Rune.
She gasped a breath. Another. Rune holding her down.
Rune. Not Howard. Rune.
Her eyes closed, the panic that had set fire to her veins rolling through her, dissipating.
“Elle, open your eyes again.”
Her eyes cracked to find Rune’s stare hard on her. Even as the softness of his voice wrapped her in security, the set of his face, the look in his copper-green eyes—was pure murder. He was going to murder someone.
She hoped it wasn’t her. She couldn’t take another strangulation.
Rune’s right hand gently moved up from the expanse of her chest and went to her throat, his fingertips the wisp of a feather over the hot, throbbing areas of her neck. “Who did this to you? Who was here?”
She stared at his eyes, at the fury in them. She shook her head.
His lips pulled into a tight line. “Are you shaking your head because you’re not going to tell me or because your neck hurts too much to talk?”
She forced air up her throat, ignoring the burning that it caused. “Both.”
He sighed, shaking his head as his look went upward, his lips pursing in raging exasperation. “Elle—”
She lifted a hand to his chest to interrupt him. “No.”
He didn’t look down at her.
With a heave, she rolled onto her side away from him and his hand instantly set between her shoulder blades, helping her into a sitting position. For a moment, her head wavered, going light, almost sending her back into blackness.
Rune’s hand pressed into her back, supporting her against falling.
“Hell, Elle.”
He moved to his knees, his left arm slipping around her back while his right slid under her legs and he lifted her up, standing and then depositing her on the settee.
She leaned back into the cushions, her right forearm long atop the soft curved arm of the settee. Her eyes closed for long seconds as she concentrated on the air moving up and down her raw throat—concentrated on staying conscious.
Something cool nudged into her fingers on the arm of the settee and she opened her eyes. Rune had set a glass of brandy into her hand.
She looked up at him, her eyebrows raised.
“It will soothe your throat.” His right cheek lifted in a weak smile. “Or at least numb the pain of it.”
A weak nod, and she lifted the tumbler to her lips. Daggers sliced down her throat as she swallowed. He’d better be right about numbing the pain. She took another swallow, more liquid this time in order to speed the numbing.
He walked over to the sideboard and poured another glass, swallowing the whole of it in one tilt of his head. He refilled it, then moved to her, pulling a wingback chair from in front of the fireplace and setting it before her. After placing his glass down on the side table, he sat, leaning forward with his forearms resting on his thighs, his stare fixed on her.
It was to be an interrogation, then.
She stifled a sigh, taking another sip of the brandy and forcing it down her throat.
“What happened, Elle?”
Avoiding his stare, she looked out the window at the largest oak in the front line of the woods. “An old friend appeared at my door.”
“Friend?”
Her left hand flipped into the air. “A paramour. We shared a tryst or two.”
“Or more?”
Her gaze shifted to him, every word raw through her throat. “You know I’m no innocent, Rune. And my widowed circumstances have given me much freedom.”
“To indiscriminately couple with whoever catches your eye. Even though he’s a bloody bastard.”
Her head cocked to the side and she glared at him. “I’m not a whore. I actually liked him for quite some time. He liked me—until he liked me too much. He needed to know my every whereabouts, my every conversation.” The scratch in her voice sounded foreign to her own ears.
“And then?”
“And then…” She stilled for a long breath, the shiver that came with the memory skittering across her back. Her eyes downward, she drank another sip of the brandy. “And then one night he choked me. He said it would make the sex better. He would choke me and I would go to another place.”
Both of Rune’s hands curled into fists. Fists so tight his knuckles went white, purple veins straining, pulsating.
She couldn’t look up at his face, didn’t want to see the violence in his eyes. “I didn’t know what to do, how to get away. I was already in my stays and chemise. And his hands went around my neck, cutting off my pleas. So he did it and he liked it. I remember that. He liked it. I woke up with a brain about to explode and I left his house. I broke all ties with him in a note and had been avoiding him ever since.”
“But he’s refusing to listen?” For how Rune’s fists looked ready to slam through the nearest wall, his voice was oddly calm.
She nodded, her gaze fixed on his fists. “And then he showed up at a house party in Berkshire—he wasn’t invited—he wormed along with another guest. I dodged him the best that I could until I was walking along the corridor in the guest wing and he appeared out of nowhere, shoving me into a room. He started to choke me, but Jules and Des happened by. Des tore him off me and pummeled him—into a bloody mess, as far as was reported by the staff that saw him on his way out. I haven’t seen him since. I thought he was gone for good.”
Silence.
Her stare couldn’t move off of his tightly wound hands. His fists quivered, near to shaking.
The last thing she wanted to do was see his face in that moment. But her eyes lifted, her gaze finding his look.
The jolt of rage emanating from his eyes struck her, echoing down her chest to rest in a hard boulder in the pit of her belly.
“All I need is a name, Elle.” A growl. A demand. A death sentence.
She shook her head.
“A name, Elle. Now.”
In that moment—the air between them palpitating with murderous intent—realization hit her.
He could never know.
Not for what he would do.
She refused to lose him to, of all things, a hangman’s noose for murdering Howard. For that was exactly what he was planning.
