The Soul of a Rogue (A Box of Draupnir Novel Book 3)

by K. J. Jackson

  Rune.

  Rune with two heaping plates of food. Her stomach instantly tightened, remembering how hungry she was. The wine had only slightly sated the grumble in her belly.

  His eyes instantly narrowed at her. “You opened the door without asking who was out here.”

  She shrugged. “I knew it was you.”

  His lips pursed for a second, admonishment nearly slipping out. But he managed to hold back from calling her on her lie when they both knew full well she didn’t have a clue who was knocking on her door.

  So he could manage some semblance of pity.

  He lifted the large silver platter the plates were balanced on. “I am here to deliver food.”

  “Thank goodness. How is Felix? And my footman?”

  He stepped into the room, moving past her toward the table in the corner of the room. “They went to Taunton. The surgeon there looked at your driver’s arm and the bullet went clean through the flesh. Bandaged, but he’ll recover fine. Your footman wasn’t harmed.”

  She let out an exhale, her eyes closing. “Thank the heavens. I am just so grateful that Rosey wasn’t with me.”

  “Who is Rosey?” Rune set the platter on the table and pulled one plate from it, placing it on the table. He laid the silverware into place. A proper setting, even.

  For all his egregious behavior in flopping her over a horse, at least he had enough manners to set a table properly. Not that he’d openly displayed them as of yet beyond her fork, spoon and knife in the right place.

  Elle moved across the room, her fingers tapping along the high back of one of the chairs by the table. “My maid. She has a temper when it comes to protecting me and I fear she would have attacked those men herself.”

  His right cheek lifted in a half smile. “Why did you leave her behind? And your second footman? Des said you had two footmen. We could have used both the extra one and your maid on the road instead of being stuck with that lily-livered boy that could barely hold a pistol.”

  Her mouth twisted to the side for a long moment. “They…well. Rosey and Fredrick—there have been looks between them.”

  “Looks?”

  Her head tilted to the side, her fingers waving in the air between them. “Romantic looks. I thought in this situation it would be easiest for us to travel without them—the less they know about what we’re doing with the box the better. Plus, it would give them a chance to travel back to the isle together, and…” Her shoulders shrugged with a grin on her face.

  Rune scratched the back of his neck, his copper-green eyes boring into her. “I did not take you for a romantic.”

  “I’m not—not for myself, at least. But I am for other people.”

  “That’s a bit of a paradox.”

  She shrugged and grabbed her wine glass, pouring herself another brimming share of the Madeira from the carafe on the table.

  “That’s what is different about your eyes.”

  She looked to him. “My eyes?”

  “I thought at first it was that your ire at me for tossing you on the horse had been tempered, but now I see that you’re merely soused.” His forefinger flickered to the three-quarters empty bottle. “That’s the difference.”

  “Possibly.” The smallest smile eked onto her lips. She couldn’t argue it. It was hard to buoy her anger at him with this much wine in her head. “You left me in here with a full bottle of wine and no food, ordered me not to move, and have been gone for a number of hours. It was bound to happen.”

  “I’m impressed you managed the will to listen to me.” He pointed to the plate of food he had set on the side of the table. “Eat.”

  Elle took a sip of her Madeira, eyeing him as she did. “It just occurred to me I don’t even know if Rune is your given name or surname.”

  His eyebrows lifted. “You just set off on a journey with a man that you don’t even know the name of?”

  Her shoulders lifted. “There wasn’t a lot of time for details before we needed to leave. Jules trusts you. Des trusts you. That was all I needed to know.”

  “That’s a lot of trust.”

  “They have more than earned it.”

  He nodded as his forefinger started to tap on top of the chair in front of him. “Smith is my surname.” The tapping sped and his head angled slightly to the side as though he was trying to sort something out about her. Something he didn’t care for.

  She waved her hand to the table and his plate still on the large silver platter. “It looks like you intend to leave. But please, eat with me. I was terribly bored all day long.”

  He didn’t make a motion to remove his plate from the platter and her look lifted to him. “Oh, I apologize. That was presumptuous of me. You have no need to be my entertainment. I realize you are accompanying me as a favor to Des.” She bit the inside of her cheek—what was she even thinking, inviting him to eat in her room? Her tongue always wagged too freely when she was foxed. The man clearly had—at the best—nothing but slight disdain for her.

  For a long second he looked at her, his lower jaw working back and forth. “No, I guess…I guess I can eat with you.”

  He removed his plate from the platter and set it in front of the other chair, waiting for Elle to sit before he slipped into the chair across from her.

  It was interesting to watch him—his fingers on the plate, his arms, his body as he sat—all of his movements were so smooth—like a slick of olive oil through water. Silent but effective, a mastery of movement, down to the slightest twitch of his pinky finger.

  She didn’t give him even a moment to pick up his fork before she pounced, the question that had been on her tongue all day burning to be spoken. “Do you think we’ll find it?”

  His eyebrows lifted. “Find what?”

  “Any clues as to the origin of the Box of Draupnir. When Jules talked about it at Seahorn, it made sense—find some clues in the mosaics on the walls of the Roman baths under the Marquess of Kallen’s lands. Use those clues to then deliver the box back to where it came from. But the further we get from Seahorn, the more impossible this task seems. But Jules was so certain—so certain this would work.”

