The Duke with the Dragon Tattoo

by Byrne, Kerrigan

  “That, Countess, is none of your concern.” She’d expected the man to slam out as he left, but he only shut the door with a silent click behind him.

  A quarter hour later a smallish Jamaican man by the odd name of Saxby tiptoed in, bringing with him afternoon tea, a pitcher of ice shards, and leaving with an outfit for his captain.

  Where one kept ice on a pirate ship was beyond her.

  Veronica ate a little, and nursed her tea in between bouts of ministering ice-cold cloths to Lorelai’s forehead.

  When the sun began to dip toward the west, the door opened and heavy footsteps fell behind her. Veronica didn’t bother to look up. She didn’t want to meet the Rook’s cold stare again.

  “If you hurry, I can help you escape.”

  Every part that made Veronica a female clenched at the sound of that voice. It took a moment longer than it should for the words to register.

  She whirled to find Moncrieff filling the doorway. It should be illegal for a man to appear both an angel and a rogue at once, Veronica thought unkindly. Especially when she knew the deviancies of which he was capable. Not to mention the unwelcome, but not unpleasant, sensations he’d elicited within her.

  He’d dressed in fawn trousers and a cream shirt. The afternoon sun gleamed off his hair, damp and lambent from a recent wash.

  Had the prostitute bathed him? Why did the thought of that intimacy between a woman she didn’t know, and a man she didn’t wish to be acquainted with, turn the corners of her mouth down?

  Also, why couldn’t she bring herself to look at his mouth? Or, anywhere above his neck, really.

  She knew why.

  Did he?

  Finally, the word escape permeated her mortification.

  “You’re letting us go?” She found that hard to believe. Could he be playing some sort of terrible game with her? “Y-you would do that to your captain?”

  His hazel eyes turned gray with the threat of a storm. “I do this for my captain.” He gestured to Lorelai, who still slumbered unnaturally deep. “Whoever this woman is to him, he forgets that he is the Rook around her. He becomes someone else.”

  “Who?”

  Moncrieff scowled. “I don’t know. And I don’t want to know, not until we find the Claudius Cache.”

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  In his tenure as the Rook, he’d only been outmaneuvered … well … never. He’d plotted a successful invasion at best, and a slightly protracted siege at worst.

  In no scenario he could devise would Dorian Blackwell, the Blackheart of Ben More, be meeting an ambush with an invitation to open battle.

  Yet there the bastard stood, yards away with twelve men to the Rook’s ten, matching him pistol for pistol. Brute for murderous, bloodthirsty brute.

  Almost.

  Moncrieff had offered to take Barnaby and another rifleman to the other side of the isle to approach from behind, in case such an occasion should occur. They would offer long-range cover from the hills.

  So, where were they?

  From beneath his cowl, the Rook scanned the jagged peaks beyond which Ben More Keep settled in the distance, lording over a crystal cove. They were the castle’s only weakness, these treacherous, mossy mountains. Even from the keep’s tower, it was impossible for a lookout to see over the black stone knolls to the swath of beach where they’d moored the longboats. Just above the ridge closest to Ben More Peak, the charred stone skeleton of burned Jacobite ruin told of a century-old British invasion.

  The Rook had brought his most fleet-footed men, and they should have been able to navigate the perilous mountain terrain and reach the ruins of the castle before needing to concern themselves with discovery.

  When the Blackheart of Ben More and his men had melted from the shadows of the ruins upon the Rook’s approach, his astonishment turned into anticipation.

  Better a battle, mayhap, than an invasion. Castles had fortifications, hiding places, armories, and corners in which to be trapped. Out beneath the sky, beneath the sunset to the west and the threatening clouds above, he could take full measure of the men before him.

  And calculate exactly how long it would take them to die.

  With luck, Moncrieff and his riflemen were in position to provide cover. But when had luck ever been on his side? Never. Fate was an enemy with which he waged a constant war. He’d carved his own destiny out of the flesh of his enemies.

  His men were trained more for naval combat, but they’d overwhelmed many an opponent on land. Today would be no different.

