O'Roarke's Destiny (Cornish Rogues Book 1)

by Shehanne Moore

  "I hope you think--"

  "I don't think. I know. The thing is I also know what was in my head that night I cursed you. It was everything you cared about."

  "That's not what I rem--"

  "So I think that makes me safe enough, don’t you? Ennis too, if he's looking down from whichever little cloud it is he occupies. Sitting there all day with nothing better to do. Playing his little harp, singing his hosannas, the endless Hallejulah Choruses and ditties. Unless of course, he's not in heaven?"

  "Why wouldn't he be?"

  "Because he outraged St. Peter when he married you."

  "No. He never did." She dropped her gaze but not before he saw what burned in her eyes. Ah, the hits he scored here. "He loved me."

  "Well, more fool him."

  "Ennis wasn't a fool."

  "Oh, we were all fools then."

  "How dare you."

  "I could have loved you. Any of the men round here could have loved you. But that wasn't good enough."

  "What? You think I wanted any of you? With your country clodhopper boots? And your smell of pig farms clinging to your hair?” Obviously she hadn’t or her voice wouldn’t tear, her eyes wouldn't glaze, her hair ping loose and he wouldn’t be standing up bravely--given his earlier broken ribs--beneath the sudden rain of blows on his chest. "And your mired in the fields of Kinsale accent?"

  "That was then. This is now. Cheer up. If he's in hell, the chances are you will meet again. Now. When you’re ready, you come and join me downstairs. No bluff. That choice is yours. But I will have your answer. And if you think you can turn tables on me, in any way, go running back to Lyon with little tales of things I’m not—yes, I do know you well--you can’t. The kitchen, Destiny. Or the door. Just don’t think it will be neither, do you understand?”

  She did, she must. Why else had she stopped trying to beat him half to death, her eyes glitteringly hot but cold in her head? Wild? Uncontrolled? Dangerous? Hot tears glazing her lips?

  Her earlier running Lyon was in vain. She couldn't wither him to anything. But her thinking she could run back there again with the fact he was the Cleanser? Not in a month of Sundays. Maybe he cared for very little? That much he did care for.

  She exhaled sharply. “I know ... I know you somehow think that. That you think you know this. Know me. But you don’t … the truth is you don’t know, anything.”

  “You let me be the judge of that.”

  "No," she breathed. "Because you’re wrong. About why … About why I am driven to do what I did today. Why I couldn’t stop meself, if you must know the truth, even knowing it was something I shouldn’t have done.”

  “Oh, I understand all right. I also understand there’s nothing you can say to me, about me being the Cleanser, or this supper you don’t want to make, or eat, or the pack of lions you’d like to see me thrown to, the sole reason you couldn’t stop yourself.”

  “If only. If only that were true. But it's not, its--" She passed her hand across her nose.

  “And are putting on such a good show. But nothing you say to me will change what I know. It comes with the turf in this game. And believe you me, it’s a game I’m going to win. Because I’ll tell you something else, remind you of it rather, about Lyon and why I need that answer--”

  Her throat tightened, the words dripping from her. “The night. The night I lost Ennis, I lost more. Far more than you can ever know about.”

  “Well, we all lose Destiny, I think that much we can guarantee about life. So, if you don’t mind, I’d appreciate if you’d stop giving me what your very own father used to call—"

  “When they brought him in. When they brought him in, cold and dead and in bits on that board and they asked me … they asked me, was this him, I lost our baby."

  Christ Almighty.

  "And just in case you’re wondering … ”

  “I’m not.” How he found his voice? Kept it measured? He had this. And nothing she said would change that, remember? Not her forehead suddenly pressing against his, because he bent it, her breath, sticky as honey, on his lips. Even if it already had what lurched inside him. “Believe me. I’m not letting you speak to me. It’s the kitchen, remember? So if this is a ploy, a ploy because you won’t go there and cook--"

  “I don’t know. I don't know if I can have any more."

  “And last night, I never thought about that and you did? Is that it? What you now want to beat me up about, tell me that’s why you went to Lyon and why you now want to go to him with the fact I’m the Cleanser? Compromising this whole operation here which he will not let you do?”

