The Duke with the Dragon Tattoo (Victorian Rebels, #6)(25)
Calm? Is that what she was? Calm. She supposed her inability to move must seem tranquil, but in truth Lorelai attributed her behavior to terrified paralysis more than anything.
Shock. Astonishment. Distress. Any similar word she summoned to describe her current state seemed woefully inadequate to the task. Traumatized, perhaps?
Ash? The Rook? How?
Reality had just collided with a nightmare, and she and Veronica were the reluctant debris left in the aftermath.
“Dash it, Lorelai, help me open this!” Veronica cried. “We’ve heard the stories of the Rook, read the news articles. You witnessed what that man did to Mortimer. The Rook has a crew of men with rocks for hearts and he’s the deadliest of the lot.”
“Which is why it would behoove you both to behave.” The air in the room cooled several degrees, and even the storm shadows deepened as the Rook ducked into the cabin. It was as though he brought the darkness with him. He wore it about his wide shoulders like a regal mantle tailored for the devil, himself.
Suddenly very aware that she sat upon his bed, Lorelai stood, her hand searching for Veronica, who instantly returned to her side. She wasn’t sure why, but it seemed easier to address the most infamous and lethal pirate in centuries—one who wore the features of her first love—whilst clinging to her only friend in the world.
His cool, detached manner stung more than it should as he assessed her with distressing thoroughness.
Veronica probably assumed she tightened her grip out of a similar terror, but in reality, she did it to stay the impulse to smooth her bedraggled hair or fiddle with the veil that hung damp and limp from her crown.
She probably looked a fright, drenched and pale and wind-tossed.
Why should that matter? she admonished herself.
Because those eyes, those dark, empty eyes had once looked at her as though she were the most rare and beautiful treasure on this earth.
And now … now … nothing.
As the ship left the bay, the sea became as tumultuous as her own emotions, making it extra difficult to keep her feet beneath her.
The Rook advanced upon her with the unhurried but absolute concentration of a shark drawn to blood. He emoted no appetite, no aggression, no anticipation.
But he was hungry. Lorelai didn’t understand how she knew it. She just did. Like the conditioned responses of any prey animal, she sensed his need with the tiny hairs prickling on the back of her neck. Or by the twitches and shivers of ever-ready muscles, urging her to run.
She hadn’t run in more than twenty-five years. Not that there was any hope for escape on a pirate ship.
Black trousers pulled tight against his thighs as he progressed, molding to legs much longer and thicker than she remembered. Brilliant, colorful, unidentifiable shapes of innumerable tattoos pressed against the white of his shirt as muscles he’d not yet built in his youth shifted when he reached for her.
As a boy, his body hinted at strength, now he rippled with it. He might have once been dangerous, now … danger seemed too mild a word. The peril she sensed in his presence defied description.
“How fortuitous that you’re already wearing a wedding dress,” he said without inflection.
Lorelai shrank away from him, but of course he didn’t allow it as he firmly disentangled her from Veronica’s clutching hands.
“Don’t you touch her,” Veronica cried.
“Do keep in mind, Lady Southbourne, the last person who presumed to command me now rests at the bottom of the ocean,” he replied. “And I say rest, because, in the end, his death was a mercy.”
Veronica paled, and for a moment, Lorelai thought she might swoon.
“There’s no need to threaten Lady Southbourne.” She kept her voice even, unchallenging, a tone she’d adopted and perfected during thirty years living with a volatile man. “I won’t make any trouble. You know that. Just tell us what you’re after.”
The stare he leveled at her hinted at displeasure, but Lorelai had the sense an incalculable fury seethed beneath the air of indifference. “Do not speak to me as you spoke to your brother, Lorelai. I am not a man to be handled.”
“I wasn’t trying to—”
Dark brows lowered in calculating evaluation, his stubborn jaw tilting slightly to one side in an achingly familiar gesture. “Do not lie to me. If you are afraid, show it. If you are in pain, tell me. I might not know, otherwise.”
The moisture deserted her mouth. How did even the most innocuous sentences become sinister when uttered by him?
She attempted to accommodate him.
“I am afraid that you’ll do Veronica harm,” she admitted calmly.
His granite jaw relaxed slightly along with his grip on her arm. “Are you … not afraid I’ll do you harm?”
Well … she was now.
“I tell you, Captain, I don’t understand you one bit.” Moncrieff was also tall enough to have to duck beneath the arch of the cabin door. He punched his long arms into a lush, expensive emerald-green velvet jacket with a black silk collar. “Correct me if I’m wrong, but don’t we expend a great deal of our time and effort doing our best to avoid government institutions?”
“As a general rule, you are not wrong,” the Rook casually acquiesced.
“Marriage would make the second government institution you’ve entered into willingly in as many months. To be honest, I’d rather take a stab at Newgate than nuptials. Easier to escape, if you catch my meaning.” He aimed a mischievous wink at Veronica, as though she were in on some elaborate joke.