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

by Shehanne Moore

  “Divers?”

  “There’s no need to sound so surprised.” He raised his head, exhaled deeply. ”I just needed to sit down for a moment.”

  “Well, there’s no chairs here.” She set the candle down on the table. Task one? Consider the fact that maybe that curse coming true didn’t require her to care for anyone, although those she had cared about had a disconcerting habit of dropping dead. “Where’s Gil? And I’ll get him to--"

  “Why ask when you already know?”

  Her throat dried. My God, don’t tell her he was dead?

  “Yes, Destiny, he’s out on the moor. But he’s not dead. And neither am I, though it’s not for want of trying. You and Lyon. And the little game you’re playing.”

  “Says the man who’s playing every dirty little game going.”

  He dragged his head up, straightened his shoulders, his eyes like drowning pools in the caverns made by the candlelight. “You think?”

  “I know.”

  He loomed, casting a giant shadow over her. “Well here’s the thing. I think you are playing games. Or I wouldn’t have nearly got my head blown off, now would I?”

  She froze as surely as if she’d been dropped into the iced water off Ryland’s Point. My God. Nearly got. But hadn’t. Nearly got. Nearly. His head? Not by Lyon, surely?

  He stepped past her, just when some might say it was of vital importance that she pick her jaw from the floor too. When that self he’d done his damndest to smash the coffer lid of, that self that had been in his bed ... that self needed to stay staked through the heart.

  So? Go to her room as he now lurched to his, blow the candle out, sleep, dream. After all, she had named her price to Lyon and Lyon would see that price was met. If Lyon had shot at Divers O’Roarke—well, there wasn’t exactly any sign of any blood, was there?

  But then how much real sign was there on her that night of drowning agony, of Ennis’s limbs like cardboard castles, of her world trodden on by a colossus? She had not been able to function for weeks. Even now could see these images, floating in the huddle of her consciousness, the ones she must shut out, stop, strangle, go to her room, escape from. Not think, not think for a second, that she’d any kind of common ground with Divers O’Roarke.

  Her throat tightened against the breath screaming for release.

  Now she was allied with Lyon, some would say to go after Divers O’Roarke could only be over her dead body. and they would be right. It didn’t matter what swept and sat like a tsunami in her breast.

  She had this.

  And that was how she was keeping it too.

  ***

  It was all part of the play. Now he’d lit a candle and seen, wrapped in its dancing light, the wooden edge of the mantelpiece, the mottled ochre of the coal scuttle, felt the sink of the mattress beneath him, Divers O’Roarke lifted his head and himself from his huddled thoughts. He had his eyes on one thing and that thing was not sitting here, a blanket dragged over his shoulders, like maggot meat.

  But a bullet had whizzed past his ears in the moonlight as he’d waded into the swirling icy water to help bring the rowing boat to the shore, and there, that one thing was dead. Wounded anyway.

  Lyon always made things look good. But tonight? When Divers hadn’t even put a toe wrong, never mind a foot?

  Tonight he was lucky he hadn’t taken a bullet in the

  head.

  There was only one reason Lyon had taken that shot. He thought Divers was the Cleanser and there was no doubt who had offered proof.

  He should have known the devil was not, and never would be, someone you could deal with, only someone you thought you could. In that respect he shouldn’t even have come back here. Gil was right. With Destiny Rhodes, the only certainty was that there was none. She’d face you with that shuttered stare regardless. And he? In addition to knowing that even under your nose wasn’t a safe place to keep a viper, he never should have touched her, then he wouldn't be haunted by her image in the candlelight.

  Should he get out of here tonight? Wait till Gil returned and make a run for it with what they had, instead of cobbling together this job, his life? It wasn’t like he chose it. No. That too, had been Lyon. But then what? Where could he hide that was far enough? Hated by smugglers and the law alike? He’d be lucky to clear the county before she raised the alarm. The county? He’d be lucky to reach the end of the lawn, the foot of the stairs. And that was before he got to the things Lyon had on him.

