The Duke with the Dragon Tattoo

by Byrne, Kerrigan

  He’d awoken in a pauper’s grave, one saved for the unloved and the unwanted.

  Or worse. The condemned.

  He had an enemy. One who’d beaten him to death. Or at least assumed they’d succeeded.

  And now … he had an angel. One come to life. More beautifully rendered than any artist could compose. Hers was a face molded by a loving celestial hand.

  She was young. Quite young.

  Was he? He didn’t think so. He felt as old as time.

  Though they’d drawn the drapes and lit a single candle for the unveiling, the room may as well have been illuminated by the noonday sun. She glowed with some inner luminescence, a light both otherworldly and pure. Her wide lapis eyes glinted like jewels against fresh, gilded skin. She was too soft to be real, surely. Too divine to be mortal. Too golden to be made of the same clay as himself.

  And he …

  Oh, buggar me blind! he thought. What do I look like?

  He needed … something. Something that wasn’t on the dark wardrobe on the far wall, nor the bedside table, but—

  There. Above the ivory washbasin to his right.

  A mirror.

  “It’s … best you don’t look just now.” An impish nose wrinkled with worry as the rest of her features battled with composure when she correctly guessed the reason for his distress.

  His shoulders gave out, curling in upon themselves. He wanted to pluck his own eyes out. He wanted her to look away. To let him go. His heart shriveled like a piece of wet rubbish thrown on the fire.

  Because she’d confirmed his worst fears.

  “I’m a monster,” he groaned.

  Was that his voice? As raspy and graveled as the pit he’d pulled himself from.

  Fuck, how could those be the first words he spoke to her?

  “Oh no!” She clasped his hand even tighter. “You mustn’t think that! You’re a miracle. An absolute miracle.”

  Her eyes shone so earnestly, he couldn’t bear to look at them.

  “You don’t have to lie.” As he glanced up at Dr. Holcomb’s impressive muttonchops, his stomach clenched around emptiness at the grim expression tightening the man’s sharp features.

  “Your nose didn’t heal as straight as I’d hoped and there’s more swelling than I like. But your more … superficial wounds shouldn’t take too much longer to heal. Your ankle will take the longest, and you should stay off it until I relieve you of the plaster cast in a few weeks’ time.” The doctor bent to pick up the candle and hold it in front of both eyes, tracking their movements.

  He wanted to shrink away from the man. The impulse powerful enough that he couldn’t suppress a wince. His skin crawled and his blood sang with ferocity and … fear.

  Holcomb pretended not to notice. “Though your eye remains red, it’s reactive to light and movement. Can you see as well as before?”

  The truth was, he had no idea.

  “I … think I can see fine.”

  “All things considered, Miss Weatherstoke is correct. Your continuing recovery is nothing less than miraculous. To be honest, I didn’t expect you to survive.”

  “You see?” she encouraged. “A miracle, not a monster. In order to be considered a monster, you must first do something monstrous.”

  He had.

  The revelation hit his gut like a swallowed stone.

  The evidence was in his violent, visceral reaction to everyone and everything.

  Except her.

  Scrambling around the aching emptiness in his brain for the barest hint of a past, he found nothing. He remembered nothing. Not his name. His age. His origin. Not even his own hair or eye color.

  Yet certain powerful, primal information gave him a terrifying glimpse into his nature.

  He knew things a monster would know. Noticed what a monster would notice.

  He could kill. With that decorative letter opener, the pillow beneath his head, the pitcher of water broken into lethal shards. He could and would open an artery, or throat if necessary. He knew exactly how much damage he could inflict. How much time it would take. Where to exert the most force or pressure.

  Pain was not only his oppressor, keeping him useless upon this bed. It was his tool.

  His friend.

  The only friend he could remember.

  How was it he knew nothing, but could ascertain that?

  The doctor’s touch repulsed him, in every confusing and conceivable way. A strong man with cold eyes. Someone who wielded more power than he did.

  For now.

  This he could not abide. Why? Why?

  He leveled a cautionary stare at the doctor as Holcomb measured the pulse at his throat.

