The Duke with the Dragon Tattoo

by Byrne, Kerrigan

  “Finesse isn’t a skill I’ve had to acquire.” Carefully, he lowered himself to the edge of one of the monstrous chairs, letting the fire warm the chill established by Lorelai’s absence. It would be folly to allow himself to be comfortable. To let down his guard.

  “Of that I have no doubt.” Blackwell claimed the chair beside him, crossing an ankle over his knee. “But with a woman like yours … it may be in your best interest to obtain some. If not finesse, at least a bit of diplomacy.”

  His eyes narrowed. “What do you mean, a woman like mine?”

  “Bit shy, isn’t she? Tenderhearted.” Blackwell swirled the contents of his glass, inspecting the caramel liquid with unnecessary absorption. “It’s difficult not to notice her damaged leg … her brother’s doing?”

  “Part of why I killed him.”

  “Just so.”

  Blackwell didn’t ask another question, and antithetical to his nature, the Rook felt a need to fill the silence. “I spent twenty years thinking of nothing but getting back to her, and now that I have…”

  “You realize you are no longer the boy who loved her. You’re…”

  “Someone else,” he finished, pleased to have found a sympathetic soul. A heart as black as his own. “All I know is the sea. How can I navigate these waters when the sky is opaque? When the stars do not shine to light my way? How do I behave? How do I make her care for me? How do I stop her from fearing me?”

  “She may yet fear you,” Blackwell conceded. “But it is undeniable that she cares for you.”

  “Is it?” He searched his memory of their interaction for just which part of the last few hours made her feelings for him undeniable. He came up frustratingly empty.

  Blackwell regarded him over the top of his glass. “When I went to meet you in the valley, she begged me not to kill you. She wept, and pleaded for you, and would not be consoled until I promised to do what I could to defuse the situation.”

  A tiny spark lit in his chest, before sputtering out. “She knows nothing of who I am. She cares for who she wants me to be. Who I once was to her.”

  Blackwell slid him a look. “And you cannot be that man?”

  Dejected, he shook his head. “Even as a boy, a part of me knew I was not good enough for her. That I was a killer.”

  Dorian examined him over the rim of his cup, as though crafting a plan before he spoke. “Then, perhaps, the kindest thing would be to set her free.”

  The Rook’s eyes snapped up. “I am not equipped with that sort of kindness. How many times do I have to say it? She. Is. Mine.”

  “I know. There’s nothing to be done for it, I’m afraid.” Dorian smiled that secret smile. “If she is yours, and you have her, then why the aggression?”

  “I am an aggressive person,” he said blandly.

  “The frustration, then. Is it of a … sexual nature?”

  He looked away before nodding. “It seems that if I am to have her, I must take her. She will not submit to me. She … doesn’t want me. I’d erroneously thought that wouldn’t matter…”

  “What stops you?”

  He thought on this for a spell. He’d intended on taking her. He’d vowed that after everything he’d been through, he deserved her. He’d thought he’d lost enough humanity to be inured to her tears. To her needs. He’d show her that his attentions wouldn’t hurt her and eventually she’d submit to him. And yet … “For so many years, I’ve taken anything I want through brutality and force. But with her … I want her to give herself to me.”

  Blackwell idly toyed with the corner of his eyepatch, adjusting the strap. “I’m reminded of a crocodile that my friend the Duke of Trenwyth told of upon returning from holiday to Egypt,” he said. “These are the most vicious creatures you’ll ever meet. Solitary monsters. They’ll eat each other. Feast upon their own young. They are the descendants of dragons, some say.” His gaze flicked to the Scythian Dragon on the seal in front of them.

  “Their bite is so lethal, so strong, that even the largest of land predators give them a wide berth. However, there is a tiny bird, a plover, the most unimpressive-looking thing, who will perch in the monster’s open mouth without fear, and is never harmed. Never eaten. Because these fragile little creatures floss the carrion out of the crocodile’s teeth. And so, they have struck an almost ridiculous but mutually beneficial relationship for any hundreds of years.”