And in the core of all that was the notion that she didn’t want to lose him.
Which meant she wanted to keep him.
How in the blasted Hades had that happened?
That wouldn’t do.
Couldn’t do.
Her mouth clamped closed, her stare direct on him.
She wasn’t going to tell him anything.
Not about Howard.
And certainly not about the realization that had just hit her.
{ Chapter 15 }
Elle looked down the ladder as Rune landed on the ground in the lower bath for the third trip, the set of three unlit lanterns hanging on his right arm clinking together.
He’d foregone a jacket and waistcoat, his white lawn shirt glowing ethereal in the darkness below from the one lit lantern he’d already brought down.
It had taken her the rest of the previous day and a night—much of that time spent with her nude body on top of his—before Rune got past his annoyance at her for not telling him who the man was that choked her.
She’d blatantly used her naked body to make him move past his anger and she didn’t regret it in the slightest. Anything to take away the murder in his eyes.
Was he over it? No. Not in the slightest. He was placating her, at least for the time being, and she happily took that.
But when she’d woken in the morning to find him wide awake next to her, his forefinger tapping nonstop on his chest, she knew she had missed something. Something he wasn’t telling her. She’d come to recognize that the constant tapping of his forefinger meant he was excited, pondering hard on some mystery he held deep in his head.
That crazy energy in him wasn’t the need to murder the person that had choked her—that rage had shown up very clearly and had only abated late in the night after
he’d exhausted every muscle she had, using his tongue to tease her to new heights and mark her very distinctly as his.
So it had taken some early morning cajoling to extract the answer of his tapping forefinger from him. Specifically, an exhausting round where she’d returned the favor of teasing to new heights and slid her tongue along every part of his body. Sated to limpness and no match for her, he’d finally told her of the planks of wood that he’d found in Captain Folback’s belongings and what they could mean—how the lines matched up.
A real clue.
She’d bounded out of bed, dragging him with her and they’d barely stopped for bacon, bread and marmalade in the kitchens before rushing out to the baths.
Along with their sketches and more paper and the wooden shards, they’d brought a slew of lanterns this time, determined to light the chamber and the mosaics with as much light as possible.
His boots thudded on the ground of the Bronze Chamber and she peered over the edge of the opening. “All set?”
He looked up at her. “Yes.”
He waited, his hands up and at the ready in case she misstepped on the ladder, then pressed his palm into the small of her back along the last few rungs. She’d been up and down the ladder in this bath too many times to count and wasn’t about to fall, but she held her tongue. It was foreign to have someone ready to catch her should she stumble, and she rather liked the feeling.
Her feet on solid ground, she turned to him, her cheeks brimming with anticipation. “Let’s light the lanterns.”
Within fifteen minutes, they had the chamber aglow like it never had been. After laying out the sketches they had made days ago, Rune arranged the rough wooden planks on the ground in front of the ring mosaic in the most logical way to connect the lines etched into the surfaces of the eight pieces.
Both of them stood several steps back from the wall, their arms crossed over their ribcages, their eyes darting in a triangle, from the ring mosaic to the wooden shards to the sketches, again and again. Both of them hoping that the puzzle pieces of the wood shards somehow reflected what was on the wall.
“Something isn’t right,” Elle finally mumbled.
Rune nodded, but didn’t say a word.
Elle stepped forward to stare down at the wooden shards. “This is extra hard because the edges of the wood are so ragged and cracked.” Her hand went along her jawline, rubbing it as she stared at the wooden planks. “What are we missing?”
She glanced over her shoulder at Rune. “Do you remember how you have them placed?”
“Yes.”
“Good. I’m going to mess with them.” She sank onto her knees, grabbing the top right shard and twisting it ninety degrees. Her fingers following the main line carved into the wood, she traced it to the edge. Onto the other planks, she felt for the boldest etched line until she found the one that felt very similar to one she started with. She moved it to the right edge of the first shard, setting in place the lines.
One by one, she tried by touch to find the similarities in each line, then reordered the shards three across until they were in a new jumble three across.
She glanced up, her head cocking sideways as she found one line that she recognized. The whole grouping needed to be spun for it to angle the same way and she shuffled the tiles.
When she sat back on her heels and looked up at the wall, the lines on the planks now looked eerily similar to the parts of the mosaic that still existed on the wall. Except for the few lines that extended into nothing in the lower right, where there was obviously a chunk of wood missing.
A low whistle echoed behind her. Rune stepped next to her, extending his hand down to her. She took it and he pulled her to her feet.
“Genius.” He pointed at the lower right part of the wall. “Look at what I’m seeing.”
Her gaze shifted from the wooden shards to the lower right corner. Most of the tiles were still intact on the wall in that area and the lines matched up perfectly to the missing chunk of wood.
“Bloody flugbusters.”
He laughed, loud and booming throughout the chamber, then grabbed her by the waist and pulled her into him, his eyes never leaving the wall. “Exactly.”
“But what is it? Weren’t we looking for some kind of message? What did you say the markings on the other sides of the tiles were—Norse?”
