The Soul of a Rogue (A Box of Draupnir Novel Book 3)

by K. J. Jackson

  “Oh, well, we shall have to correct that.”

  “My bones do me no favor these days, sweet Eliana. The stairs to get to the lower rooms have become too much for me.”

  Elle bit her lip. “That is a shame—I know how much you enjoy them.”

  His raised his cane again, jabbing it toward Rune. “Who are you?”

  Rune glanced at Elle and she nodded, angling her head to the marquess.

  “I am Rune Smith, your lordship. I am accompanying Lady Raplan on a quest she has embarked upon.”

  “A quest?” Lord Kallen’s look swung to Elle. “What quest?”

  “It is actually why I was hoping you could take us down into the baths. There has been a box discovered, and it looks very much like the box in the mosaics in the Bronze Chamber. Except the real box is small—it fits into my hand. I was hoping to explore the mosaics in that chamber a bit more with you to see if we can discover any clues as to where the real box may have come from or why it exists.”

  “This…” The deep wrinkles on the lower half of his face curled around his frown. “This is unexpected. I never imagined such a thing possible.”

  “Neither did I. It seems quite improbable, but there it is. My niece—you remember Lady Troubant—had the box at Seahorn Castle. It was a surprise to me, but it looks exactly like the one in the baths.”

  “Did you bring the box with you? Can I see it?”

  “I did not. I thought it safest back at the dower house. But I will bring it on our next visit.”

  Lord Kallen nodded and his hand lifted to his chin, stroking the few stray wiry hairs that must have been missed in his last shave. “I have not spent enough time in that chamber to offer any clues. Nor can I accompany you down there because of my gout. Not with that ladder. And you know it’s not safe in there for you alone, Eliana.”

  Her bottom lip jutted up in a frown and her gaze went to Rune. “Well, possibly Mr. Smith can accompany me and look after my safety as I search the chamber?” She looked to Lord Kallen. “Would that suffice?”

  His weathered grey eyes shifted to Rune and he glared at him for long silent seconds. So long she thought he possibly fell asleep.

  With a start, his gaze swung to Elle and his eyes narrowed at her. “Is that man to be trusted?” He pointed at Rune as though he wasn’t but three feet away from them.

  Her answer was immediate. “Yes. He can absolutely be trusted. I assure it. My niece and her husband, Lord Troubant, can assure it.”

  “Fine.” His fragile lips pulled to a tight line. “I will allow you and Mr. Smith down there on one condition.”

  “What is it?”

  “The Summer Moon Ball is three days hence.”

  Her gut sank. “The Summer Moon Ball?”

  “Yes. You may have access to the baths as long as you attend the ball. It was going to be terribly droll without you.” He looked at Rune. “Mr. Smith, you may attend as well, if my dear Eliana deems it fitting.”

  Rune opened his mouth, but Elle gave a quick head shake. His mouth closed and he nodded with a weak smile.

  “If that is the bargain, then that is the bargain.” She squeezed his hand once more. “I will come—although you know I would have come just to see you.”

  “Yes, but then you would have slipped out.” He reached out and patted the side of her face. “I want you at the ball the entire evening. I want you dancing. I haven’t seen you dance in years at it.”

  “That is because most of the single gentlemen on the island are no longer single.”

  “Flugbusters, there are still plenty of single men on the isle. And I miss your face when you are dancing. I miss the glow.”

  She leaned forward, the edges of her mouth quirking. “The glow is for you, Lord Kallen, and you well know it. If you were fifty years younger—”

  “Or you were fifty years older—”

  “What a grand match we would be,” they both said in unison.

  Elle smiled, her heart happy. How she adored her dear friend.

  His lips lifted in a grumbled smile. “It is settled. I will tell Percival that you will be going down into the baths with Mr. Smith so he doesn’t stop you.”

  “Thank you, and I will be sure to report anything interesting we find down there to you. And of course, you will see me at the ball.”

  He nodded, tapping his cane on the floor.

