin here.

“You are decidedly more prone to violence, it seems, at dawn.”

She shook her head, regarding him as though he were the one who’d lost his mind. “Did you have some strange dream? A nightmare perhaps?”

Christopher was beginning to wonder…

Jakub, who’d been glancing back and forth during their exchange, chimed in, his falsetto a calculated study in circumspection. “You woke her before nine o’clock, didn’t you?”

“I’m afraid so,” Christopher confirmed.

The boy shook his head with a very mature compassion. “You should not have done so,” he reproached gently, though he remained the picture of solemn masculine commiseration. “Mama is not to be woken before nine in the morning, and if you wait until ten, then you’re the better for it.”

“I’ll keep that in mind.” Christopher nodded his appreciation, which drew a gap-toothed smile from the boy.

Millie’s astonishment bordered on indignation as she made a tight sound. “I haven’t the slightest idea what you two are on about,” she huffed, then turned to peek at them hesitantly. “Am I such a monster in the morning?”

“Yes,” both Jakub and Christopher answered at once.

“Well.” Her lips tightened.

“It’s all right, Mama.” Jakub rushed to soothe her, placing his small hand over hers and giving her a few consoling pats. “I’m a monster if I take naps, remember?”

Millie smiled and leaned down to kiss the top of his head. “You’re always an angel.”

“I’m a monster at night… in the dark,” Christopher confessed with an amused sort of smirk. An ironic revelation amidst a supposedly innocent conversation.

“Are you, Mr. Argent?” Jakub asked.

“The worst kind of monster, I’m afraid.”

The child turned back to Millie. “There, Mama, you see? We are all monsters sometimes.”

This time, Millie didn’t so much as glance down at her son, her brilliant dark eyes holding Christopher in some kind of thrall as they stared across the enclosed carriage. “So we are,” she murmured.

Finding it a marvel that even in the wan light of the carriage, her skin seemed to shine with a luminescence he’d never before encountered, Christopher ventured forward. “I may have been a monster last night. I may have done—rather monstrous things.” He’d never apologized in his life, but merely admitting the fact that what he’d done to her last night might have been wrong released some of that oily sensation from his soul.