“I do.”
His nod turned into a shake of his head as his eyes lifted to the giant golden ring on the wall with tiles of dusty red clumped as the ruby.
Impossible, all of this matching up with the box. But there it was.
His gaze sank down onto the top of Elle’s head, her thick chestnut hair reflecting shine from the scant light.
Impossible, her and everything roiling in his gut when he looked at her. Thought of her. Smelled her. But there she was.
He could feel himself sinking into the deep, one purpose pulling him away from the other.
Neither one of them with answers nor a clear path forward.
Any which way he looked at it, he was spiraling into disaster. But he’d come too far to change his path. Even if that path was wrong.
Push onward. That was his only option.
{ Chapter 12 }
Curled onto the settee in her drawing room, Elle stared at one of the sketches she’d made of the ring mosaic, then flipped through the pages on her lap to Rune’s sketches. There had to be something there she was missing, some shred of a clue.
Rune’s steadfast belief that none of this was happenstance was quickly becoming her own belief.
She went back to her top sketch and followed the lines of it, every corner and swoop of her pencil line. Some sort of clue had to be there.
She blinked, her eyes dry, and then lifted her head, her eyes requiring a long moment before they could focus on the trees outside the window and to her right.
Mindlessly flipping a golden tile taken from the floor in front of the ring mosaic, she stared at the leaves fluttering in the light breeze. This was the exact sort of day she loved on the island. Bright sun only occasionally marred with puffy white clouds, the smell of honeysuckle in the air. A day she would usually spend riding or walking the grounds or helping out Mr. Jenson with the gardens.
Her forefinger stopped on a prickly nub on one edge of the tile. Rune was right—it was cut differently from the tiles in the upper chambers. Cruder edges, if she had to pinpoint the difference—and not just from the wear of time.
She looked down at the tessera, turning it over to the rear of the tile, and she scratched her fingernail at the dust caked to the back.
A reddish tint appeared.
She tilted the tile toward the sunlight streaming in the open window.
Yes, red. The mortar—it wasn’t the same as the kind used in the upper chambers. Not at all.
A knock on her front door echoed along the front hallway and into the room.
Rune wouldn’t knock on the front door, would he? She thought she had made it clear he should come and go as necessary. Even with that, he had made sure to tell her he was going to Newport to check on the arrival of Captain Folback’s papers that he’d sent to London for.
Footsteps approached and she called out to her butler as he passed the open doorway. “Please see whoever it is into here, Watson.”
He paused in his steps toward the main door. “As you wish, my lady.”
Her stare went back down to the tile in her hand, her eyes blinking again and again to recreate moisture where there was none. Red in the mortar—whatever did that mean? Lord Kallen would know—she would have to pay him a call once Rune returned.
“Mr. Sangton here for you, my lady.”
Elle froze with her look on the tile, all blood draining from her head, her arms, her chest.
“My lady?”
She jerked around with Watson’s question, a fabricated smile cracking across her face as she looked up. “Of course, show him in, please, Watson.”
Her butler stepped to the side and Elle held her breath. Maybe she had misheard the name. Maybe she was imagining the whole thing. Maybe.
A tall man, almost too thin, with a face she had once found handsome, stepped into the room. A face that now only drew bile up her throat.
Her smile locked into place, she stood and looked past Mr. Sangton to her butler. “Thank you, Watson. Please close the doors as you leave.”
Watson paused, his greying eyebrows lifting.
She nodded at him.
He moved slowly to grab the right, then the left door and he pulled them closed.
Elle watched him until the last sliver of the hallway disappeared from view. Her gaze swung up to Mr. Sangton and the slightest fracture in her forced smile made her lower lip quiver. “Mr. Sangton, I didn’t know you had returned to the island.”
He inclined his head to her. “I just arrived last night for the upcoming ball and my uncle reported he had a visit from you. You have been a hard one to track down, Eliana. Our last meeting ended so abruptly.” He took a step toward her.
Close. Too close.
She shuffled a step backward. “I think we both know that the outcome of our last encounter at the Whitmore house party was unfortunate. And that any further interactions between the two of us are unnecessary.”
He stepped forward, swallowing the small scrub of space she’d gained. She was already regretting having Watson close the doors.
“Just because your niece’s husband interrupted our last tête-à-tête doesn’t mean we’re done.” He tilted down slightly, menace lining his brown eyes. “He was the churl that barreled in and interrupted us. You didn’t give me enough time. Not enough time to show you. Besides, that was months ago. I’ve missed you.” His hand lifted, the back of his knuckles brushing against her cheek.
She fought the urge to cringe away, only half winning the battle—her head stayed in place, but her eyes winced. “I thought Lord Troubant talked to you.”
A sneer curled his lips. “The fool talked to me. Threatened me. But I don’t listen to rabble like him—the scum isn’t our kind. Turned his back on all of us for years—the ass is better off on a ship back on sea.”
