The Duke with the Dragon Tattoo (Victorian Rebels, #6)(69)

“It is all I am.” The butterfly never landed, because he surged to his feet and stalked a safe distance away, taking refuge by the fire. “You can’t take my hatred from me, Lorelai. Or…”

“Or what?” she prompted.

“You’ll take the last thing away that I know.” The fire gleamed an eerie shade off his midnight hair. “I’ll truly be nothing … No one.”

Lorelai helplessly watched an inner battle rage across features usually so implacable. He’d been so cold since his return. So very frighteningly unyielding. His scars now bunched and twitched with the movements of his jaw beneath. His restless soul called to her with a volcanic sense of pressure.

Perhaps he just needed to let it out.

“I had so much reason to hate Mortimer,” she professed. “But you say that you do, as well. What reason had you to kill him?”

“You,” he clipped.

She blinked at him. “What?”

“He’s the reason we’ve lived apart these twenty years. He killed Ash. Over. And. Over. And. Over.” It was the lack of inflection in his voice, the unhurried repetition of the syllables that made his declaration that much more dreadful. What horrors must it have taken for enough of Ash to disappear, to create the Rook?

“W-what did he do?” she whispered, all the while terrified of the answer.

He gave her his back, taking the iron tool from its stand and stabbing at the glowing coals. “Have you ever heard of being shanghaied?”

His voice was so low, she had to strain to hear it. “I haven’t.”

“It’s a widespread practice these days. The maritime shipping industry is booming, you see, but it’s also dangerous, tedious, and backbreaking work. Most working men are better suited to the fields and factories than the sea. This has created a shortage of willing sailors. And so, in some places, a brawny man with a body built for labor will go to a pub or a brothel, to eat and drink his fill. He won’t know that some enterprising flesh peddler drugged his ale until he wakes up on a ship halfway to Shanghai. The captain of that ship is now his world, his king, and the only hope he has of getting home is to work on a crew and save the money for passage from some foreign port.”

“Oh my God,” she whispered. “You’re saying Mortimer drugged you and gave you to a ship captain?”

When the coals glowed red enough for him, he stooped to add another log to the fire. “It’s worse than that. Mortimer sold me, and it was up to me to work off the money the captain had paid him.”

Lorelai gaped, her fingers curling into fists around the hem of the bedclothes. For all her talk of forgiveness, his story stoked a rage to match that of the flames now licking up the chimney. “How long did that take?”

“I was a special case,” he continued. “Mortimer had made a singular deal for me. I was sold again and again. My life was to be one of continuous indentured servitude, until I became too broken, old, or ill. Then I’d be discarded to the sea once I was of no use to anyone. I witnessed that happen more than once. An old or injured man pushed from a deck. Calling out for salvation. It used to be my greatest fear.”

Lorelai didn’t realize she’d been crying until a hot tear dropped from her chin onto the cold hands clenched in her lap. “I didn’t know,” she marveled. He’d mentioned that Mortimer deserved to die seven thousand deaths. Seven thousand. The number of days stolen from them.

“I always wondered what he’d told you, about why I didn’t come back.”

“He said you’d remembered,” Lorelai managed, though her emotions threatened to strangle her. “That you didn’t want to return to Southbourne Grove only to break my heart. He said you had someone else and you went to her.” Even that heartbreak hadn’t come close to touching this one. She’d cried for months, but a part of her had understood. She’d done her best to comprehend, at any rate.

“All this time…” he murmured to the fire. “You thought I’d abandoned you.”

“To think I was happy for you!” she railed. “I assumed you were living your life, your true life, and that offered a modicum of comfort. When I missed you, I’d tell myself I had a hand in healing you enough to send you home to the family and loved ones you’d lost.”

“Did you not believe the words I spoke to you when we parted?” he asked in a low, dangerous voice.

The sun will set in the west, and I’ll come for you.

Shame lowered her gaze to the counterpane, to the silhouettes of her feet beneath the covers. “If you loved someone as Mortimer claimed. Someone who already meant so much to you. Why keep your promise to a sheltered cripple?”

His hand tightened on the poker. “Even then, you assumed I was without honor?”

“That’s not what I—”

“You were right, it seems. As Dorian Blackwell I was a thief and a murderer.” He stabbed the instrument back into its place and whirled on her. Backlit by the fire, his features took on a demonic cast. “You think I’m a monster?” he rumbled. “You don’t know the half of it. But there are creatures out there far more horrendous than I. They do things, horrific things. Unspeakable things. To girls. To boys. To men. To women … to me.”

She wanted to call his name … to make him stop. But what name did she use? He didn’t know who he was, and she knew even less. “How long did you suffer? How long were you a slave?” She didn’t want the answer. But she needed it.