The Steel Rogue: A Valor of Vinehill Novel

by K. J. Jackson

  For all he was a wretched brute, the touch of his calloused finger was soft, a whispered caress she was unprepared for.

  Two agonizingly long breaths she sat suspended, unable to look away from his gaze, before his finger snapped away from her neck, almost as if a snake had struck out and bitten him.

  He jumped to his feet, moving a step backward and to the side where he sat on the wooden barrel-backed chair. He leaned back, his fingers tapping along the edge of the desk.

  A hot flush spread up her neck and she took a panicked sip of brandy. What was she thinking, allowing him to touch her? The liquid burned down her throat as her look darted about the room, desperate for anything to move her out of the awkward moment. His dark blue jacket lay crumpled on the floor, rolled into a haphazard pillow. Her gaze lifted to him. “You were in here all night?”

  “Yes.”

  “Sleeping on the floor?”

  “Yes.”

  Her brow furrowed. Why on earth would he bother? “You realize it’s not necessary? You don’t need to protect me. No man will touch me.”

  His head tilted to the side for a moment as he contemplated her, then his gaze dropped to the desk where his fingers had moved to fiddle with the brass sextant. “What I realize is that I would have preferred you hadn’t explored the ship yesterday with Des. You stayed on deck for far too long.”

  “But he said it was your idea. And you said I wasn’t a prisoner to this room.”

  “You aren’t. Which is why I allowed it, requested it, even. It was my idea.” He shrugged. “That doesn’t mean I liked it.”

  “Why would you bother to care?”

  His eyebrow cocked, his gaze lifting to her. “You say no man will touch you, but I cannot believe you don’t realize that every man on this ship wants that very thing.”

  Her mouth opened with caustic scoff. “Not with my legs. And I saw the way each of the men aside from Des gave me a wide berth—would walk in ridiculous arcs about my person.”

  “They walk around you because you’re a woman on a ship. Bad luck.” He shifted in his seat, his nails finding a loose shard of wood on the edge of the desk and he picked at it for a long moment before setting his gaze fully on her. “You don’t see yourself, do you, Torrie?”

  Her head tilted up slightly and she looked down her nose at him. It’d been her way since she’d been out in society in the years since the fire.

  Judge before she could be judged.

  But she knew what she was—she harbored no illusions on the matter. “See myself? Of course I see myself. I’m very real about what I am now, how the scars define me.” Her fingers tightened around the neck of the brandy bottle. “I’m absolutely honest with myself instead of trying to gloss over the reality of what I am, as you seem determined to do with this magnanimous captain act.”

  His grey eyes flickered for a moment, a shot of fury, but it blinked away as quickly as it appeared and he leaned forward in the chair, setting his forearms to balance on his thighs. “You truly see yourself like that? Scars? That’s all you are?”

  He didn’t rise to her bait and it sucked all the indignant fire from her chest. “No. I’m also jaded. The scars, the fire did that. Jaded me beyond repair.”

  She sighed, shrugging her shoulders, and her head dropped forward as words slipped raw from her throat. “And I’m also tired—so very tired of this. I’m tired of walking through life as though it’s a dream. I have been waiting to wake up from this nightmare. A nightmare of the in-between.”

  “The in-between?”