  No. He couldn’t afford to run. Not here. Not now. Not when the thing was to stay here and face her down as if he wasn’t fazed. Face Lyon too when that bullet had whizzed past his left ear. Anything less was to say one thing.

  He’d sooner it had hit him.

  ***

  As she stood feeling the wind playing havoc with her throat, as well as her cloak, not to mention her hair, Destiny knew one thing. That thing wasn’t the usual.

  “So, Miss Rhodes?” Lyon’s gaze raked the empty rises and falls of the browning landscape. But then anyone could be crawling on their bellies in the spaces there below the wheeling gulls, watching, waiting, listening, to more than the wind’s howl, shivering in the blast that cut like a knife. “What do you have for me?”

  “After you tried to kill Divers O’Roarke last night, why would you think I’d have anything? Well? I asked you not to make my job harder than it already is. And what did you do?”

  Something very like emotion glinted in Lyon’s eyes. As if he found her funny. She wasn’t funny. But his voice was quieter than the grave. As cold too. “Is that what he told you?”

  “It’s what I know.”

  “Hmm. Well, that’s very fine you are so knowledgeable. I won't ask how you know that."

  “Because I am knowledgeable. More than you know. And you told me to find out. So I did."

  “Then you should also have found out that the man is an inveterate liar. It goes with the turf, I am afraid.”

  “He’s not the only one. In fact why not just kill him and be done with it if that’s the way you’re going to do this? Well? Spare us all the tedious wait. The crawling back and forward to meetings in weather like this, the dangling of Doom Bar Hall like a carrot, when I'm not exactly going to win first prize for doubling as the sodding donkey in the local Nativity play.”

  Speaking this way was as dangerous as the plunging cliffs that dropped from the edge of her vision into the thrashing waves below. Lyon trying to kill Divers O’Roarke shouldn’t matter. In fact, the problem wouldn’t just be halved, it would be solved. And whatever was said of her in Penvellyn would be said anyway.

  But for some very strange reason she wasn't here because Divers O’Roarke had broken Grandmother Tintagel’s bowl and didn’t want to own up.

  It was far harder to want to see a man dead than she’d thought. Right now anyway. Even one who'd cursed her for nothing. And, some might say, who'd sat on the fence having gone to the wire. But then, others might say she had too.

  Looking at her dresses, at Molly's mother, was like seeing her old life sitting in a passing coach though, one she didn't want to look in but found herself almost hailing, when this was her life. Just because Divers O'Roarke had been brave enough to let her touch him, it didn't mean a damn thing where the future was concerned.

  Of course, some might say it would help matters considerably if she could only get near her lavender shortcake, or cushion covers, the important things. But she couldn't. Her thoughts about the dining room either, for the sea of sheets and ladders. And, so far, so far as she could see anyway, not a blob of paint on any one of the four walls. The ceiling either. But then, they were big walls so maybe she was missing something.

  Then there was the fact that, with the exception of what was in the fruit barrels, the various preserves, and some pretty boot-hard bacon hanging in the cold cupboard, there was only what Gil Wryson brought in from the market at Penvellyn to eat. And that wasn't what you would term, much. Were excisemen poor, or something?

  S
o yes, was it any wonder that Divers O'Roarke, unnerved, on her doorstep was something she couldn't take?

  Lyon resumed his perusal of the moorland. “Do you know where I first encountered Divers O’Roarke?”

  “Why would I? It's hardly something I'm dying to know."

  "Teezer’s Travelling Troupers.”

  “Teezer's Travelling what?”

  “Yes. Thieves and pickpockets, with some modicum of talent amongst them.”

  “Are you saying Diver O’Roarke was a--?"

  “He was an actor. Quite a good one.”

  Really? It was the first she’d heard. What a turn up for the books. But then what had become of him when he left Cornwall? How had he even gotten out of Cornwall?

  “It made him ideal for what he does,” Lyon slithered on.

  “Excuse me? Are you saying he stole--?”

  “I’m saying he’s adaptable and that’s why I never had him hung which I could have.”

  “I see.”

