The Duke with the Dragon Tattoo

by Byrne, Kerrigan

  Lorelai took her dear sister’s hand, and they clung to each other for a while. “Perhaps if Mr. Gooch is pleased with me, he’ll allow you and Mortimer back to Southbourne Grove after a time.”

  “I shall miss you.” Veronica’s own tears brightened her gaze from emerald to jade. She pressed her gloves to her eyelids, not allowing the tears to fall. Lorelai suspected she didn’t want smudges in the powder she applied to hide the still-healing bruise on her cheek.

  Veronica’s wealth of carefully arranged dark curls danced in the sunlight streaming in through the tall windows of her chamber. The grand manse had been her home for four years, and now she’d be forced to leave it, penniless and ashamed.

  “Southend-On-Sea is not so very far away, and since our husbands’ business interests are now aligned, I’m certain we shall see much of each other.” Lorelai ascertained instantly her attempt at cheering the younger woman was an utter failure.

  “Mortimer made it clear that I cannot visit until I conceive an heir.” Veronica put a hand to her empty womb.

  “Mortimer can suck rotten eggs,” Lorelai spat, causing Tamerlane to change his mind about being held, and leap out of her arms, his tail held high with distaste.

  Veronica had conceived a child and had lost it because of Mortimer’s heavy fists less than a year ago.

  Still pale with grief, Veronica never dared smile, but her porcelain cheek dimpled on the rare occasion she was pleased. “At least you’ll get to stay with your animals. The estuary can remain your sanctuary.”

  “I only hope my new husband allows me to keep all of them.”

  “Do your best to give him a son,” Veronica advised. “Perhaps an heir will entice him toward indulgence.”

  The thought of lying beneath her corpulent fiancé, who smelled of machine engines and bacon grease, was enough to incite a fit of vapors. Allowing him to touch her. There. To put his troutlike lips on her. A shudder oozed down her spine, fanning spikes of revulsion to lift goosepimples on her skin.

  “Lorelai,” Veronica ventured cautiously. “Have you ever … that is … has anyone ever discussed … your wedding night with you? What to expect? What to do?”

  As much as she adored Veronica, Lorelai very much did not desire to have a woman eight years her junior explain marital relations to her. As if today could be any more demeaning.

  “I’ve not doctored so many creatures for so long without obtaining a basic understanding of mammalian mating habits.” Lorelai did her best to keep her mortification from coloring her voice. “I don’t suppose a man of Mr. Gooch’s age and … dimensions can manage such a physical undertaking well or often. It shan’t last long, I’m sure.”

  Veronica turned away, but not quickly enough to hide her disconsolate expression. “If you’re lucky, it won’t. But surely you’ve more experience than the observation of beasts.”

  “I have been kissed,” she huffed. Once.

  “And was it a pleasant kiss?”

  “It was like a dream. But better.” Twenty years. Twenty years and she could still taste his warmth. Could still conjure the fullness of his lower lip, the intensity beneath his restraint. The sweeps and drags of his smooth mouth against hers. The utter, heartbreaking need.

  He’d been a dark creature with fathomless eyes. A specter of some other time. Some other fantasy. A loss too devastating to be evoked.

  Especially today.

  Ash.

  That hope had died a thousand painful deaths. And she’d cried enough tears to overflow the marshes before she’d accepted the soul-crushing truth.

  He’d remembered who he was. And whatever he’d left in his past had been enough to make him forget the promise he’d made to her.

  There are only two indisputable facts in this world. One, that the sun will set in the west. And two, that I’ll come for you. Always.

  “I’m glad you’ve had one pleasant kiss,” Veronica was saying. “Perhaps you can remember it tonight whilst … you know. Also, there are … things you can do … to help hurry along—”

  “Lady Southbourne, Lady Lorelai, the carriage is come to fetch you to the church.”

  Steeling herself, Lorelai turned to the footman. “Thank you—er—” Strange. She didn’t at all recognize him, and she considered herself familiar with everyone employed at Southbourne Grove. Had Mr. Gooch already begun installing his own staff? The nerve of the man, really! And who was this footman, anyhow, who could step so lightly they’d not mark his entrance? “I’m sorry, remind me of your name.”

