The doctor’s bushy gray eyebrows flew up his forehead. “Slumped at his desk, pistol in his hand, shot in the side of his head. All the house’s doors locked and no outcry in the night. Nothing at all in fact until early this morning, when the maid came to clean the grate.”
A letter on the desk caught Raphael’s eye. The contents weren’t interesting—it appeared to be addressed to Leland’s father-in-law begging for more money—but the handwriting was.
All the Ts in the letter had been crossed twice.
Beside him the doctor was continuing his monologue. “You don’t think his lady wife would do such a thing, do you? It beggars belief. Only reason we’re saying ‘cleaning his dueling pistol’ is to save her sensibilities. You ought to know that, man.”
Raphael glanced at the window and went to it to look down.
The brickwork of the house was laid with regular ornamental indentations beginning about six feet off the ground. An agile man could climb it easily if he had a ladder to start.
He turned back to the room and approached the body.
“Nasty business,” the doctor said, almost sounding cheerful. “Be a job to clean the gore from the wall.” He gestured to a spatter on the wall directly behind the desk.
“Mm,” Raphael murmured and bent over what was left of Leland. There was a piece of paper sticking out of the man’s right sleeve.
He plucked it out.
“What have you there?” The doctor was at his elbow, peering at the paper.
On it was a dolphin, crudely drawn, but quite recognizable.
The doctor snorted. “A fish. Whyever would he draw that?”
Raphael ignored him and turned the paper over.
And then his heart stopped.
An iris was drawn on the other side. The doctor was muttering about flowers and fish and other nonsense, but Raphael heard none of it. There was a dark X over the iris, drawn with such venom that the pencil had scored the paper. Beside the crossed out iris was a bunch of grapes.
Dionysus was the god of wine and grapes and debauchery.
Leland hadn’t drawn this. The Dionysus had—and the message was plain: Iris was in danger. The Dionysus had threatened his wife.
It was as if he’d been hit in the head. There was a ringing in his ears and his vision was washed with red. How—how—could he have let himself become so enthralled with Iris that he’d let his pursuit of the Lords of Chaos and the Dionysus slow? She’d almost been murdered last night by one of them and what had he done?
He’d taken her home and lost himself in fucking her.
She was a distraction. A siren, singing only to him. He had no defenses against her, and while she sang her song so close to him his attention would always be diverted. The next time he fell in thrall to her, the next time he turned from his mission, the assassin the Dionysus sent might not be so incompetent.
She might die.
He had to get back to her.
Raphael turned to the doctor. “Thank you.”
The doctor was still commenting behind him on daft aristocrats when he left, but Raphael hadn’t the time to respond.
The Dionysus had already killed Leland.
His sights were set on Iris now.
Raphael had to send Iris away—to keep her safe and to save his own sanity.
Chapter Sixteen
“Do not go,” said the stonecutter to Ann. “The Rock King is an evil spirit. Once you’re in his grasp, he’ll never let you free.”
“He seemed but a man to me,” said Ann. “Oh, stay!” cried El. “How is it fair that you save me and then must give your life away?”
“It’s only a year and a day,” Ann replied.
“Besides, I promised him.”
And she set off into the wasteland, a small sack of clothes on her back and her mother’s pink pebble in her fist.…
—From The Rock King
Chartres House had a lovely garden, even when it wasn’t yet in bloom.
Iris stood in the gravel path with Donna Pieri. It was late morning and she hadn’t seen Raphael since their argument the night before. She hadn’t told Donna Pieri about the fight, but she had the sense, from the way the older woman studied her with a pitying air, that Donna Pieri suspected a falling-out.
Iris sighed and looked down at Tansy. The puppy was sitting in the middle of the path and crying piteously, refusing to take a step farther.
Donna Pieri cocked her head as if examining an insect she had never seen before. “And you say Raphael got this dog for you himself?”
The older woman had to speak rather loudly because Tansy’s whining had risen in volume.
Iris shook her head and gave in to the dog’s begging, bending and picking her up.
Tansy wriggled frantically, licking Iris’s face in thanks as if the puppy had been saved from perilous waves.
“Yes, I think so,” Iris replied as they continued their walk. She frowned down at Tansy, who had settled, tucked into her elbow, and was now enjoying the view. “He didn’t say, but he presented her to me in a basket.”
“Amazing,” Donna Pieri murmured.
Tansy yawned, shaking her little head with the effort.
Donna Pieri smiled, her eyes crinkling behind her gold spectacles. “It is a very pretty little dog.”
“Yes, she is,” Iris said, and stroked Tansy’s silky head.
Tansy licked her hand. For some reason the puppy’s affection made her lips tremble. She wasn’t sure after the night before if she could fix what was between her and Raphael. If he’d ever accept her—accept their marriage—and let them live together as they should.
As man and wife.
His face last night had been so horrified. So angry and cold. And it had been cruel, just when she thought they’d overcome their problems, just when she thought they’d finally become one, for the whole thing to be smashed because of his fear.
If he never relented, could she live like this?
She wasn’t sure. She blinked, gazing at her ruby ring as she held Tansy. Somehow the sight of the ring made her eyes blur.
