The Duke with the Dragon Tattoo (Victorian Rebels, #6)(77)

“By share, I mean she peeled it daintily and shoved it in my eye.”

She let out a surprised giggle. “Tell me you didn’t hurt her!” she said.

“I ate her plantain, that’s for certain.” A smile didn’t sit easily on his hard mouth, but it seemed like it wanted to. “But we parted as friends.”

“I thought you said you didn’t have friends,” she taunted.

“Not of the human variety.”

She petted the lemur, somewhere left of his navel, a frown tugging at her brows. “I wish I could see these exotic creatures, but I know I never shall.”

His fingers lifted her chin with a gentleness she’d not thought him capable of. “A lot can happen between now and never.”

The words she’d spoken to him as a child glowed in her chest and spiked her lashes with threatening tears. “True,” she said haltingly, “but with my leg, there’s no traipsing around jungles or climbing mountains for me. I’m essentially useless.”

“Nonsense,” he soothed. “I’ll hire elephants to take you through the jungle, and sedans carried by ten bronzed men to conduct you through foreign cities. Arabian horses will convey you through the deserts, and we can take trains or my ship everywhere else.”

She sniffed, wishing she weren’t such a ninny. “And what about all the places elephants, and bronzed men, and Arabians and trains and ships can’t go?”

His playful gaze sobered, and warmed. “I’ll carry you.”

Driven by a desperate hope, she collapsed back to his chest. “Can we leave tomorrow? Just leave pirates and treasure and our names behind? We could start our lives anew.”

His hands toyed at the tendrils beside her face, as a gentle regret settled on his expression. “I have to find the Claudius Cache,” he murmured. “I’ve promised my men.”

“Couldn’t you just give the map to your men? Let them find it?”

“I have to see this through,” he insisted.

“But why? You have more money than you could spend in five lifetimes. Do you really need more treasure? Hasn’t this search taken enough from you?” She traced her fingers over his ruined tattoo. “It almost killed you once, already.”

He watched her with glittering black eyes. “I’ve been searching for this treasure since before I was Dorian Blackwell. When I think about it, I feel like my past is hurling itself at the iron door separating me from my memories. I feel like if I find the Claudius Cache … I’ll find myself.”

At this, she nodded reluctantly. “I understand.” And she did. “What then?” She was almost afraid to ask. “What will drive you once you’ve found what you seek?”

“Drive me?”

“You’ve been everywhere, seen everything. You have nothing left to conquer. What will you live for then?”

His eyes swung to the window as he contemplated the storm that had calmed to a light, pattering rain. “I have seen everything,” he said tightly. “I’ve met every kind of man. There are those who would risk their lives to climb the highest mountain or find the source of the most treacherous fjord. They crawl over themselves to build the highest building. Or to mine the deepest cave. They crave power. Glory. Danger. Excitement. They seek to taunt death. To defy God. To dominate nature … And only that thing, that obsession, makes them feel alive.”

She contemplated him with as much intensity as he did the storm. “Do … any of those things make you feel alive?”

“Not even close.”

“Then … what does? What will?”

He looked at her then, almost as though she’d disappointed him. “How can you not know?”

The air between them crackled with the promise of something cataclysmic. The promise of a shift in their cosmos, a rotation of their fates.

“Did you love me?” The moment the words escaped her, she regretted them.

His eyes shifted away from her. “I was young. I hadn’t yet learned to fear the folly of a fool in love.”

The emotion that had threatened the entire night spilled over her lashes, and his thumb smoothed it away. “It’s too late for love, Lorelai. To me, love is no more than the construct of poets. As easily bought and discarded as trust or loyalty. But I understand possession.” He rose up to bring his face close to hers, so they were once again breathing the same air. “You are mine. That is what I know.”

“So … you don’t love me.”

He pressed his forehead to hers. “I should have said it,” he lamented. “Back when I still had the ability to feel it. Back when I knew what fear was. What love was. I should have said I loved you before I rode away with Mortimer that day. It was there on the tip of my tongue. Right then, it was there in my heart when I was young enough to have one.”

Hope permeated the pain of his words as he brushed his mouth against hers. If love had been there once before … maybe she could put it back.

“It doesn’t matter,” she soothed. “I love you.” She wrapped her arms around him, letting the covers fall away. She didn’t want to look at him. Didn’t want to see fear or guilt or rejection in his eyes. She pressed her heart to his heart, her lips to his lips, and this time, when he moved above her, she had the sense he’d be much more wicked.