The Duke with the Dragon Tattoo (Victorian Rebels, #6)(59)

It had almost worked, too, had they not been beset upon by Blackwell’s men the moment they touched the beach, and conducted to Ben More to hold court with the reigning King of the London Underworld.

The man in question was followed by his valet, a stocky Scot named Murdoch. Blackwell’s gaze found his wife instantly, and Farah greeted him from where the ladies sat on the long settee perpendicular to the fire.

A wrinkle appeared between Lady Farah’s brows, as though she knew something was wrong the moment she met her villainous husband’s eye. Her finger anxiously twisted a silver-blond curl, even when the Blackheart of Ben More offered his wife what was meant to be half of a reassuring smile.

Not for the first time, it struck Lorelai how much he resembled the Rook. Perhaps his nose was more patrician, and his mouth softer. His skin decidedly less swarthy and weathered. More marble than bronze. He’d spent his life beneath the eerie pallid lanterns of the London night, or the constant clouds of Ben More.

Not on the deck of a ship with no escape from the relentless sun.

Neither the Rook, Moncrieff, nor Blackwell or Murdoch claimed the two monstrous leather chairs across from where the ladies anxiously perched.

Blackwell instantly went to a hearth large enough to house a small village, bracing his arm on the mantel and staring into the roaring fire as though he could see the past in the flames with his one good eye.

Lorelai glanced from him to the Rook, who’d strategically positioned himself off to the left of the assemblage, at the edge of where firelight and shadow met and melded. From his vantage no man stood at his back, only a wall of books, and he had a view of both the north and west entrances to the room.

And everyone in it.

He’d belonged there. He’d lived his entire life half in shadow … the darkness threatening to claim him.

Come back, Lorelai thought. Come into the light.

His boots planted wide, his arms crossed over his chest, he stood like a sentinel.

Large and lethal and … lost.

As much as he claimed to no longer be Ash, he resembled the boy she’d loved in this moment. His passionless, emotionless demeanor now tightened and flexed with any number of expressions. And none of them pleasant.

Though he didn’t move, torment and menace rolled off the mountains of his shoulders in palpable waves. Did anyone else feel it?

She ached for him. In every possible way. She ached for his pain. She ached for his attention. For his touch.

God help her, what did that mean?

Lunacy, surely. To feel for the man who’d not a few days ago murdered her brother. Who’d murdered countless more, by his own admission. The most wanted man in all the world.

And he wanted her.

Moncrieff stood at his shoulder, his handsome fa?ade set somewhere between disbelief and discontent.

Farah broke the fraught silence. “I take it, husband, that since you have brought guests into our home, with our children, your … negotiations were successful.” A thread of steel weaved into the soft tapestry of her voice.

Mortimer would have throttled his wife for speaking to him thusly.

Blackwell only released an eternal breath. “I’ve a story to tell,” he murmured into the flames. “Everyone gathered needs to hear the telling of it.”

Though Lady Farah had been unceasingly polite and kind, Lorelai hardly knew the woman, and the obvious affection between the silver-haired beauty and her unaccountably forbidding husband was the source of much consternation.

The so-called Blackheart of Ben More was the quintessential villain. He could have unfurled from the pages of one of a dozen penny dreadfuls, dark, sly, and disturbingly inscrutable.

And yet, he’d patiently cleaned baby sick from his lapel before gathering his garrison of mercenaries to defend his keep against a pirate siege.

On the opposite side of the coin, the cherubic countess seemed to calm or cheer anyone she met, Lorelai included. But she reigned as the undoubted queen at her husband’s side. A lioness for which any number of men would lay down their lives.

“Let us make introductions, then.” Farah stood, crossing to the pirates. “I’m Lady Farah Blackwell. And you are?”

“Moncrieff, my lady.” He took her hand and pressed a kiss to the air above it, flashing that devastating smile.

“Moncrieff?” She tapped a finger to the divot in her chin. “I knew a Moncrieff family as a girl. Any relation to Thomas Moncrieff? The Earl of Crosthwaite?”

The fearsome pirate actually flinched. “My late father, I’m afraid.”

“His firstborn went to fight in India; I was told he never returned,” she marveled. “You cannot be Sebastian.”

“In the flesh.”

“The Erstwhile Earl!” she exclaimed. “Where have you been all this time?”

Lorelai looked to Veronica, who watched the exchange with perceptible interest.

“Everywhere and nowhere.” Moncrieff shrugged, not bothering to hide his discomfiture. “I found I’m more suited for pirating than Parliament.”

“Just so.” Farrah laughed. “It’s a pleasure to meet you.”

“Likewise.” He nodded, his eyes shifting about the room in a gesture more disconcerted than Lorelai had imagined him capable.

“And you are?” She turned to the Rook, but he didn’t uncross his arms. Instead, his eyes darted over to her husband, who answered for him.