  “No. Last night I never. I never anything. Because last night I were living.”

  Her breath caught. Her hands did too, against his face. He should take control. He had control. But the blackness in her eyes, her voice stealing over him like a warped refrain, everything, from her skin, beneath his fingertips, to the knowledge that she might be telling the truth about Rose and Chancery, crashed like waves into the empty places in himself. He couldn’t move. He couldn’t do anything for the feel of her mouth on his-- hot, hungry, demanding--except kiss her back, in the same way. When it could be anything to get out of cooking that meal.

  Forget being in command, he just wanted her, the same way as this kiss. Her body, warm, wanton, earthy, demanding, was against his, her heartbeat hammering beneath his fingertips, her mouth, full of every secret she’d ever kept. Every tiny bodice button, one, two, three, tore from his clasp though. The sheen of the exposed silk of her skin, her scent, was nothing to the ragged saw of breath, to her gaze meeting his, hotly dark, wild, inviting. Things he’d struggled to say about her since walking into the library. Things he’d known damn fine could not be wasted by grief so their breaths, wild, jagged, strangled the air.

  "Come on then, what are you waiting for then?" The pant, the glazed look in her eyes? Did she tug her skirts up, or did he? Did the mattress creak beneath his knee? Had he ever had a woman want him in this basic, animalistic way? "Now, Divers. Now." Wrap her arms around him? Straddle him? Hold him? Kiss him? Her fingertips cupping his face? Skimming beneath his shirt to the bare skin of his back? So everything was an all consuming flame?

  Tomorrow she’d regret giving him this inch. So long as he didn’t regret taking it, it would be fine.

  It was only sex. What he’d had with Eirwin, after all.

  At least he hoped that was all it was.

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  Touch him. Turn him to dust. Get back to her room. Shut the door. Sleep. Eat. Face the day ahead. Touch him. Turn him to dust. As she ran her tongue over what appeared to be glass paper stuck to her lips—enough to make her gag--Destiny fought to focus on the words hammering at her eyelids, along with the cold grey shaft of light demanding immediate entry.

  Morning. It was morning. How could it be morning? Anything approaching it either when she was lying here fit to win the sleep for Cornwall competition? She forced her eyes open. Then she snapped them shut again.

  God Almighty, Divers O’Roarke standing at the lovely cream, inlaid with the nicest, most delicate green and red fretwork, washstand, half naked was as much as she needed to know. Alas—because now she did know, her gaze stuck to the sight. The waist was especially spectacular. Narrower than Ennis’s. And would you just look at the corded strength in these shoulders, the muscles that rippled beneath the tan as he poured a ewer of water over his soft dark hair? She'd sooner not although some might say she opened her eyes again to do it specially.

  Not that she meant to, or anything, but sometimes people didn’t do what they meant. As for her still being here? She removed her gaze from the tight outline of his buttocks in his corduroy breeches, gathered the sheet around her and pushed a foot out of bed. What? Stay here? Having won the feather headdress in the how to make a sodding great tit of yourself competition? Hardly.

  “Christ.”

  The jug smacked against the top of the stand. Just as she was thinking that helping lug barrels ashore rea
lly agreed with him too. He inhaled sharply and bent forward over the stand. She hesitated.

  “Divers … Are you--are you all right?”

  He exhaled sharply but didn’t turn round. Goodness, was that curse working, after all? That wasn’t so good, given what he’d said last night. “Never better.”

  “It’s just I can't say as you look it.”

  Another grunt. “Before you go thinking this curse is working, neither would you be if you’d had your ribs broken.”

  He dragged his head up as if he felt her cool lingering gaze on the base of his spine. To have asked if he was all right might seem crass when what she should really want to know was that he wasn’t. His ribs, were, after all, nothing to what Ennis had had broken. His back. His legs. Blood on the board. Blood everywhere. Thick, dark, sickly sweet in her nostrils. Ennis was who should be here. But he wasn't, was he?