  A few minutes later she and Rune had mounted their horses, leaving the inner courtyard of Lord Kallen’s ancient castle.

  Rune managed to hold his tongue until they were a quarter mile away from the looming weathered grey stones that centered the marquess’s estate.

  “Scissorsquack?” He looked to her from atop his horse.

  “That is the first word you have for me?”

  He shrugged. “The only other word I have at the moment is flugbusters.”

  Elle laughed. “Scissorsquack is a new one for me as well. The marquess likes to make up nonsensical words to see if people will challenge him on them. Flugbusters is one of his old favorites.”

  “And you don’t challenge him?”

  “I used to—all the time—and now I just let them all go. It’s more fun to hear what he’ll come up with next.”

  A crooked smile came to Rune’s face. “You two are of like spirit, aren’t you?”

  “We are. I adore him for so many reasons.”

  “Name one.”

  “He doesn’t judge me. It makes him happy to see me happy, and that is so rare in a friend. He has no motives with me other than to enjoy my company. Those are several. One has to scratch below his gruff exterior to find he is a rare gem.”

  His mouth quirked to the side. “If only you were fifty years older.”

  Laughter escaped her as Rune’s attention went to the road before them. She watched his profile for a few strides of the horses.

  “I didn’t think you could do it.”

  He didn’t look to her. “Do what?”

  “Keep your mouth closed as you did. Admirable.”

  He gave her a sideward glance. “You had the situation well in-hand.”

  She shook her head, her hand adjusting along her reins as her mare stepped off to the left side of the road and she tugged it back in line. “Most men wouldn’t have seen that.”

  He watched her horse for a moment and then looked up to her. “Most men aren’t patient.”

  “Yet you have proven that you are more than once today.” A carnal grin slid onto her face. “Several times in fact.”

  He laughed. “I’m glad you noticed.”

  “I’m glad you are.”

  Rune pointed with his thumb over his shoulder. “I thought you said the marquess hates people.”

  “He does.”

  “So why does he host a gala?”

  She glanced over her shoulder at the retreating castle. “He does it because his wife made him promise he would throw the gala every year after she died. So he does it for her memory. He does it because she’s still in that castle—she talks to him all the time and he talks to her.”

  His eyebrows cocked. “He talks to her?”

  “Sometimes in front of me.”

  “You don’t find that—him—addled? Usually speaking to dead people will find you in an asylum fairly quickly.”

  She waved her hand in the air. “I find him perfectly fine just as he is—if his wife is there, then she’s there. Just because I cannot see her, who am I to question it?”

  His mouth opened as though he was about to retort, but then he shook his head.

  “What?”

  “You truly want people to be who you think they are, don’t you?” He looked directly at her. “You don’t want to know the truth of the soul underneath.”

  “Are you calling me naïve?”

  “I’m calling you…optimistic.”

  “And that is bad?”

  He shrugged. “It isn’t very realistic.”

  “Yet I wouldn’t be on this current adventure if I questioned e
verything around me. If I questioned that box and the power it has.”

  He inclined his head to her and then looked forward. “No, I don’t suppose you would be.”

  Her eyes narrowed as she stared at his profile. “To that matter, you seem to have set aside solid logic as well to accompany me on this journey.”

  “I’ve learned that the box is the one thing that logic doesn’t apply to.” He took a deep breath before his stare shifted to her. “Though I’m beginning to believe logic doesn’t necessarily apply where you are concerned as well.”

  While he looked dangerous earlier, his eyes, his current countenance was utterly sinful.

  She’d promised herself, promised him, no entanglements, and she’d meant it.

  But if he kept looking at her like he wanted to devour her, inch by inch, and make her enjoy it as he did it, she might just find herself wavering on that vow.

  She had to be careful around this one, or she’d find her promise dissolving to dust in the storm.

  { Chapter 10 }

  Something was different.

