The Duke with the Dragon Tattoo (Victorian Rebels, #6)(68)

“I didn’t,” she whispered.

“It has served me well to be no one. A shadow. A faceless shade. The terror of the high seas, the architect of my own mythology.”

She scrutinized him closely, noting a new vulnerability beneath his indifference that hadn’t been there before. “Are you not glad you’ve found your name? That you know who you are?”

“I thought I would be.” He waited for another clash of thunder to abate. “I do not share a kinship with the name Dorian. Nor any memories. But it’s haunted me, and now I know why,” he admitted, returning the book to her lap. “It doesn’t matter. The name Dorian Blackwell remains with the man who’s earned it. I don’t want it.”

Lorelai sat up from her pillows aching to reach for him, but afraid of where such an intimacy would lead. “He seems glad to have found you,” she postulated. “He truly feels you are his brother.”

He made a derisive sound. “I met his brothers. I’m not certain that’s a compliment.”

“Do you believe him? Do you remember anything about him?”

“Maybe. Somehow. I believe he is someone I trust. Trusted. I don’t know.” He gritted his teeth and threaded his fingers through his sable hair, pulling it in frustration. “All of these fucking revelations, and I still don’t know who I am. I don’t remember.”

“I know who you could be,” she ventured. “I gave you a name.”

He looked at her sharply. “We’ve been over this.”

“I still don’t understand,” she pressed. “You say it is impossible, that Ash is dead. But here you are. Not Dorian. Not the Rook. Doesn’t that mean there is still hope?”

His hard glare softened. “Hope is for fools. I am not Ash anymore.”

“Tell me one good reason you couldn’t be again,” she challenged.

“I kill people. A lot of people.”

There was that. She chewed on the inside of her cheek. “Could you … ever try … not to kill people?”

Something tender toyed with the edges of his mouth. “You know how it is in the world. It is kill or be killed. It has always been thus.”

“Maybe in your world…” Lorelai scooted even closer, encouraging him with a cheeky smile. “My experience is that if you don’t try to kill people, they usually won’t try to kill you back.”

Instead of amusing him, she seemed to make it all worse. A bleakness radiated from him as he sank to the side of her bed. “You’re fortunate, Lorelai, that this is your experience.”

His words sliced a leaking wound into her heart. “Are you angry with me?” she asked.

“Why would I be?” His puzzlement seemed genuine.

“Because I—I fainted when we…” She couldn’t finish that sentence without possibly repeating the humiliation. “And then I—Veronica and I—escaped.” She softened the word. “We left.”

She flinched when he reached for her, but relaxed as he traced the soft underside of her jaw with gentle, callused fingertips. “Veronica mentioned you do that when you are afraid. That you sleep as though you’d left your body. And nothing can wake you. Where do you go?”

“I—I’m not sure.” His touch was doing something twitchy to the muscles of her neck. “It’s like my mind is no longer in my body, as my body has never particularly been a comfortable place to live. Somehow, I’ve created in my sleep a quiet place. A safe place.” A place where Ash has always lived, she didn’t say.

“A quiet sleep. How would that be?” He caught one of the loose curls at the nape of her neck and ran it through his fingers, testing its consistency. They seemed to hold a certain fascination for him, the wild, willful strands that refused to be tamed. “How long have you done this?”

“Since childhood. Since my leg…”

He frowned. “I never noticed it in the time I spent at Southbourne Grove.”

“I never left when you were there. I felt safe when awake, I suppose. Mortimer never hurt me again until you were gone.”

Suddenly the air was charged like the moment between lightning and thunder. Dangerous. Anticipatory. “I would kill him again if I could,” he vowed. “Slower this time.”

“I never knew you hated him so much.”

“Didn’t you hate him?”

“No,” she answered honestly. “I admit I strongly resented him. I feared him, mostly. But over time I learned to be indifferent. And, with his death, I think I will easily forget him.”

He gestured to the ankle she had propped up on a pillow. “How do you forget something like this? He broke you. Terrorized you. He—”

“You only have to forget once, and then it’s all over,” she said. “To hate you must remember, you must dwell. You must hold it in your heart all the time and feed it. Nurture it. I found that too exhausting. Hatred for Mortimer made me physically ill. And that didn’t hurt him, it only made me suffer.”

He dropped her ringlet, his hands tight fists by the time they lowered to his sides. “I have become my hate, Lorelai. I am loss and wrath and loathing.”

“You are more than that,” she contended, her hand hovering like a butterfly over his broad back.