  Her look lifted to him. “Between knowing what normal is but never achieving it, and death.” Her head bowed again, her gaze on the rim of the brandy bottle in her hand. “I am so tired of the torture of the in-between. Every day is a dream that I cannot wake up from, but death never comes.”

  ~~~

  Roe swallowed hard against the hard rock wedged in his throat.

  She was jaded.

  Broken. Beyond anything that he’d imagined.

  And he hadn’t realized it until that very moment.

  She’d put up a good front the last six years—ever since she’d left her home at Vinehill Castle—with her marriage to the viscount, her acceptance into society. All a farce.

  It broke his heart.

  He knew what she suffered, for he’d been living in the in-between for the last nine years as well, just the same as her. He recognized well the numbness she spoke of—the hole that sat in his chest, gaping, sucking away everything he’d always thought life would be for him.

  Torrie sat there, small in the size of his bed with only her chemise on and a shield of detachment protecting her from the world. Her hair was still weaved into a heavy dark braid that fell over her shoulder, though many thick strands had worked their way free during the night, sending dark wisps to frame her face. The locks set off the peculiar creaminess of her skin. Perfectly unmarred—as though the skin on her face had to make up for the twisted wreck of the scars on her legs.

  Before carrying her onto the ship, he’d never been this close in proximity to her. And the beauty of her stretched his groin in unholy ways he wasn’t keen on having to subdue. That she’d stripped off the layers of her clothes down to her chemise last night—a necessity for the heat that had overtaken his cabin—hadn’t helped matters in the slightest.

  When he’d come into the cabin the night before, she was on her side, sleeping with her wrapped bare arm atop the sheet and the swell of her breasts a shadow in the moonlight filtering in the window. He’d suffered a test he hadn’t been prepared to endure, attempting to ignore her bare skin the whole night.

  Damn her for following him to the docks. For putting him in this position.

  Stay far away.

  For everything that he’d done since leaving Newgate—for how he’d manipulated circumstances in her life—that had been his one rule in regards to Torrie. Stay far away.

  And this was too damn close. Whatever odd compulsion she’d had that had set her on that path of following him on the docks, it didn’t touch the obsession he’d had with this woman.

  She’d been his sole purpose since he’d walked out of Newgate.

  Her cousins, Sloane, a duchess, and Lachlan, an earl and heir to the Vinehill estate, had both recovered from the fire long before he was released from prison.

  But Torrie—she was not fine. He’d seen that in her right away. Even married to a viscount. Even living a high life in London.

  She was not fine.

  But he’d never imagined it was as bad as this. That she had shattered so fully from those moments in time when the flames had overtaken her.

  The nail of his thumb flicked repeatedly across the pad of his middle finger and his gaze lifted to her as he steadied his breath. “I know what it’s like—the in-between.”

  Her green eyes pinned him, narrowing in spite. “How could you possibly know what it’s like?”

  He paused for a moment, his voice dropping. “In prison I wanted to die.”

  She blinked hard, the wrinkles around her eyes easing. “You did?”

  “Every day. Every beating. Every time I retched up a piece of rancid rat fat because of the pain.” His hands clasped together in front of him, his look shifting to the floor, to the tips of her brown boots peeking out from under the bed. “I would take beatings—so severe I couldn’t see out of either eye. Blood and pus crusting my lashes together.”

  She flinched, a tremor running through her whole body noticeable enough for him to lift his gaze to her.

  “And I would lie there in the filth. Willing it to happen. Willing death to take me.” He paused, his head shaking slowly. “But it never did. I couldn’t understand why. I would lie there. Breath after breath would come. Breath after breath after breath. And I couldn’t will the air in my lungs to cease.”

  Shifting the sheet up across her chest to add another layer in front of her breasts, she leaned forward, her voice breathless. “So what did you do?”


  “Nothing.” He shrugged. “I just kept breathing. Breathing. And I survived—survived when there was no will to do so.”