  His fingers wrapped onto his fork. “So you would like to abandon the mission?”

  She shook her head. “No. I just fear disappointing her and Des. They need this box gone from their lives. My niece—she was almost frantic for how much she needed this to happen and Jules doesn’t get frantic. She is the epitome of calm.”

  “Your niece is an unusual woman, Lady Raplan.”

  “That she is.” Elle picked up her fork, pushing the tines through the long beans that wrapped the edge of the plate. “Why do you never speak my given name? I’ve given you permission more than once, but I have only heard the formality of my title from you.”

  His hand holding his fork paused in midair for a second before diving into the slab of roasted beef. He didn’t look up at her. “If I call you by your name I become like you. I am not like you.”

  “Because of my title?”

  He chewed his bite of beef, set his fork down, poured a glass of wine and drank half of it before his look met hers. For a long second as he held her stare, she didn’t think he’d answer, but then he set his glass down and his gaze settled on her. “Because of entitlement. You’ve been entitled to everything in your life. Always. I see it in your actions, in your soul. Everything you’ve ever wanted, you’ve gotten. You are not like me. Not at all.”

  Her head snapped back. “You don’t know what you speak of.”

  “I know I have struggled for everything in my life—had things stolen from me by your kind.”

  “What?”

  “My father, for one. His destiny. His legacy. He was killed by one of your own.”

  Her jaw dropped with a slight gasp. A second passed and then she shook the shiver from her spine. “I am sorry for your loss.”

  “It was long ago.” Rune picked up his fork, his look going back down to his food.

  That was it? That w
as all he had to say?

  Elle stared at him as he ate. Even foxed as she was, her mind was straight enough to know his logic lacked merit—to lump everyone with a title under the same umbrella dripping with contempt. “I am still sorry, no matter how distant in the past. But your father’s death and how it happened has nothing to do with me.”

  His head gave a slight shake, his copper-green eyes hardening as he looked at her. “It has everything to do with your kind. It has everything to do with entitlement. You expect to get everything that you want. And you do.”

  The hairs on the back of her neck spiked and she jabbed a piece of meat, shoving it into her mouth before she said something she’d regret. Her niece was always saving her from unleashing her barbed tongue, but Jules was now fifty miles away.

  She clearly had to become accustomed to biting back her own words as she was stuck with this man—at least until they discovered what secrets the ancient Roman baths held about the Box of Draupnir’s origins—whether she liked it or not.

  Whereas earlier in the day, she’d thought she’d have a hard time not daydreaming about Rune’s too-perfect jaw and his unique copper-green eyes, she was quickly seeing evidence of the ugly beneath the handsome veneer.

  And she needed to avoid the ugly. She’d been fooled by a pretty veneer before.

  She’d just have to set in place her most placating smile and handle the sour disposition of Rune to the best of her ability. And if her ability wavered on occasion, well, the man had it coming.

  Elle forced a tight smile as she chewed, channeling everything Jules had ever explained to her about swallowing rage and moving onward with life. Her niece was a champion at the sport. Elle was not.

  Rune shoved several bites of food into his mouth, eating so quickly she’d only gotten three bites down before his plate was cleared. Almost as if he was afraid she was going to start picking food off his plate.

  It was at that moment she couldn’t hold her sham smile any longer and she broke. “You’re quite odious, I must say. First tossing me onto a horse I still have bruises from and now this. I’ve never met someone so judgmental about someone he knew nothing of. You haven’t even spent five minutes with me conversing and you think you know exactly what I am. You’re the worst kind of a ridiculous prig.”

  Jules would not be proud of her.

  Rune’s fork clattered to his empty plate and his gaze shot up to her, his eyebrows cocked. “You want questions?”

  The severity of his voice set her on instant guard. Why had she even bothered to open her mouth?

  Her shoulders lifted. “If you plan on judging a person, at least judge them on the truth of who they are. An actual conversation does help with that.” Her teeth clamped down hard on the piece of meat on her fork.

  He nodded slowly, even though every muscle in his body had tightened to the contrary, and he leaned back in his chair as he crossed his arms over his chest. “Fine. What were you doing today on the floor of the carriage? Clamped up in a ball? Mute? Lost to the world around you?”

  A gasp whipped into her mouth, sending the chunk of meat deep into her throat. A fit of coughing overtook her until it dislodged, and with her eyes watering, she grabbed her wine and swallowed far too much for how tipsy she already was.

  Elle dared a glance at him.

  He sat in the same position, his eyes trained on her, not even inclined to lean forward and reach across the table to give her a helpful pat on the back. Waiting. Waiting for the answer to his question.

  Another sip of her wine and she inhaled a deep breath, trying to calm the instant heavy ball rolling about in her gut. “I—I don’t know what happened to me in the carriage. It is hard to explain.”

  “Try.”

  “Why?”

  His fingers flicked out from his crossed arms. “I can’t protect you if you turn into a turtle. If I tell you to move, I need you to move. It’s really quite simple.”