  Elle chewed on a bite of her roasted grouse with sweetened pea sauce, staring at the table and the full spread of food on her plate—grouse, apricots, asparagus, Oxford pudding—that Cook had made that day to celebrate her return. Cook always said she looked too skinny when she returned to the island.

  Her gaze shifted past the candelabrum centering the smaller, intimate table she usually had set in her dining room to look at Rune.

  What was it?

  Her look dipped back down to her plate and then to Rune’s plate of food. His plate was still half full. They’d been eating for five minutes now, and he wasn’t done.

  He was actually eating at a somewhat normal pace.

  In the numerous meals they’d had together, she hadn’t witnessed even an inkling of this.

  So odd.

  She lifted her fork, pointing at the mound of food still on his plate. “You’re eating at a human pace instead of a rabid dog pace.”

  Setting down his glass of port, he looked at her, coughing on a slight choke of the wine. “I what?”

  She swirled her fork in a circle still pointing at his plate. “You’re not done with your entire meal by the time I take three bites. That is always as I’ve seen you eat. I look down at my own plate, and by the time I look up all your food is gone.” She shrugged. “It is just that I have never seen food on your plate for more than a minute.”

  Rune looked to his food, then stiffly picked up his glass and took another sip of wine. “My apologies. Have I been making you nervous while dining?”

  “No. It is just odd. Most men lounge about their food, filling their bellies slowly.”

  His shoulders lifted. “It’s from my youth, from the years at sea. Eat quickly or someone is liable to steal your food.”

  “Your childhood?”

  He took another sip of port and nodded, his voice stiff. “I was twice orphaned a half a world away. What little food I found had to be eaten quickly. The son of an English scholar alone in Belize was not looked upon kindly.”

  “Twice orphaned?” Her hand holding her fork sank onto the table. “You were in the Yucatán when your father was killed? I had assumed it was here in England if he was killed by a peer. What about your mother?”

  “My mother died in Belize Town when my father was away on an expedition. That was the first orphaning. After she died, two months passed and my father didn’t return, so I was tossed out of the rooms my father had let. There was no one for me.”

  “You were evicted out of your home?”

  “That the landlady fed me for as long as she did was generous—she had five mouths to feed herself. She had to take the next paying tenant rather than let a child live there for free.” He said the words nonchalantly, no bitterness at being removed from his home.

  “But how could that have happened, you being left all alone?”

  Rune took a bite of food, chewing it slowly. Whether he was buying time or proving how slow and delicately he could eat, she wasn’t sure.

  He swallowed. “The possibility of it hadn’t occurred to either of my parents. Before that, we were always together. My father was a scholar, but even more so, an antiquarian. He travelled extensively for the expeditions he led, but we were always at his side—Greece to Egypt to Mayan ruins. He taught me everything that I would ever need to know about leading expeditions in those years.”

  Her eyes lit up. “That life sounds like a grand adventure for a child.”

  The smallest smile came to his lips. “It was—some of the things I saw. Rhinoceroses and giraffes and lions. Mayan temples. Egyptian pyramids. Lands where the trees and plants are so lush they suffocate everything about them, yet animals live within—they find a way—birds and monkeys.”

  “Have you ever had a chance to follow in your father’s footsteps?”

  “Lead expeditions?”

  “Yes.”

  He nodded. “It’s in my bones, the adventure of it, so yes, I have. A few expeditions that were of interest during the years—mostly in the Yucatán. I’ve been able to come and go from the Firefox as it suits me.”

  “Did you find what you were looking for on the expeditions?”

  “Yes and no.” His smile dissolved as quickly as it had appeared. “But yes, my childhood was a life of wonder until my mother died. The only time we separated as a family was that last time in Belize Town when my mother wasn’t feeling well—it was just some aches, she said. So we stayed behind when my father went on to his expedition into the jungle searching for Mayan ruins. She died a week after he left.”

  “How old were you?”

  “Ten.”

  Her chest tightened. “Ten and alone half a world away?”

  He shrugged. “It was what it was. I survived.”

