The prick of tears became a burn.
“It is very good.” He lowered his head to his shoulder, as though to bring it into her line of sight, rather than require her to lift her gaze.
Glancing up, she found his jaw flexing and working. Movements made when the fare needn’t be chewed, merely rolled and processed by an enterprising and appreciative tongue.
She swallowed when he did, her mouth watering as though she’d taken the bite.
“I can’t ever remember having better.” His next bite was not so dainty as the one she’d cut for him. Indeed, it was almost half the slice of cake. As he savored it, his eyes crinkled a bit at the edges. Not a smile, but a resemblance of amusement.
Belatedly, she realized he’d just attempted a joke at his own missing memory’s expense.
A giggle escaped her. Then another.
Before preparing his next bite, he asked, “If you decided today is my birthday, did you also decide how old I am turning?”
Heartened, she rushed to answer him. “Mortimer thinks you cannot be as old as he, and he’s twenty.”
At the mention of her brother, the sparkle in his eye turned into a glint. “What do you think?”
Lorelai blinked. No one had ever asked her that before. A little spark of delight warmed her from behind her ribs. He asked because he wanted to know; she could see the patient curiosity blinking out at her.
His age took up a great deal of her idle speculation. Studying him now, she made her best assessment of him.
Whoever created him had not only been particularly detailed, but disproportionately punitive to the rest of mankind. His features were nothing less than aggressively masculine. Sharp. Broad. With deep lines and hard planes. And yet … if one looked closely, there was a sense of the sensual his sculptor must have tried hard to conceal. His upper lip, for example, was little more than a thin slash, but not so with the one beneath. His crooked nose was patrician enough for Caesar himself to have looked down from as he wrested power from all the world, and resided between rather barbaric cheekbones. His jaw was nothing less than belligerent. Not so square as Mortimer’s but neither was it diminutive.
It was the sort of jaw that, when painted, rendered the subject a villain rather than a hero. A cleft split the middle of his chin. Dimpled and webbed by pink, healing burns scarred his jaw from his left ear, and down his neck to the deep lines created by his collarbone before disappearing into his sleeve.
His jaw, she realized, strong as it was, had required very little shaving in the weeks he’d been at Southbourne Grove. And, as she’d previously tested with her own fingertips … with her lips … his chest remained smooth. Hairless.
Men had hair, didn’t they?
So he was maybe not yet a man … but most certainly not a boy.
His head had been all but shorn a month past. Now, thick layers of ebony tousled every which way, untamed by a comb or pomade.
It suited him, though.
Everything suited him.
Blushing, she remembered that he had a bit of dark hair protecting his … his … Well, never mind what it was called. But Mortimer had intimated that he was of the opinion there wasn’t enough of it for a man grown.
Her gaze wandered lower. She certainly wouldn’t know about such things, and it wasn’t as though she could just ask—
“Lorelai?” Her name was more a plea than a question.
Golly, had she said anything aloud?
He’d stopped eating. Frozen in a thin-eyed calculation of his own.
She cleared her throat with a distinctly unladylike sound. “I—I know you must be older than me, as you have the voice of a man, and most of the boys my age have similar voices to mine.”
“What is your age?” he asked alertly.
“Fourteen.”
He made a sound in his throat, though whether affirmative or negative, she could hardly tell.
“Let us say that you are seventeen today. Younger than twenty, but still almost grown.” He’d a very young—very vigorous—body, but the soul who peered out of those eyes had seen everything one would wish to in a lifetime.
And then perhaps a little more.
“That would put three years between us.” He said this as if it were significant.
“Is that a good number of years? Or bad?” she couldn’t help but ask.
“I couldn’t say.” He took a distracted bite, then asked, “What is the date? I’d like to know, should I live to see my next birthday.”
She grinned. “It’s August second, for future reference.”
That noise again. Like the disinterested groan of a wolfhound. A thinking sound, perhaps?
“Do you … like your birthday?” she fretted. “We could always change it.”
