The Duke with the Dragon Tattoo

by Byrne, Kerrigan

  His hard glare softened. “Hope is for fools. I am not Ash anymore.”

  “Tell me one good reason you couldn’t be again,” she challenged.

  “I kill people. A lot of people.”

  There was that. She chewed on the inside of her cheek. “Could you … ever try … not to kill people?”

  Something tender toyed with the edges of his mouth. “You know how it is in the world. It is kill or be killed. It has always been thus.”

  “Maybe in your world…” Lorelai scooted even closer, encouraging him with a cheeky smile. “My experience is that if you don’t try to kill people, they usually won’t try to kill you back.”

  Instead of amusing him, she seemed to make it all worse. A bleakness radiated from him as he sank to the side of her bed. “You’re fortunate, Lorelai, that this is your experience.”

  His words sliced a leaking wound into her heart. “Are you angry with me?” she asked.

  “Why would I be?” His puzzlement seemed genuine.

  “Because I—I fainted when we…” She couldn’t finish that sentence without possibly repeating the humiliation. “And then I—Veronica and I—escaped.” She softened the word. “We left.”

  She flinched when he reached for her, but relaxed as he traced the soft underside of her jaw with gentle, callused fingertips. “Veronica mentioned you do that when you are afraid. That you sleep as though you’d left your body. And nothing can wake you. Where do you go?”

  “I—I’m not sure.” His touch was doing something twitchy to the muscles of her neck. “It’s like my mind is no longer in my body, as my body has never particularly been a comfortable place to live. Somehow, I’ve created in my sleep a quiet place. A safe place.” A place where Ash has always lived, she didn’t say.

  “A quiet sleep. How would that be?” He caught one of the loose curls at the nape of her neck and ran it through his fingers, testing its consistency. They seemed to hold a certain fascination for him, the wild, willful strands that refused to be tamed. “How long have you done this?”

  “Since childhood. Since my leg…”

  He frowned. “I never noticed it in the time I spent at Southbourne Grove.”

  “I never left when you were there. I felt safe when awake, I suppose. Mortimer never hurt me again until you were gone.”

  Suddenly the air was charged like the moment between lightning and thunder. Dangerous. Anticipatory. “I would kill him again if I could,” he vowed. “Slower this time.”

  “I never knew you hated him so much.”

  “Didn’t you hate him?”

  “No,” she answered honestly. “I admit I strongly resented him. I feared him, mostly. But over time I learned to be indifferent. And, with his death, I think I will easily forget him.”

  He gestured to the ankle she had propped up on a pillow. “How do you forget something like this? He broke you. Terrorized you. He—”

  “You only have to forget once, and then it’s all over,” she said. “To hate you must remember, you must dwell. You must hold it in your heart all the time and feed it. Nurture it. I found that too exhausting. Hatred for Mortimer made me physically ill. And that didn’t hurt him, it only made me suffer.”

  He dropped her ringlet, his hands tight fists by the time they lowered to his sides. “I have become my hate, Lorelai. I am loss and wrath and loathing.”

  “You are more than that,” she contended, her hand hovering like a butterfly over his broad back.

  “It is all I am.” The butterfly never landed, because he surged to his feet and stalked a safe distance away, taking refuge by the fire. “You can’t take my hatred from me, Lorelai. Or…”

  “Or what?” she prompted.

  “You’ll take the last thing away that I know.” The fire gleamed an eerie shade off his midnight hair. “I’ll truly be nothing … No one.”

  Lorelai helplessly watched an inner battle rage across features usually so implacable. He’d been so cold since his return. So very frighteningly unyielding. His scars now bunched and twitched with the movements of his jaw beneath. His restless soul called to her with a volcanic sense of pressure.

  Perhaps he just needed to let it out.

  “I had so much reason to hate Mortimer,” she professed. “But you say that you do, as well. What reason had you to kill him?”

  “You,” he clipped.

  She blinked at him. “What?”