  “And your father never came back for you?”

  Picking up his knife, he looked downward at his plate. “I had wandered too far from the boarding house in the months after I was removed—I had to survive—scouring the town for scraps I could find. I knew my father was coming back for me, but I had to survive. But then he couldn’t find me when he returned.”

  He jabbed his fork into his meat, slowly carving a bite of grouse from the chunk. “My father continued searching for me for three and a half years. During that time, his expeditions failed, he ran out of money, and he had to travel several times to England to raise more funds to return under the guise of new expeditions, but his goal was always to find me.”

  Riveted, her stare hadn’t flickered from his face—it didn’t matter that he talked to the plate rather than to her. “And he did?”

  Rune took the bite of grouse and nodded as he chewed. “He did. I was fourteen and in the Port of Veracruz. By then I had discovered I could usually find work and food, as horrible as it was, if I stayed around ports and worked on ships. After my father found me, we were together for two months before he was killed. Two months.”

  The sharp clip at the end of his words told her he was done talking about the past. Done talking about anything that would be insight into this peculiar man sitting across from her.

  She motioned with her fork to his plate. “So why have you slowed down your bites tonight?”

  “I didn’t even realize I had.” He glanced at her and shrugged, then looked down at his plate, his copper-green eyes perplexed. “It’s quite possible I trust that you won’t steal my food.”

  She chuckled, shoving her plate across the small table to him. “Had I known all of this I would have been sharing my own plate long ago. It’s all yours.”

  “Pity grouse for me?”

  “Not at all. If someone needs my food more than me—be it a real or imaginary need—it is all theirs.”

  His head tilted slightly to the right, his eyes narrowing at her, not in malice, but in interest. He nudged her plate back to her. “As wonderful as this grouse is, I’ll decline. You need to put meat on your bones more than I do.”

&n
bsp; Her eyebrows lifted. “I’m too skinny? You sound like Cook. Or is the grouse too bland?”

  “Can I claim both?” His finger pointed at her torso. “You’re well proportioned, but an extra layer of meat is insurance against lean times.”

  A smile on her face, she shook her head as she stabbed her fork into a piece of meat.

  He watched her eat and his left hand landed on the table, his fingers drumming the shined mahogany. “I do have to ask…”

  She wiped the corner of her mouth with a napkin before answering. “Yes?”

  “Why such a small table as this in such a large dining room?” His fingers motioned into the air around him.

  Her gaze lifted and she looked at the room about her. She hadn’t really studied her surroundings in a long time and suddenly realized how off the room must look to the unaccustomed.

  Draperies of the finest wool and dyed a deep teal lined the long wall of windows that looked out onto the precisely molded boxwood labyrinth. The opposite wall held three tapestries of the hunt interspersed with gilded frames holding portraits of past countesses.

  The portrait that was done of her within months of becoming the Countess of Raplan had been delivered years ago to the dower house, though she had never had it hung. She didn’t need to look at herself while she was eating. All of the portraits hanging in the dower house were of the past countesses soon after they were married—the portraits of them older and with children remained at the main Raplan estate. She’d never ascended to the status of mother, so there would be very little left of her at the seat of the title.

  Her look shifted to the right, her assessment of the room continuing. A giant white marble hearth—large enough to warm the chilliest of nights—anchored one end of the room with two walnut sideboards at the other long end of the room. The ceiling reflected light downward with gilded crown decoration and a coffer intertwining in a hexagonal pattern.

  And there in the middle of the opulent, cavernous room sat a tiny table.

  She looked downward, her fingers running along the well-worn edge of the table. “The large table that belongs in here makes me lonely. It is just me in this house, Rune. Just me. Most nights, just me eating alone. It was a year before I admitted to myself that staring at the expanse of that large table reminded me of all I’d lost, all I was supposed to be.” The edges of her mouth lifted in a strained smile. “So that table is in storage. This table holds me and Lord Kallen when I can convince him to leave his castle. It is all I want.”