Instant fury balled into her gut. No one talked of her family like that. No one. “Mr. Sangton—”
“Mr. Sangton? Once is a slip—but twice? That’s what you’re calling me now? Say my name, Eliana.”
Her mouth clamped tight.
“Say my damn name.” He leaned forward, the threat in his voice sending cold spikes of fear down her spine.
“Say my name, Eliana.” His fist, balled tight, lifted at his side.
Why had she asked Watson to close the door? Some false sense of propriety over what was going to be a delicate conversation? Idiotic. Stupid to think this was going to unfold in any other way.
Her eyes closed. “Howard, please. Lord Troubant talked to you and I believed that to be the end of us. I—”
“The end of us?” He jabbed another step forward, his chest bumping into her as his voice snaked into a growl. “You don’t decide the end of us, Eliana. I decide. You didn’t give it enough time. I was going to show you—show you what we could have, but that was ruined. You didn’t understand the first time.”
Her hands wedged up between them and she pressed against his chest. “Except we are done, Howard. What we had was enjoyable, I still appreciate your company, but there cannot be more between us.”
His head shook, fury lighting blazes into his brown eyes. “You don’t decide the end.”
She pushed off of him, gaining another step. “You need to leave now, Howard, or I will scream and my staff will be here in a breath.”
His hand around her neck was instant, clamping the wind out of her throat as he shoved her backward.
Her back hit the wall next to the window, slamming the air in her chest upward, only to be blocked by the grip he had on her neck.
Crushing. Crushing her air. Her voice.
“The old man is dying. It won’t be long now and I’ll have the Kallen estate—all of it. And I take you with it. Whatever you and my uncle have, it is mine. You’re mine. Don’t you ever forget it.”
Black dots started to ring her vision, moving inward, taking the light. Her mouth gasping for air, she fought the blackness, fought back into the light, into the room. Fought for strength into her right leg. J
ust enough. She jammed her knee upward with all the strength she could muster just as she started to drop, the blackness winning the battle.
His hand fell from her neck and he doubled over, screaming.
She tumbled toward the floor, the wood planks coming fast up at her. She hit the floor hard, her arms wide, not able to block the fall as she landed brutally on her chest, her belly.
Her breath gone. Gone for good.
{ Chapter 13 }
Rune stood in his guest chamber, looking down at the leather satchel bursting with papers on his bed.
Not that he’d spent more than the first night after arriving here at the Raplan dower house in the bedroom. Elle had not been shy about where she preferred him to sleep the last two nights—in the comfort of her bed, naked next to her. He’d had no objection to the arrangement.
Just a few minutes ago he’d entered through the back door of her house and had gone straight up to this room so as to not be seen.
He needed to look through the papers by himself. Needed to remember alone.
His fingers went down, opening the top flap of the bag and pulling free a tied stack of letters shoved into the very front of the bag. He set them on the bed and started flipping through more of the papers and scraps of vellum buried deeper within the bag until his gaze strayed to the stack of letters.
Letters his father had written him during the years when they were separated after his mother died. All of the letters had been saved for Rune, as there had been nowhere for his father to send them.
The past, staring at him as it always did.
A sigh on his lips, he set the satchel down and shifted to stand in front of the letters.
The second night after his father had found him in the Port of Veracruz, he’d sat—still livid that his father had shown up out of nowhere on that pier to claim him again—crouched by the fireplace for light, reading letter after letter after letter. Learning that his father had never abandoned him. Had done everything in his power to find him.
And he had. Eventually. His father had traded everything to get back to Rune, to find him. And it had cost him his life.
Undoing the twine holding the stack together, Rune took a deep breath, then picked up the top letter from the bundle and opened it. Words he knew by heart, but was still driven to read, for the quick, efficient scrawl held the last vestiges of his father.
October 13, 1811
My beloved son,
Two days ago I learned your mother died and you are nowhere to be found. Devastated does not begin to describe the loss I hold in my heart at losing not only your mother, but you as well. I have pulled apart this town, searching every corner, every street for you. I will continue my search for you tomorrow. And every day thereafter, until I find you. Make no mistake on that. I am coming.
The latest expedition was successful, and it was not. I didn’t find what we’ve been searching for, but the team did discover a cache of unnaturally large emeralds in a bronze Mayan long box that the viscount was quite pleased with. He left port satisfied, with all the glory of what he will now claim solely as his discovery.
It was a reminder of a lesson that I have been meaning to teach you. You are old enough now to understand. The aristocracy—you must be careful with them when you take over these expeditions one day. Their blood, their entitlement sets them apart from us, and you need to remember that. They are not our kind. Our kind is adventurers, movers of the world with great destinies. The aristocrats are not, yet they are so desperate for it, they will ride on our backs to glory as it is the only way they can achieve it. You must always remember that if we start to think that we are like them, or that they are like us, then they will steal that glory, steal our destinies.
Always know where you stand, boy. And do not stand with them.
Use them as you need to, but never believe you are one of them. You are better.
Until I find you again, my son.