The door to the house slammed.
Both women turned.
Raphael was striding down the gravel path. “Come inside.”
“What has happened?” Iris asked cautiously.
“Inside.”
She jolted at his tone and was already hurrying up the path with Donna Pieri beside her. Raphael was tense, his face stony, and she had trouble meeting his eyes.
She could see no similarity between this man and the one who had made love to her so sweetly last night.
He ushered them inside Chartres House and into a small back sitting room, gesturing for her and Donna Pieri to sit in a far corner—well away from the windows.
Raphael waited until they were seated before stating, “I’m sending both of you away.”
“What?” Iris rose and stepped toward him. He can’t do this. “What are you saying?”
He stared at her coldly, no emotion at all in his face. Was he punishing her? “Hector Leland is dead. Shot this morning, supposedly a suicide, but I think it’s the Dionysus.”
“Oh, dear God,” she whispered, horrified. Tansy was still in her arms, asleep now, and she stroked the puppy’s soft ears. She’d met Mr. Leland. He was a member of the Lords of Chaos, true, but he’d been a person.
“How does that affect us?” Donna Pieri asked.
Raphael looked at her. “Threats were made against you and my wife last night and again this morning. I should have sent you both away at once, but I was … distracted. We cannot wait another minute.”
Iris sucked in her breath at being called a distraction. Was that how he truly saw her—them? As something that got in the way of the more important things in his life?
Donna Pieri nodded. “I will go pack, then.”
Iris watched her leave and then turned to Raphael. “I’m not leaving you.”
His eyes were so cold she thought she must’ve imagined their ever thawing. “You will
. Both you and Zia Lina. I’m trying to keep you safe.”
“Is the danger really so great?” she asked.
“Leland’s head was blown away,” Raphael said without a trace of emotion. “Yes, the danger is great.”
She sucked in a breath at his blunt words, and suddenly she was at that dark revelry, the torches flickering all around as she waited to die.
She truly did not want to die.
Iris shook her head and looked at her husband.
His eyes narrowed, and with his scar he looked like the very devil. How could she want to be with the devil?
Except he wasn’t. He wasn’t at all.
“Nothing will stop me from ensuring that you’re safe,” he said. “Not even you.”
“But how can you keep me safe away from you?” she asked, and was upset when she felt the prick of tears in her eyes. She couldn’t lose her composure now. She had to remain as cold as he so that she could fight this.
He closed his eyes as if she pained him. “The Dionysus is after me. He will stay in London if I am here. Therefore you and Zia Lina must leave.”
She felt her lips trembling. “If the Dionysus could send an assassin to kill you on the road, what is to stop him doing so again? Let me stay.”
“No.” He was already shaking his head. Had he even heard what she’d said? “I will send my Corsicans with you and Zia Lina. You will be guarded well.”
She was desperate. Last night she had felt a change in their marriage. They had been growing closer before he’d left her bed. She hadn’t imagined it.
She just needed time to make him see the happiness she saw could be in their marriage.
But if he sent her away now, she was afraid that every gain she’d made thus far would be destroyed.
“Raphael,” she said softly, moving toward him. “Please. Please don’t send me away.”
But he turned from her as if he couldn’t stand her touch. As if he couldn’t even look at her. “Do not beg me. I cannot bear it. I cannot bear you. You tear down my walls, take away my reason and purpose. Iris, you have to go. I can’t do what I must do with you here.” He held out his hand to his side, fingers outstretched as if to push her away. “I’ve made up my mind. We don’t have time to waste like this.”
She walked around him—walked around that damned hand—so that he was forced to face her.
There were tears on her cheeks now, true. She was humiliated. Devastated. But she had to at least try.
And what mattered her pride now?
She looked at him, her husband. At his eerie crystal eyes, at his raven’s wing–black hair, at the scar that he’d carved into his own face. Out of fear but in bravery. She looked at all of him and she knew. “I love you.”
He closed his eyes, shutting her out. “I made a mistake last night.”
“Don’t say that.” She felt as if she’d been hit in the chest. She couldn’t inhale. “Please don’t say that.”
He opened his eyes, clear gray and completely without emotion. His gaze was that of a dead man. “But it was a mistake. My mistake. What is done is done. With luck there will be no consequence, but I would be a fool to continue to court disaster.”
She held out her hand, pleading. “Raphael—”
“No.”
She sobbed angrily, uncaring of her wet face. “I am not a disaster. Our child would not be a disaster. On the contrary, if I am so lucky as to be with child I will rejoice. It will be a blessing. Do you hear me, Raphael? A blessing.”
He flinched at her words. “Not to me. Never to me.”
He might as well have struck her. She felt as if she were wounded. As if she were dripping blood on the floor.
She raised her chin. “If you send me away now, I will never forgive you.”
He bowed his head. “So be it.”
Iris turned and left the room without another word, pressing Tansy to her face.
Half an hour later she descended the front steps to a carriage driven by Ubertino. Five other Corsicans were on the carriage, either in back or beside Ubertino on the box. They were all armed.
Raphael was nowhere to be seen.
