Raphael agreed.
Despite the fear that shone in them, Lady Jordan’s blue-gray eyes were beautiful.
“What do you mean you’re trying to save me?” She still held the pistol as if ready to club him over the head should he move, the bloodthirsty little thing.
“I mean that I don’t intend to ravish and kill you.” Years of anguish and dreams of revenge followed by months of planning to infiltrate the Lords of Chaos, only to have the whole thing collapse because of blue-gray eyes. He was a bloody fool. “I merely wished to spirit you away from the Lords of Chaos’s debauchery. Oddly enough, I believed you would be grateful.”
Her lovely brows drew together suspiciously over those eyes. “You promised the Dionysus that you’d kill me.”
“I lied,” he drawled. “If I’d meant you harm, I assure you, I’d have trussed you up like a Christmas goose. You’ll note I didn’t.”
“Oh, dear Lord.” She looked stricken as she flung down the pistol, staring at his gory shoulder. “This is a mess.”
“Quite,” he said through gritted teeth.
Raphael glanced down at his shoulder. The wound was a mass of mangled flesh, the blood pumping from within at a steady pace. This was not good. He’d meant to have her securely on the road back to London tonight, guarded by his men. If the Dionysus heard that she’d shot him, that he was weakened—
He grunted and tried to sit up against the swaying of the carriage, eyeing her, this woman he’d only truly met once before.
He’d first seen her in a ballroom where he’d gone to meet members of the Lords of Chaos. In that den of corruption, swarming with his enemies, she’d stood out, pure and innocent. He’d warned her to leave that dangerous place. Then, when she’d walked alone back to her carriage, he’d shadowed her to make sure she made it safely there.
And that would’ve been that—had he not discovered that she was all but engaged to the Duke of Kyle—a man tasked, on orders of the King, with the risky job of bringing down the Lords of Chaos. Raphael knew that as long as Kyle pursued the Lords, Lady Jordan would be in danger. Because of this, Raphael had spent no little time worried about her. Had even gone so far as to trail her into the country to Kyle’s estate.
There he’d seen her marry Kyle—or so he’d thought.
At that point Raphael had been forced to consider the matter at an end. Lady Jordan’s protection was no longer his concern, but her husband’s. Raphael might be loath to admit it, but Kyle was more than equal to the task of protecting his wife. If Raphael had felt some small twinge of longing … well, he’d made sure to bury it deep inside, where it would die a natural death from lack of light.
Yet now …
It was as if his previously stopped heart jolted and started beating again. “Are you truly not the Duchess of Kyle?”
“No.” She reached for him, and he was astonished at how gentle her hands were. She had no cause to be gentle with him—not after what she’d been through tonight. Yet she placed both small palms about his left arm—the unharmed side—and helped him stand. He lurched across the moving carriage and half fell into the opposite seat.
“I, too, saw you married to Kyle,” Raphael said evenly.
She glared. “How? Alf and Hugh were married inside their country manor. The King was there, and I assure you there were guards everywhere.”
“I saw Kyle kiss you in the garden at the celebration afterwards,” he said. “There might have been guards, but I assure you they neglected to search the woods overlooking the garden.”
“It rather serves you right that you confused the matter since you were spying,” she said tartly. “I don’t remember Hugh kissing me, but if he did it was in a brotherly manner. We’re friends. It doesn’t matter anyway. Whatever you imagined you saw, I’m not married to Hugh.”
He closed his eyes for a moment, wondering why she’d bothered moving him, when he felt the bulk of a fur rug bunched over his nude body. He hadn’t even realized that he was shivering.
Ah, of course. The rug that had been stored in the bench he’d been sitting on. “Yet it was well known in London that you were to marry the Duke of Kyle.”
“We let the gossips think I was the bride at the wedding because his real wife is without family or name.” She shook her head. “’Twill be a scandal when the news comes out. Is that why you saved me? Because you thought I was the duchess?”
