The Duke with the Dragon Tattoo (Victorian Rebels, #6)(54)

“Trauma…” He swallowed heavily, losing some of his own high color.

“What did you do to her?” Veronica asked in a horrified whisper.

He said nothing.

A protective rage welled within her. Only hours ago, she’d been ready to take her own life on her best friend’s behalf, and now, it seemed, she’d be willing to do it again. “Did you hurt her?” she demanded. “Did you … did you force yourself upon her?”

Had she been awakening the long-dormant lust within her body at the very same moment this monster had been thrusting his own upon poor Lorelai?

Dear Lord, she’d never forgive herself.

The Rook’s features darkened from sinister to brutal. It was a look that would fill demons with dread, but Veronica was beyond that.

“It was only a kiss…” he muttered.

“Not to her, it wasn’t,” she snapped. “She’s never even been truly kissed, you bloody fiend! Not since some sacred chaste encounter as a child. Now she’s been forced to wed a pirate? You terrified her, you—you monstrous boor! I mean, just look at you!” She gestured rudely to his unclad body. The vibrant, menacing tattoos of things with teeth and tails. The vast breadth of his shoulders. The muscles built upon other muscles screaming of brutal labor, vast years of violence, and barely leashed ferocity.

Dear heavens, where did they build pirates these days? On Mount Olympus? Weren’t they supposed to be a scurvy lot, unkempt and unwashed, with leathery skin and missing limbs?

Not that such casts of males would be preferable to these men. Especially when coerced weddings were concerned.

She realized they’d been glaring at each other for several seconds, and only then when he shocked her by breaking eye contact first.

Did she read regret on his features? Was a man like him capable of such human emotions as remorse?

“Stay with her,” he ordered. “I don’t want her alone when she wakes. I’ll send my valet in to fetch my clothing. Make certain she is well by the time I get back.”

“When will that be?”

He pierced her with a warning glare. “When I’m finished storming Ben More Castle.”

“In the middle of the day? You can’t be serious.” She stepped forward before reason screamed at her to be less reckless with her life. “What if the Blackheart of Ben More overwhelms your forces and decides to take the ship? We’d be helpless.”

Better the monster you know …

“You’re helpless now,” he snarled.

No they weren’t. Somewhere in the Rook’s dark soul, he fancied he cared for Lorelai. It’s what had kept them both safe up until now. But what if the Rook could no longer protect them?

He answered the question he saw in her eyes. “A man like Dorian Blackwell is more vigilant at night. He is ready for his enemies to come at him in the dark because the dark is his domain. So, I will not strike when he is ready. When he is watching. I will raid when he is most relaxed. When he and his children are sitting down to supper. When his servants are busy and his men are full of food and sluggish with ale. And I will not relent until I get what I want.”

“How … how do you know he won’t see you coming?” she couldn’t help but ask.

“No one ever sees me coming. Until it’s too late.” He said this almost gently as he returned to Lorelai’s side and touched every inch of her face with his gaze, as though committing it to memory.

“What … what do you want from her?” Veronica wouldn’t have dared ask, but for a ludicrous moment, he seemed almost … human. “What do you mean to gain from all of this?”

“That, Countess, is none of your concern.” She’d expected the man to slam out as he left, but he only shut the door with a silent click behind him.

A quarter hour later a smallish Jamaican man by the odd name of Saxby tiptoed in, bringing with him afternoon tea, a pitcher of ice shards, and leaving with an outfit for his captain.

Where one kept ice on a pirate ship was beyond her.

Veronica ate a little, and nursed her tea in between bouts of ministering ice-cold cloths to Lorelai’s forehead.

When the sun began to dip toward the west, the door opened and heavy footsteps fell behind her. Veronica didn’t bother to look up. She didn’t want to meet the Rook’s cold stare again.

“If you hurry, I can help you escape.”

Every part that made Veronica a female clenched at the sound of that voice. It took a moment longer than it should for the words to register.

She whirled to find Moncrieff filling the doorway. It should be illegal for a man to appear both an angel and a rogue at once, Veronica thought unkindly. Especially when she knew the deviancies of which he was capable. Not to mention the unwelcome, but not unpleasant, sensations he’d elicited within her.

He’d dressed in fawn trousers and a cream shirt. The afternoon sun gleamed off his hair, damp and lambent from a recent wash.

Had the prostitute bathed him? Why did the thought of that intimacy between a woman she didn’t know, and a man she didn’t wish to be acquainted with, turn the corners of her mouth down?

Also, why couldn’t she bring herself to look at his mouth? Or, anywhere above his neck, really.

She knew why.

Did he?

Finally, the word escape permeated her mortification.