  Holcomb regarded him strangely, in turn, before standing. “I—think I’ll go tell the earl the news.” He paused in the doorway. “My Lady, would you like to accompany me?”

  “I’ll stay and make certain our patient keeps down a few sips of soup.”

  “Are you certain you should be alone with—”

  “We’ll be fine, Dr. Holcomb, thank you ever so much.” Even her dismissal sounded like a compliment.

  The doctor’s eyes narrowed dubiously. “As you say.”

  Then they were alone.

  Could she hear his heart pounding? Could she see how quickly his chest rose and fell? Did she feel anything but pity when she looked at him?

  She released his hand, and reached for the bowl of soup at his bedside.

  Bereft, he brought his empty hand back over his heart, which ached more than it beat.

  “Hungry?” she asked brightly.

  Unable to find words again, he shook his head. He couldn’t think of eating. Not in front of her. She was a lady, refinement evident in her every graceful gesture. What if he did something embarrassing?

  “It’s very good.” She lifted the spoon. “I’ve been feeding you every day while you’ve been here. This is a favorite of yours.”

  It was? He eyed the brown liquid dubiously, wondering just what floated beneath the surface.

  “If I have some first, would that help?” She lifted a healthy spoonful of what appeared to be broth and soggy vegetables to her plump pink lips.

  The inside of his own mouth dried as he alertly watched her savor the bite of stew. His hand dropped from his chest to cover his lap.

  “Mmmmmm,” she moaned with overwrought appreciation. “It’s extra delicious today.”

  Disturbed by his body’s reaction to her, he crossed his legs and covered the moan of pain the movement caused him.

  “You must have some nourishment in order to heal.” Her eyes became pools of concern. “Is there nothing that could entice you to eat? What would it take?”

  “Your name…” The words escaped before he’d properly formed the thought.

  She blinked rapidly, the bowl in her hand threatening to spill when she trembled. She turned peach rather than pink when she blushed. He stored that away for future reference.

  “Lorelai. My name is Lady Lorelai Weatherstoke.”

  Lorelai. He couldn’t bring himself to repeat it. The name was too lovely. Too lyrical. He needed to practice first. To test it by himself before addressing her.

  “Are you a man of your word?” she asked.

  His heart stalled. “What do you mean?” Was he a man of his word? He had an ominous feeling that he was not.

  “You said you would eat.”

  “Oh … yes.” That he could do. In fact, he realized then and there that he would never break a promise to Lorelai. He’d keep his word to her, or die trying.

  She dipped the spoon, crafted a bite, and lifted it to his lips.

  As he took it, she unconsciously mimed the action of eating, opening her mouth and then closing it to mirror him. Swallowing when he did as if to teach him how.

  She transfixed him so utterly, he didn’t even taste the food until the second bite.

  She’d been telling the truth. It was very good. The soup consisted of dark, briny meat, sweet carrots, and was thickened wi
th potatoes, herbs, and a luxurious taste he couldn’t identify. Something told him he wasn’t used to decent food.

  His tongue lingered against the spoon. Pondering what he considered the illicit intimacy of sharing the utensil. Of tasting what she’d tasted. Of putting his mouth where hers had been.

  Perhaps she’d been the secret ingredient all along.

  “You’re probably wondering what makes this broth so scrumptious,” she guessed.

  He blinked at her. She couldn’t read minds, could she? He dismissed the ridiculous notion right away. If so, she’d have run screaming from the room already.

  He found that in order to swallow, he couldn’t look at her lips, her eyes, her hair, her throat, below her throat or … well, anywhere, really. He affixed his focus to the tiny bob dangling from her lobe. It danced and twinkled in the light of the lone candle, a diamond floating on a disk of iridescent blues and greens and pink. Crafted from a shell, maybe?

  She reached out another bite to him, and a discoloration on her wrist snagged his attention. A faded bruise showed beneath the delicate lace of her sleeves. A purple tinge barely visible beneath an unsightly yellow. Had she hurt herself?

  “It’s salt,” she revealed cryptically.

  “It’s what?” He forgot himself long enough for her to plunge the spoon into his mouth once again, forcing him to chew.