  “He’s the reason we’ve lived apart these twenty years. He killed Ash. Over. And. Over. And. Over.” It was the lack of inflection in his voice, the unhurried repetition of the syllables that made his declaration that much more dreadful. What horrors must it have taken for enough of Ash to disappear, to create the Rook?

  “W-what did he do?” she whispered, all the while terrified of the answer.

  He gave her his back, taking the iron tool from its stand and stabbing at the glowing coals. “Have you ever heard of being shanghaied?”

  His voice was so low, she had to strain to hear it. “I haven’t.”

  “It’s a widespread practice these days. The maritime shipping industry is booming, you see, but it’s also dangerous, tedious, and backbreaking work. Most working men are better suited to the fields and factories than the sea. This has created a shortage of willing sailors. And so, in some places, a brawny man with a body built for labor will go to a pub or a brothel, to eat and drink his fill. He won’t know that some enterprising flesh peddler drugged his ale until he wakes up on a ship halfway to Shanghai. The captain of that ship is now his world, his king, and the only hope he has of getting home is to work on a crew and save the money for passage from some foreign port.”

  “Oh my God,” she whispered. “You’re saying Mortimer drugged you and gave you to a ship captain?”

  When the coals glowed red enough for him, he stooped to add another log to the fire. “It’s worse than that. Mortimer sold me, and it was up to me to work off the money the captain had paid him.”

  Lorelai gaped, her fingers curling into fists around the hem of the bedclothes. For all her talk of forgiveness, his story stoked a rage to match that of the flames now licking up the chimney. “How long did that take?”

  “I was a special case,” he continued. “Mortimer had made a singular deal for me. I was sold again and again. My life was to be one of continuous indentured servitude, until I became too broken, old, or ill. Then I’d be discarded to the sea once I was of no use to anyone. I witnessed that happen more than once. An old or injured man pushed from a deck. Calling out for salvation. It used to be my greatest fear.”

  Lorelai didn’t realize she’d been crying until a hot tear dropped from her chin onto the cold hands clenched in her lap. “I didn’t know,” she marveled. He’d mentioned that Mortimer deserved to die seven thousand deaths. Seven thousand. The number of days stolen from them.

  “I always wondered what he’d told you, about why I didn’t come back.”

  “He said you’d remembered,” Lorelai managed, though her emotions threatened to strangle her. “That you didn’t want to return to Southbourne Grove only to break my heart. He said you had someone else and you went to her.” Even that heartbreak hadn’t come close to touching this one. She’d cried for months, but a part of her had understood. She’d done her best to comprehend, at any rate.

  “All this time…” he murmured to the fire. “You thought I’d abandoned you.”

  “To think I was happy for you!” she railed. “I assumed you were living your life, your true life, and that offered a modicum of comfort. When I missed you, I’d tell myself I had a hand in healing you enough to send you home to the family and loved ones you’d lost.”

  “Did you not believe the words I spoke to you when we parted?” he asked in a low, dangerous voice.

  The sun will set in the west, and I’ll come for you.

  Shame lowered her gaze to the counterpane, to the silhouettes of her feet beneath the covers. “If you loved someone as Mortimer claimed. Someone who al
ready meant so much to you. Why keep your promise to a sheltered cripple?”

  His hand tightened on the poker. “Even then, you assumed I was without honor?”

  “That’s not what I—”

  “You were right, it seems. As Dorian Blackwell I was a thief and a murderer.” He stabbed the instrument back into its place and whirled on her. Backlit by the fire, his features took on a demonic cast. “You think I’m a monster?” he rumbled. “You don’t know the half of it. But there are creatures out there far more horrendous than I. They do things, horrific things. Unspeakable things. To girls. To boys. To men. To women … to me.”

  She wanted to call his name … to make him stop. But what name did she use? He didn’t know who he was, and she knew even less. “How long did you suffer? How long were you a slave?” She didn’t want the answer. But she needed it.