  “Moncrieff, my lady.” He glanced from Veronica to her, and back to Veronica again.

  Not someone Mortimer would hire, certainly. Her brother wasn’t fond of men taller or more handsome than he. With hair rich and lambent as brandy tied into a queue, Moncrieff possessed the depraved sort of good looks one would attribute to a libertine like Casanova or Byron rather than your workaday footman.

  “Thank you, Moncrieff, we’ll be down presently.” Lorelai dismissed him.

  He executed a flawless bow, turned on his heel, and marched out.

  “Moncrieff.” Veronica blinked rapidly, as one might after glancing directly at the sun. “I’m sure I would have—that I’ve never—is he new?”

  “Apparently.” Taking one last glance at herself, Lorelai decided she looked perfect for a second-rate wedding day. Her dress, a simple gold affair, set off the sun-stained metallic highlights in her hair. Her maid had arranged it into an intricate coiffure of braids, leaving long darker curls to tumble down her back. Generally, her round cheeks and high color hid her age, but Veronica was right, her recent weight loss painted every one of her thirty-and-four years onto her terse features. She appeared as limp and listless as she felt.

  “You look like a goddess.” Veronica affixed the Southbourne sapphire tiara to her hair, arranging the attached veil with deft puffs and pulls.

  “I look like a gibbon,” Lorelai groused.

  Usually, a maid or seamstress would make any last-minute adjustments to the clothing, but Veronica had both a talent and zeal for fashion.

  “Do you want your cane?”

  Lorelai shook her head. “Not today.” With her luck, she’d rest her cane on her dress and rip it on the way down the aisle, or something equally mortifying.

  They hurried—as fast as Lorelai hurried anywhere—to the carriage.

  Mortimer had decided Veronica was all she required in the way of bridesmaids. The countess wrestled with the dress while Moncrieff was kind enough to lift the veil off Southbourne Grove’s circular drive.

  The carriage must have belonged to Mr. Gooch, as it was larger and grander than any Mortimer owned by at least half.

  Clouds hung over the bay, inching toward the mouth of the Black Water River, pregnant with the promise of rain. A few ships moored in the distance bobbed in the choppy waves. Sloops, sailboats, and a rather large, dark ship with curiously few masts. A steam-belching stranger to these familiar shores. Though, she supposed, Maldon and Heybridge attracted more and more industrial commerce these days and, unfortunately, men like her husband-to-be.

  Her ankle ached in weather like this, and she favored it as she made her way down the steps to the coach. A tall, ebony-clad coachman, with a collar turned up to ward off the increasing wind, held a team of four restless black steeds in check.

  An appropriate color, in Lorelai’s assessment, as it felt as though she were being conducted to her own funeral, rather than her wedding.

  Tucked into the carriage with Veronica, Lorelai fought a suffocating sense of surrealistic dread the entire way. Every moment this day progressed promised to be more horrifying than the last.

  It would begin with a promenade down a long aisle, conducted by a brother who would think nothing of tripping her if only for the sake of his sick amusement. At the end of such a potentially disastrous walk stood a fiancé she’d only met but once, on the day he’d won her and Southbourne Grove in a poker game, and come to inspect his prize like one would a brood mare
.

  He seemed more impressed with the estate than his bride.

  Sylvester Gooch. A beady-eyed, sour-faced glutton with prominent jowls who seemed to snore even when awake.

  The soiree after the wedding would be nothing less than a chore, accepting disingenuous felicitations, watching others dance when she could not, and doing her best not to obsessively dread what came next.

  The wedding night. God, how was she going to endure it?

  She must. Or she and Veronica—to say nothing of Mortimer—would be out on the street. The ancient Weatherstoke name ruined beyond repair.

  And worse, her animals would be without a home, and the meager staff she’d hired to keep them, unemployed.

  Too many souls, both human and otherwise, depended on her for their survival.

  And, once again, Mortimer had crippled her—hobbled her, more like—forcing her to suffer for his own heinous iniquities.

  Devil take him, she railed to the incoming clouds. Take him back to hell where he belongs.