  The Rook squinted at the man who had claimed his name. Was he drunk already? “I don’t gather your meaning.”

  “My point is, some tiny plover, somewhere, had to gather enough bravery to land in a crocodile’s mouth. And that crocodile had to show enough trust, enough patience, to see what happened next without snapping his jaw shut and devouring the poor creature.”

  Scowling, he tried to draw the comparison to him and Lorelai.

  A sound of wry amusement drifted through the space between them. “You never were fond of metaphors,” Blackwell muttered.

  “Wasn’t I?” He’d always yearned to meet someone who could answer questions about his past. Though he’d never considered how disconcerting it would be to share a room with someone who knew more about him than he did about himself.

  “I taught you how to read, you know,” Blackwell revealed. “During those long nights in prison.”

  He didn’t know. He could read, rather well, in fact. But just where he’d acquired the skill had been one mystery in a lifetime of a thousand.

  Blackwell sighed. “The little bird is your wife, obviously. You, yourself, said she was fond of wounded animals, did you not?”

  “Yes.”

  “Show her your wounds, then. Bare your scars. Be the crocodile with the sore tooth. The wounded lion. Let her pluck the thorn from your paw and smooth away the pain of it. Perhaps then, she will no longer fear you. Perhaps then, she will accept her desire for you.”

  Assuming she had desire for him.

  Blackwell continued. “We monstrous men, we think we must be invincible all the time. But I’ve learned women like them … they need to know that we are human. They will do what they can to discover that humanity. Because, eventually, they will require you to love them, and you’ll find you cannot help yourself.” This was said with a droll sort of amusement.

  “That’s just it.” The Rook stared down at the palms of his hands, traced the nautical star tattoo on his wrist and the snake coiled above it. “I don’t know that I am human anymore,” he admitted to his arm. “Even if she loved me, we would be doomed, wouldn’t we?”

  “Why is that?”

  “Because you can’t love the teeth out of a shark.”

  “Is that what you are? A shark?”

  His open hands became fists. “I don’t know what I am. I’ve barely learned who I am—who I was—and that’s if I take you at your word. I’ve been in chains all my life, it seems. And some of those chains I deserved. I’m little more than a beast of burden. When I became the Rook, I thought I knew what freedom was, but … even leadership has its own cages.”

  When Blackwell spoke, he wanted to strangle the pity from the man’s voice. Or maybe the truth from his words. “There is more than one prison, brother. I sense you carry yours wherever you go.”

  “I will never be free of it.”

  “Then why not grant her freedom?” he pressed. “Would you inflict your chains upon her?”

  The Rook surged to his feet, driven by a desperate gloom, and stalked to the window. “Yes, dammit. Because without her my confinement is solitary, and in that void, where I am alone, I’m locked up with my worst enemy.” He found golden tassels on the drapes that precisely matched the hue of her hair. He twisted one with his finger. “But she … she’s the only one who could share my cage. The only one whom I’m certain I wouldn’t eventually tear to shreds.”

  “You do love her,” Blackwell asserted.

  “No,” he insisted. “Love is soft. Love is kind. I know nothing of that. What I feel for her is … well, it’s neither of those things. It’s too o
bsessive. It’s marvelous and terrifying. It is the cruelest affliction for a merciless man. Because it leaves me at her mercy. So unprotected. So easily damaged. It is a bizarre thing to accept, that when entire armies have failed to destroy me, one word from her lips could dismantle me.”

  Dorian returned to the sideboard for a second drink. “You were always a romantic, even back then. Even before her.”

  “Do not tell me I’ve always been this pathetic,” he lamented.

  “You were the best of us, Dorian.” Something about the barely leashed emotion in the man’s voice chipped at the ice in his chest.

  He couldn’t face it, so he studied the ruined dragon tattoo. The web of scars he carried over so much of his body, no amount of ink could hide it all. “How monstrous I am. I can kill a man faster than he can take a breath. I can wage war with the sea. But the stratagems of this battle remain unknown to me. The rules of society. The needs of a woman. When do I smile at her? When do I stand? And sit? I don’t remember how to laugh … And, how do I kiss her? And for how long? How do I make her want to kiss me back? The last time I thought she did … she fainted. For hours.”

