Iris staggered and fell.
The Dionysus turned to meet him. Opened his mouth to say something.
Raphael knocked him to the ground.
All around them there was blood raining down. Gunshots and screams. A war encapsulated.
Raphael stepped over the Dionysus and grabbed his wife. “Iris! Where are you hurt?”
He frantically ran his hands over her head, trying to find the wound.
“Raphael!” She took his hands. “The shot blew off part of his ear. It’s not my blood.”
“Thank God.” He held her a moment, staring into her beloved face. Then he pushed her to the ground. “Stay down.”
The Dionysus was trying to crawl away.
Raphael straddled the monster—the thing that had dared to take Iris from him. He drew back his arm and hit the man beneath him in the throat.
The Dionysus made a strangled sound and tried to buck him off.
Raphael hit him again. And again.
A tiny knife flashed in the Dionysus’s hand.
Raphael knocked it away.
And continued hitting.
Until he could no longer feel his knuckles.
Until the thing underneath him no longer moved.
Until small palms pressed to his face and a voice said in his ear, “My love. Raphael. Stop.”
And he obeyed.
He looked up and Iris was kneeling beside him, blood smeared over her beautiful face, her eyes swimming in tears.
He wanted to pummel the thing again for putting those tears there.
Instead he reached out his own bloody hand and touched her cheek. “I told you to stay down.”
She smiled. “I don’t take orders well … even from you.”
He gathered her into his arms and held her, his sweet wife, as he looked over the abbey ruins. Bardo was kicking a downed man who was no longer moving, while Valente slapped another Corsican on the back and laughed. The fighting had ended. His men looked to be whole.
Kyle stood overseeing his men as they tied up prisoners.
As Raphael watched, Kyle met his gaze and nodded.
Raphael inclined his head. He owed the man. He owed the man more than he would ever be able to pay.
His arms tightened around Iris at the thought.
“He killed Ubertino,” she said, and sobbed. “Oh, poor, poor Ubertino!”
He stroked her hair. He didn’t know what to say, so he said nothing.
Valente suddenly appeared. He had a nasty gash on the cheek and he still favored his wounded arm, but his coat bulged as if he hid something inside.
The young Corsican knelt in front of Iris and smiled tentatively. “Your Grace.”
He opened the top of his coat and the puppy’s head popped out.
“Oh!” Iris said. “Oh, Tansy. Thank you, Valente.” Iris tried to wipe her cheeks. She merely smeared the gore and her tears around with a bit of mud, but Raphael wasn’t going to tell her that. She reached for the puppy. “She ran when she heard the gunshot. Thank you for finding her. She would have been lost if you hadn’t. Tansy might have died.”
She hugged the puppy to her bosom and sobbed anew as the tiny animal licked her face.
Valente looked at Raphael, his eyes wide with alarm.
Raphael shook his head to reassure him. “The duchess is fine. You did well in finding her little dog. She is very appreciative, but she is also tired and frightened from her ordeal. Gather the men and we will return to London and Chartres House.”
“Yes, Your Excellency,” Valente replied, and for a moment Raphael’s chest seized.
He was used to giving Ubertino these orders. Soon he would have to decide which of his men to put in Ubertino’s place.
Raphael rose and helped Iris to stand.
Kyle saw him rise and walked swiftly over. “Are you all right, Iris?”
She nodded shakily. “I will be, I think. Thank you, Hugh.”
He smiled at her and then looked at Raphael. “We have them all rounded up, I think.” He glanced at the pile on the ground. “The Dionysus?”
“Yes.” Raphael didn’t bother to look.
Kyle crouched to pull off the mask.
Andrew Grant lay with his right ear blown off and his eyes half-lidded. He was quite obviously dead.
Kyle looked up at Raphael. “What about his brother?”
Before Raphael could reply, Iris said, “I think you should look in the trunk, Hugh.”
Kyle glanced sharply at her and then moved to the trunk and opened the lid. “God’s blood!”