— Father
It took Rune long minutes after he’d read the words on the letter before he could neatly fold the creased and worn paper and set it back atop the stack, retying the twine with detailed precision.
Recommitted to his guiding light. What he had to do.
The darkness flooded him. The darkness he didn’t even remember was there. It’d been in him so long, become such a part of him that he’d long since forgotten he was a bad person. Nothing mattered but the box. Whatever it took to get it.
Just the reminder he needed.
He looked to the satchel and the scraps of history cobbled together inside.
Pulling papers and maps and even thin wood pieces that had been carved with old language, he splayed all of the history of the Box of Draupnir that he was aware of onto the bed. Everything that had been collected over the years.
He picked up the crystal clear sunstone, flipping it around in his fingers as he stared at the pile. The answer had to be in there somewhere.
His eyes drifted to the timeline of where the box had been seen, travelled in the last fifty years. Testimonials from those that had seen it, witnessed its power. Tales of where some believed the box to have come from—some outrageous, some with seemingly grains of truth, of sanity. The stories of the wars that some said had been won with it.
Rune reached to the far side of the bed to pick up several of the small slabs of wood with Old Norse carved into them, staring at the inscriptions.
Fragments of meanings, never full thoughts. Prayers for winds. Curses on the Christians. Words of undying love.
He flipped one of the pieces of wood over and, for the very first time, noticed the scratches on the back. Random scratches he’d never thought anything of, except in this light, they looked to be more than scratches. Quite possibly intentional scratches—carvings, worn down with time.
Papers flying across the bed, he frantically searched for the other eight pieces of wood—all with ragged edges—that had been collected throughout the years and he flipped all of them over.
A line here…he scanned the backs of the other pieces.
That could match up with the line on the one on the right.
He set them together, pushing and pulling the pieces together in a myriad of ways until lines seemed to hop the ragged, rough edges of the wood and become connected in a two-across block pattern.
And at the bottom, either two missing blocks or the lines ended unconnected.
He had to tell Elle. And he needed to see the inside of those baths again.
Where was she?
Rune hurried from the room, going first to her chambers. Empty. Moving through the house, he looked in room after room, searching for her.
No Elle. Was she outside walking the grounds again?
He aimed for the front door and along the way noticed the doors to the drawing room were closed. Unusual, as he’d never seen Elle hiding away anywhere and he’d never seen her in that room. He moved to the double-wide doors, opened the right one and peeked into the room.
No one.
Rune took a silent step backward and pulled the door toward him. Just before the room disappeared from view, he saw the tiniest tuft of a cerulean blue skirt on the floor just past the settee. The exact blue Elle had been wearing that morning.
He pushed the door open again, his look swiveling about the room. Empty.
His look dove down to the tuft. Except it wasn’t just a tuft of her skirt, it was the whole of it.
His heart stopped and he rushed into the room, shoving aside the settee as he rounded it.
Elle on the ground. Flat on her belly. Arms splayed wide. Her right arm bent down with her wrist by her waist, her left arm bent high over her head.
Not moving.
Dead. She looked dead.
He skidded onto his knees beside her, his hands to her face. Cupping her cheeks. Shaking her.
Breath. Breath hit his thumb. The slightest whiff of air, but it was there.
He froze with her head in his hands, not daring to move. Not until
he felt another breath from her.
A slight whisper of air rolled over his knuckle.
Thank the heavens.
But what the hell had happened to her?
As delicately as he could, he slipped his hands under her body and flipped her over.
Shit.
Seeing it instantly, his fingers went to her throat, gently tracing the angry red welts that lined her neck. One…two…three…four…and then on the opposite side of her neck, a fifth mark.
She’d been choked. Choked in her own home.
A rage so visceral swept through his body he was shocked his skin didn’t tear open, exploding.
“What the hell happened to you, finch?” The whisper barely made it from his lips, choked in a dam of fury beating hot in his throat.
His body heavy, as though a thousand stones had landed upon him, crushing him, he spun around, setting his back to the wall and he pulled her head onto his lap.
His fingers itched to shake her, to wake her up, but he instead stretched them wide, then set them on the bare expanse of her chest above her bodice.
If he could feel her lungs rise and fall then he didn’t need to worry—she would wake.
But he did need to plan.
{ Chapter 14 }
This wasn’t how she fell. Face first into the floor.
She remembered it distinctly. The wood rushing at her. The thought that it was going to hurt flashing through her brain, then nothing.
The sliver of light she could see through her lashes told her the sun was still streaming in through the window.
No. Not at all how she fell. She was on her back now, her head propped up. What the deuce?
She shifted slightly, her head rubbing against something soft—soft but hard. A lap.
Her head was in a lap, fingers stroking through her hair.
Howard—hell. She had to get away from him.
Her eyes opened wide, her look darting frantically about the room as she tried to lift her head.
His fingers landed on her brow and the hand he had clamped onto her chest pinned her onto his lap. “Elle, shhh, we’re alone. No one is here.”
The Soul of a Rogue (A Box of Draupnir Novel Book 3) Page 9