  “Fifteen years.” He stalked to the foot of her bed, a tower of shadow and wrath and revelation. “When my crew and I were able to free ourselves, we were little better than animals. But at least we’d learned to be predators. We hunted down these men. Slavers, mostly, from every country you could fathom. I’ve done atrocious things, Lorelai, I’ve torn whole crews apart with my bare hands. These hands.” He showed her his open palms, as though to demonstrate the stains of blood. “It was them or me … and it’s always them. It will always be them.”

  A darker emotion underscored the pain and pity she felt.

  Pride.

  These slavers should have suffered. Deserved it. She hoped they died screaming. She’d never felt wrath like this before. “And so, you only took from these men? You kept plunder from their fleets?”

  “And why shouldn’t I?” he challenged. “I’ve had so much taken from me. My freedom. My dignity. My humanity. My name. My memory. Myself. But your brother took from me the one thing I couldn’t get back. The only thing I truly wanted. Time.”

  Lorelai deflated a little, berating herself for expecting him to say something else. “I—I wish I could take it all back.” She sniffed. “I wish I could have spared you pain.”

  “I’m not after your pity.” He sneered. “I’m trying to make you understand. This body, this shell some-fucking-how survived everything. The beatings, the torture, the labor, the other … molestations … but Ash didn’t. Something, someone dark and terrible took his place. And that is the man who came for you.”

  Lorelai tried to respond, but the agony was too heavy in her throat, the storm of her tears was beginning to gather the strength of the one raging outside.

  He walked around the bed frame toward her, but reached out and grasped at the post, as though desperate to hold the rest of him back. “I tried to get to you sooner. And in doing so, I lost what was left of me. I told you, I’ve been watching you for a long time … Initially, the plan was to rescue you, to protect you from Mortimer. But once I did find you, I realized it was more imperative I protect you from myself. From the things I want to—” His lips slammed shut and he looked away.

  Her head snapped up. “That makes no sense. You said you don’t want to hurt me.” She hated how plaintive her voice became when laced with tears.

  His eyes became two tortured orbs of onyx. “I—I can’t promise I won’t. As evidenced by what’s been done already. And the chances are great that you’ll be harmed because of me. I’ve more enemies than the queen. Enemies who would revel in tearing you apart to get to me. I’ve only been fearless because I’d nothing to lose. If I have you … they have a way to hurt me. It is the reason I stayed away from you as long as I did. Ash’s promise put you in danger.”

  “Then why come for me at all?” she snapped tartly.

  His grip tightened on the post, producing a loud, splintering sound. “To go through what I went through, to survive, a man needs a purpose. Something to live for. You were that for me. And for a while, knowing that you were just as I left you, romping about the estuaries with your animals, was enough. You were a memory I could visit. Something pure I hadn’t tainted. And for the past several years, Mortimer was always away in London. He’d largely left you alone since he’d taken a wife.”

  It was true. Mortimer had all but ignored her since he married Veronica. He’d taken what her father had left for her dowry and bought a place in town. Southbourne Grove was a sanctuary in his absence. She’d loved the sprawling manor. It was her home.

  “I knew if I killed Mortimer before he produced an heir, you’d lose your precious Southbourne Grove to some distant male relative. So, I installed Barnaby and went on a quest of my own. To find…” He trailed off, distracted by an extra close flash of lightning out the casement window.

  “The Claudius Cache?” she finished for him.

  “That, too,” he said cryptically. “But when Barnaby told me your brother had betrothed you to a cruel bastard like Sylvester Gooch. That did something to me that all the slavers in all the world could not.” Finally, he approached her. Looming over her bedside, he reached down and wiped a tear from her cheek, his touch agonizingly tender. “I’ve known pain. I’ve known pain you’ve never…” He didn’t finish the sentence, but grappled with a few harsh breaths. “But agony. True agony. Was knowing you were so far away for so long. That I might not again feel your touch. Hear your voice. Bask in your smile. There is pain and sometimes it’s excruciating. But then there is suffering…”

  She caught his hand in hers, turned it palm up, and buried her cheek against it.

  He remained absolutely still, staring at the seam of their flesh. “Nothing mattered but getting to you before your betrothed touched you. My instinct overcame my reason, I can see that now. And that day, I saw Mortimer at the church and I … I snapped. I regret that you witnessed what I am capable of. That you watched your brother die in such a brutal manner.”