“No.” Raphael opened his eyes and watched as she unwrapped the fichu from about her neck, exposing a deep décolletage. Her breasts were sweetly vulnerable. He glanced aside. Such things were not for one as tainted as he. “I would have rescued you in any case—duchess or not.”
“But why?” She flipped the fur away from his shoulder and pressed the flimsy fichu hard against the wound.
He inhaled, not bothering to answer her nonsensical question. Did she think him a demon?
But then she had just seen him attending what was at base a demonic rite.
“You have to stop the carriage,” she was saying. “I can’t halt the bleeding. You need a doctor. I should—”
“We’re near my home,” he said, cutting her off. “We’ll be there soon enough. Just keep pressing. You’re doing fine, Lady Jordan. You tend a wound nearly as well as you dance.”
Her blue-gray gaze flicked up to his, wide with surprise. “I wasn’t sure if you recognized me from the ball.”
This was intimate, her face so close to his. He naked and she with the upper slopes of her breasts uncovered. He felt hazy with desperate temptation. He could smell her, above the scent of his own blood—a faint flower scent.
Not cedarwood, thank God.
“You’re hard to forget,” he murmured.
She frowned as if uncertain whether he complimented or insulted her. “Is that why you rescued me? Because you knew me from that one dance?”
“No.” Not at all. He hadn’t known whom the Dionysus meant to sacrifice tonight. Hadn’t known there was to be a sacrifice—though of course that was a possibility. Would he have rescued any woman?
Perhaps.
But the moment he’d seen her, he’d known he had to act. “You seem oddly competent at handling a gunshot wound.”
“My late husband James was an officer in His Majesty’s army,” she said. “I followed him on campaign on the Continent. There were times when tending a wound became very helpful.”
He swallowed, watching her from beneath half-lowered lids, trying to think. He couldn’t afford to show weakness in these parts—it was why he’d brought his own servants from Corsica. The Lords of Chaos were powerful in this area. If the Dionysus discovered that he was wounded, he—and she—would be in peril. The Dionysus already wanted her dead and expected Raphael to kill her.
A wicked idea crept into his mind.
She was a temptation—a temptation aimed at his one weakness. He’d walked alone for so long. For his entire life, really. He’d never thought to seek another. To permit any light into his darkness.
But she was right here, within his grasp. To let her go again was beyond his control right now. He was weakened, dizzy, lost. Dear God, he wanted to keep her for himself.
And the means to convince her to stay with him had just dropped into his lap.
“The blood has soaked my fichu.” She sounded upset, but not hysterical. She was a strong woman—stronger than he’d first realized when he’d pulled her from the revelry.
He made his decision. “You need to marry me.”
Her beautiful eyes widened in what looked like alarm. “What? No! I’m not going to—”
He reached up and grasped her wrist with his left hand. Both her hands were pressed firmly on his wound. Her skin was warm and soft. “The Dionysus ordered me to kill you. If—”
She tried to recoil. “You’re not going to—”
He squeezed her fragile wrist, feeling the beating of her heart. Feeling this moment in time.
Seizing it.
“Listen. I meant to have you safely o
n the road to London tonight. That isn’t possible now that I’m wounded. The only way I can protect you is to marry you. If you’re my duchess, you’ll have my name and my money to shield you when they come, and believe me, Lady Jordan, the Dionysus’s men will come for you. They need to silence you, for you know far too much about the Lords of Chaos now.”
She snorted. “They thought I was the Duchess of Kyle before. That certainly didn’t protect me.”
“I am an entirely different duke than Kyle,” he replied with flat certainty. He brought his other hand up and untied the rope around her wrists. “And I also have my servants.”
She frowned down at her freed wrists and then at him. “How will they keep me from being murdered?”