His eyes melted from hard sable to soft pitch. “It’s my favorite day so far.”
Pleased and discomfited by the gravity in his words, she groped for something to occupy her racing thoughts.
“I brought presents. Well, sort of presents. You won’t be able to keep them, but since you haven’t been able to meet my friends…” Reaching for the covers to the pens she’d had conducted to his bedside, she pulled them away, like a magician unveiling his grand reveal. “I thought I’d bring them to you.”
He surveyed her “friends” with the appropriate expression of curiosity and enjoyment. Enough to delight her into congratulating herself on such a capital idea.
From their respective pens peered three sleepy foxes, two turtles, a bunny, a ferret, and a snake.
“You … saved them all?” he murmured.
“I did, yes,” she said, grimacing at the excess pride in her voice. She couldn’t say why, exactly, but she very much wanted him to be pleased with her. Impressed, perhaps. “Oh! And the best one I brought just for you.” Bustling to the wooden box at the foot of the bed, covered to protect a nest, she hoisted it next to him and lifted the lid. “Happy birth—”
He said words she’d never known to be curses until that moment, as he retreated across the vast bed.
Shocked, utterly stymied, she stared down into the disinterested eye of the young roosting rook with a broken wing in complete amazement. “You … you don’t like it?” She knew it to be an obviously senseless question the moment it escaped on a quivering gasp, but astonishment had apparently stolen her wits.
“Like it?” he panted from several spans away. “Why the fuck would I—” Disgust had pilfered what little color resided in his cheeks, but once he looked into her swimming eyes, he clamped his jaw against whatever else he’d been about to say.
A hot tear slid down her cheek. She wished she could drown herself in it, somehow, so powerful was her mortification.
His panic seemed to intensify as he held out a hand. “Don’t … don’t cry.”
“I’m not.” She sucked in a shaky gasp, petrified into place by indecision and self-contempt as her breaths turned into hiccups.
“Please.” He groaned. “I—can’t bear it if you—” Decisive determination hardened his features, and he only spared the nest three sideways glances of unease as he inched back toward her.
“I—gave you a birthday—and—and then I—ruined it!” she sobbed.
“Lorelai.” Big hands dragged her off her feet and onto the bed, until she was cradled against his chest. A warm body with not one soft place to be found, folded around her like a shelter from the storm of her sorrow.
She collapsed into his strength, abandoning her own. Never had she been held like this. Never had anyone taken the burden of her weight, nor the weight of her pain, and acted as a bulwark against it. If only she could stop crying long enough to marvel at the miracle.
Callused fingers snagged at her cheeks as tears disappeared the moment they fell.
“Lorelai. Please. Do not weep. I’m sorry.” The desperation in his voice quelled her sadness, enough to give her the strength to fight the next wave of sobs. His breath was a sweet-scented breeze across her face as he pulled her closer. His vo
ice broke often with uncharacteristic youth as he scrambled to explain. “When I woke in that grave … Ravens … they were picking at the bodies of the dead. Tearing things off them. Out of them. You understand? One came after me…”
Holy God. Lorelai hid her face against his chest as a fresh wave of tears crashed against her. She’d gifted him a nightmare. How could she be so thoughtless?
“Lorelai.” The backs of his knuckles lifted her chin, forcing her to look at him. “Sweetest Lorelai.” It was as though he could not stop saying her name. His own eyes melted. Misted. His rigid features impossibly tender. “I know you. You had a reason, didn’t you? For bringing me this…” His dimpled chin gestured to the crate teetering dangerously next to them.
“It’s so inane.”
“Tell me,” he soothed, his fingers brushing at damp curls trying to stick to the tears on her cheeks.
Snuffling her embarrassment, she peered over to the crate. “I thought the raven’s feathers look like your eyes. Black upon first glance, but when you inspect them more closely, there are a great many colors, indeed.” She leaned up a little. Not enough to leave his embrace, but to show him what she meant. “Sort of—sort of iridescent, aren’t they? Extraordinary, really. Every time I looked at him, I thought of you. I thought—they were lovely.”
