"Whatever you may think or say about that," he added. "If it's now little smuggling paths you want to tittle-tattle about and how these barrels--"
"Things you don't know."
"--got into your summerhouse-."
"The things about Chancery and Rose.”
“Chancery and Rose?” He cocked his eyebrow, glanced at the floor. “Chancery? Not a name you should speak in connection with her. Not and expect to keep--”
“Well, I will mention it."
He tightened his grip on the handle. Better that than on her neck, what shot through him in that second. What was this but a cheap attempt to stay here? An attempt he could not afford to let undermine him. "The door, Destiny."
"They were in love, Divers. Something you never knew.”
In love? Chancery and Rose? With difficulty he swallowed what knotted his throat. Staunched the breath that bled from him in that second. How low could she stoop? How far could he let her? The wonder was he didn't annihilate the floorboards with the intensity of his gaze in that second. But at all costs he needed to keep this casual, use every ounce of his training.
“And that was why he raped her, was it, and, talking children—”
“Well, of course she was always a saint. She had to make up something when my father forbade the match, rather than face you with the truth that she was pregnant; me aunt had just died after all. She had to implicate me too, that I didn’t just put Chancery up to it. I egged him on, when Chancery loved her. He wanted to marry her.”
That he managed to keep standing there upright at the door, was a miracle on a par with Christ rising again after he’d had nails driven into his hands and feet. A miracle such as he had never witnessed.
All this was about, was her staying here. To that end she wouldn’t just cling to the coal dust, she’d cling to the air. At all costs, this was a moment where he needed to bring everything he'd ever learned in his line of work to bear. About staying calm. About being measured. About not thinking of these times when he was eighteen that he’d hungered, thirsted for this. Destiny Rhodes at his mercy.
Lyon had to be appeased. One thing Divers wasn’t ever going to be was dust. As for listening to a single word that dripped from her serpent’s tongue?
He’d sooner slice off his ears with a blunt knife. Because what it meant was he'd cursed her for nothing. Fallen into Lyon’s clutches for the same reason. And he hadn't. He couldn't have. For Christ's sake why would Rose be here for any other reason but to warn him to stay away from Destiny Rhodes? Or demand the revenge he hadn't come here to take from the woman he couldn't seem to take it from?
“Well, she was certainly a saint compared to you. Not that that was much manner of hard. As for revenge? If this was about revenge, it would be revenge to take you into my bed and give you exactly what you deserve. But I’m not going to. Now, in case you haven’t seen it, in case you've gone blind or something, the door is here.”
She gathered her skirts. Relief pounded through his narrowing throat. She rose, walked towards him, not as quickly as he’d have liked. So it strained every fibre and sinew in his being, not to grab her elbow and shove her out of the door the way his mind reeled. But what she'd said was a taunt he wouldn’t rise to, whatever else she said.
Her gaze, dangerous as that same serpent’s tongue, scorched him.
“Such a pity Divers, when you never know. I might actually have got to like it. But maybe you’re just too scared of that curse ... ”
CHAPTER TWELVE
“So … Dstiny? Whoring yourself s'now?”
Get back to her room. Shut the door. Sleep. Eat. Face the day ahead. With Orwell’s voice roiling over her? His hand descending on her bedroom door, the one she’d just opened? And the smell, the one that was worse than the inside a keg of ten year old brandy—off ten year old brandy—making her gag? Or it might if she could rise to it. So he’d been standing in the darkened corridor listening? To what? Hardly her moans of ecstasy. The ones that only the other night she’d thought she could rise to in order to convince her new lord and master how delighted she was with the present arrangement. She raised her chin.
“S'now? I'm not doing anything s'now. Not that I know of anyway. But if you're meaning now? Well, Orwell, it is certainly better than drinking oneself now, isn’t it? Especially to death. Now, if you will kindly excuse me--”
“Do you think slo? Wilth him? D’stiny, you … look, old girl, you’re a Rhodes.”
