The Duke with the Dragon Tattoo (Victorian Rebels, #6)(10)

He had an apelike quality about him. Arms too long for his stocky body. Posture curled with indolent apathy, though blessed with brute strength. A golden gorilla.

Barely fucking human.

“Here.” Lorelai offered him another bite of soup, doing her best to dispel the tension gathering in the room. “Do you think you can finish?”

“Like rabbit, do you?” Mortimer asked.

“Rabbit?” An adorable wrinkle appeared between her brows. “Cook didn’t get any at market, did you finally catch some in your snares?”

“No.” Mortimer packed the single syllable to overflowing with cruel anticipation.

“Mortimer … what did you do?” Setting the half-empty bowl down with such haste, the contents sloshed onto the bedside table, Lorelai stood to question her brother.

A fear the boy didn’t understand feathered across her features.

“Why go through the trouble of snaring rabbits, when there were perfectly good ones out back in the pens?” Mortimer obviously savored the devastation of his sister’s features. Her abject shock melting to horror and then to heartbreak.

“No,” she sobbed, clutching at her throat. “Mortimer, how could you?”

Her brother shrugged his shoulders. “Oh, come on, Duck. Rabbits are rabbits. What does it matter if I snare them in the fields or take them from the pens?”

“You knew they were mine, I saved them from starvation when they were just orphans. They had names, Mortimer! They were my friends!”

“And now they’re your food,” Mortimer said smugly.

“We … ate them.” All color drained from her face, replaced with an alarming shade of puce. Lorelai clapped her hand over her mouth, convulsed once, twice, then lurched out of the room as fast as her limp would allow.

“Watching her run never ceases to amuse me,” Mortimer chuckled.

Unable to reach for her from his useless spot on the bed, the boy watched her steady herself on the wall as she fled, eventually disappearing around a corner in a frenzy of curls and grief.

Bile crawled into his chest, flooding his mouth with stinging moisture. The sides of his jaw ached and his throat closed off with a lump of rage as hot as a brick of coal from the fire.

“What a little fool,” Mortimer commiserated. “She’d likely release those beasts into the fens, and they’d just end up in my snare anyhow. Or on a rack at the butcher’s. Will we ever understand women?”

“You … did that on purpose.” Eventually his throat released enough for him to rasp words around his rage. “To hurt her.”

Blue eyes darkened to a granite gray. “Careful, cripple. Father says you can stay, but only because I wanted it.”

“Why?” He’d meant the question in regard to Mortimer’s cruelty to his sweet sister, but Mortimer mistook his meaning.

“I’m bored.” Another shrug, as though he could barely punctuate his apathy with his shoulder. “And you’re a mystery I’d like to solve.”

The anger felt good, in a way. It poured through him like molten metal, molding him into an eventual weapon. It overtook the eternal throb in his broken ankle. The pounding in his head. The sharp stab of his ribs with every breath. It strengthened him.

It forged him.

Rage was something he knew how to wield. Just … not yet. Not until he was stronger.

Mortimer hadn’t finished. “You should have seen yourself. When the burns bubbled, then burst. It was the most putrid thing. And Duck, she was always there, playing the little nurse to Dr. Holcomb. Bringing herbs in from the fens. Mixing you potions. I’m surprised she didn’t poison you or cause you to shit yourself to death.”

They both stared down the hallway where she’d retreated.

“Don’t get attached,” Mortimer scoffed. “You’re just another wild animal to her. She’ll release you back to whatever shit pile you crawled away from just as soon as you’re able. She keeps none of her patients for long. Besides, a highborn cripple cannot show interest in a lowborn cripple. Though, watching you two travel anywhere would be hilarious in the extreme.”

The heat in his veins instantly turned to ice. Hardening him in tense, torturous increments. His blood stilled, awaiting his next command. He’d expected an explosion of temper, an inferno of rage. But no. He sensed he’d felt this way before. Before he’d ended a life.

Lives.

Calm. Cold. Almost … anticipatory.

So, he thought serenely. I am a monster, then. And in this moment, he was glad of it.

“You fancy yourself dangerous, don’t you?” Mortimer correctly assessed.

“I fancy nothing.”

“Maybe you are. I went with Dr. Holcomb to that open grave, you know. Full of cholera victims from the East End that the queen paid mightily to be buried far away from the city. Those corpses mixed with a few of those who met their fates at Gallows Corner thrown in for good measure. Sometimes … before the graves are slated to be filled, a murder victim or two finds their way onto the pile.”

Mortimer bent down, bringing his big, square face uncomfortably close. “Dr. Holcomb says you’re too big and healthy to ever have suffered from cholera. You had bruises round your neck, but not ones caused by a rope. So, what are you? we wonder. A criminal or a victim?”