The Pirate's Duty (Regent's Revenge #3)(69)

“Including your brother?” After getting the reaction he clearly wanted out of Oriana—her silence—the pirate glanced at John. “Do you care for this woman?”

“That is none of your concern,” she said before John could answer. Did the Regent think she was daft? “He has nothin’ to do with me. And I can speak for myself.”

“Can you now?” The pirate’s mouth twisted cruelly. “I know about the message Carnage sent you, Miss.”

“Which message?” Charles’s most recent note threatened another surprise would be waiting inside the Roost. None had been found . . . yet. Was the Regent aware of something she wasn’t?

A deadly cold suffused her, and her brows knit together as she wondered if the Regent had found Nicholas while they’d been in the cellar. But he couldn’t have. He’d traveled up the tunnels from the beachhead.

“And how do ye know about his note?” she asked. “I’ve only told—”

“Sadly, we stumbled across your man.”

“My man?” Her pulse quickened. After what Charles, or his men, had done to Nicholas, she couldn’t handle another shock. She put her fists on her hips again, fearing the slight tremor that threatened to weaken her voice. “I do not have a man.”

“Your stablemate, then.” The Regent waved his men aside and ordered several more forward. “I must warn you, Miss Thorpe. He isn’t a pretty sight.”

A limp figure was dragged in by his arms and plopped unceremoniously on the ground.

“Girard!” she shouted. His head hit the cellar floor with a sickening thud. She rushed to his side, nausea welling in her throat. “No, no, no!”

Tears pooled in her eyes, and she inhaled several fortifying breaths as the pirates flipped Girard’s lifeless body over, revealing his badly beaten face, swollen eyes, and bloody torso.

Falling to her knees, she laid her head on his chest to check if he was breathing. When she couldn’t detect a heartbeat, she lifted Girard’s head and closed his unseeing eyes.

Oh, Girard . . .

The Regent said nothing. Why was he not more upset? Girard and O’Malley were his crewmen, after all.

And yet, he’d called Girard her man. Why hadn’t he used his given name?

Her heart raced, and cold seeped into her core. She shook her head to clear it, tears tumbling unchecked down her face. I heard wrong. She had to have heard wrong.

Men snickered farther back in the tunnel, the sounds strange and objectionable to her despairing mind. What should have been a comforting presence brought her nothing but momentary panic.

John touched her hand. “Come away from him, Oriana. No one can help Girard now.”

She held Girard’s face to her chest. “No. Ye don’t understand.” Her heart was breaking. Couldn’t he see? She’d spent months with Girard and O’Malley. They were the brothers she’d never had. They’d taught her to fight, to protect herself, and had encouraged her to be the woman she wanted to be, free from Charles’s influence. A sob tore from her throat. She was the cause of Girard’s death. “He was . . . my friend.”

Mindlessly, she petted Girard’s body, adjusting his bloody shirt laces, straightening the fabric over his torso, trying her best to make him more presentable.

Finally, a moment of mental clarity washed over her, and she looked at the Regent. “Who did this?”

The Regent frowned down at her, legs wide, his arms crossed over his chest. “Your brother, Miss Thorpe.”

Swiping tears from her face with the back of her hand she remembered the blood in the stable. She narrowed her eyes. “I’ll kill Charles for this.”

“Captain Carnage,” the Regent corrected, his sarcasm knowing no bounds. “The pirate must have found out Girard was working for me. I suspect, by the looks of him, he was tortured for information.”

Why had the Regent suddenly used Girard’s name now?

Distrust was building in her gut, but she could not show it. “What information?” she asked.

“The whereabouts of Carnage’s gold.”

Oriana sat back on her heels, her mind reeling in confusion. Girard had been brutalized over Charles’s gold? Her lips trembled uncontrollably as she gazed back down at the man. “Ye should have never come here, Girard.”

Compelled by a unique force she couldn’t quite name, Oriana reached out for John, desiring his presence, his touch, his strength to fuel her body and mind. “If he hadn’t tried to help me—” her voice cracked with emotion “—he’d still be alive. His blood is on my hands, John.”

“Blood is on your hands, Miss,” the Regent said, eavesdropping. He pointed to the dried blood on her hands before his eyes snapped back to her face. “Girard mentioned a hidden cache when we found him.”

Oriana met the Regent’s gaze, somehow managing to keep her emotions in check. “Cache?”

“Aye.” The Regent’s eyes widened and then narrowed in the slits of his mask. “In particular . . . gold.”

“Too many people have already died for it.” Oriana looked down at Girard, noticing his hand curled into a fist, contemplating it as she spoke. She drew it toward her. Her heartbeat was racing, thundering inside her chest as a piece of black fabric came into view.