  She didn’t. Putting a brake on this, remember? So how Divers O'Roarke got out of Cornwall, whether Lyon could have had him hung, or not, was no concern of hers.

  Lyon’s eyes lingered on her face. “The woman he was with too." Well, of course she might have known there would be a woman in there somewhere. "Miss Rhodes, I sincerely hope you are not playing me.”

  “Me? That would be good given my feelings about him and how he cursed me for sod all."

  “I am not a fly on your particular wall.”

  Well, wasn't that something to be singularly grateful for? She wouldn’t want to have to take Great Aunt Modest's fly-swatter to him. Him slavering over what he might see either. It was bad enough Ennis probably saw these things. Bad enough she thought of them here. Putting a brake on this, remember? Now.

  “I don’t know what goes on between you and Divers O’Roarke—”

  “Nothing.”

  “He is known to be attractive to women.”

  “I can’t think why.”

  Pray God-–task one—especially given the way her head sweated, that more than her face didn’t burn and she didn’t think why right here. Or, on consideration, having lain awake most of the night, she'd know she was kidding herself to think that lying awake was the least she could do, when she couldn't think that. When--all right—she’d had to stop herself more than once—she wouldn’t say it was more than that, others might, but she wouldn’t--from opening her door, then his, to see he was all right.

  “Good.” Lyon returned his gaze to the frothing horizon. “But so long as you content yourself with lying about what you do with him--"

  "Lying? Me?"

  "--and bringing me the proof I need—”

  "Who says I won't? I'm just asking--"

  “Mathematics, Miss Rhodes.”

  "I'm really sorry but what has mathematics to do with this?"

  “How everything is accounted for in our world."

  "Tell me something I don't know. I mean ... really?" What did he think? That her world was any different?

  "The last few jobs were short, shall we say?"

  "Short?" Her scalp prickled. "In what way?"

  "What way do you think? I know Divers O’Roarke and that man of his know something about it. I know he has taken gold that was not his to take. And I know he involved himself where he shouldn’t. I just need the proof; whether or not he is the Cleanser is, in many ways, irrelevant.”

  My God. Did this make this better, or worse? Trust Divers O'Roarke to have his fingers in pies. Was that the real reason Lyon had taken a pot shot at him? And killed that woman? Because he had more than a finger, he had his whole hand? Along with his sidekick too. Obviously.

  “And I’ve told you I will get you that."

  Because she would. She would now. This was the brake. The brake she needed for Lyon to do what he liked to Divers O'Roarke. Then? Then she'd get Doom Bar Hall.

  Divers O'Roarke needed her as insurance after all. And no sodding wonder too.

  "Good," Lyon said. "You cannot imagine how glad I am to hear it. Especially given how attractive he seems to be to women."

  Well he was. Extraordinarily so with that swaggering air of confidence, assurance and menace, he breathed through his pores, his hypnotic eyes, the way he rolled on like a harrow, flattening everything in his path, which made last night’s little episode—something she shouldn’t think about here. These remarks he’d made about seeing babies getting their brains bashed in, about her not being able to do anything to him that hadn’t already been done, either.

  My God, Lyon did seem obsessed as a bear with a honey pot about Divers O'Roarke and his many attractions to women though. One thing he certainly wouldn’t win was any baskets of apples in the local Penvellyn handsome men competition. Unless you liked men who resembled weasels? And spoke as if their tongue slithered about inside their mouths.

  Some might say what he would win was first prize for being a shade more interested in what went on with Divers O'Roarke's private life than was right.

  Why was that? Because Divers O'Roarke would win that basket?

  They might also add was that the real reason he’d shot that woman? And should her hair stand up over it, or not?

  "Just don't send him home a wreck—”

  “A wreck? Divers O’Roarke? That'll be a first," he chuckled. "The man wouldn't be afraid of the devil himself walking this way and saying hello."

  “I mean ... What I mean is ... ” Her throat constricted. As for Lyon stepping closer as if he knew exactly what she meant?