He knelt and put his hand inside.
Raphael walked over to look, shielding Iris from seeing inside.
Viscount Royce lay naked in the trunk. Judging by his state, he’d been in there for many hours. Blood was clotted in his hair and bruises covered his body.
“Is he alive?”
“Barely.” Kyle stood and waved one of the soldiers over. “Get my man—the one with the gray hair.”
The soldier nodded and jogged away. Kyle turned back to the trunk. “This is the brother?”
“Yes,” Raphael said grimly.
“Were they leading the Lords of Chaos together?”
“No, only Andrew led the Lords,” Iris said. She had her face buried in Tansy’s fur. “And … and Lord Royce had abused Andrew when they were younger, along with his father. I think Andrew hated him. Lord Royce was probably not even aware of it.”
“How do you know this?” Raphael asked softly.
“He talked a lot,” Iris answered. “On the way here.” She looked up suddenly. “Donna Pieri! Is she all right?”
“Yes,” Raphael said. “She’s fine, though in a temper.” He examined Iris. She was pale and swaying in his arms. He needed to get her home.
Raphael looked at Kyle. “Will you and your men be able to handle this?”
“Yes.” Kyle nodded and then sighed. “Now that we know who the Dionysus is, I’ll need to search his house and begin finding the rest of the Lords of Chaos.” He glanced warily at Raphael. “I expect you’ll want to help with that.”
“Yes.” Raphael looked down at Andrew, realizing that his sense of urgency had diminished now that he’d destroyed the Dionysus. Still. It was important to clean out all the Lords of Chaos. “Thank you.”
Kyle’s eyes darted to Iris, who was half-asleep, her head on Raphael’s shoulder. He smiled. “No thanks are necessary.”
Raphael opened his mouth to argue … and then simply nodded.
Perhaps he didn’t entirely dislike Kyle.
With a nod Raphael swung his wife into his arms and headed for the carriage.
Chapter Nineteen
One day a man knocked upon the tower door. He told a desperate tale of a mangled soul and shale demons. He vowed he’d give the Rock King all his worldly possessions if only the Rock King would kill these demons and bring back the torn soul.
Ann watched as her husband donned his stone armor and strode off into the wasteland. The Rock King was gone a fortnight, and when he returned, his arm hung broken and bloody.…
—From The Rock King
Iris woke early the next morning in the duchess’s bedroom at Chartres House. She held herself very still, trying to think what she’d heard to wake her. Raindrops pattered against the windows, but that wasn’t loud enough to alarm her.
There was another crash.
She jumped up from the bed at the same time that Tansy whined. Iris ignored the puppy to run into the dressing room.
The door to the ducal bedchamber was ajar.
Cautiously she opened it and looked inside.
The bedroom was a shambles. The bed torn apart, glass shattered on the floor, and drawers pulled from a dresser.
Raphael stood by the fire in shirt, breeches, and coat, watching it roar. He was barefoot. His black hair lay long and silky about his face, and his unmarred side was to her. From this angle he might be a poet lost in unearthly thoughts.
He turned to her and the illu
sion was broken.
She went to him and saw that the flames were consuming a sketchbook.
“He was a monster,” Raphael murmured, his smoky voice husky from sleep or something else. “Even more of a monster than Andrew Grant. My father not only preyed upon the innocent, he turned them into monsters.”
He walked to the table by the bed and pulled out a drawer. Inside was a knife, and Iris’s heart leaped with alarm.
Raphael took the knife and went to his father’s portrait. He raised the knife high above his head and thrust it into the painted face, gashing the painting. He tore through paint and canvas, slashing to the frame at the bottom. Then he began cutting along the edge, ripping the painting into pieces. He threw them onto the fire.
The fire began to smoke.
Then he froze.
“Raphael?” She went to him, laying her hand gently on his arm.
