The Steel Rogue: A Valor of Vinehill Novel

by K. J. Jackson

  A cart that had been stuck in the mud in front of her moved to the left and down the street and she spied the top of his head again. The dark hair that was too long—that didn’t have the crispness of the cuts that were fashionable with the men in London.

  Twenty paces away from her, Mr. Robert Lipinstein turned to look at his companion as he talked, moving effortlessly through the crowd. His tall frame sent his stride long. Wide shoulders that brushed against all the people moving the opposite direction. A rock in a stream, and he never flinched, never faltered in his steps.

  For a man that had just spent seven years in Newgate prison and two years at sea, he knew where he was going. And that made him all the more dangerous.

  Torrie slipped out of the alley and moved quickly along the building to her left. The rough of the stone facade caught again and again on the sleeve of her jacket as she moved, pulling her arm backward. She sank into the shadow of the next alley and scanned the ships ahead, her look flickering back to the bastard so she wouldn’t lose him in the crowd again.

  If he was getting on a ship and disappearing once more—fine. Hopefully it would sink.

  But if he planned to stay in England, she needed to know.

  The bastard rotting in jail was preferable above all else. Newgate had been perfect for that. But since that was no longer the case, she wanted him off English soil. Far away from her cousins. Far away from her. She hadn’t slept well since the investigator she’d hired to track him had told her he had stepped back onto English soil.

  And she’d been dreaming of revenge ever since.

  Her look caught sight of a brigantine in the middle of the docks.

  The Firehawk.

  Apparently it had sailed from London to Truro in the last several weeks. The dock and the gangplanks leading onto the ship were frantic. Barrels rolled and buckets carried onto the ship. Mayhem with sailors running to and fro on the deck. Ropes unfurling. Men climbing the masts. It was looking to set sail.

  Bloody tide.

  She wasn’t ready. They were taking off with the waters. And she wasn't ready.

  She’d thought him disappearing onto the sea again would suffice. But it wouldn’t. He looked too tall, too strong, too virile. There was no justice in that.

  She wasn't ready for him to walk away from her again.

  She’d witnessed him walk away before. Walk away from her family being crushed by a flaming roof. Walk away from her excruciating screams. Walk away from her legs being charred beyond all recognition. Walk away from the smallest act of kindness he could have extended but didn’t.

  She’d been engulfed in the unimaginable pain of the inferno that took her family’s farm—of her flesh burning—her body no longer able to scream, to fight the torture, and she had turned onto her side in the dirt. Turned and seen his face.

  Seen the horrification lining his features. Seen his dark grey eyes locked on her through the smoke and embers.

  Those dark grey eyes. Dark grey eyes that had flickered, wanting to help. For one instant, he’d looked as though he was to move forward.

  To help. Help her. Help her family.

  But then, no. He had stayed in place, watching. Not moving.

  A gust of wind had cut across him and bright orange flames had danced in front of his eyes. A torch. He had been holding a torch.

  He was one of them.

  One of the blackguards that had set her whole life to fire. To destruction.

  A crash had thundered behind her and scalding bits of fire had singed her hair, her face. And then they had closed, those grey eyes.

  He had shaken his head and turned.

  Turned and walked away, tossing the torch to the ground. Away. He’d walked out past the veil of smoke and haze that had hung in the air. Walked until he disappeared.

  He never once looked back.

  But his face—his grey eyes were seared into her memory. Seared for all time.

  Her fingers tightening on the corner brick of the building to her left, Torrie gulped a gasp of air and exhaled it in a long breath, expelling the memory of the pain that was still as harsh in her chest as it had been in those moments nine years ago.

  No wallowing.

  She’d made that promise to herself when she had left Vinehill Castle.

  Put everything behind her.

  Everything except for this one man that still lived. This one man—this last memory of those moments that had wrecked her so fully she no longer recognized herself.

  It—he—was the one thing she allowed herself to remember from that day.

  With a quick shake of her head, she stepped out into the throng of bodies again, moving forward.

  She didn't know what she was about to do. But she knew one thing.