She stared at the raven, currently running his long beak across the back of his feathers with improbable bends of his neck, impervious to her outburst of emotion.
The silence stretched out for a moment too long before one arm released her, and reached for the box.
“I suppose … this one isn’t so terrible.” He stroked a feather with the very tip of a square finger, palpably suppressing a flinch when the bird noticed.
Both man and creature didn’t move for endless silent moments.
Her every fiber attuned to his, Lorelai sensed him relax in unfurling increments, turning to warm muscle again instead of cold steel. She’d never been so comfortable. Never felt so safe.
“Good God, what’s it doing?”
The bird had rested its beak atop his wrist, inspecting them both with tiny, rapid jerks of his head.
“I think he likes you,” she ventured. Perhaps if she educated him about the birds, he’d understand them better. Perhaps he’d even forgive them for mistaking him for a corpse. He’d been in a grave, after all. They could hardly be blamed. “Ravens are really such clever birds. Someone once told me they have a rather intricate language, not just all cackles and caws. They like puzzles, and play.” She brushed her hand over the bird’s uninjured wing, enjoying the inky sheen illuminated by the candlelight. “They fall in love.”
“How do you know?” His whisper caressed her ear, and she shivered.
“For their whole life, they have one mate. One other to whom, no matter where the wind takes them, they never fail to return. I always considered them rather beautiful, romantic birds … That is, of course, unless they’re eating people.”
She felt him smile against her hair.
“It’s why I’m so anxious for Atilla to heal,” she babbled on. “What if he has someone waiting for him? Someone he’s desperate to return to? What if she’s afraid he won’t come for her?” The very idea fragmented her.
After a pensive moment he said, “You named him Atilla?”
“Oh yes.” She brightened, “And the snake is Hannibal. The turtles over there are Genghis and Kublai. The foxes are Vlad the Impaler, Ivan the Terrible, and Catherine the Great—it was Alexander the Great at first, but then for obvious reasons I had to change the name, and naturally I found a supplemental ‘Great.’”
“Naturally.”
She allowed her head to rest against his shoulder, lulled by the rhythm of his inhalations. She didn’t allow herself to consider what would happen should she be caught in such a posture, in such proximity to a man in his state of undress. It seemed that through nursing him, a sense of intimacy and familiarity she’d not considered until now had bloomed between them.
She wanted him close. Craved it with a ferocity her young mind didn’t understand. She wanted his skin next to hers. Reveled in the scent and sight and warmth of him.
For warmth wasn’t something she experienced enough of.
Furthermore, no one much cared about her pets. She had to protect them from Mortimer just as attentively as she did from each other and the elements. Her father’s apathy toward her beasts was legendary, to say the least. And though she suspected they were too kind to say so, she had the idea that the servants found them more of a nuisance than a pleasure.
“What did you name the weasel?” he queried.
“It’s a ferret, and his name is Brutus. Oh, and the little rabbit over there is Napoleon Bonaparte. We … We ate Josephine, Lucien, and Pauline. Now he’s all alone.” She swallowed grief that should not be so fresh.
He cradled her gently, but she didn’t miss that his hand curled into a fist.
“Such fierce names you’ve given them.” She glowed because it sounded like he approved. “Do you have particularly violent turtles?”
Lorelai had the sense they were both wondering how he could remember all these historical figures when he could not recall his own past.
“I’ve given them epic legacies to live up to. To be fierce, to be a conqueror or a warrior, one must first recover one’s strength. I feel it might help them get better. A name is important, you know. It has power. A turtle named after a great Kahn would just feel silly if he died without a fight.”