  “Black Water salt is the best in the world, and the rarest. It’s so difficult to render, that there isn’t much of it, but we locals have our ways.” She gifted him an impish wink and he nearly choked.

  Lorelai. Her name had as many curls as the unruly flaxen hair spilling past her shoulders. Shorter wisps fringed about her face like a halo. How apropos. With such a lovely name, why would they…?

  “Why do they call you Duck?”

  She paled, even in the golden light. “You don’t know?”

  He flushed along with her, wishing he could take it back. Or scoop out his own tongue with the spoon. Anything to avoid the shimmer of mortification in her eyes.

  It had something to do with her uneven gait. He should have surmised that.

  But he’d hoped it was an endearment rather than a taunt. A familial moniker given to a girl with a tendency to rescue motherless ducklings and the like. She’d told him about her little menagerie in one of his more lucid moments. And, for a blessed time, he’d not wanted to claw off his own flesh as he listened to her tales of silly animal antics.

  He pondered the long sleeve of a shirt that didn’t belong to him. Horrible scabs stretched along his arm, his torso, and down his waist. He could not see them, but the tangible tugs and aches on his flesh alerted him to their presence.

  “My ankle was broken, too, a long time ago,” she murmured. “The same one as yours, in fact. But mine didn’t … heal in time.” Lifting another spoonful of soup, she summoned a smile, punctuating the end of that topic.

  Obediently, he ate.

  The sound of heavy bootsteps interrupted the ensuing silence. Big, blond, and brawny, Mortimer Weatherstoke looked exactly like he’d imagined the bastard would. He surveyed the scene with the air of a princeling watching the slaughter of his supper. The novel carnage both revolting and fascinating.

  “Dr. Holcomb said that the blighter had woken … Dear God.” His ruddy, handsome face crumpled into a grimace. “How positively grotesque. It’s worse than I thought, Duck.”

  “No it isn’t!” she huffed at her brother. “No it isn’t.” She hastily turned back to reassure him. “Dr. Holcomb said you were fortunate it rained so mightily on the day the lye was poured on your … body.” She whispered the word, as though it were a naughty one. “The water diluted its effect. You were again lucky that the burns didn’t become infected. And now, once the scabs turn to scars, you’ll recover fully. But … better you don’t look until then, yes? Promise me?”

  He opened his mouth to disagree and again found it full of the soup spoon before he could make a noise.

  His impish angel was craftier than he’d given her credit for.

  He glared at them both as he gnawed a particularly chewy piece of stew meat.

  Mortimer rested a manicured hand on Lorelai’s shoulder, and she winced as though she’d been stung by a wasp.

  His heartbeat sped to a murderous pace. The bruise on her wrist … had been the shape of a finger. Of two fingers. And if she lifted her sleeve, he’d bet he could find others. The places where she’d been mishandled by the oafish lummox looming over them.

  “You truly remember nothing?” Mortimer scratched his scalp through hair several shades lighter than his sister’s. “Not your name. Not your parents. Not even where you live?”

  Swallowing the stew, along with the madness that threatened each time he tried to ponder what he didn’t remember, he shook his head.

  “I’ve heard of this happening before…” Mortimer stroked the sparse beginnings of a mustache on his upper lip. It looked like a half-plucked baby chick. “To soldiers and the like. Are you a soldier?”

  What a fucking imbecilic question.

  “I. Don’t. Know.”

  Their glares locked, and suddenly he knew his own eyes were black. Black with instant hatred.

  Whereas Lorelai’s honey-wheat hair was threaded through with streaks of dark gold, and her flawless skin bronzed by many hours spent in the sun, Mortimer was simply … yellow. Sallow, even. His hair, his ridiculous mustache, and his pale skin tinted an almost sickly color that was exacerbated by his mustard silk house coat.

  He had an apelike quality about him. Arms too long for his stocky body. Posture curled with indolent apathy, though blessed with brute strength. A golden gorilla.

  Barely fucking human.

  “Here.” Lorelai offered him another bite of soup, doing her best to dispel the tension gathering in the room. “Do you think you can finish?”

  “Like rabbit, do you?” Mortimer asked.