  And last night?

  Divers O'Roarke straightened his back, glanced over his shoulder, his mouth cinching. “Yes. I’m sorry to disappoint you. A hazard of the trade is all this is.”

  “Well, if you will play with fire.”

  He rubbed the towel over his hair. “Yes, well, I’ve done that all right.”

  What was that supposed to mean? The way his gaze rested on her with that gemstone glint of hardness too? That she'd betrayed him to Lyon? And still he’d let this happen?

  When a fat lot of good that was if touching him did no good unless she cared for him. She should stop it, especially now he stood there displaying every inch of his more or less perfect torso.

  “I see. Found out were you? Well, I’m sure you don’t need me to tell you you’d be safer crossing the devil than smugglers and wreckers, seeing as you already know it all."

  “Well then, seeing as you've outstayed your usefulness, the door’s there." He let go of the washstand and strolled to the scuffed chest of drawers.

  She blew out a long breath. Last night she was living? She just wanted him to know why she was driven? To do what? Forget she came in here with the ace in the pack? Even if the past never stood like an iron man between them, fall again and have no-one to break that fall? Fall again and be smashed in the process? No.

  “Happens I do know that. I have lived here for all of me life in case you hadn’t noticed.”

  “Funny that. You never sound like it.”

  “Says the man who speaks with a false tongue because he's meant to be a successful businessman and he’s quite wiped the mud of the past off his fine leather boots. Looks as if he colors his hair and everything. I’ll come back for my things after, seeing as there’s no-one to bring them and I’m so obviously not welcome being as I speak funny.”

  “I never said that.”

  She hugged the sheet against herself. "You didn't have to. Now, if you don't mind I've a room to go to."

  “Fine. Just don’t use it as an excuse to snoop because you won’t find anything.”

  “Really? Who says I either want to or that you’re worth snooping on? Chance would be a fine thing you know.”

  The door handle was in front of her. Now she’d had the final word, he’d be hard pushed to top it and there was nothing to stay for. She grasped blackened brass. That was when he spoke.

  “By the way you’re wrong, Destiny. Firstly, my ribs weren’t broken by smugglers. They were broken by excisemen. When they kicked the bejesus out of me and killed a woman I was involved with.”

  ***

  Right. Well, that hadn’t gone quite as she’d hoped but at least she was back in her room, with her dressing gown about her, sitting at her dressing table, even if his bed sheet was on the floor.

  “Destiny.”

  Or should she change that at least to, she was back in her room, with her dressing gown about her, sitting at her dressing table, his bed sheet on the floor, till the door creaked open and face as long as a six fiddle cases and twenty four rainy days, Orwell walked in?

  Not a lot of peace in the world, was there? She’d really planned on mending that tapestried footstool. The one by the side of the dressing table. But plainly that would have to wait till another day. At least she’d done something with it today. That was refrain from booting it across the hearth, given what Divers O’Roarke’s words had raised in her--the excisemen had attacked him bit anyway. Why? Because the rest was just him being vile about her. Not worth kicking anything anywhere over.

  The attack bit now? Why was that? Because they'd also put two and two together and made the four that said he was the Cleanser? Three and a half anyway. If it was four they'd have arrested him.

  Why ask Destiny to get proof? It wasn't like she didn't have a million and one other things to do--that didn't sodding involve her involving herself more with Divers O'Roarke either. Unless he'd made it up?

  “Now Orwell, unless you’re coming in here to tell me something new of interest, why don’t you go somewhere else? Daindridge’s. The Hollow Tree. Wherever. Because really, while it might not look it, I’m rather busy right now.” Hoping he'd take the hint she reached for the bottle of lavender scent that stood like a sentinel before the glass. He clicked the door shut. Sadly on her side of it.

  “Well, old girl, while it pains me to say so, perhaps if you weren’t in his room last night—”

  “Listening at doors, were we?" So long as it wasn’t to her assaulting a Crown officer. "A change from drinking at them, I must say.”

  “You should be glad I do, glad I’ve come here, to be a brother to you as I have not always been in the past"

  “Door’s there, Orwell.”