“They are Corsicans—brave and loyal to a fault—and I have over two dozen.” He’d spent his life filled with rage, grief, and a drive for revenge. He’d never even thought of marriage. This was a flight of fancy. An aberration. A diversion from the strict path he’d set for his life. Yet he could not find it within himself to resist. “My men answer only to me. If you’re my wife—my family and my duchess—they will protect you with their lives. If I die due to your gunshot wound and you do not marry me, they may look upon you far less favorably.”
Her plump mouth dropped open in outrage. “You’d blackmail me into marriage? Are you deranged?”
Oh, indeed. Probably on both counts. “I’m wounded.” He arched an eyebrow. “And attempting to save your life. You might try thanking me.”
“Thank you? I—”
Fortunately the carriage halted before she could articulate what she thought of that idea.
Raphael kept a firm hold of the lady’s wrist as the door was opened, revealing Ubertino, one of his most trusted men. Ubertino was nearly forty, a short man with a barrel chest and graying hair clubbed back in a tight braid. The Corsican’s bright-blue eyes widened in his tanned face at the sight of his master’s blood.
“I’ve been shot,” Raphael told him. “Get Valente and Bardo and tell Nicoletta to come.”
Ubertino turned to shout the orders in Corsican to the other men behind him and then stepped into the carriage.
Lady Jordan backed away warily.
“Tell Ivo to take the lady into the abbey,” Raphael ordered. He wouldn’t put it past her to run once she was out of the carriage.
“Did she do this, Your Excellency?” Ubertino muttered in Corsican as he put his shoulder against Raphael’s bad side.
Raphael grunted and stood, clenching his jaw. He would not pass out. “A misunderstanding merely. You will forget this.”
“I think it will be hard to forget,” Ubertino said.
Carefully they negotiated the two steps down from the carriage.
He was cold. So cold.
“Nevertheless, I order it so.” Raphael stopped and stared at the servant. In another life he might’ve counted this man his oldest friend. “You will protect her no matter what happens.”
The Corsican inclined his head. “As you wish, Your Excellency.”
Valente and Bardo came running into the driveway.
Valente, the younger of the two, began asking questions in Corsican, but Ubertino cut him off. “Listen to lu duca.”
Raphael’s hands were in fists. He would not fall down here before his men. “Go to the vicar in town. You know his house, by the English church?”
Both men nodded.
“Wake him up and bring him here.” He could feel the blood trickling down his side, oddly hot against the chill of his body. “Do not let anything he says or does keep you from your task. Hurry.”
Valente and Bardo ran to the stables.
They knew only a few words of English. The vicar might very well think he was being robbed or worse. Raphael ought to write a letter explaining the matter.
But there was no time.
Behind them Lady Jordan exclaimed, “Take your hands from me, sir!”
Raphael raised his voice. “Ivo is merely helping you into my home, my lady.”
“I don’t wish to be helped!”
He turned to see her glaring at him, her blond hair a halo about her head in the carriage’s lantern light, and felt his lips quirk. She really was rather extraordinary.
A pity he could not make her his wife in reality.
Her gaze swept past him and to the facade of the building behind him, then widened in what looked very much like horror. “This is your home?”
He turned to look as well. The abbey was ancient. The original structure had been a fortified keep, which had been added to and modified over centuries, first by monks and then, after the dissolution of the monasteries, by generations of his ancestors. This was where he’d spent most of his childhood. Where his mother had breathed her last breath. The place he’d hoped never to see again.
His mouth twisted. “Home might be a bit of an exaggeration.”
Chapter Two
The stonecutter lived with his two daughters in a tiny hut at the edge of a great barren plain of rock.
It was a desolate place and few godly things dwelled there, but the stonecutter found plenty of stones and, since he’d never learned another trade, there he stayed.…
—From The Rock King
The edifice that rose before Iris loomed like a decaying giant in the flickering lantern light, somehow both gloomy and forbidding.
“What is this place?” she whispered.
“Dyemore Abbey,” the duke replied.
Even now his voice was a sensuous rasp against her nerve endings. His skin was pale and sweaty, his horrid scar standing out like a red snake writhing down the right side of his face.