  The Rook kept his pistol leveled on the raven-haired, black-eyed bastard standing in the exact same position as him. Several yards away, out in front of his men, who took a similar formation as the Rook’s own crew.

  He could have been looking in a mirror, but for the eye patch over his adversary’s left eye.

  The handicap would make Dorian Blackwell a weaker shot.

  That shouldn’t matter. It didn’t usually. But … what if Blackwell’s bullet found its mark this time? Death possessed a particular repugnance today, as the thought of leaving Lorelai unprotected on his ship produced a foreign thump against his ribs.

  “Which one of you goes by the name of Frank Walters?” he called across the divide. His crew needed to know which man not to kill. Not until he gleaned the information he came for. “If you give him over, I’ll grant the rest of you your lives.”

  No one moved. No one spoke. So, he cocked his weapon, aiming for Dorian Blackwell’s infamously black heart.

  A shimmer of electric sensation tensed the very organ neither of them claimed to possess. This paroxysm had long since ceased to astonish the Rook. Every time that name crossed his mind, a slight impression of recognition or revulsion came with it.

  Dorian Blackwell.

  To chase the emotion or the memory the name evoked was like searching for shadows on a moonless night. Impossible.

  It haunted him, though. A specter of dread. The ghost of some long-forgotten pain.

  Had they been enemies, once?

  He’d gleaned that Dorian Blackwell and the prisoner known just as “Walters” had become acquainted in Newgate.

  He’d also learned that his half-ruined dragon tattoo was undeniably Walters’s work. Which meant Walters had answers. Not just about the Claudius Cache, but about his past, as well.

  No one, not even this fearsome one-eyed blackguard, would stand in the way of that.

  After a moment fraught with impending aggression, the Blackheart of Ben More took a step forward in the manner of a man after parlance rather than violence.

  “I’ve spent the better part of an hour trying to imagine what would bring the notorious Rook to my island.” His voice slithered through the space between them with a sinister, serpentine grace. “I thought, perhaps, the King of the Seas sought to usurp the King of the London Underworld. Tell me, Rook, have the vast oceans become too small for you? Do you seek to conquer the empire, as well?”

  That voice. Something … something beneath the cultured British accent and the leashed menace. Smooth as silk, and yet it raked at his skin with the soul-flaying swipe of a jungle cat.

  “I want nothing you can claim as your own. Not your stinking city or your lonely castle. I want Frank Walters. Give him to me, and I’ll return to my ship. Our paths need not cross again.”

  Blackwell spoke as though their words traveled across a desk, rather than down the barrels of their guns and across a narrow valley with black peaks that could, at any moment, become their gravestones. He stood just barely too far off for the Rook to identify his exact expression, but he got the impression he’d bemused Blackwell. “Frank was once a master counterfeiter. The best, in fact. Are you here because you’ve taken exception to his previous work?”

  “That’s my business.”

  “He’s one of my men,” Blackwell stated. “His business is my business.”

  If Frank Walters held the secrets of his past, it wasn’t information the Rook wanted in the hands of a canny cr
iminal like Dorian Blackwell.

  “He’s just one man.” The Rook also took a step forward, closing the divide. “If you don’t produce him, my crew will attack, including the sharpshooters I have in the hills. Is Frank Walters worth the loss of a dozen men, and your own life?”

  Blackwell’s notice darted to the hills, as well. His first show of uncertainty. “I’d rather no one die today,” he stated rather blithely, considering. “It’s something of an anniversary, you see, and you’ve interrupted some rather lengthy and amorous plans my wife and I have been anticipating.”

  The Rook tried not to be impressed. The sight of him and his men sent warlords, generals, and even kings scurrying underground. Not Dorian Blackwell. He barely seemed riled.

  Which meant he either was very foolhardy.

  Or he knew something the Rook did not.

  “If you don’t recognize Frank Walters on sight, then any one of these men could be him,” Blackwell reasoned. “What is he worth to you dead?”