Tug her wrist free. Get inside her room—task one. Shut the door. Sleep. Eat. Face the day ahead. The one that wouldn’t be spent here. Not now. Not ever.
“And a fat lot of good that's ever done me. Now, if you're done clutching me wrist and breathing your stinking brandy fumes all over me ..."
He swayed. “Look, you shid trouble yourself about that, about ev’rything, given what’s been said round Pnvllyn about him. All tht’s being … whativir.”
“Really? So then? Go ahead. Tell me."
“Ahhh, so you’re interested now are you, little sistre?”
“If it will get rid of you quicker.”
“Such a pity that’s for me to know and you to fin—”
“In other words? Nothing. Nothing’s being said. Nothing you remember anyway.”
Accept the fact it was—task twenty. Feel her eyes burn in her head. Duck inside her room as she did now. Shove the door shut. Stand against it. Feel the smooth wood press against her spine. Accept there was no day, no day ahead. Nowhere to go. Nothing.
She’d failed. How the sodding hell had she failed? She stared across the room at her reflection in the mirror. Because she looked like some sodding old crow who’d win first prize in the sodding old crow competition, that was why. Even if she wasn't cursed, she'd win sod all prizes in the local fair competition for inveigling a man into her drawers. For making them run a mile, jumping every stile, in the opposite direction perhaps, but that was about it.
As for spilling beans about Rose and Chancery? What
was she thinking about? Trying to win something in the I’m an idiot, humor me competition, maybe even the see how nice I am really, or the I have nowhere else to go ones, having come last in the other two? Her face crumpled. No really, had she, or had she not, gone to that room tonight, with the express intention of securing the roof over her head with all that she knew? Getting into bed with him if need be? The man had cursed Ennis, who had only gone and left her flat. And it was revenge if she turned Divers O’Roarke to dust. Sometimes in life you had to put out to get back in.
Just because he’d stood there more commanding than Genghis Khan, it was no reason to come back here with her tail between her legs. Get the bejesus knocked out of her spine by a door handle either.
”Sod off, will yeh?” She fumbled for the key. It clunked off the floorboards as the door battered against her elbow. “Because I'm telling you now, you can do this all night if you want to but over me dead body --"
“Destiny--"
"--are you coming in this ro--"
"Destiny, open the door---”
My God. Divers O’Roarke. Let her faint on the floor now before she lived to be a second older, except she couldn't faint on the floor. She'd be trampled on. As for what he wanted, nearly taking her off her feet like this? Well, if wasn't to make sure she didn't leave here with a stuffed parrot up her skirt, or down her bodice, it must be that his beauty sleep had been a bit disturbed what with the noise she and Orwell had been putting up and he was here to put her out a bit faster?
“What do you want?" Fail to face him up as he burst into the room and she was finished. "Am I just not moving me backside fast enough for you? Or is it, that when it comes to gathering my things, despite what you said, I have none? And you want to be sure I don’t leave here with something that’s yours, like my petticoats, for example? Or something else that’s already on me back? Like this dress?"
"Not especially if you want the truth. In fact I can't think of anyone who would like it. It's that
hideous."
"Where's Orwell?"
"Lying on the floor, I expect. Along with Grandmother Tintagel's table." The floorboards creaked as he strode to the wardrobe, yanked it open. “But to answer your other question, you have things all right.”
“Grandmother Tintagel’s table? You broke me Grandmother’s Tintagel’s table?”
"I never said I broke it. I said it was lying on the floor, where it best belongs, damned old bat that she was."
Dear God, it was too much to bear. No wonder she sprung across the floor.
“You want me to take that?" The red dress he tore from its hanger, despite the blows she rained on his shoulder and arm, was one she wouldn’t wear if she was stripped naked and thrown out into an Arctic storm.
“Oh, Destiny, Destiny, if you did but know what I want.”