  She nodded, her fingers at her chest curling into the sheet, her voice tiny. “I asked my cousin, Sloane, to kill me. It was in my room at Vinehill and months after the fire. My body was healing—barely—but the pain was constant, unbearable.” Her words turned wooden as her gaze lifted to the ceiling of the cabin. “It was in the middle of the night, in the darkness, and Sloane was sitting next to my bed, keeping vigil as she did after her own wounds had mostly healed. Raining. And I thought that was the time. The dark, the rain—as far opposite from the fire and light as possible. She’s as a sister to me, and of all people, I wanted her to do it. To smother me. To help me go quietly into the night. I had no right to ask it of her, but I did.”

  He had to force air into his lungs. “She didn’t try to do it?”

  Her look dropped to him. “No, she didn’t. She didn’t even pretend to consider it, though she almost killed me for asking. And then she left Vinehill. She couldn’t watch the pain I was in anymore. What I had become. ”

  “What had you become?”

  A half smile, twisted from horrific memories, lifted the right side of her face. “A monster. A bloody monster to everyone around me. To anyone that tried to help me. I lashed out with words, with anything I could throw. I was nothing but a monster.”

  “That is why you left Vinehill?”

  “I was still closer to death than to living when I left. But I knew I couldn’t continue as I was. It began to hurt too much to see how I terrorized the people around me. The people that loved me.”

  “Where did you go?”

  “To live with Sloane and the duke at Wolfbridge Castle. She forgave me for what I’d asked of her, for all of the vile things I spewed at her. So I had a new home, far from where the past would suffocate me. And I learned to talk normally again. To eat, to sleep, to ride, to fill my time with all of the things expected of me. I even reached a point where I was so correct in all the motions, that she set me in front of Lord Apton. I managed to smile and laugh and charm enough for him to marry me. I know it’s what Sloane wanted for me. A happy life with him.”

  Her hand twisted along the bottle of brandy she still held in her left hand. “But I never felt any of it. It was all motions. What was expected of me.”

  He drew in a deep breath, staring at her. At the cracked pieces of her becoming his cracked pieces. She’d just nudged a door slightly open to him, and he still had one question he needed to know the answer to. “I know you wanted retribution—you said that—but there are a thousand ways to make that happen. None that you chose to pursue. So what were you truly doing following me at the docks, Torrie?”

  Her eyes flickered off of him. Avoidance.

  But then she met his gaze. “The truth?”

  “Please.”

  Her look fixed on him. One breath. Two. Three. “You have been the only thing—the only visceral emotion—I have felt in the last nine years.”

  “Hatred?”

  She nodded. “When I’d learned you’d come ashore, back to England, it was the first spark of raw emotion in my chest in forever. It was so foreign, I almost didn’t know what it was. So I followed you onto the docks because you were leaving again and I knew it. And I didn’t want the emotion to go away—even if it was hatred—I didn’t want it to end.”

  “Because you felt something.”

  She gave one nod. “I actually felt something. And I have been barren of everything for far too long—far, far too long.”

  { Chapter 6 }

  Torrie leaned back against the railing of the quarterdeck, setting her elbows atop the worn wood as she watched sailors moving about, shifting the sails.

  They’d sailed into calm waters—unusually calm, barely enough to lift the sails—and the looks she’d been getting from the crew were pointed.

  She was bad luck, and everyone knew it.

  Including the cabin boy approaching her from the left, his arms so full of a jumbled sail he couldn’t see out past the top of it. But he leaned out to the right to watch her with wary eyes, and in his effort to step a wide path around her, he took a step too far to the left. He tripped over a rope with a yelp, and the sail went flying from his arms, unfurling across the deck as he landed hard on his stomach.

  Torrie jumped from the railing, picking up the closest corner of sail to her and started to fold it back in toward the boy. “Are you hurt?”

  The boy’s eyes wide, he shook his head, his fingers scrambling to get the sail back into a pile in front of him. “No—no, ma’am.”

  He refused to look up at her, even as she pulled more edges of the sail to set into his bundle.

  “Can I help?”

  His look whipped up to her as though Satan had just spoken to him. “No, no, ma’am.” He clambered to his feet and ran past her, half the sail dragging behind him.

  Torrie dropped the edge of the sail she held before he had to tug it from her hands. She didn’t want him to fall again.

  With a shake of her head and a sigh, she went back to the railing, getting out of the way of the men.

  Carrying a heavy coil of thick rope, Des dropped it onto the deck to her left and turned to her. “Good day, my lady. I trust you slept well?”