  “If you don’t produce him, I get silence either way. However, in one scenario, I’m granted the pleasure of killing you. A prospect which becomes more attractive with each passing moment.” It wasn’t that the Rook had ever learned to school emotion out of his voice, it was more that he’d never had much to convey.

  Apathy had always been his ally.

  So, he considered it alarming that he had to carefully relax his throat and unbind his jaw in order to maintain the same tone of disaffected nonchalance. “You have my terms. Give me Walters, and you’ll return to your wife’s embrace. Refuse, and I’ll leave your corpses in this valley, as I return to mine.”

  “Will you, indeed?” A dark hint of whimsy in Blackwell’s voice produced another breath-stealing palpation.

  The Rook took a threatening step forward. “Speak your piece, or meet your fate,” he snarled.

  “You may have superior numbers, Captain, but I believe I have in my possession something altogether more valuable.” One step closer brought the inexplicably familiar half-smile on his grim mouth into view.

  A headache bloomed behind the Rook’s right eye, which he summarily ignored. “What’s that?” he asked from between clenched teeth.

  “Collateral.”

  “In the form of?” Information? Had Walters already told Blackwell his secrets? Secrets even he was not privy to because of the iron wall in his mind separating him from his memories?

  “Two lovely doves,” Blackwell taunted. “One dark and morose, one sweet and fair with a broken wing. One of them, I gather, is your recent bride.”

  The Rook had experienced fear and fury before. He’d used it, cold and menacing, to kill so many. To wreak the vengeance that had garnered him international renown. But never, never, had he immolated with an inferno of rage this lethal. His blood burned inside of him, scorching through pathways to his muscles screaming for him to strike. To tear limbs from bodies. “I will murder your entire family. I will burn all you hold dear to the ground and smear your body with the ashes.”

  “Yes, yes, I know. As would I in your situation.” The Blackheart of Ben More’s eye shone with an infuriating victorious gleam. “She will remain quite safe so long as there is no violence.”

  “There is always violence,” the Rook vowed.

  “Not this time.”

  “You sealed your fate the moment you touched her.”

  “I didn’t have to touch her,” Blackwell scoffed. “The two washed up on my shore like attractive, exhausted driftwood. If I didn’t know better, I’d say your wife had left you, though now I can see why. You’re every inch the sinister, heartless pirate. I don’t imagine that makes for a desirable spouse.”

  A pang permeated his rage. Lorelai. She’d awoken, and the countess had succeeded in spiriting her away this time.

  She’d left him.

  He’d frightened her, and she’d left him. Had run straight into the clutches of one of the most dangerous men alive.

  “What are we waiting for, Captain?” Haxby hissed from behind him. “He’s lying. Let’s paint this valley with their blood and be done with it.”

  Any other day, he’d have given the order. He’d have ripped the Blackheart of Ben More’s spine out through his throat.

  But he couldn’t. Not if Lorelai was in danger.

  “How do I know you have her?”

  “My wife remarked upon how shamefully one of them was attired. Flannel and muslin rarely flatter each other.” He slid him a sly look. “Had she landed anywhere else, she’d have made quite the scandal…”

  “Ye’re wasting time, Blackwell.” A stout, middle-aged Scotsman at Blackwell’s left elbow was as eager for blood as Haxby. “Let’s gut them before they get their land legs.”

  Blackwell held up a staying hand. “I’m a businessman first, and a warrior second. Tell me what you want with Walters, and perhaps we can still strike a bargain.”

  The Rook’s skin burned everywhere. His skull, which had gone numb but for the ache in his head, pulsed with the accelerating rhythm of his heart.

  One didn’t earn a title like the Blackheart of Ben More by showing mercy. What would he do to Lorelai?

  Suddenly Walters no longer mattered. The treasure. His past. The men behind him.

  He lowered his gun. “You’ll give her back?”

  Blackwell nodded, pointing his own gun at the ground. “If you give me cause.”

  “Captain—” Haxby protested.

  He held up his own fist, silencing all dissent.

  “I need Walters to identify some of his work,” he muttered. “A tattoo.”

  “That might be difficult,” Blackwell admitted after a cautious hesitance. “He was injured in an attack in prison. His memory isn’t what it once was.”