“Oh, I know.” She thudded her fists off his chest, the sting of fury so hot, she could barely get a word out that wasn't mangled by her failure to breath properly. "It’s not good enough that you’re throwing me out, you want to select what you throw me out in. Show those, who may not know already, what me true colors are?"
“Then show them, Destiny.” She gasped as the dress hit her chest. “Show me. Now. Because coming to my room dressed as you are right now wouldn’t invite a man to open a chest containing fifty thousand pounds in gold, if you must know, let alone invite one to the dark and dusty death that supposedly waits from touching you.”
“Seeing as you did the cursing you should know whether it’s supposed or not.”
“I’m not afraid of you. That’s just something you've always liked to think."
"Oh, I don't like to think. I know."
"Whether I’m attracted to you is another matter.”
Attracted? She clutched the folds of the scarlet dress tighter against her breast.
Task one--Get back to her room. Shut the door. Sleep. Eat. Face the day ahead. Remember? She was back in her room. She had shut the door but now, now he’d opened it, was it possible that facing the day ahead could be exactly as she’d prayed coming along the corridor?
For one thing too? Well? And was that why he stood there cool as a cucumber? Sort of anyway. Cooler than her anyway which some might say was hardly difficult.
Everything she touched, remember? All she needed to do was put on this dress, which she hadn't worn since Ennis died, his face bloody as its color. She could, couldn’t she?
"Well then? I've news for you." Her throat tightened as if there was an iron bar across it. Tightened so she could not speak. But she would. She would speak. She would do this. “I’m not doing this.”
He stepped closer, his iced gaze skimming her face. “Not even to see me in hell? Well. Well. Oh, I should think it’s what you want. Let me remind you if you can’t remind yourself.”
“No. " She shook her head. "Let me remind meself. The reasons I don’t wear this dress. This color."
“Look in the glass there.” The way he grasped her and swung her towards the glass gave her no choice but to stare, as icicle cold as she could now, at what met her. At eyes that belonged to an alien constellation. At a starved crow failing to put on its finest feathers. His breath, warm male, brushed her cheek so she could taste it, taste him. “And tell me that woman is you, that you don’t see what I mean?”
Somehow she jerked her gaze away, her mind from the images that she wasn't going to let fill it here. Images of him. Of her. Images that would win her first prize in the needing to contain herself competition. Did he think she didn’t see he wasn’t serious?
“And that is somehow something to you? After all, unless I’m very much mistaken, not ten minutes ago you told me to go.”
“Well, maybe that was because I don’t want that woman." He leaned his chin on her shoulder, so all she could see was his eyes, liquid silver in the candlelight. "But this one, the one I know you are inside, let me see that one. Show me. The real woman. The one that could light a man to his doom and lead him dancing down these paths.”
“Divers, I am.”
Because she was.
There was no ‘real’ woman. This was what she was. It was also as much as she was showing him, the way her heart hammered.
Anything else was a betrayal of Ennis. Only think of him, waiting on the other side for her? Already he'd be affronted seeing she'd stooped low enough to be a foot below ground level.
So, if Divers O'Roarke thought, for one moment he could beat her down now, he'd a big thought coming.
He gestured at her reflection. “That dress, Destiny.”
“Divers … I’ve not said, no--”
“Where are the clouds of ambergris?” He strode back to the wardrobe. “The trailing wake of debris?”
“You will find debris if you don’t let go of this. And that debris will be you. And I … I will have some say in—Put me blue dress back.”
“Says who? You? When I’m the person who’s about to turn to dust? Now choose, Destiny. Choose. Blue? Or red? What do you think? What is more, I don’t believe that curse.”
“Well, more fool you because I'm telling you now--”
“No. Fool you, Destiny. For ever listening to a load of old balderdash. Spoken by my good self--"
"So you say but you're not the one living with it."
"--it’s true but balderdash nonetheless.”
