The Duke with the Dragon Tattoo (Victorian Rebels, #6)(43)

It occurred to Lorelai that she was being rather insolent for a pirate captive, but her nerves stretched beyond the capacity for restraint.

Astonishingly, her captor didn’t at all seem to mind. He touched his chin pensively. “You could shorten it to Rook, I suppose,” he ceded. “There’s no great need for a the.”

“Is that what your friends do?”

“I don’t have friends.”

“Your crew then?” she pressed.

“They call me Captain.”

“That certainly won’t work for me.”

“Address me as husband, then, and I will always answer.” After a look that threatened to scorch the fine hairs from her body, he perched on the bed to rid himself of his boots.

“But … in the eyes of most countries, we are not truly married,” she argued.

“You only just signed documents to the contrary,” he reminded her without looking up from his buckles.

“They don’t have your name on them!” She brandished the marriage contract in her hand as if they proved her point. “Why do you insist on being intolerable?”

“I’ve given you options,” the Rook said reasonably. “You’re just being stubborn. You weren’t stubborn as a child. I remember you being quite agreeable.”

“Well, we’ve both changed in twenty years, haven’t we?”

He looked up at her then, conducting a thorough examination as though to test her theory. From her unruly hair, to her pilfered shirt, and down to the soles of her wedding slippers. The silence became thick, heavy, charged with whatever emotions didn’t reach his dead, black eyes.

She knew what he saw. An old maid. A crippled spinster in her thirties who’d let loss paint her pale and gaunt, and allowed bitterness to etch wrinkles into her forehead.

Why, then, didn’t he look away? Why did he not allow his disappointment to show? If he were not Ash, and she was no longer agreeable, why did he want her, still? What would their life together look like? Would he take her to sail the world with him, forever locked in his cabin for his own personal use? Would he install her somewhere like a kept woman, to visit when he felt the need?

And if he claimed not to be Ash, why carry out a promise a supposedly dead man made?

She could no longer stand the silence of torturous unanswered questions and opened her mouth to inform him thusly.

“You need a name,” she blurted. Well … that wasn’t what she’d expected to say, but it was true, nonetheless.

“Why?” He stood and approached her in his bare feet, his gait as quiet as a hunter stalking his prey.

“I need you to—I mean—you need to be a person. Not a title.” When he drew close, she put her hand out, and it landed over his chest, over the shirt still rumpled because he’d slept in it.

Unless he’d not slept at all.

Though her strength was feeble next to his, he halted his advance as though her hand were a wall. He stood abnormally still but for the muscle twitching and tensing beneath her palm. The warmth of his body radiated through the fabric, heating her chilly fingers.

Lorelai stared at her white hand against his black shirt. She remembered touching him like this before. Over his clothing, enjoying the little intimacies of their budding young romance. The brush of his hand against hers. The way he’d tuck her hair behind her ear. The strength of his shoulders and arms as he provided her stability whilst crossing the treacherous estuary.

That kiss.

The long-ago kiss that launched their love from an innocent infatuation into another territory altogether. That kiss had promised this very thing. He’d sworn with his lips that he’d claim her one day.

That Ash would.

“Why can you not be my Ash?” she pleaded. “You said you liked the name. That you liked being him for me.”

He stared at her a long time, retaining that unnatural stillness that unnerved her to no end. “The boy you—knew is dead,” he informed her gravely.

But that made no sense. He stood right here. “Why?” she demanded. “Who killed him?”

His eyes burned with an onyx fire. “Mortimer Weatherstoke. Though Ash has died many times since the first.”

“Mortimer?” Lorelai snatched her hand back as though she’d been burned. “What did he do to you?”

He said nothing, but his knuckles whitened as fingers curled into fists. It was the first sign of emotion Lorelai had observed since he’d taken her.

“What happened to you? To Ash?” she whispered. “Tell me.”

“It doesn’t matter,” he rumbled. “The past has already been written. The blood is already dry. The only part left of Ash is the part who—”

“The part who what?”

“The part who … owns you.” Had she imagined it, or had it seemed as though he’d been about to say something else?

“You don’t own me.” How cruel time could be, to turn the boy she’d loved into a man she loathed.

“Of course I do.” He smothered his sentiment with a leer. “Haven’t you ever heard it stated that possession is nine-tenths of the law?” Without the barricade of her hand, he crept forward, crowding her. “What if I were Ash? What would you say to me?”

Heart stalling and then sputtering back to life, Lorelai took a limping retreat backward. “Y-you only just said that you wouldn’t answer to Ash. That he was dead.”