He was staring at the frame. Inside, between where the painted canvas had been and the backing sealing the frame, was a thin book, wedged into a corner of the frame.
Raphael took it out and opened it.
Iris peered at the book. She was prepared for something awful. Perhaps more sketches, perhaps something worse.
Instead there were tidy rows of names with dates next to them and notations.
She leaned to look over Raphael’s shoulder.
The first line read:
Aaron Parr-Hackett Spring 1631 Badger d. 1650
Iris drew in her breath as she scanned the list. There were dozens of names.
“It’s the ledger of names for the Lords of Chaos,” Iris said. “Hugh thought he’d found it before, but obviously the list of names he had wasn’t complete.”
Raphael paged through the book. There were hundreds of names, some of them shocking. The dates marched forward until he came to blank pages.
The last entry was dated “Spring 1741.”
“I told myself I never knew the Lords of Chaos were still in existence,” Raphael whispered, staring down at the ledger. “But of course I was lying. How would they have died? All that evil doesn’t simply waste away on its own. I should have come back sooner. Burned them away while my father still lived. Confronted him. But I was a coward.” He closed the book. “I am a coward.”
“No, you’re not,” Iris said fiercely. “You saved me. You brought down the Dionysus. You—”
He looked at her, the corner of his mouth—the side not scarred and twisted—curling up in what looked like self-disgust. “The Dionysus was one man. Not even a very large one. He was Andrew Grant, who was raped and beaten by his father and his brother again and again until he went mad from it. Killing such a weak man isn’t the act of a hero. It’s the act of a coward.”
He set the ledger down and walked out of the room.
Iris gaped for a minute before hastily following him, clad only in her chemise. “Where are you going?”
“Back to Corsica,” he said.
She stumbled to a halt. “At once?”
He didn’t even turn as he started down the stairs. “Yes.”
“But I have no clothes,” she said stupidly.
He paused, but still did not face her. “You are not coming with me.”
He continued down the stairs.
She stared after him in shock. But they’d come so far … She’d been kidnapped—again—and he’d saved her and he’d killed two men.
For a moment she simply wanted to sit down and cry. It wasn’t fair.
She shouldn’t have to fight this battle again.
Love shouldn’t be this hard.
But Raphael was nearing the bottom of the stairs now, and if she didn’t move he would be out of sight.
And she might lose him.
She couldn’t let that happen, no matter how hard or how stubborn he might be.
So ran down the stairs after her husband. And when she saw that he’d opened the back door—the door to the garden—and was walking out into the rain, she stepped out into the deluge, too.
“Wait,” she called. “Wait!”
He turned. Rain was running down his face. “Go back.”
She shook her head, raindrops splattering off her nose and chin. “No. Where you go, I go, too.”
He closed his eyes and tilted his face to the sky as if this was one thing more to bear. As if his shoulders were bowing under terrible pressure.
“Iris,” he said, “I’m tainted. He fucked me, Iris. My father fucked me. Look what that did to Andrew Grant. Do you want to wait until the day I go mad?”
“But you won’t,” she said, bewildered.
He shook his head. “I can’t breathe when I smell cedarwood. Is that how a sane man behaves?” He opened his eyes and looked at her. “I forced you to marry me. I was selfish. Now I let you go. You can have my houses, my estates, my English monies. I’ll never bother you again. Just let me go to Corsica.”
“I can’t let you do that,” she said, exasperated. “You’re my husband. I’m your wife. I married you. Don’t try and wriggle out of it now.”
“I can’t stay here with you,” he said starkly. “You are too much temptation. You’ve proven it already.”
She held out her hand, the palm filling with rain. “Then give in to temptation.”
He looked away. “You make it sound so easy. But it’s not. You don’t understand.”
“Then make me understand,” she cried in desperation. “Why? Why can’t you be with me?”
“Because I am the evil,” he shouted. “It’s passed from father to son, on and on, ad infinitum. Would you wait, never knowing if I would attack a child of ours? When I might attack our child?”