  At least this time the Blackheart of Ben More had the sense to try and hide his mirth. “Take it from me, brother. Twenty years of unrequited desire can be overwhelming to you both.” A clap on the shoulder was warm. Welcome. And so the Rook didn’t shove it off. “Believe it or not, we’ve led similar lives. I kidnapped my bride, as well. How apropos, that we should have found analogous women. Fair-haired and kind and tender.”

  “Your wife loves you.”

  “Yes, but she had to learn to trust me first.”

  “What did you do?” It was the most humbling question he’d ever asked, right before the next one. “What … do I do?”

  “Open your heart to her, Captain. It’s the only way. A woman of true worth needn’t be wooed. Not with poetry and flowers. But with honesty and gestures of your devotion. Farah loved me as Dougan Mackenzie as a child. And when I … coerced her into marriage with Dorian, she had to learn to fall in love with him all over again. Perhaps your Lady Lorelai works in reverse. She will not give herself to the Rook, just as Farah did not give herself to the Blackheart of Ben More. But perhaps she could love you for who you used to be … as Dorian?”

  Something about that felt wrong. His body, his brain, rejected the name. “If I became Dorian again, who would you be?”

  The hand slid off his shoulder as his Blackheart brother leaned against the casement and scrubbed at his face. “That … is an excellent question.”

  They stared into the night together. He sensed night hadn’t always been their ally. That they’d done this before, stood sentinel against the moon.

  The Rook studied the man next to him in profile, coming to a conclusion. “You have given my name back to me, my past, but … you have lived longer as Dorian Blackwell than I ever did. He is what you have created. His legacy is yours, I don’t want it back.”

  Despite his lack of memory, the Rook read the man in front of him. Knew him. Understood the wordless communication glinting in a dark eye more deep set than his own.

  “If I am Dorian, what do I call you now?” Blackwell asked the night. “The Rook?”

  Keeping his gaze firmly fixed on the moon casting the Isle of Ben More in a mystic silver glow, he answered from that place he’d thought empty. “I—I find I like that you call me brother.”

  Dorian didn’t look at him, either, but the glass in his hand trembled a little. “And who will you be for your Lady Lorelai?”

  “For her, I must learn to be someone else … Or no one at all.”

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

  How was one to focus on anything when locked in an actual tower like some fairy-tale princess? Lorelai huffed out a frustrated breath and let the book she’d been attempting to read fall to her lap. Reaching down, she fluffed the pillow beneath her throbbing ankle. The storm outside and the adjustment from being at sea to coming ashore had angered the ancient injury.

  Who’d have ever thought that she’d need to find her land legs?

  She studied the door with a pensive frown. Another thing the Rook and the Blackheart of Ben More had in common. Certain rooms with doors that locked from the outside.

  Close thunder shook the stones and rattled the glass of the oil lantern at the bedside table of yet another luxurious prison. The bed was comfortable, at least, and the room spacious, done in dark wood and autumn tones.

  Still, the storm stirred a restlessness inside of her she couldn’t appease. Something wild. Something indefinable and inescapable. Like time or fate.

  But didn’t she exist outside those constructs? It certainly seemed thus. Was she a married woman, or a captive? Her physical desires and her emotional ones were ever at odds when it came to the dark and damaged man who could in the span of a breath be both threatening and tender. It seemed if she were to search for Ash, she’d have to live with the Rook.

  As much as the prospect terrified her, it thrilled her, as well.

  And the question remained. Did she have a choice?

  Did she want one?

  A chill lanced up her spine, spreading bumps down her arms, and Lorelai knew he was on the other side of her bedroom door. All six-plus feet of him.

  He hadn’t made a sound. He didn’t cast a shadow.

  But he was there.

  The electric presence of him radiated from just beyond the thick oak as extant and intense as the lightning outside. She was acquainted with his unparalleled strength. The barrier wouldn’t protect her if he decided to pit his body against it.

