Page 38 of The Duke With the Dragon Tattoo
His hand froze, halfway out of his pocket. “You think I’m going to…killyou?”
“And why shouldn’t I? YoumurderedMortimer,” she said woodenly. “In a churchyard, no less. In the late afternoon in front of God and everyone. You didn’t even… hesitate or—”
“In my experience, hesitation is the number one cause of death.” He flicked out a handkerchief and presented it to her, as though to prove a point.
To say she was surprised didn’t cover half of it. She’d only just kneed him in his… manly bits. Wasn’t he livid? Why was he not punishing her in some dastardly, piratey manner?
“Why do you weep overhim?” He didn’t sound angry, only confounded, but Lorelai didn’t fail to note that he wouldn’t say Mortimer’s name. “He broke your fucking leg. He fed your pets to you. Life with him these past twenty years could hardly have been palatable.”
He didn’t know the half of it.
“Tell me you’ve not become so touched as to keenly mournhisloss.”
The disgust in his words sparked a temper she’d long considered dormant. “It isAsh’s loss I mourn,” she spat, delicately wiping at her nose. “For he is gone, and a stranger has taken his place. Ash wouldneverhave done something so monstrous. Even to Mortimer.”
“You are both right and wrong about that,” he responded wryly. He seemed about to say something, and then changed his mind. Regarding her with more curiosity than regret. “You once said that to become a monster you must first do something monstrous. And as a youth at Southbourne, Ash thought he might have done monstrous things in the boyhood he didn’t remember. But I’m convinced that until the day we were parted, Ash only had dirt on his hands.”
Lorelai puzzled over his use of the name in the third person as the Rook held his large, callused hands out to her, as though to demonstrate their filthiness.
“Now there is blood. Enough blood to stain this Channel a red no less than biblical. But that is not why it was so easy to kill your brother.” His hands curled to fists. “Mark me, Lorelai, had you not been watching I would not have been kind enough to grant him such a painless death.”
She closed her eyes against the sight of the blade skewered through Mortimer’s open mouth. “His death did not seem so painless.”
He gripped her chin, forcing her to look at his savage features. His other palm feathered over her hair with a confounding gentleness. “That is because you do not know enough of pain.”
“Are you about to teach me?” She’d meant it as a challenge, but it escaped as a whisper. “Is that what this is? This so-called wedding night? Am I to suffer for Mortimer’s sins? Do you want to stain yourself with the blood of two innocent people in one day?”
“Blood… innocent…?” He released her, brows drawing together as though her words had confounded him.
She leveled him a speaking glare. “Virgins usually bleed, do they not?”
His eyes dipped to her lap, then closed for the space of one cavernous, never-ending exhale.
“You are still… innocent.” He drew the word out on a hiss. “After all this time?” His fingers curled into talons before abruptly letting go.
He was at the door before Lorelai could form a reply.
Bracing one hand against the door frame, he clung to the handle as if at any moment someone might drag him away. The curious dark shapes of the tattoos beneath the thin white of his shirt rose and fell with three heaves of his shoulders. Feathers maybe? He turned the latch.Paused. “You cannot be so blind as to think Mortimer was innocent.”
Lorelai wiped at her tears with trembling hands. “For all his atrocities, he was not a murderer. No one deserves to die like that.”
“Hewasa murderer.” The Rook didn’t look at her, but the creases of his fists turned white. “And he deserves to die seven thousand deaths.”
Stunned, Lorelai almost dropped the edges of her bodice. Seven thousand was a very specific number. “What are you saying? Why seven thousand?”
“It doesn’t matter.”
She flinched as he wrenched the door open. “Your enterprising knee has saved you from a wedding night.” He’d still yet to look at her, and for some untold reason, Lorelai was glad. “Get some sleep, Lorelai, but suffer no illusions. I’ll not be denied. Iwillhave you.”
“Never,” she vowed as he closed her in and locked the door behind him.
In an unprecedented moment of weakness, the Rook pressed his forehead against the barrier of wood and steel separating them. On a harsh breath, he repeated the same word he’d whispered at the end of every infernal day for twenty long years.
“Always.”
CHAPTEREIGHT
“Fuckinghell,” the Rook muttered as he braced his legs against the bow and ripped his shirt open, allowing vicious nails of rain to drive themselves into his flushed, overheated skin.