“Let’s give me a name,” he suggested. “William after the Conqueror? Julius, after the Caesar. Or Antony? Not Octavian or Augustus, I’ll not have it. David, maybe? The one who defeated Goliath. David sounds close to something…”
“Oh, I named you ages ago,” she informed him merrily. The veins in his arm she’d been mentally tracing momentarily distracted her from remembering that she’d planned to keep that fact from him.
He stilled. “What … did you name me?”
“Ash.”
He snorted. “Because I’m more cinder than flesh?”
“Because I found you under an ancient, enormous ash tree, obviously.”
“Ash,” he repeated. “Not exactly a king’s name, nor a warrior’s.”
“It’s better than all that,” she rushed to explain, distressed by the disenchantment in his voice. “Our housekeeper, Maeve, says her family is descended from Druids. According to her, the Tree of Life is an ash tree, and it holds the whole of the earth and the sky together. It heals the sick, protects the innocent, and endows immortality to the worthy. So … as legacies go, I’d say I granted you a right whopper.”
“That you did.” The look he slanted down at her brimmed with something so tender, her throat ached in response. “Ash it is, then. Until I recover my family name.”
“You could be Ash Weatherstoke,” she offered, knowing it was terrible of her to hope he never belonged to any family but hers. “Father doesn’t mind. He says it looks good to society when a genteel family takes in a poor relation. A distant cousin, perhaps?”
The tenderness evaporated, his lips pressing into a tight crease. “I don’t like the idea of being a poor relation. Someone not good enough for…” He broke off, glancing away from her. “Not if I’m to someday…”
She certainly wished he’d finish those sentences. She’d never wished anything so mightily.
“I did not mean to offend you.” Again, she amended silently. Lud, but it was a blessing animals couldn’t understand her. Or she’d probably drive them all off with her constant meddling. “I suggested we make you part of the family. It was Father who came up with the poor-relation bit.”
“I do not want anyone to mock me. To think me less…”
“No one would dare.” Of this she was certain. A man with such strength and height, such unusual musculature, wouldn’t be ready fodder for the jackanapes. “Besides, it’s not so bad really.”
At his look, she hurried to explain.
�
�The thing about being mocked or laughed at is … you forget to fear it after a while. It’s just something that happens.”
“By Mortimer, you mean?” He said the name as though it tasted of tar.
“Mortimer, yes. And just about everyone else.”
“Because of … your ankle?”
She nodded, suddenly very shy.
His palm gently landed on her knee, gathering the ruffles in his hand until the hem of the sky-blue skirt revealed her white-stockinged feet.
Lorelai could only stand shoes for so long, and almost never wore them in the house.
They both gazed at her slim ankle, forever turned inward at a grotesque angle.
“Were you born with it like that?”
“It happened when I was six.” The gentle curiosity in his voice prompted her to answer questions she’d always avoided.
“What happened?”
“My ankle was broken, like yours.”
“Like mine?” he puzzled. “But … Dr. Holcomb said by the end of the year my ankle would be like it was before. I can almost walk on it now. Why not yours?”
Wounded with a familiar shame. Struck dumb with unrequited fury, she simply shrugged.
“Lorelai?” A dark suspicion turned her name into an accusation. “How was your ankle broken?”
“I’m not supposed to say.” She pulled away from him, but the muscles of his arms bunched, tightening around her.
“Mortimer.” His one harsh word contained all the knowledge she wasn’t supposed to impart. All the darkness contained by a moonless night. All the wrath of the devil, himself.
“I broke his wooden sword with my boot…” She wished her voice were not so small. That she could summon the acceptance she’d counterfeited for more than half her life. “So, he broke my leg with his boot.”
Ash became very still. Unnaturally so. Only his chest lifting with the increasing intakes of breath.
“Does it hurt?” he asked tightly after a long while.
“Sometimes,” she admitted.
“What did the doctor say?”
“I never saw a doctor. Father didn’t want anyone to know.” Suddenly frightened, she pulled away from him to implore. “You won’t say anything, will you? Won’t let on that I told you.”
The Duke with the Dragon Tattoo Page 5