  She wasn’t about to let him get on that ship and walk away again.

  ~~~

  “Ignore it, Roe,” Des said, his canny hazel eyes set forward, determined not to look at the growing melee in front of them.

  Roe looked from his friend and first mate to the crowd gathering at the entrance to the alleyway that sat opposite the dock leading out to the Firehawk.

  Des had a nose about these things and had kept Roe from far too many scrapes over the past two years. Of course he should listen to him.

  Yet that didn’t stop his eyes from scanning the crowd, curious as to what could be causing the frothing mouths along the edges of the horde. Or the heckling yelps from those further into the thick crush of men.

  “We already lost time going to the Golden Goblet to try and find Weston and now I can see you eyeing this mess.” The note of warning was clear in Des’s voice. “We’re minutes from setting sail.”

  Roe kept his eyes on the crowd. “Just checking to make sure none of our crew is entangled in whatever it is.”

  “Aye. Except there’s not an idiot in your crew aside from Weston. They know enough not to get mixed into a tangle minutes before we leave—lest they be left behind and miss the bounty.”

  They reached the outer edge of the crowd and Roe’s feet slowed.

  “Don’t do it, Roe.”

  “Don’t worry on it—it’s not like the ship is going to set sail without us.”

  “If we don’t hit this tide we may as well give up on catching Bockton’s ship.”

  “We aren’t going to miss the tide, Des.” Roe came to a full stop, his height giving him a small advantage in seeing into the crux of what this crowd was about.

  He shoved his way inward through the bodies, scanning faces, making sure none of his crew was diddling about.

  Des grabbed his forearm from behind, tugging it. “Cap, we need to move. Sails are catching wind.”

  Roe moved forward, not letting Des stop him. If Weston was in the crowd, he needed to yank the blasted idiot from the fracas. The last thing Weston could afford was to get himself entrenched in another brawl.

  He jammed his way past three more men and Roe could finally see the cause of the commotion.

  Bloody hell.

  A woman surrounded by seven men, her arms swinging wildly, trying to escape them as they shoved her around in a circle between them and argued about who was going to take the first go at her.

  Her bonnet had been ripped off her head, dangling down her back, and her dark hair had been yanked wild and covered her face. Her cerulean blue traveling habit was too fine—gold buttons lining her chest, black lace trim dusting the bottom of the skirt—far too fine for a woman at the docks.

  Almost his same height and pushing through the crowd behind him, Des saw it the same moment Roe did. “Don’t do it, Roe. We got to go.”

  Roe shook Des’s grip from his arm, muscling his way past the last onlooker.

  The woman spun with a screech as she was shoved to a short man across the circle. So slight in comparison to the brutes surrounding her, she looked like the petal of a flower in a whirlwind. She let out a scream as one of the men snatched her shoulders—a scream of anger, of fury—not fear. And with the squeal leaving h
er lips her hand went flying wildly across her face to clear the hair from her eyes. Pale green eyes with golden flecks.

  Great Zeus.

  Impossible. Not here. Not at the docks. Not hundreds of miles from London.

  Roe sprang into action without a breath, his fist slamming into one of the brutes nearest him as his foot swung out and slammed up into the ballocks of the man across from him.

  Two more swings, two more down before the brutes realized they were under attack.

  A fist at his temple connected and Roe felt his skin split open, but it didn’t stop his progress forward. Straight to the woman.

  With an open palm he grabbed the face of the man holding her and slammed it backward, smashing his head into the brick wall behind him.

  The motion sent the brute backward and he spun with the pain, dragging the woman into the wall with him.

  Her head knocked hard against the brick and her body instantly slackened. Dropping.

  Roe’s arms clamped around her waist before she fell, wrapping her into his chest just as a blade came at him from the left. Not enough time to dodge and the edge of it sliced across his shoulder.

  Pain he didn’t let himself feel.

  He spun toward the docks.

  The crowd of hyenas wanted a show and they weren’t going to easily give up their meat.

  Out. Out before they were all killed.

  “Bloody ballocks.” Des’s roar of a grumble shot through the air as he swung wide, knocking aside two of the men in the pathway between them and the Firehawk.

  It was enough of a line.

  Roe charged forward, gripping the woman to his front side even as he could feel hands clawing at his arms, at his neck, trying to get him to stop.

  With his shoulder, Des rammed into three more men in front of him and the line was clear.

  Roe set his left forearm under her backside and picked the woman up, running forward. Des paused to follow, protecting his back. The best of men, his first mate.

  Boots thundering on the rough timbers of the dock, he dodged carts and barrels and goats and almost skidded past the sole gangplank still in place leading onto the Firehawk.

  Five long strides and he jumped onto the main deck of the ship.

  Des landed behind him, bumping into his back.

  “Pull it.” Roe’s command thundered across the ship and the deckhands closest to the gangplank yanked it free from the dock.

  He spun to Vally, his second mate, who was running across the deck to them. “We all aboard?”

  “As much as we can tell, Cap’n Roe,” Vally said with a smirk on his face. It wasn’t the first time they’d made a dramatic exit from a port.

  “And Weston?”

  “Sleepin’ it off below,” Vally said. “He stumbled onto the ship just moments ago.”

  Roe nodded, then looked to Des and winked at him. “Told you there was nothing to worry about.”

  “Nothing to worry about?” Des’s forehead folded into long wrinkles as his eyebrows shot up. “You got a woman aboard the ship, Cap. That bad luck alone is enough to worry about.”

  “Then it’s a good thing you worry enough for the rest of us.” Roe inclined his head to him. “And thanks for the line, mate.”

  Des exhaled an exaggerated sigh, shaking his head as his eyes rolled to the sky. “Any time, Cap.”

  { Chapter 2 }

  One.

  Two.

  Three.

  Four.