  “That attack was staged. He knows that. I know that. Anything else is a lie, including however he came home to you. I’m not the man you may think I am that way. Him, now … given all this? Plus his lamentable habit of having his hand where he shouldn't?”

  Oh God, not in smuggling pies either.

  She clasped her cloak tighter against her throat. My God, why think that? Because Lyon was staring intently and his breath was on her face? As if he’d win first prize in the local graspers' competition for knowing exactly where Divers O'Roarke had had his hands?

  To flinch would be tantamount to spreading oil on her own hand to win first prize in the picking up burning coals and turning your hand into a flaming fire faggot, competition.

  But the fact was, Divers O’Roarke had never shrunk from spilling beans before, despite all the other lies he’d told about being a designer.

  My God, why think that either? She swallowed.

  “All I can tell you is that Gil Wryson knows where that consignment of goods is now. That one I believe is probably yours. That’s it. As to whether something is missing, or going to go missing in the final analysis, I don’t know. But Divers O’Roarke—”

  She snapped her mouth shut on the words, is a wreck because you killed a woman who trusted him, who you expected him to lie to and work closely with. Why go there? Why say it just because she saw it? Why even see it?

  Yet the Divers O’Roarke she had once known may have brought the whole house crashing down about her ears, he wasn’t that kind of person then. The kind to line his pockets, the kind to lose the way, the kind to betray men, at all. In fact he’d been such a sitter at her feet, he'd have won every prize going in the fawning dog competition.

  “Go on, Miss Rhodes.”

  Aware of Lyon’s intense gaze, she cleared her throat. The gale was tearing down it after all. Could she just stop this Divers O'Roarke stuff? Concentrate on winding Lyon round her pinkie nail? She’d made this pact, hadn’t she? For one thing too, Doom Bar Hall. Already, having given up on revenge for Ennis, was she going to lose that? The answer was no. Although it did no harm to lay down a few ground rules and after all, given Lyon needed her and she needed him, what was he going to do about it?

  “Divers O’Roarke is someone I can only get information about if you don’t make it any more difficult than it is. Do we have an agreement, Mr. Lyon? Yes? Or no?"

  “Hmm.”

  “That’s not an answer.�
��

  “Because I don’t like your question.”

  “I see. Well, I imagine if you only answer questions you like, you must be a man of very few words.”

  “Indeed, it is one of my finest points, Miss Rhodes, just as your charm is almost certainly yours.”

  Had a snake just slithered up her spine? She didn’t think so but then, before she could check, he reached towards her bare throat and clasped it in his leather-gloved hand--fingered it anyway--his jaw jutting like a hawk's beak.

  “But I warn you, you fail me on this matter and this lovely neck of yours is something I will break. Snap in two as if it is of no consequence. Perhaps not right now, perhaps not tomorrow, or next week, but, make no mistake, I will do it. Traitors are something I never let live. And believe me, I want to let you live. We agreed Doom Bar Hall and Doom Bar Hall would be empty without you in it. You and me. It is something I forgot to stipulate—”

  “What?”

  “Yes. Just as you said, you came with the house, I do too.”

  CHAPTER TWENTY ONE

  “Destiny… ”

  Oh, how lovely and just what she was needing, after that little scene with Lyon. Divers O’Roarke, in her face, in her hall, her lovely hall, that always looked so beautiful at Christmas when she and Orwell stood in its luscious pine-garlanded center, dispensing steaming cups of mulled apple cider—what he didn’t dispense to himself anyway--and hot fruit pies—fortunately he wasn’t much interested in them--to the servants.

  Ashes might be things she rose from on a daily, if not hourly, basis. But to be expected to rise every minute, second, even? How many burnings, shooting downs, could one woman withstand and pretend it didn’t matter? She didn’t feel them? In this hall. The doom-ridden hall that some might say was now danker and dowdier than the crypt because there were even less servants to keep it, than there was apple cider to dispense on these Christmases after Orwell had helped himself. And they would be right. One thing this hall wouldn't win was any prizes in the Penvellyn Fair best hall hereabouts competition.