  She didn’t breathe until the bolt slid open, the latch released, and he let himself into her room.

  The sight of him freed the band from around her lungs and created a new pressure. One she’d felt awaken inside of her more fervently with each moment they passed in each other’s company.

  A lower pressure. A moist desire.

  She’d not felt it since their kiss all those years ago. But it was different now. Less innocent. More insistent.

  Lanternlight had a way of softening people, but not him. His eyes were too black, too fiendishly clever. His features—dark as a heathen’s—were too hard. His expression, intemperate.

  He was a living, breathing sin.

  In her bedroom.

  Lightning blanketed the sky in blinding brilliance, shifting the deep hollows and broad planes of his features into a queer white light. For a ghostly moment, she caught sight of the boy she’d once known.

  Ash. Her Ash. All tender yearning and impetuous youth. Only Ash had gazed at her like that, once upon a time.

  By the time the percussion of the thunder broke their stillness, his expression had again smoothed to that eerie tranquility she’d come to despise.

  Instead of many, regular beats, her heart gave one great thump. Had he come to finish what he’d started in his quarters this morning?

  She’d not known men were such creatures as he until he revealed his unparalleled body to her. Now that she thought of it, most men weren’t.

  There was no one like him.

  Not that she’d chanced upon many naked men, but she doubted any resembled him in the flesh, a smooth and fearsome canvas poured over hard, iron power.

  He approached the bed, and her hand fluttered up to the high neck of her nightgown, clutching it closed against skin gone suddenly flush.

  Was he angry? She couldn’t tell. Had he come to punish her for leaving?

  Unabashedly, he stared down at her lap. Between her legs. “What do you think of Captain Nemo?”

  What? She squinted at him for several silent seconds. Oh, right. Her book. “I find him conflicted,” she answered carefully. “He is a man both riddled by remorse and driven by vengeance.”

  “Indeed.” He took the book from her lap, causing her thighs to tense, and inspected the gold-leaf pages. “Did you know the Egyptians believe your ka is in your name?”

  “Ka?” she echoed. What a
strange conversation to be having at a time like this. When there was so much else to say.

  “Orientals call it variations of chi, Christians call it your soul. So many believe there is power in a name. That it is what makes you immortal. Demons are expelled at the revelation of it. God’s name is so sacred it cannot be spoken. It cannot be known.” He spoke to her in a voice every bit as rich and opaque as Turkish coffee. “For so long I have felt such an affinity with Captain Nemo. Nemo literally translates to no name. Did you know that?”

  “I didn’t,” she whispered.

  “It has served me well to be no one. A shadow. A faceless shade. The terror of the high seas, the architect of my own mythology.”

  She scrutinized him closely, noting a new vulnerability beneath his indifference that hadn’t been there before. “Are you not glad you’ve found your name? That you know who you are?”

  “I thought I would be.” He waited for another clash of thunder to abate. “I do not share a kinship with the name Dorian. Nor any memories. But it’s haunted me, and now I know why,” he admitted, returning the book to her lap. “It doesn’t matter. The name Dorian Blackwell remains with the man who’s earned it. I don’t want it.”

  Lorelai sat up from her pillows aching to reach for him, but afraid of where such an intimacy would lead. “He seems glad to have found you,” she postulated. “He truly feels you are his brother.”

  He made a derisive sound. “I met his brothers. I’m not certain that’s a compliment.”

  “Do you believe him? Do you remember anything about him?”

  “Maybe. Somehow. I believe he is someone I trust. Trusted. I don’t know.” He gritted his teeth and threaded his fingers through his sable hair, pulling it in frustration. “All of these fucking revelations, and I still don’t know who I am. I don’t remember.”

  “I know who you could be,” she ventured. “I gave you a name.”

  He looked at her sharply. “We’ve been over this.”

  “I still don’t understand,” she pressed. “You say it is impossible, that Ash is dead. But here you are. Not Dorian. Not the Rook. Doesn’t that mean there is still hope?”