  The priest stood by her bedside, his warm brown eyes masterful in their empathy.

  Her brother gone. Her mother gone. Her father gone. Her cousin, the man that had raised her more than her own parents…gone.

  Four of them. She counted them on the tips of her fingers, her knuckles twitching against the sheet covering her.

  Four.

  The roof of the cottage had crushed them, burnt their bodies to ashes. Nothing to bury.

  She concentrated on his mouth, on his lips moving, telling her. His lips and nothing else.

  And then those lips stilled.

  Her eyes closed as a new wave of nausea swept her body. This one not from the pain of her scorched legs, but from the agony rolling through her chest.

  Her chin collapsed to her collarbone and her eyes opened. Charred skin dangled from her left leg propped high atop the sheets. Black, crusting flesh, from her thigh to her ankle where her leather boots had protected the skin. If she survived—and he said she might not—it was the leg he said would never heal. At best, she would limp upon it for the rest of her life.

  The agony of the pain swirled with the nausea already overtaking her and her stomach roiled, heaving.

  Her body shot upright in the bed, her belly upending the contents of her stomach.

  Torrie swung her hand out to grab the chamber pot she kept at her bedside table for just this purpose. The dreams got her. Far too often. Even after nine years, the dreams could do this to her. Put her back into that moment. Into that pain.

  The pot wasn’t there.

  Her eyes flew open as bile hit her throat.

  Not her room. Not a chamber pot in sight.

  Her look frantic, she searched the tight quarters, then lunged across the room, grabbing a boot that was sitting next to a wall five steps away.

  She vomited, retching again and again into the boot.

  It wasn’t until she was on her last heave that she realized it was a man’s boot. A tall, well-worn black boot that she had just retched into.

  Her feet shuffled backward and she sank to the bed, her gaze lifting from the boot after setting it on the rough wooden floorboards. The room was small. Wood plank walls, ceiling and floor. Very little in it. The bed she sat in. A desk on the opposite wall with an hourglass, a quill, ink, a sextant, and paper—and what looked like maps rolled and neatly inserted into several square shelves above it. A door that looked too short.

  She craned her neck to look behind her. A row of windows let daylight in, so bright it hurt her eyes.

  And was that…no…it couldn’t be.

  The entire room tilted to the side.

  She scrambled onto all fours on the bed, crawling to the windows.

  Water.

  Water filling everything along the horizon.

  Not the bloody sea.

  She blinked hard and rubbed the window with the butt of her fist.

  No.

  But yes.

  Nothing but water.

  How in the blasted world did she end up on a ship?

  The last she could remember, she was at the docks and then she was suddenly surrounded. Surrounded on all sides by the filthiest brutes. Grabbing her. Shoving her.

  And then nothing.

  Nothing until she was here, retching into a boot.

  She flipped herself over to sit on her backside, her legs stretching out long in front of her on the bed. Her boots and stockings were gone. Just her bare toes peeking out from under her skirts.

  Someone had removed her boots, her stockings.

  She swallowed hard and heat crept upward along her neck, setting her scalp to tingle.

  Someone had seen her scars. If they had removed her stockings, the monstrosity of her legs would have been impossible to miss.

  The short door to the room pushed open and a head popped in just under the top of the frame.

  Bloody hell, no.

  No. No. No.

  She scampered backward on the bed and her shoulders hit the ledge just below the windows, stopping her retreat.

  “You’ve roused.” He stooped as he stepped in past the low doorway and then stood straight, closing the door behind him. The dark hair, too long. The height of him, even with bare feet. The breadth of his shoulders in his deep blue coat that swallowed the space in the room. The black scruff of whiskers that sent a shadow onto his tanned face.

  The grey eyes that held the devil’s flames in them.

  His gaze swept over her, his look almost apologetic. “You’ve been asleep for a day.” His
head inclined to her. “That lump on your head did not do you well. Does it pain?”

  No. Impossible.

  Who was this man that thought he could walk in on her and speak to her with calm nonchalance when he was one of the bastards that had taken her family from her?

  Talking to her as though they were casual acquaintances—old friends.

  “No.” The word seethed from her chest, barely audible. But she felt it from deep in her bones, deep in her gut. No to his question. No to everything she had just woken up to.

  She could not be trapped at the mercy of this cutthroat.

  Her chances were better with whatever was above deck.

  Her fingers dug into the sheets of the bed for a long, still second and then she pounced forward, leaping off the bed, her hand outstretched toward the desk.

  She grabbed the only thing she could identify as a weapon—the heavy brass sextant sitting on a pile of papers—and she swung it in the same motion to smash it across his skull.

  Except he was too tall.

  And he ducked backward.

  Her crushing of his skull only managed the slightest whiff of the tip of the sextant across his brow.

  Damn his height. Damn his reflexes.

  The lack of hitting a solid object with her swing sent her stumbling, flailing across the room in front of him.

  Just as she looked to smash into the far wall, he flung an arm out in front of her waist and yanked her to a stop.

  Double damn his reflexes.

  His arm didn’t leave her waist and he yanked her into him. Hard into the unyielding mass of him.

  “You’re a harpy, then?” His words were laced with threat—harsh down upon her. “Then I’ll treat you as such.”

  He twisted her in his arms, sending the back of her flat against his chest as his free hand slid down her arm and grabbed the heavy metal of the sextant, wrestling it from her grip.

  She resisted for a moment, grunting, but he wedged it from her grasp, then tossed it onto the desk.

  He didn’t let her go.

  Of all things, he stood there, the uptick of his breathing sending his chest to heave against the back of her head and his arm tightened all the more around her waist. An iron clamp there was no escaping.