  “Neither is mine,” the Rook said wryly.

  “I was his cellmate. I watched most of his work. Perhaps I can be of assistance.”

  The Rook scanned the ever-ready faces of Blackwell’s forces. Feeling the tension of his own crew slam into his back like the waves battering at the black cliffs below Ben More.

  Moving slowly, as one does in the presence of so many primed pistols, he took a few steady steps forward, rolling his sleeve back from the underside of his scarred forearm. “It was— I was damaged twenty years ago. I don’t remember what it means.”

  Dorian Blackwell gazed down at the webbed flesh of burns on his arms, becoming unnaturally still. “The dragon,” he breathed. “The map.”

  The Rook’s temperature spiked once again. “You know it?”

  With lightning speed, Blackwell’s pistol leveled right in between his eyes. His own chest heaved beneath his fine wool jacket. “Take. Off. Your. Cowl.”

  For the first time in years, the Rook followed another man’s orders.

  A raw sound erupted from Blackwell’s throat. Then another. The first carried disbelief, and the second a tortured form of sorrow.

  To see such a fearsome man tremble astonished the Rook into bewildered silence.

  “You’re … You’re dead.” Blackwell depressed the hammer on his pistol before it landed in the grass.

  “Buggar me blind,” groaned the Scotsman as he frantically pressed the arms of his cohorts down, pointing their pistols at the ground. “It’s a ghost ship.”

  “What are you talking about?”

  “Are you a ghost?” Dorian reached for him, but the Rook lunged first, grabbing Blackwell by the collar.

  “You think you know me?” He brought his face close, ignoring the metallic clicks of weapons. “Did you think you’d killed me?”

  “Yes.” A strange and discomfiting moisture glittered in the Blackheart of Ben More’s one good eye. His smooth voice was now hoarse with barely leashed emotion. “You’ve haunted me for twenty years. All this time I thought your death was my fault.”

  A band tightened around his chest. He looked at Dorian Blackwell differently now. The ebony hair. The marble-black eye. The height and breadth and scope of the man.

&nbs
p; It was like looking into a mirror. Almost. Could they be…?

  “How is this possible?” the Scotsman marveled. “Dorian—?

  “They made us scrub your blood from the stones.” Blackwell’s hand curled over the Rook’s wrist with a gentleness that bedeviled him. “So much blood. How could you have survived? I watched them take your body away. I’ll never forget…”

  His other hand gripped the Rook’s shoulder with a ferocity he hadn’t expected. “I avenged you, brother. We avenged you, Argent and me. We killed them all, Dorian. Every Newgate guard who put his hands on you. Know they died screaming.”

  “Brother? Argent?” The Rook pressed a hand to his temple as an ice pick slammed into his eye, nearly buckling his knees. The pain. His head. He couldn’t …

  The Blackheart of Ben More supported him with an anxious hand on his arm. “You … You don’t remember? You don’t know who I am?” Concern mingled with increasing alarm in his voice.

  The Rook pushed him away, weaving as a wave of dizziness threatened his composure. “We’ve never fucking met,” he growled. “What are you saying? What are we to each other? Are you or are you not Dorian Blackwell?”

  “No.” His one dark eye sparkled, welled, and a tear streaked down his cheekbone as torment etched into the brutal lines of his oddly familiar features.

  “I am not Dorian Blackwell,” he whispered. “You are.”

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  The moment the Rook darkened the doorway to Ben More’s magnificent library, Lorelai found it almost impossible to look at him for a myriad of reasons.

  All of them ridiculous, she’d be the first to admit.

  The last time she’d been in his company, his wide shoulders hadn’t been straining the seams of a fitted black shirt and vest. He’d been wearing nothing at all. That frighteningly formidable body had been pressed to hers, offering pleasure in lithe, sinewy movements and guttural, sinful words.

  Words, she found, were more powerful than she realized.

  And offering … was a rather tame expression for what he’d done. If she could claim that he commanded her to allow him to give her pleasure, she would. But … didn’t that sound preposterous?