  “Rabbit?” An adorable wrinkle appeared between her brows. “Cook didn’t get any at market, did you finally catch some in your snares?”

  “No.” Mortimer packed the single syllable to overflowing with cruel anticipation.

  “Mortimer … what did you do?” Setting the half-empty bowl down with such haste, the contents sloshed onto the bedside table, Lorelai stood to question her brother.

  A fear the boy didn’t understand feathered across her features.

  “Why go through the trouble of snaring rabbits, when there were perfectly good ones out back in the pens?” Mortimer obviously savored the devastation of his sister’s features. Her abject shock melting to horror and then to heartbreak.

  “No,” she sobbed, clutching at her throat. “Mortimer, how could you?”

  Her brother shrugged his shoulders. “Oh, come on, Duck. Rabbits are rabbits. What does it matter if I snare them in the fields or take them from the pens?”

  “You knew they were mine, I saved them from starvation when they were just orphans. They had names, Mortimer! They were my friends!”

  “And now they’re your food,” Mortimer said smugly.

  “We … ate them.” All color drained from her face, replaced with an alarming shade of puce. Lorelai clapped her hand over her mouth, convulsed once, twice, then lurched out of the room as fast as her limp would allow.

  “Watching her run never ceases to amuse me,” Mortimer chuckled.

  Unable to reach for her from his useless spot on the bed, the boy watched her steady herself on the wall as she fled, eventually disappearing around a corner in a frenzy of curls and grief.

  Bile crawled into his chest, flooding his mouth with stinging moisture. The sides of his jaw ached and his throat closed off with a lump of rage as hot as a brick of coal from the fire.

  “What a little fool,” Mortimer commiserated. “She’d likely release those beasts into the fens, and they’d just end up in my snare anyhow. Or on a rack at the butcher’s. Will we ever understand women?”

  “You … did that on purpose.” Eventually
his throat released enough for him to rasp words around his rage. “To hurt her.”

  Blue eyes darkened to a granite gray. “Careful, cripple. Father says you can stay, but only because I wanted it.”

  “Why?” He’d meant the question in regard to Mortimer’s cruelty to his sweet sister, but Mortimer mistook his meaning.

  “I’m bored.” Another shrug, as though he could barely punctuate his apathy with his shoulder. “And you’re a mystery I’d like to solve.”

  The anger felt good, in a way. It poured through him like molten metal, molding him into an eventual weapon. It overtook the eternal throb in his broken ankle. The pounding in his head. The sharp stab of his ribs with every breath. It strengthened him.

  It forged him.

  Rage was something he knew how to wield. Just … not yet. Not until he was stronger.

  Mortimer hadn’t finished. “You should have seen yourself. When the burns bubbled, then burst. It was the most putrid thing. And Duck, she was always there, playing the little nurse to Dr. Holcomb. Bringing herbs in from the fens. Mixing you potions. I’m surprised she didn’t poison you or cause you to shit yourself to death.”

  They both stared down the hallway where she’d retreated.

  “Don’t get attached,” Mortimer scoffed. “You’re just another wild animal to her. She’ll release you back to whatever shit pile you crawled away from just as soon as you’re able. She keeps none of her patients for long. Besides, a highborn cripple cannot show interest in a lowborn cripple. Though, watching you two travel anywhere would be hilarious in the extreme.”

  The heat in his veins instantly turned to ice. Hardening him in tense, torturous increments. His blood stilled, awaiting his next command. He’d expected an explosion of temper, an inferno of rage. But no. He sensed he’d felt this way before. Before he’d ended a life.

  Lives.

  Calm. Cold. Almost … anticipatory.

  So, he thought serenely. I am a monster, then. And in this moment, he was glad of it.

  “You fancy yourself dangerous, don’t you?” Mortimer correctly assessed.

  “I fancy nothing.”

  “Maybe you are. I went with Dr. Holcomb to that open grave, you know. Full of cholera victims from the East End that the queen paid mightily to be buried far away from the city. Those corpses mixed with a few of those who met their fates at Gallows Corner thrown in for good measure. Sometimes … before the graves are slated to be filled, a murder victim or two finds their way onto the pile.”