Page 12 of The Duke With the Dragon Tattoo
But he’d hoped it was an endearment rather than a taunt. A familial moniker given to a girl with a tendency to rescue motherless ducklings and the like. She’d told him about her little menagerie in one of his more lucid moments. And, for a blessed time, he’d not wanted to claw off his own flesh as he listened to her tales of silly animal antics.
He pondered the long sleeve of a shirt that didn’t belong to him. Horrible scabs stretched along his arm, his torso, and down his waist. He could not see them, but the tangible tugs and aches on his flesh alerted him to their presence.
“My ankle was broken, too, a long time ago,” she murmured. “The same one as yours, in fact. But mine didn’t… heal in time.” Lifting another spoonful of soup, she summoned a smile, punctuating the end of that topic.
Obediently, he ate.
The sound of heavy bootsteps interrupted the ensuing silence. Big, blond, and brawny, Mortimer Weatherstokelooked exactly like he’d imagined the bastard would. He surveyed the scene with the air of a princeling watching the slaughter of his supper. The novel carnage both revolting and fascinating.
“Dr. Holcomb said that the blighter had woken… Dear God.” His ruddy, handsome face crumpled into a grimace. “How positively grotesque. It’s worse than I thought, Duck.”
“No it isn’t!” she huffed at her brother. “No it isn’t.” She hastily turned back to reassure him. “Dr. Holcomb said you were fortunate it rained so mightily on the day the lye was poured on your… body.” She whispered the word, as though it were a naughty one. “The water diluted its effect. You were again lucky that the burns didn’t become infected. And now, once the scabs turn to scars, you’ll recover fully. But… better you don’t look until then, yes? Promise me?”
He opened his mouth to disagree and again found it full of the soup spoon before he could make a noise.
His impish angel was craftier than he’d given her credit for.
He glared at them both as he gnawed a particularly chewy piece of stew meat.
Mortimer rested a manicured hand on Lorelai’s shoulder, and she winced as though she’d been stung by a wasp.
His heartbeat sped to a murderous pace. The bruise on her wrist… had been the shape of a finger. Of two fingers. And if she lifted her sleeve, he’d bet he could find others. The places where she’d been mishandled by the oafish lummox looming over them.
“You truly remember nothing?” Mortimer scratched his scalp through hair several shades lighter than his sister’s. “Not your name. Not your parents. Not even where you live?”
Swallowing the stew, along with the madness that threatened each time he tried to ponder what he didn’t remember, he shook his head.
“I’ve heard of this happening before…” Mortimer stroked the sparse beginnings of a mustache on his upper lip. It looked like a half-plucked baby chick. “To soldiers and the like. Are you a soldier?”
What a fucking imbecilic question.
“I. Don’t. Know.”
Their glares locked, and suddenly he knew his own eyes were black. Black with instant hatred.
Whereas Lorelai’s honey-wheat hair was threaded through with streaks of dark gold, and her flawless skin bronzed by many hours spent in the sun, Mortimer was simply… yellow. Sallow, even. His hair, his ridiculous mustache, and his pale skin tinted an almost sickly color that was exacerbated by his mustard silk house coat.
He had an apelike quality about him. Arms too long for his stocky body. Posture curled with indolent apathy, though blessed with brute strength. A golden gorilla.
Barely fucking human.
“Here.” Lorelai offered him another bite of soup, doing her best to dispel the tension gathering in the room. “Do you think you can finish?”
“Like rabbit, do you?” Mortimer asked.
“Rabbit?” An adorable wrinkle appeared between her brows. “Cook didn’t get any at market, did you finally catch some in your snares?”
“No.” Mortimer packed the single syllable to overflowing with cruel anticipation.
“Mortimer… what did you do?” Setting the half-empty bowl down with such haste, the contents sloshedonto the bedside table, Lorelai stood to question her brother.
A fear the boy didn’t understand feathered across her features.
“Why go through the trouble of snaring rabbits, when there were perfectly good ones out back in the pens?” Mortimer obviously savored the devastation of his sister’s features. Her abject shock melting to horror and then to heartbreak.
“No,”she sobbed, clutching at her throat. “Mortimer, howcouldyou?”
Her brother shrugged his shoulders. “Oh, come on, Duck. Rabbits are rabbits. What does it matter if I snare them in the fields or take them from the pens?”
