The Duke with the Dragon Tattoo (Victorian Rebels, #6)(30)

Back to England? Where had he gone? Where had he been for twenty years? Why hadn’t he come for her the moment he touched down on British soil?

“I spied you in the estuary,” he continued. “Teaching a fucking orphaned otter how to swim. And I decided that I’d give you as many days as possible without me. It’s the only kindness I can afford you, I’m afraid. I waited to inflict myself on you for as long as I could.” The fingers he rubbed together now curled into a fist. “But I would not see you married to another man. So now … here we are. And there is nothing to be done for it.”

“You speak as though it’s out of your hands,” she marveled.

“It is. It always has been.” He might have sounded apologetic, which was both terrifying and ludicrous. “I was born the moment I heard your voice commanding me to live. And you have been mine ever since. You’re right, Lorelai, there’s nothing to be done for that.”

“Then perhaps I should have left you to rot beneath that ash tree.” She’d meant to lash out at him. To hurt him. To drive him away, somehow, until she could contain this rapidly disintegrating situation.

“Perhaps that might have been best for us both.” He toyed with a loathed wispy curl at her temple, one of several which would neither grow nor be tamed, and forever framed her face.

Then his palms traced their way down her neck to her shoulders. They were even rougher than she remembered, the calluses like sandpaper against the tender skin. In a feline gesture, he brought his cheek to rest against hers, the stubble rasping against her jaw, as he seemed to savor her fragrance like one would an expensive wine before taking a sip.

His dark head lowered further to the hollow of her throat, dragging his lips across it. His warm breath made way for the heat of his tongue, and something damp and disloyal rushed between her legs.

Desire flared, and panic surged alongside it, surpassing the sensation with a dizzying rush of terror. She could not allow herself to submit. Not to him. Not like this. Not until she could find Ash behind the dead-eyed predator.

Lorelai’s knee connected with hard flesh before she’d even made the conscious decision to fight. She rushed around him as a breathless sound escaped his throat followed by hoarse, horrid curses.

She hoped to put the table between them, if only to buy her some time.

She hadn’t thought this through, had she? Where would she go on an unfamiliar ship? What awaited her on the other side of that door?

The boat pitched sharply, and her left foot met the ground with more force than she could take. She gave a cry of pain as her weak ankle gave out, and she sprawled forward, biting her lip hard enough to draw blood upon impact with the ground.

The tears didn’t flow because of fear or pain anymore, but out of sheer, helpless frustration. She looked like a fool, prostrate on the floor. Despite her intensifying antipathy for the Rook, she didn’t want Ash—if any part of him was left—to see her humiliated like this.

Maybe he’d be angry enough to kill her before she had to lift her head. Then she wouldn’t have to face her own mortification.

He was on her in an instant, turning her, lifting her, cradling her to his chest. Much like he’d done so long ago. Lorelai’s tears became as torrential as the storm. She did her best not to remember the last time she’d cried against him. The last time she’d made herself a fool in front of him. It had been over a raven.

A rook.

Silently, he conducted her back to the bed, limping only slightly. He sat her on the counterpane, rumpled by her struggles. This time, she didn’t fight him, not even when he reached into a trouser pocket.

“Get it over with,” she sobbed, crossing her arms over her corset in a feeble attempt to regain her modesty. “I’d rather die than live as your wife.”

His hand froze, halfway out of his pocket. “You think I’m going to … kill you?”

“And why shouldn’t I? You murdered Mortimer,” she said woodenly. “In a churchyard, no less. In the late after noon in front of God and everyone. You didn’t even … hesitate or—”

“In my experience, hesitation is the number one cause of death.” He flicked out a handkerchief and presented it to her, as though to prove a point.

To say she was surprised didn’t cover half of it. She’d only just kneed him in his … manly bits. Wasn’t he livid? Why was he not punishing her in some dastardly, piratey manner?

“Why do you weep over him?” He didn’t sound angry, only confounded, but Lorelai didn’t fail to note that he wouldn’t say Mortimer’s name. “He broke your fucking leg. He fed your pets to you. Life with him these past twenty years could hardly have been palatable.”

He didn’t know the half of it.

“Tell me you’ve not become so touched as to keenly mourn his loss.”

The disgust in his words sparked a temper she’d long considered dormant. “It is Ash’s loss I mourn,” she spat, delicately wiping at her nose. “For he is gone, and a stranger has taken his place. Ash would never have done something so monstrous. Even to Mortimer.”

“You are both right and wrong about that,” he responded wryly. He seemed about to say something, and then changed his mind. Regarding her with more curiosity than regret. “You once said that to become a monster you must first do something monstrous. And as a youth at Southbourne, Ash thought he might have done monstrous things in the boyhood he didn’t remember. But I’m convinced that until the day we were parted, Ash only had dirt on his hands.”