  The floorboards creaked beneath his leather-soled boots. “I have come here sober, which again, I will confess, has not always been the case—"

  “You can say that again but don’t get too excited. It is only nine in the morning. And Lyon did take away that stash which you were probably helping yourself to, despite what you said to the contrary.”

  “For which I do humbly apologise.”

  “What? For being drunk half the time? Or helping yourself to that stash?"

  "Destiny ..."

  "As for being humble? What’s that? The first time for everything?”

  His brown woollen waistcoat swum into view in the mirror. “I have stopped drinking since you went with him, Destiny.”

  “Let's not hold our breaths." She set the perfume bottle down, reached for the comb. "That was just two nights ago. But maybe I should have gone with him sooner, then you’d be sober as a—"

  "I don’t like it.”

  “What? Being sober? Well, I suppose you’d find that hard.”

  “You being with him.”

  “Says the man who lost Doom Bar Hall so far as I can see, to a man who didn’t use to be able to play snap too.”

  “They say he’s the Cleanser, Destiny.”

  “Really? And I’m the man in the moon. I go out at night and I fly up into the sky in a pair of silver breeches and shine me light on the world.”

  Well, she was, if Orwell had heard it from some of his cronies. When the walls had ears and these ears were called Divers O’Roarke, that was worth risking Doom Bar Hall for?

  No. Look where scuttling along the cliff path had gotten her yesterday, because of what he'd done to her nice, safe world. She’d need better than that to scuttle again. She'd need to do it in this couldn't give a proverbial fashion for a start and if she couldn't give a proverbial, why do it, when Divers O'Roarke thought she couldn't help herself and she could. Or she could until a few days ago anyway. God, she did feel like something when she was with him, didn’t she? But it was a something she couldn’t allow. In that respect it was better to sit with her head panned in.

  Orwell grasped her shoulder, his spittle peppering her skin, when she'd just gone to a lot of trouble to dab perfume on it too, so it would need done again. “Will you listen to me? Believe you me, I went to a hell of a lot of trouble to get that information.”

  She breathed out long and hard, fixed her gaze on her sewing bo
x. She had planned on doing some sewing after all. Why not just go ahead? “Drinking, was it?" She reached into the box. "Next you’ll be telling me you’re not what you seem either. That you’re secretly really working for the smugglers and all this drunkenness is an act. A man comes into an area--from London no less, or should I say he returns--and he wins from its errant master, a house that has been in the family for generations. But goodness, the errant master wasn’t errant at all, despite being years in training, he was only pretending to be a drunk because he was meaning to lose the house. All in order to catch a mythical figure called the Cleanser. Oh, really Orwell, if you weren’t needing help before, you most certainly are now. Now, I'd quite like--"

  “The Cleanser is no mythical figure. Will you listen to me?"

  "I'm trying, Orwell, but so are you."

  "He’s an exciseman gone to the bad.”

  She swallowed. Exactly what Lyon had said. What if Orwell had gone to trouble? Real trouble? What if Lyon did have some inkling and that was why he ordered that woman killed and Divers O’Roarke left for dead? He just didn't have the full proof?

  Funny that he’d said—no, she had--something similar, about people not quite being what they seemed, in certain pays and all that, that had then come to be so.

  Chance? Or something that would win her a golden booth in the Penvellyn Fair best fortune teller competition. She slipped her gaze to the door. Could she afford to be caught listening though, any more than she could afford not to listen? Probably neither. And if she signalled to Orwell, or if she put a finger to her lips, he'd probably ask her why she wanted him to shut up. She'd just have to pretend. She cleared her throat.

  “The Cleanser? Excuse me while I smother a yawn. It’s really very tiring listening to a load of old cobblers. The bad indeed? Well, maybe he is bad? Maybe he’s very bad and that’s why I like--"

  “Well, if you’re going to be as big a damned fool about it as you’ve been all your life--”

  “My life? Oh, hark at the prize carrot winner in the loudest braying donkey competition. Let’s talk about your life for a moment—”