"No. No, it's not, it's--"
He stepped towards her and bent his head. My God, what was this? Something she'd not experienced in years? Something that could not be calling her bluff? Something that took away any thoughts of thrusting her feet down through the floor to the deepest regions of hell, where they would be immediately impaled on twelve inch honeyed pikes and have wasps set on them? When she was lichened stone? And she could not afford to do this for any other reason than to turn him to dust?
However much she might sometimes have cursed the fact no-one was leaping up and down to come near her--certainly not anyone in their right mind--it was two years since Ennis. Two years, to come to this. The realization, Divers O'Roarke actually kissed not too badly for Divers O'Roarke. He actually kissed in ways that left every bit of her spinning to places she belonged in. Hot. Wild. Dark. Places where her mind emptied and there was only this to hold, to cling to, to want, to need. A hunger that shrunk her mind, melted her bones.
“So? The dress?"
Did she speak? No. He did. Definitely. What was more his forehead was pressed against hers, his grey eyes inches from hers, his warm scent, soft breath, catching hers when she couldn't let it.
“Let’s put it on, shall we?”
"Divers, I really … I truly … beg you … to let this …"
“No. Don’t speak. Not tonight. I let you speak to me the night I arrived and I shouldn’t have. I’ve already let you speak to me tonight about Rose, about Chancery. Tonight, I’m doing the speaking. Now … ”
Speaking wasn't all he was doing. Just as she told herself--tried to anyway--that him here was the answer to all her prayers, why did his fingers have to find the ribbon lacing the bodice of her gown. Tease it through the eyelets too? So they brushed her breasts? His fingers that was. Why did his scent, subtle oakmoss, invade her senses?
When it was what she needed--them to do this, anyway--why protest though? Just because her breath was somewhere down in the pit of her stomach? And she somehow feared to go on? Her? When all she had to do was touch him? The body was a treacherous thing. but nothing she could not overcome.
“It was the truth what I said about Rose, about Chancery Anyway, that wasn’t what I was going to say, if you would just listen, not take my dress off me. I mean it--”
“Oh, I’m taking it off all right.
"No. No, you're not."
She froze. The dress had pooled at her feet. It was as much as was going to.
“So, what are you going to say? Hmmm? That I’ve no right touching you, kissing you, making you wear this particular dress? Well?”
The scarlet blur in the mirror crystalli
zed into flesh, into blood, into lips red as rowan berries, into eyes black as the night sky and softly swelling breasts. Crystallized into him, pressing his mouth to her neck to the place where he must feel that even her pulse was flickering, to his arm tightening about her waist. In this dress. This awful dress, he'd somehow slipped over her head. How was that?
“But I do Destiny. Tonight I have every right. All I want is you in that dress.”
If he’d lavished these caresses on her years ago would she have sneered at him? Or was that why she had? Because what rose in her might have got her into trouble then, just as what rose in him now was something he probably couldn’t fight?
Well, she could. In fact, some might say, she would. She knew exactly how to too. She could not feel these things. She dragged a breath.
“Divers … Divers, I know that. I know all you want is
me but … there is one thing you should know."
"Not tonight."
"One thing I am trying so very hard and even more patiently to tell you.”
He raised his head. “What is it?”
"You see ... "
Not Rose. Not Chancery. There was probably not a thing he wanted to hear now his fingers cupped what was probably heaven to him--her left breast, so her breath caught and her heart missed beats. Still he murmured,
“What is it you want to say?”
“This dress isn’t the one I was going to pick.”
Really? Well, what one was it then? One of her made to make a man celibate for life, specials? When she wasn’t made to live in the dark. Or he wouldn't be here. Not when the bluff she thought she was calling, with her talk about dresses, might not be bluff at all. When underneath all that, underneath everything, did she really think he couldn’t find the woman she was, if he had to? He had to now. Because the dark was his place of safety and he wasn't in it right now. Not since he'd left that room needing to know more and somehow walked into this. He met her gaze in the glass opposite.
O'Roarke's Destiny (Cornish Rogues Book 1) Page 12