  As though to answer her invocation, a burst of sudden thunder broke over the mouth of the river, gathering a parliament of angry clouds to the east.

  “Frightful weather,” Veronica mumbled, fussing with the peacock feather in her lovely headdress. “I hope the footman and coachmen don’t catch a chill should they become drenched.”

  “Perhaps we should order them to keep going right past the chapel,” Lorelai suggested wryly. “Challenge them to outrun the storm.”

  “Tempting,” Veronica sighed.

  The coach trundled to a stop, fascinating a parcel of latecomers still filing into the church.

  Lorelai held her breath as Mortimer forced his way through a small crowd rudely gathered at the open doors of the gray stone cathedral, his mottled skin matching the wine velvet of his vest.

  “He doesn’t look pleased,” Veronica fretted, a sheen of sweat gathering on her brow despite the plummeting temperatures.

  Lorelai forced herself not to remark upon the colossal proportion of her sister-in-law’s understatement as the Earl of Southbourne stalked toward her. His hair had thinned, and his waist had thickened over the years, but he was still the same bulky, manipulative sadist she’d been raised to fear.

  If she disembarked the carriage by the time he reached them, the people milling about would take note of their arrival, and an audience would at least decrease the likeliness of an unpleasant interaction of a physical nature.

  Apparently, Veronica had been of the same mind, as she leaped for the latch before Moncrieff had even appeared from his perch to help them down.

  Ungainly teal skirts barely seemed to hinder Veronica at all, as she daintily hopped down without the use of the steps, and turned to assist Lorelai. “Quickly, now,” she urged.

  Lorelai gathered up the length of her veil in a billowing ivory armful, and reached out to take Veronica’s hand. Her landing was decidedly less graceful, and the gathering wind threatened to rip her veil from her grasp.

  The ground beneath her slippers seemed to tremble as the driver’s heavy boots landed beside her.

  Startled, both ladies gaped at his broad back as he advanced. The wind whipped his black leather coat around his long legs as he strolled toward the cathedral as blithely as an invited guest.

  Just what did he think he was doing?

  Mortimer jabbed an accusatory finger at her, condemnation seething from him like an inquisitor to a witch. “Did you do something to scare him off?”

  Lorelai flinched. “W-what?”

  “God, you’re as bloody useless as a lame mare! Your fiancé,” he thundered. “You couldn’t even entice that tub of guts to show up to his own wedding, you—”

  “It’s my fault Mr. Gooch isn’t here, I’m afraid,” the coachman said casually.

  With one nimble motion, he reached into his coat, produced a long, bejeweled dagger, and shoved it beneath Mortimer’s chin.

  He didn’t stop pushing until the point embedded in Mortimer’s brain.

  Lorelai watched her brother die horribly. Slowly.

  And quietly.

  His hateful tongue skewered through right on the yard of the cathedral as his knees buckled and he fell to the earth.

  A strangled sound emanated from Veronica, and she and Lorelai clutched at each other, shrinking back toward the carriage.

  There must have been a commotion. A ripple of awareness as the attendees inside became cognizant of the turmoil out on the grounds. Sobs. Screams.

  Lorelai marked none of it.

  A weighty fatigue settled upon her and black spots danced in her periphery. The world swayed. Or did she? No. Not now. She couldn’t faint. She couldn’t leave poor Veronica alone to face whatever came next.

  Because the coachman turned to address them both. He removed the cowl that had hidden his features and turned down his collar.

  A black cloud of horror smothered her. Black, like his eyes. Like his hair. Like the grief that had swallowed her when he hadn’t returned all those years ago.

  Like the churning storm that framed him now, summoned by whatever ancient, malevolent God had unleashed him upon this earth.

  She couldn’t say his name. Because this devil before her surely was not Ash. He was taller. Wider. Darker in every way possible.

  He’d just … murdered her brother. Without sentiment, explanation, or ceremony of any kind.

  And now he simply regarded her with the same sort of triumphant expectation one would after a particularly well played bout of croquet.