  “I’m not,” she sobbed, making a pool of grief and rage in his palm. “I’m not anymore. You’re right. He deserved it. They all did!”

  His other hand stroked her hair, infinitely gentle, like the caress of silk against velvet. “Don’t cry,” he admonished her. “Don’t you understand what I’m telling you? I am not worth all of this. I am not worth your tears.”

  “Yes you are!” she insisted. He was worth his weight in gold, her pirate king. He had wounds deeper than the trenches of the Pacific. He wasn’t a monster, he was a man. A man who’d survived the unfathomable and emerged as a mountain of strength. “I thought you were the devil. I thought you selfish and brutal and cruel, but now…”

  He pulled his hand from hers, gently, but firmly. “I am the devil, Lorelai. That’s what I’m trying to tell you. I am selfish and brutal and cruel. All I’ve considered is what was best for me. What I wanted to do to you. What I wanted you to do to me. To feel for me. I thought I could live with you as my captive. That I was cold enough to ignore your protestations. But I’m not.”

  “I know you’re not,” she encouraged him. “And that’s good. This is what we can build on.” She reached for his other hand, but he backed away. The rift in her heart widened, pouring hurt through her veins.

  “No.” He shook his head in perpetuity, as though convincing his own body as well as her. “In taking you, I always knew I would corrupt you. Break you. Destroy you. That’s what I’ve been telling you. It’s why I waited so long. Perhaps it was better if I never came at all.”

  “Don’t say that.” She threw the covers off her, struggling with her long nightgown to free her legs and stand. To follow him as he retreated.

  “What kind of life would you have with me?” he demanded. “With Nemo, a man obsessed with and possessed of power and infamy? You were right, Lorelai. I have everything in the world, but nothing to offer you.”

  “But…” Finally, her feet touched the floor and she struggled to put weight on them as he reached the door. She hobbled around the bed, too unsteady to let go of the bedpost.

  Sorrow touched his gaze as he watched her, but he made no move to help. “You are an angel in a world full of devils. And I ha
ve made myself king of them all.”

  He opened the door and turned away.

  “Wait!” she cried. “Stay! Please stay with me. We can discuss this.”

  He violently shook his head, gripping the door handle as one would a lifeline. “I thought I deserved you … that I’d earned you through suffering somehow.” His throat worked over a wretched swallow. “I find that I cannot take your purity from you, Lorelai. That I cannot claim the years you have left, shackling you to my side. I will not. I’ve come to realize it’s the one sin I cannot commit.”

  “But what if I—”

  “I used to love you because I thought you were weak, but I understand now, your goodness makes you stronger than us all.”

  She froze. His words like daggers slicing through her heart until it bled into her extremities, turning them numb.

  Used to love you.

  “You may leave in the morning when it is safe. Take poor Veronica with you. I will make certain both of you are cared for but … I will no longer be your jailor. I will not keep you in chains.”

  Lorelai slid to the floor in a puddle of tears to the sound of the bolt securing her door.

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

  Lorelai woke with a jolt, even though the hand on her shoulder was gentle.

  Farah Blackwell’s gray eyes and silvery hair shone like a Fae creature’s in the sputtering lanternlight. “I’m sorry to wake you, but there’s something—”

  A primal sound rent the night, full of both terror and warning. It was the sound a wounded lion might make when cornered by a tribe of hunters.

  Lorelai had heard the sound before. On a stormy night much like this one some twenty years ago.

  Ash.

  Farah had a silk wrapper at the ready as Lorelai flung off the covers and slid from the tall bed. She belted the robe and limped after the Countess Northwalk, cursing the storm’s effect on her leg.

  Sensing her distress, Farah offered her arm and they hurried as fast as they were able into a lavishly decorated, dark wood hallway. The plush burgundy carpets cushioned her bare feet as she made her way two doors down from her own, where the Blackheart of Ben More stood with a lone candle dancing gold over his bleak features.