Bardo helped her inside and then slammed the door, standing back to wave the carriage on.
Donna Pieri sat opposite her.
The older woman eyed her as the carriage jolted away. “He is worried.”
Iris shook her head. She couldn’t talk. If she did, she might burst into tears.
Tansy was in her basket on the seat beside her, asleep under a blanket.
Iris stared out the window with aching eyes and wondered if they could ever resolve this break. Or if this was the end of everything.
Would she ever hear him laugh in honest joy?
It was two hours later and they’d left London when she heard the boom.
The carriage shook and swayed and then jolted to a stop. Donna Pieri fell to the floor, as did Tansy’s basket.
Gunfire exploded outside, like fireworks in the sky, except this was no happy occasion. The shots were fast and close together. She couldn’t even count them.
A man shouted in Corsican and then stopped midword.
Iris threw herself to the floor and opened the seat, searching for the pistol. Surely it had been replaced? Her scrabbling fingers found metal and she drew out the pistol. Checked to see if it was loaded.
It wasn’t.
A small hole exploded near the window on her side of the carriage.
“Stay down,” she said to Donna Pieri.
The other woman nodded calmly.
Iris dived back into the seat compartment and found a bag with the bullets and powder. She knew in theory how to load a gun, but it had been a while since she’d seen it done.
The shooting stopped.
Iris poured the powder in the gun, her hands shaking, the powder spilling onto the carriage floor.
Someone wrenched at the door.
The ball was already wrapped in wadding. She shoved it down the barrel.
A man in a mask—a terrible mask, the mask of a young man with grapes in his hair—climbed into the carriage.
She pointed the pistol at him, straight armed, from her position, kneeling on the floor.
He laughed and kept moving toward her.
She pulled the trigger, but of course nothing happened.
She’d not had time to pour the gunpowder in the priming pan.
The Dionysus laughed and roughly pulled Iris to her feet. He dragged her, stumbling, from the carriage. Iris just had time to catch a glimpse of Donna Pieri’s white face and then the door was slammed behind them.
Outside there were at least a dozen men surrounding the carriage. Iris could see a few of the Corsicans still on their feet, but many were on the ground, lying still. She couldn’t tell who had fallen—who was still alive and who was dead—before the Dionysus shoved her into another carriage.
Iris fell, her palms scraping across the carriage floorboards.
“You know what to do,” she heard the Dionysus say behind her, and Iris’s blood froze. Had he just ordered the death of Zia Lina and the remaining Corsicans?
Before she could do anything but get to her knees, he had climbed into the carriage and seated himself.
“Now then, Your Grace,” he said in a soft voice. “Let us have a pleasant chat.”
Late that afternoon Raphael stood at the window of his study, looking out over the back of his garden. He could see small blue flowers blooming along the gravel paths, but for the life of him he could not recall what their name was.
Somehow he knew that Iris would be able to name the tiny blue flowers.
He pushed the thought aside. He’d lived over thirty years without Iris in his life and never felt the lack. Yet now she was gone merely hours and he was gazing out the window, mooning after her.
He could shove her from his mind.
He must shove her from his mind.
But he still saw her tearstained face. Heard her pleading with him. Remembered he
r saying, “I love you.”
He closed his eyes.
She was haunting him.
It was as if she were in his blood now, a part of him as surely as the veins running under his skin, the lungs that let him breathe air. She’d permeated him until he could no more separate her from himself than tear the heart from his body.
She was essential to his life.
He opened his eyes and turned back to his study, trying to distract himself from his pain.
It was a strange room. His grandfather had seen fit to decorate it in murals of the dead being sorted in Hades. Demons danced on one wall, driving cowering souls, while on another the souls were naked and being lashed by hoofed monstrosities. None seemed to have found peace in death.
Perhaps the lesson spoke to him especially today because he was at an impasse in his mission.
He’d gone to Lord Royce’s town house only to find both him and his brother gone and not expected back for some time.
Their butler had informed him that they’d not told him where they were going.
Which left Raphael with what? Leland? He supposed he could go back to the dead man’s house and beg leave to investigate the man’s papers. Perhaps Leland had been stupid enough to leave evidence of the Dionysus.
Or perhaps it was time he found another way of discovering who the Dionysus was. If he—
“Your Grace.”
Raphael turned at Murdock’s voice.
The butler’s face was white. “You must come at once, Your Grace.”
Raphael strode to the door, an impending sense of disaster mounting in his chest. The butler led him to the front steps. His carriage was there. The carriage he’d sent Iris and Zia Lina off in that morning.
Only one man was on the box. Valente tilted sideways, his arm obviously wounded. Beside him sat Zia Lina, stiff and upright.
She turned her head slowly to look at him, her eyes glittering with banked tragedy. “Raphael.”
There were bullet holes in the carriage door.
Raphael heard a shout, and then he was wrenching at the carriage door.
Inside …
Dear God.
The Corsicans he had sent with his family to protect them lay on the floor of the carriage. Gangly Ivo, his long legs sprawled. Luigi with his eyes open, looking surprised. Andrea, who had most of his head blown off. Others whose faces he couldn’t see.
Duke of Desire Page 24