The Duke with the Dragon Tattoo (Victorian Rebels, #6)(91)
“I’m not generally an aggressive person,” he said conversationally. “I don’t often have to be. I merely make the suggestion of violence, and find that’s sufficient to get what I want.”
“Lord, must you be so arrogant?” Lorelai wrenched the rope out of his hands. Or, rather, he allowed her to.
It wasn’t as though she could make any attempt at escape.
“Arrogant is a bit severe, don’t you think?” he asked. “I imagine I’m merely confident.”
Her decidedly unladylike snort echoed off the stones. “Confidence is quiet. And you, sir, are not.”
“I’ll grant you that.” He dug at the soft cavern floor with his boot and came away with packed sand. Picking up a black rock he’d unearthed, he hurled it at the wall.
A great chunk of it crumbled away and dissolved when it hit the wet sand.
“What’s this?” Moncrieff retrieved the rock again and chipped away some of the black substance, which he caught in his palm. He sniffed it, and stuck his tongue out and touched it.
Then spat it out.
“Christ.” He wiped his lips with the back of his hand. “It’s salt. Pure black salt.” Frowning, he gave the entire cavern a second look. “Why would both Emperor Claudius and the Danish king leave treasure in such a place? Surely, they understood the corrosive properties of salt, even back then.”
“What if there is no treasure?” Lorelai speculated. “You’ll have risked all this for nothing.”
“So many men risk so little.” He advanced on her, his eyes becoming iridescent in the lanternlight. “I risk it all to get what I want.”
“And what do you want?” she challenged.
“My desires are simple.” He brought his face close to hers. “I only want everything.”
A ruckus from outside pierced the darkness of the grotto. Gunshots. Then metallic sounds. Or, rather, the echoes and thuds of metallic objects hitting other softer, fleshier substances created a symphony of gruesome ricochets in the cavern. The grunts and calls of combat, along with wetter sounds. Final cries.
Ash! He’d come for her! No … no, he’d come for the treasure.
She just happened to be here.
Moncrieff seized her abruptly, hauling her against him. “It seems our captain has picked logic over love, after all,” he said against her ear.
“Then why is there violence?” Her voice shook with equal parts hope and devastation as she listened to the sounds of chaos.
“We are pirates, darling. There is always violence.” She wouldn’t call the emotion in Moncrieff’s voice distress, but neither would she call it calm. He produced a pistol from his belt and trained it on the cave entrance. “I suppose one cannot love the teeth out of a shark.”
Nor the avarice out of a pirate.
A body flew through the portal, and Moncrieff pulled the trigger.
Lorelai’s ears rang so loudly, she barely heard her own scream. A scream that died when she realized that Moncrieff had inadvertently killed one of his own mutineers. Or perhaps the poor pirate had already been dead. That was a lot of blood on his shirt, more than one bullet could produce.
Another man screeched as he was propelled through the opening, and thrust directly at them.
Moncrieff shot him, as well.
A simultaneous bullet of unknown origin hit the lantern, which shattered. Flames flared, devoured the fuel, and then sputtered out.
Leaving the only light in the cave from the fissure above.
“Your aim is improving all the time, Captain,” Moncrieff taunted as he levered them farther into the shadows, to avoid the spotlight of sun.
“Do you really want those to be your last words, Moncrieff?”
Lorelai’s blood quickened at the unholy resonance of Ash’s voice slithering through the darkness of the cavern. It surrounded her, enveloping her in hope.
Two twin shadows appeared at the mouth of the cave, and dove in opposite directions as Moncrieff’s pistol flashed with another deafening shot.
“Be careful to let your bullets fly at me, I’ve a pretty shield.” Moncrieff lifted her more tightly against his vital organs. “Though I suppose she means less to you than I’d expected, seeing as you came for the treasure and left her to the flesh peddlers.”
Lorelai wanted to be more courageous, hated the tiny sound she made as his arm slid from her chest to her throat. She didn’t want Ash to remember her last sound being a whimper.
“Let her go, Moncrieff.” Blackwell’s sinister command echoed from somewhere behind them.
“Give her to me,” Ash echoed Blackwell, while adding the caveat, “and I’ll let you have whatever else you find in this cave.”
“The cave is empty, you capricious bastard.” Moncrieff pulled the hammer back with an ominous click. “There’s no Claudius Cache here, as you can see. No Roman treasure worth a soldier’s weight in wealth.”
Lorelai gasped as Moncrieff’s words triggered a mem ory from one of the many books she’d read in the Southbourne library.
Worth a soldier’s weight in wealth …
Worth a man’s weight in …
“Salt,” she whispered. “It’s the salt.”
A stunned silence met her declaration.
“Don’t you see?” She squirmed to get more purchase as she struggled to reveal her findings. “The Romans. They often paid their solders in salt, which is the origin of the word salary. Even now, we tell a man he’s worth his salt or that he’s earning his salt, don’t we? Even the Latin word sal became the French word solde, which means ‘pay,’ and is the origin of the word soldier.”