“Come,” he said and turned toward the entry.
She didn’t want to enter this ghastly mansion with him. She didn’t entirely trust him, wounded or not. He might’ve saved her from immediate rape and murder, but he’d been participating at that revelry tonight. He was obviously a member of the Lords of Chaos.
And the Dionysus had ordered him to make sure she kept their secrets. To kill her.
The scowling manservant to her right—Ivo—gave her no choice, however. His firm grip on her elbow compelled her forward and across a graveled drive.
Only one window held a light—a dim glow from within, as if it struggled not to be extinguished beneath the tons of dark-brown stones that made up Dyemore Abbey. The mansion must be four or five stories high, with rectangular windows set deep in the facade. Behind the monolithic central tower loomed craggy shapes, as if a mountain range of other wings or ruins was beyond.
The duke mounted the front steps with the help of his manservant. The door was arched, but over it was the overlarge face of a demon or gargoyle, holding up the lintel of the window above. The gargoyle glared down at them, its mouth stretched wide in a grimace.
Iris shuddered.
Obviously the dukes of Dyemore weren’t concerned with welcoming guests to their ducal seat.
The door opened, and a plump woman immediately began chattering in Corsican.
This must be Nicoletta. She was older—perhaps in her fifth decade—and her black hair was scraped back from her scowling face and hidden under a plain white cap. The woman held a candle in one hand and seemed to be scolding the manservant who was helping the duke. The servant who had assisted the duke from the carriage said something, and the Corsicans all looked at Iris.
He’d told them who had shot their master—she just knew it. Nicoletta’s black eyes narrowed.
Her gaze was not benign.
Iris shivered, remembering the duke’s words. His servants would rightfully blame her for his wound. Was there any way she could explain herself? But most of them weren’t speaking English, and she didn’t know Corsican.
Besides, Dyemore’s wound was her fault. Whatever the duke might be, he had saved her from the Lords of Chaos, and she’d repaid him by shooting him.
Lord. She blinked back sudden tears. Her nerves were stretched taut from days of uncertainty and fear, and no
w to know she’d done this to another, even in defense of her own person …
Iris swallowed and straightened her back. She mustn’t break now. Mustn’t show weakness when she didn’t know who these people were or if they meant to do her harm.
Dyemore snapped something in Corsican at that moment, and the servants looked away from her, moving again.
They led her into the house. Iris tried to swallow her apprehension as the Corsicans talked in their own language and Ivo’s grip on her arm remained firm. The hall was grand—marble floors, carved wood paneling, and high ceilings that might be painted—but it was cold and dim. The only light the maidservant’s candle.
Dyemore Abbey felt … dead.
Iris shook away the morbid thought as she followed the procession deeper into the entry hall. At the back they mounted wide stairs leading to a landing with another staircase branching out from each end. Portraits peered down from the walls in the gloom as they took the steps to the right. On the upper level Nicoletta led the way to a large sitting room and warmth at last.
Near the fire—the only point of light in the cavernous room—Dyemore sank heavily into a huge wing-backed chair.
One of the men poured him a glass of wine from a crystal carafe.
“I apologize for my lack of hospitality,” Dyemore said after taking a sip of the wine. “Most of my Corsicans are guarding the house outside. It’s imperative that you not wander in the abbey. Some of the rooms are locked for a reason. Stay out of them.”
His words were arrogant and he lounged in the chair as if it were a throne, but his face was positively gray.
She glanced away. She couldn’t look at him. At what she’d done to him. “You must lie down.”
“No,” she heard him say, his deep voice even, as if they were discussing the price of ribbons on Bond Street. “The vicar will arrive soon. I will remain upright. We must keep the truth of my injury from the Lords as long as possible.”
Her head jerked up at that. “You’re naked under that fur and bleeding. How are you going to hide your injury from the vicar? This is ridiculous!”
Duke of Desire Page 2