Duke of Desire (Maiden Lane #12)(82)

“I’m listening,” she said carefully. “What were you trying to warn Raphael about?”

The Dionysus shook his head. “He was pampered and kept in ignorance. I wasn’t. How could I be? They took me to my first revel when I was eight.”

“That’s … that’s awful,” Iris said, though she wasn’t even sure the man was talking to her. “A child should never have to endure that, don’t you think?”

“I shall make Dyemore listen when he comes for you.”

Tansy gave a sharp yip.

Iris saw that the Dionysus had pressed her neck to his leg so that she could not move her head at all. She was frantically pushing her paws against his hand, trying to get away, but of course she hadn’t the strength.

One twist and he could break her neck.

Iris knew she shouldn’t, but she couldn’t help it. “Please don’t hurt her.”





Chapter Seventeen




When Ann arrived at the rock tower it appeared deserted, so again she knocked at the door.

The Rock King answered, and when he saw her he blinked.

She raised her eyebrows. “You seem surprised to see me.”

“I am,” he replied. “In seven hundred years seventy maidens have pledged to be my wife for a year and a day. None but you have ever returned to serve their time.” …

—From The Rock King





The town house was magnificent. Grand enough for even the son of a king.

Raphael ran up the front steps with all but two of his remaining Corsicans behind him—over a dozen in all—and pounded on the door.

It was opened by a regal butler, white wigged and red nosed. “Where is your master?” Raphael demanded before the man could speak.

The man’s mouth dropped open.

“Show me now,” Raphael snapped before the idiot could start some protestation.

The butler turned and led him and his men into the town house.

Up stairs, through halls, until he arrived at a library.

Kyle was there with three of his men.

He rose, his expression wary, at the sight of Raphael and his Corsicans in his domain. His men spread out around him. “What is this?”

“I need you,” Raphael said. “You and your men. Get your weapons and follow me.”

Kyle didn’t move. “I don’t take orders from you.”

Raphael remembered why he disliked the Duke of Kyle so very much.

“Damn you.” Raphael gritted his teeth. “Please. He’s taken Iris. I need you to help me get her back alive.”

It was late afternoon now and the carriage was growing dark. Iris was curled in a corner with Tansy safe in her arms. The madman had grown tired of the little puppy after a while and simply let her go.

Now the carriage was stopped, the Dionysus sitting across from her doing nothing.

Outside, Iris could just make out a stand of trees and the arch of a church. The rest of the building had either fallen down or been cannibalized for the stone.

They hadn’t traveled very far, so they couldn’t have gone much beyond London.

Iris wondered if Donna Pieri had made it home safely. She’d seen Valente driving the carriage past with Donna Pieri on the box beside him. Valente looked as if he had been badly wounded in the shoulder. Would he be strong enough to control the horses until he could get help?

What if he fainted and the horses bolted?

She sighed and examined the carriage again. She could see no weapons. If she was left alone she could check the seats to see if they hid a pistol, as Raphael’s carriage did.

It seemed unlikely, however.

“Have you ever pondered on the nature of fate?” came the Dionysus’s voice in the darkness.

He held a pistol loosely in his lap now, handed to him earlier by one of his men.

Iris eyed it, wondering if she could grab the gun before he shot her.

“No, I haven’t,” she replied tartly, even though she knew by now that the man needed no partner for his soliloquies.

“For instance,” he went on, proving her thought correct, “had I not had you kidnapped and brought to my revels, you would not now be the Duchess of Dyemore. You should thank me.”

“You’ll forgive me if I don’t,” Iris muttered.

Good Lord, the man was insane.

“Of course I will also be the agent of your death,” he went on. “but that is an entirely separate and different affair.”

He closed his eyes and was silent for several minutes, and she began to think that he’d gone to sleep. If he loosened his grip on the pistol …

Then he spoke again, dashing her hopes. “But there are deeper matters in fate than you. I think sometimes of what I would be had I not had the father I did. I might have been an entirely normal man. You might have liked me, Your Grace. Imagine that.”

Iris shuddered. “I sincerely doubt it.”

She could not imagine in any world liking this man.

“Oh, come now, Your Grace,” he said. “I am not so very different from your husband, after all. Both our fathers loved the revels. Both our fathers loved us. The only difference is that he escaped and I did not. Am I to be blamed for this? I was but a boy. Should the dog, having been beaten every day of its life, when it finally turns and savages its master, tearing out his throat, feasting on his blood, gobbling his innards, should that dog be blamed for its madness? The dog began an innocent creature.”