  “I’m not a turtle.” The heat from earlier on her neck exploded. First she was a sack of potatoes, now she was a turtle. Beyond the pale. She pulled out her most wicked glare, the one that had sent more than one dandy of the ton scurrying into the nearest smoking room.

  “You were today. A turtle hiding in its shell.”

  Her hand flew up in the air next to her. “It was the gunshot. I hear them and they do something to me. Take over my brain until I cannot think, until I don’t know what I’m doing, where I am. I’m just…gone. And then I wake up somewhere—like flopped over a horse today.”

  “So you curl into a ball and hide?”

  “Usually. It is better if I know a shot is coming—like when a hunting party goes out, I can control myself. But if it is out of nowhere as it was today…I cannot control the reaction. Or I have not been able to.”

  His look bored into her. “So you usually turn into a turtle? What happens when it is not usual?”

  She picked up her fork, looking down at her plate and pushing the beans about the edge. “It does not matter.”

  He shifted in his chair, leaning forward, his elbows sliding onto the table. “Except it does matter—for the same reason it’s hard to protect a turtle, it’s just as hard, if not harder to protect something unpredictable.”

  She sighed, her hand with the fork falling to the table as she looked at him. “Rage. There were two times when I woke up after a gunshot startled me and I had a knife in my hand. A bloody knife. Both times. Not my blood. Jules found me once in the middle of it—at a house party in Essex—and extracted me from the situation. She knows her way around a blade.”

  “Jules?”

  “Yes, Jules—she learned when she was a pirate bride—stolen on the seas and forced into marriage.” Her forehead furrowed. “Weren’t you on the ship—the Firefox with her when she escaped off the pirate ship? I could have sworn she said she knew you from those days.”

  Both of his palms went up to her. “I was on the Firefox then and I do know about her past, but I didn’t know how public that information was.”

  She exhaled some of the angst brewing in her belly. “That is admirable of you, feigning ignorance. And for the benefit of a lady with a title.”

  He shrugged, not acknowledging her sarcasm.

  “Well, Jules’s past is not public knowledge. And it needn’t be. Jules told me and there are Des’s shipmates from the Firefox that know, such as you. But beyond that, the only thing that has ever floated about society is merely rumor and we’d prefer it to remain so.”

  He offered one nod, his gaze skewering her as if she was daft.

  Her head dropped, her stare on her plate as she picked up her fork, avoiding any further conversation.

  Apparently, he knew how to be discreet. She had to give him that.

  But she was done with questions, because she hadn’t been wrong about him.

  He was dangerous. Dangerous on levels she hadn’t even anticipated.

  Not just his devil-set-on-earth looks or his ability to extract her from deadly situations.

  He was dangerous in the worst kind of way—he hated her—and she had never done well with men that fell to that persuasion, for she either ended up slicing them with a dagger or falling into bed with them.

  She stuffed a bean into her mouth.

  This journey to set the box in its resting place had just gotten inexplicably more complicated.

  { Chapter 6 }

  Rune looked to his left at Elle sitting sidesaddle atop her horse.

  For a woman that had been parted with her trunks and possessions the day before, she looked remarkably polished. Her dark hair was pulled back in a tidy bun, sans the bonnet that was left in the carriage. The skirts of her dark blue dress showed only minor wrinkles. The military-styled celestial blue satin pelisse layered over her blue dress still looked crisp. Her eyes were alert and she had good color on her cheeks that the day’s sun had set in place.

  They’d had to ride out of Ilminster, as there were no coaches for hire, and remarkably, Elle had taken i
t in stride.

  He’d told her the situation and she had merely nodded, her eyes lighting up as she looked toward the stable.

  She liked to ride, liked the horses—that much was obvious. She’d cooed to her mare for quite some time when it was brought about—something about making friends—but it had taken so long that he’d finally had to nudge her to the block to get on the horse.

  That had been six hours ago and she looked like she could easily go on for ten more.

  Him, not so much.

  She’d been raised on horses. He’d been raised on the sea and it was his legs that were looking for a break more than hers.

  He’d also discovered during the day that she was a pleasant enough travel companion. A quick wit, she produced clever observations on the villages they passed through. And in the dull of long stretches of road, she’d asked him light, nonsensical questions that drew him against his will into conversation after conversation with her.

  What was the best way to store hay? How many acorns should a squirrel hide away for the winter? How far out into the sea would birds follow a ship that had fish remains on it? What was the actual intelligence of crows? Would the exponential breeding habits of hares eventually suffocate the world if they weren’t hunted?

  The woman was curious about any and every topic.

  Not that he had anything better to do with his day.

  Though she was never too deep. Never too quarrelsome.

  She was a master of non-committal, non-contentious conversation. Perfect for ballrooms and stuffy dinners.

  But to balance the chatter, she also knew how to be quiet for long stretches. To let the sounds of leaves crinkling in the breeze fill the space of silence.

  Rune looked past her into the forest that lined both sides of the road, his head tilting his right ear upward to hear any and all sound. A corridor of trees was the most obvious place of attack and his eyes shifted back and forth, wary.

  Rustling in the far-off bushes on his right, nothing more.

  Crack.