The Duke with the Dragon Tattoo (Victorian Rebels, #6)(16)
She stared at the raven, currently running his long beak across the back of his feathers with improbable bends of his neck, impervious to her outburst of emotion.
The silence stretched out for a moment too long before one arm released her, and reached for the box.
“I suppose … this one isn’t so terrible.” He stroked a feather with the very tip of a square finger, palpably suppressing a flinch when the bird noticed.
Both man and creature didn’t move for endless silent moments.
Her every fiber attuned to his, Lorelai sensed him relax in unfurling increments, turning to warm muscle again instead of cold steel. She’d never been so comfortable. Never felt so safe.
“Good God, what’s it doing?”
The bird had rested its beak atop his wrist, inspecting them both with tiny, rapid jerks of his head.
“I think he likes you,” she ventured. Perhaps if she educated him about the birds, he’d understand them better. Perhaps he’d even forgive them for mistaking him for a corpse. He’d been in a grave, after all. They could hardly be blamed. “Ravens are really such clever birds. Someone once told me they have a rather intricate language, not just all cackles and caws. They like puzzles, and play.” She brushed her hand over the bird’s uninjured wing, enjoying the inky sheen illuminated by the candlelight. “They fall in love.”
“How do you know?” His whisper caressed her ear, and she shivered.
“For their whole life, they have one mate. One other to whom, no matter where the wind takes them, they never fail to return. I always considered them rather beautiful, romantic birds … That is, of course, unless they’re eating people.”
She felt him smile against her hair.
“It’s why I’m so anxious for Atilla to heal,” she babbled on. “What if he has someone waiting for him? Someone he’s desperate to return to? What if she’s afraid he won’t come for her?” The very idea fragmented her.
After a pensive moment he said, “You named him Atilla?”
“Oh yes.” She brightened, “And the snake is Hannibal. The turtles over there are Genghis and Kublai. The foxes are Vlad the Impaler, Ivan the Terrible, and Catherine the Great—it was Alexander the Great at first, but then for obvious reasons I had to change the name, and naturally I found a supplemental ‘Great.’”
“Naturally.”
She allowed her head to rest against his shoulder, lulled by the rhythm of his inhalations. She didn’t allow herself to consider what would happen should she be caught in such a posture, in such proximity to a man in his state of undress. It seemed that through nursing him, a sense of intimacy and familiarity she’d not considered until now had bloomed between them.
She wanted him close. Craved it with a ferocity her young mind didn’t understand. She wanted his skin next to hers. Reveled in the scent and sight and warmth of him.
For warmth wasn’t something she experienced enough of.
Furthermore, no one much cared about her pets. She had to protect them from Mortimer just as attentively as she did from each other and the elements. Her father’s apathy toward her beasts was legendary, to say the least. And though she suspected they were too kind to say so, she had the idea that the servants found them more of a nuisance than a pleasure.
“What did you name the weasel?” he queried.
“It’s a ferret, and his name is Brutus. Oh, and the little rabbit over there is Napoleon Bonaparte. We … We ate Josephine, Lucien, and Pauline. Now he’s all alone.” She swallowed grief that should not be so fresh.
He cradled her gently, but she didn’t miss that his hand curled into a fist.
“Such fierce names you’ve given them.” She glowed because it sounded like he approved. “Do you have particularly violent turtles?”
Lorelai had the sense they were both wondering how he could remember all these historical figures when he could not recall his own past.
“I’ve given them epic legacies to live up to. To be fierce, to be a conqueror or a warrior, one must first recover one’s strength. I feel it might help them get better. A name is important, you know. It has power. A turtle named after a great Kahn would just feel silly if he died without a fight.”
“Let’s give me a name,” he suggested. “William after the Conqueror? Julius, after the Caesar. Or Antony? Not Octavian or Augustus, I’ll not have it. David, maybe? The one who defeated Goliath. David sounds close to something…”
“Oh, I named you ages ago,” she informed him merrily. The veins in his arm she’d been mentally tracing momentarily distracted her from remembering that she’d planned to keep that fact from him.
He stilled. “What … did you name me?”
“Ash.”
He snorted. “Because I’m more cinder than flesh?”
“Because I found you under an ancient, enormous ash tree, obviously.”
“Ash,” he repeated. “Not exactly a king’s name, nor a warrior’s.”
“It’s better than all that,” she rushed to explain, distressed by the disenchantment in his voice. “Our housekeeper, Maeve, says her family is descended from Druids. According to her, the Tree of Life is an ash tree, and it holds the whole of the earth and the sky together. It heals the sick, protects the innocent, and endows immortality to the worthy. So … as legacies go, I’d say I granted you a right whopper.”