  The one friendly face on the ship. Or so she hoped. She wondered if he’d just witnessed her scaring the devil out of the boy. Nevertheless, an easy breath went into her lungs. “I did, thank you for inquiring.”

  “How fares your arm?”

  “Tis of no bother—just itchy.” She turned to her side, her left elbow still leaning along the railing. “Tell me, Des, do you think we will reach the next port soon? I would just like to prepare myself for how long I will be on board.”

  Des set his back against the railing. He pulled free a dagger from the scabbard at his waist and picked free a chunk of driftwood he’d had stuffed in along his left boot. Carving into the wood, he flicked free tiny shard after shard as he watched the deckhands. “It is hard to guess. We weren’t to be in port for another month, most likely, as we were headed to Spanish seas. But then you came aboard and Cap planned to swing back in at Port de Brest. We would have been there by now, but the winds flipped on us and now that they have died and we’ve drifted, it is hard to guess.”

  She nodded, her look slipping out past the deck in front of her to the calm sea. “Shifting, dead winds on account of my bad luck.”

  Des laughed. “I’ve been at sea long enough to know that it doesn’t matter who or what is on board. Winds die. Storms collide. Ships sink. The sea is in charge, and if you’re lucky, it gets you where you need to be. But never trust it and never assume you’ll be lucky.” He reached out and patted her hand on the railing with his fingertips lifting away from his blade. “So no, it’s not on your account. It’s actually nice to have a woman aboard—I’m surrounded by the lot of these ugly mugs day after day so you’re a welcome respite from that.”

  She smiled at him, her first genuine smile in days. “You have been the one generous soul on this ship and I thank you for that, Des.”

  “You’re extraordinarily kind, Lady Apton.”

  “It is because you’re an extraordinary gentleman, Des. So much so, I find it hard to believe this is the life you’ve chosen for yourself.” She watched the tip of his blade, the skill with which he whittled what looked to be the face of a lion. “I’ve lived in the Scottish countryside and in London—and when we were young, my cousin, Sloane, and I were sent to finishing school near the city so we would lose our Scottish accents.”

  He glanced up at her. “From what I’ve heard, it sounds like that took?”

  “Aye. It did for the most part. Living in London for the past five years has also helped. But my point is that my speech is a learned thing. And you sound exactly like the gentlemen in London—far more than a sailor,” she said. “You had to learn that, or be brought up in it. And you conduct yourself as a g
entleman as well, which tells me you are no stranger to society. So much so that I’m surprised you’re on this ship. Are you perhaps a younger son of a peer?”

  His blade on the chunk of driftwood stilled and his clear blue eyes darkened for a long moment, lost to the world around him. With a slight jerk, his gaze lifted to pin her. “Why would you say that?”

  “Nothing—I didn’t mean to imply—”

  “I’m no one, Lady Apton.” He pushed off of the railing, pulling himself to his full height. “No one. Just a sailor that got lucky under Captain Roe.”

  She set a crooked smile on her face and inclined her head. “Of course. I certainly wished no offense.” With a flick of her wrist, she motioned to the rope curled on the deck by his feet. “Please, I do not wish to hold you from your work.”

  With a curt nod, Des shoved the driftwood into his boot and the blade into his scabbard. He stepped forward to heft the bulk of the heavy rope onto his shoulder and then moved away from her.

  Unsettled, Torrie turned her back to the deck, her gaze solidly on the smooth sea as her hands wrapped along the worn wood of the railing. She had just lost the one friendly face on this ship and she wasn’t sure exactly how that had just come to be.

  “What did you say to Des?”

  Roe’s deep voice in her left ear made her jump. He’d snuck up on her and she hadn’t the slightest clue. She looked down next to her. No boots. Damn the devil.

  Or damn her—she wasn’t sure his bare feet were by choice or by the necessity of letting his boot dry out from her retching into it.

  Her gaze avoiding him, she kept her concentration on the low undulating waves. “I said nothing of importance to him.”

  “I saw how he stalked away from you, Torrie. I’ll not have you disparage my men. Not on my ship.” He leaned slightly over her, far closer than she ever wanted him to be, but she refused to take a step away.

  She glared up at him. “I didn’t disparage him. I merely asked him if he was of the aristocracy—a second or third son, perhaps.”