  “Captain.” Moncrieff blocked her from flinging herself at him, whether to assault him or embrace him, she hadn’t yet decided. “I do believe it’s time we quit this affair.”

  “I do believe you’re right.”

  He stalked back toward the carriage in long, primal strides. His carriage, Lorelai realized numbly.

  For that’s what she was. Numb. She couldn’t feel her feet beneath her or her hands at the ends of her wrists. Not until he moved closer.

  Lightning forked across a once-calm sky, but that wasn’t what lifted every hair on her body.

  It was the way he moved. Upright, like a man, but with the feral tread of an animal. Every motion maintained by absolute control and primal intent.

  No pleasure brightened the pitiless voids of his eyes. No tender hunger. Nor bitter wrath. Not even a murderous fury to warrant such an act of violence.

  And yet there had been no true violence in the deed.

  Just a smooth, unhurried pressure. Utter, lethal precision … and a man’s life ended. It had been as if he’d performed the act a thousand times. A million, maybe.

  This couldn’t be. Lorelai’s mind hurried to reject the specter of a beloved ghost thought long dead.

  Thrusting a hyperventilating Veronica behind her, she did what she could to stumble out of his way.

  If only she could run. But, she realized, even an able-bodied person wouldn’t easily evade such a man.

  She’d thought him tall, but had been mistaken.

  He’d been tall twenty years ago. Now, he was tremendous.

  “Get in the carriage.” The wind stole notes of his low, cool command, but Lorelai read every word on his lips.

  Veronica scrambled inside.

  A thousand, thousand refusals, questions, and emotions swirled in a maelstrom of hysteria inside of her head.

  What escaped was, “Why?” The word was both all-encompassing, and completely insubstantial, but her rapidly closing throat couldn’t force out one more word.

  “I came for you,” he answered dispassionately.

  “Why?” she gasped again, hoping she could hear his answer over the hammering of her heart.

  Coffee-dark eyes speared her with an arctic indifference she’d not known existed until this moment. “Does the sun still set in the west?”

  The question stole her ability to breathe. She’d been hoping that despite the brutal features, despite the blue-black of his hair, and the unmistakable scars, she�
��d still been gaping at an interloper.

  Mutely, she nodded.

  “Then get in the carriage, Lorelai.”

  Something about his order broke the stricken chains of traumatic astonishment. “The sun has set in the west every day for twenty years.” The words tumbled out before she could think better of it. Before she could call them back.

  If she’d thought his eyes black before, she’d been wrong. They’d been dark, surely, but now they were little more than desolate, abysmal mirrors in which she could divine her own dire fate.

  “You do not want me to put you into the carriage,” he informed her pleasantly. “I still have your brother’s blood on my hands.”

  Was he threatening her? Or showing her an unimaginably macabre form of courtesy?

  He held out his gloves, demonstrating that he was in no way being figurative.

  Swallowing the acid crawling up her throat, Lorelai complied, allowing Veronica’s clutching hands to pull her in.

  Lorelai had expected him to lock them in and mount the driver’s seat in order to race away from the growing pandemonium.

  Instead, he climbed in behind her, settling his bulk across from them.

  “Who—who are you?” Veronica whimpered. “What do you want?”

  He leaned forward, dark and sinister as death himself, and bowed his head in a strangely cultured mockery of tradition. “Allow me to properly present myself, Lady Southbourne. In the Orient, they call me the Black Dragon. In Africa, I am known as the Sea Panther. A warlord along the Persian coast once granted me the title the Djinn of Darkness. I have many names, and even more titles, but first I am captain of the Devil’s Dirge, more commonly known in this part of the world simply as … the Rook.”

  CHAPTER SIX

  “They’ll come looking for us, won’t they?” Veronica reasoned as she and Lorelai clutched at each other in the captain’s quarters of the selfsame dark steamship she’d admired not an hour prior. “I mean, we were abducted from your wedding after he stabbed … after Mortimer…” She swallowed as a visible shudder ran through her. “Several people witnessed the murder and would have contacted the authorities by now. Probably the whole British Navy is after us. The Rook has been a quarry of theirs for ages. They’ll rescue us and hang him for a pirate. And we can go home.”