The Duke with the Dragon Tattoo (Victorian Rebels, #6)(33)

If ever a woman was in dire need of a good … seducing, it was that one.

Thrusting the priggish countess from his thoughts with greater difficulty than he was comfortable with, Moncrieff considered his captain carefully. He’d taken a bride, but he’d obviously not taken her.

Why the fuck not?

Frowning, Moncrieff blew a perfect smoke ring into his whisky glass before drinking deeply. How many drinks did this make? Six? Seven? Didn’t matter. He’d keep drinking until he’d puzzled this conundrum through. For what self-respecting pirate made decisions whilst sober?

None he’d want to know.

Inelegantly, he poured his seventh—eighth?—dram and decided to sip this one as he measured the only man he’d ever obeyed.

Together he and the Rook had turned apathy into an art form, and avarice into a religion.

For so long before his tenure on the Devil’s Dirge, Sebastian had thought himself immune to fear. Until one glimpse of the quiet and ruthless brutality of which the pitiless Rook was capable taught him more about himself than did a lifetime spent in self-discovery.

Sebastian had realized he wasn’t immune to fear, but addicted to it.

And no one frightened him like the Rook.

Did he not know better, he’d have thought the Rook some dark incarnation of Typhoon, the ancient god of chaos and the sea. The captain was possessed of a sense he’d never before encountered. Several, in fact. And before long, Sebastian had become convinced that the Rook was either a great friend or a mortal enemy of Death.

Because the demon had left him alone—left him alive—more times than should be humanly possible.

In time, Moncrieff’s curiosity had become a grudging respect, and then—astonishingly—kinship. He was as close to the Rook as anyone dare get without his balls shriveling to the size of sun-ripened grapes. His general insouciance became the perfect counterpoint to the Rook’s own brand of terrifying tranquility. They each had their parts to play. The Rook violently obtained things, and Moncrieff violently enjoyed those things. It went beyond treasure now. Titles. Power. Prestige. Land. They had so much. More than any one crew of ne’er-do-wells deserved.

But it was never enough.

Pirating for Sebastian was about pleasure. The rush of life-affirming exhilaration unparalleled by any other experience. The freedom of calling no man king, and no country home. Certainly, he followed the Rook’s orders … usually. It was his ship, after all. But for all his brutality, the Rook was no tyrant. His crew consisted of men who were at one time or another hired to do some mercenary thing and liked either the work or the reward so much that they begged to stay.

Attrition caused from death by the Rook’s own hand was astoundingly rare for a pirate ship. In the four years Moncrieff had known him, the Rook had only killed three of his crew. One, for turning state’s evidence after his capture in Morocco. Another, for alerting the British forces of their cache beneath the catacombs of Inverthorne Keep. And what a fucking debacle that had been.

And, most notably, Jeremy Smyth, who’d snuck an eleven-year-old girl into his quarters.

An oily shudder oozed down Sebastian’s spine at the memory, and he took a larger drink than he’d meant to. He’d never forget how the captain had reacted to that. He didn’t punish Smyth so much as … dismantle him. Without a word, without the frenzy of rage, the captain had simply shoved the trembling child into Sebastian’s hands, and gone to work on the man.

Not wanting the girl to see, Sebastian conducted the child back home with a bit of recompense, grateful Smyth hadn’t had the chance to relieve her of any clothing. He’d returned to a ship so eerily silent, one could hear Samuel Barnaby muttering obscenities as he mopped up the blood.

What was left of Smyth had been displayed on the aft railing of the quarterdeck until the smell became untenable.

That was how the captain operated. Most often, no order need be given. No law need be written. The men just knew what was expected, and when they didn’t, they stepped very lightly.

No one had quite discovered what drove the Rook. Greed? Perhaps. His own legend, maybe? Or blood. There was always plenty of blood. Though the crew often hazarded as to the captain’s proclivities in careful whispers, it had never truly mattered before.

Until now. Until … her.

With no warning at all, they’d paused in the middle of the grandest treasure hunt since the Copper Shuttle had been uncovered, to kidnap a crippled spinster and murder an impoverished earl.

This behavior of the captain’s was not only eccentric in the extreme, it was … troubling. And since the enigmatic Rook never explained himself, Sebastian and the rest of the crew were left scratching their heads, speculating as to what, if anything, Lorelai and Veronica Weatherstoke had to do with the Claudius Cache.

Lorelai had seemed to know him. She’d called him Ash.

Sweet Christ, did the Rook have … a name? A past? That didn’t sound at all right.

It’d been easiest for the world—for Moncrieff, himself—to perceive the Rook as some sort of mythical character. Birthed by an ancient forgotten god in some ridiculously brutal way. A curse or a scourge of the seas dredged from beneath Poseidon’s fingernail or Neptune’s nut sac … or whatnot.

Could it be possible that he was … a mere mortal? That skill, cunning, strength, and sometimes blind bloody luck had seen him through all this fucking time?