“You wouldn’t attack a child,” Iris said, shocked. “Raphael, I know you wouldn’t.”
“Why not?” He held his hands up to the thundering sky. “Why not? I have the blood of monsters in my veins. He loved me.” He dropped his arms. “He loved me.”
He took a ragged breath.
“And I … I loved him.”
Her heart broke. Iris’s eyes filled with hot tears that spilled over to mingle with the cold rain on her cheeks.
She watched as Raphael sank to his knees on the muddy ground, his shoulders bowed, his hands lying open in the mud. “He was my father. I couldn’t kill him. Even after he did that. I couldn’t kill him.” He peered up at her through the strands of his sodden hair. “You can’t trust me, Iris. I am a beast. A demon. Send me back where I belong. Send me to hell.”
She sobbed and sank to her knees, facing him, wrapping him in her arms and laying her forehead against his. “You are not a demon or a beast. You are my beloved husband. I know you, and you are not your father. You are good and kind and valiant. You are stubborn and intelligent and sometimes very witty. You will never hurt a child of ours, I promise.”
His head was bowed against hers, rain running from his brow to her cheeks and dripping off both of their chins.
He loved her, he knew that now. That was what this longing, this never-ending want was.
How she believed in him—despite all that had happened, despite all that he was—he did not know, but he was grateful.
He angled his head, taking her sweet lips with his, drinking her succor, her faith in him. She was his light, his hope, guiding the way out of the depths of his Stygian despair.
“Iris,” he murmured against her wet lips, “my radiant wife, my love, my life. I promise I will try to live up to your belief in me. I do not think I can do otherwise, for I would repine and die were I to leave you. I would be blind and alone, howling in the darkness. I would go mad without you.”
He captured her mouth again, forcing her lips open, sliding his tongue into her, claiming her as his own.
Dark to light.
She tore herself from him, gasping, her cold wet fingers against his jaw, raindrops beaded on her eyelashes. “Will you believe me, Raphael? Can you accept our marriage and a family?” She stared at him with her storm-blue eyes, terrible in her certainty of him. “Wi
ll you be my husband in truth?”
“Yes,” he vowed, and swept her into his arms.
Chapter Twenty
The Rock King gave the man his torn soul, glowing white in a stone cage, and the man was beside himself with gratitude.
Ann watched the man leave and then asked her husband, “When will he return with the riches he owes you?”
The Rock King sighed. “He won’t. They never do.” She stared at him, gray and stern, save for the red of the blood on his arm. “Then why do you help them?”
His black eyes seemed a little less cold. “Because someone must.” …
—From The Rock King
Raphael carried Iris back through the garden door and up the staircase with all his forbidding ancestors watching.
She didn’t care.
She clung to his neck, staring at his face as he climbed, feeling as if this was their true wedding night. He carried her down the corridor and to their bedroom, shutting the door firmly behind him.
Then he stood her before him and took her sodden clothes from her body until she was naked and shivering.
He found cloths in the dressing room and dried her carefully and then insisted she climb into their bed under the covers.
She watched as he stripped off his clothes. He rubbed the cloth roughly over himself and then threw it aside. Nude he stalked to the bed, his penis heavy between his thighs.
She sat up, looking at that utterly male part of him and then in his eyes. “Let me.”
He paused at the side of the bed.
She reached out and took him in her palm, feeling the soft skin. The warmth. He was filling as she watched, lengthening between her hands, pulsing under her fingertips. She saw his foreskin stretch and the eye of his penis, red and wet, begin to show.
“Iris,” he growled above her.
But she ducked, looking closer as she encircled his girth and slowly stroked up his length. Under the skin the muscle was hard, so hard, and veins snaked along the shaft. She thumbed the head, feeling the wetness there, and, on an impulse, brought her thumb to her mouth and licked it.
She was suddenly on her back, Raphael above her, his crystal eyes staring into her own.
Duke of Desire Page 26