His head finally turned to her, his eyes bright. “It’s a map, Elle. A map behind the ring.”
She stared at the lower right corner of the mosaic, then looked at the whole of it, finally seeing it. It was a land mass. An island. Behind the ring, brown tiles met up with the blue tiles along the edges—water.
A bloody map.
“But a map of where?”
His head tilted, almost completely touching his shoulder as he stared at the wall. “I’m not sure. Do you have an atlas?”
“No, but I know who has hundreds of them, and we’re going to his place tonight.”
Rune turned to her. “So you’re finally inviting me to accompany you to Lord Kallen’s ball?”
“Did I forget to do that?” A teasing grin came to her face. “It would seem I have no choice now.”
He laughed, grabbing her about the waist and lifting her until she was eye level with him. “I accept your most begrudging invitation. But only if I get first rights to removing your ball gown afterward.”
She chuckled. “We’ll see how well you dance.”
He nipped the tip of her nose. “You are in for a treat. My dancing skills are legendary.”
“Legendary on the ship?”
His left eyebrow cocked upward. “Something like that.” He set her down onto her feet. “Come, let us draw the whole of this in detail before the lanterns run out of fuel.”
Two hours later, they moved their drawings and slew of lanterns upward to the Gold Chamber where scant rays of sunlight trailed into the main bathing room from the crumbling stairwell at the far end of the room.
Elle stepped to the side of the opening in the floor with the ladder leaning downward, setting down her still-lit lantern by the wall on the north side of the space.
While most of this room, the Gold Chamber, was much cleaner—Lord Kallen had excavated this area down to the original mosaics that still existed and all the debris had been removed from the bathing pool—there were still a few tiles that had fallen from the walls since he’d last been down there.
Waiting for Rune to come up, she stared at the mosaic of a sea serpent that stretched the length of the wall, using her fingernail to scrape at the mortar where a few tiles had gone missing. Glancing about her toes, she found three and picked up one of the rogue blue tiles from the ground. Looking at it, she tested it in a few spots before finding the right curves of the mortar where it had sat.
Rune set the three lanterns strung along his arm onto the floor and then hauled himself off the ladder, standing up next to her.
“You’re right about the tiles below.” She turned to him, holding up the blue tile in her hand. “I should have noticed this long ago, how the tiles were cut so different. And the red tint in the mortar down below should have been obvious. There isn’t any red in this mortar up here.”
He looked to the wall, his fingernail flicking into the loose mortar. “So the chamber and the mosaics were done at different times?”
“Much different, I imagine. We’ll have to ask Lord Kallen about it—this is what he is an expert in—mosaics, ancient artwork like this. He’s done such an incredible amount of research on the matter in his lifetime.”
Rune looked about the chamber at the mosaics along the walls and she followed his eyes. Cherubs and cupid and centaurs in wide scrolling scenes. The longest stretch of wall opposite them held a set of nine sea horses streaming to the left in a band led by Poseidon lifting a trident high in attack. A battle. A battle with an invisible opponent, as the next wall had nothing but crumbling stone on it. A mosaic lost to time or never completed, she was never sure.
His gaze landed on
Elle. “I cannot believe you’d spend your days buried under here.”
She looked past his shoulder at the mighty Poseidon. “It was this or…”
“Or what?”
She turned fully to him. “What I do when I’m above ground.” Her hand waved over her head. “You say I’m feckless, and maybe I am. But this—these dusty old tiles—and aimless liaisons are what I’m meant for. It is how I am able to fill my days. It is what I can bear.” Her hand reached out, her fingertips brushing lightly against the tiles. “No, it’s more than that. This is where I can find fleeting moments of happiness. Lord Kallen has taught me so much about properly excavating ruins and I truly do love it. It’s productive and the specific method of it centers me. Setting back in place a tile that was thought lost. Gently scrubbing away dirt to reveal a beautiful translucent tile that doesn’t belong amongst the others, but is perfectly in place. In those few moments, it’s magic.”
His voice dipped slightly, almost rough. “Yet maybe you should want more.”
“Not for what it will cost me. I had everything, had it planned out until the day I died, and it all disintegrated with that one shot of a pistol.” Her eyes closed, her forehead dipping forward, the self-pity invading her for only a second. She gave a slight shake of her head and her eyelids cracked open, but she couldn’t lift her chin, her stare fixed on the floor. “I cannot ever want that again—a future. Not ever. My husband may not have loved me, but it…it was my world and it crushed me. Losing all of it crushed me.”
“Elle—”
“Don’t.” Her eyes lifted, her stare seizing him. “Don’t ask for more from me, Rune. Don’t. I don’t have it in me. I can’t have it in me.”
Silent, his stare clamped onto her, fire invading the copper in his eyes as he took a step forward and the heat of his body overtook her.
“Then I won’t ask.” His head dipped downward, his lips landing lightly on her neck, his words soft along the curve just below her ear. “I’ll take. A thief, I’ll slip under your skin, burrow a way into your heart and soul, and steal away what little I need from you. Take it before you know what I did. Before you can resist.”
The Soul of a Rogue (A Box of Draupnir Novel Book 3) Page 10