My Dangerous Duke

by Gaelen Foley

  “Mm.” He folded his arms across his chest, but it was clear he wanted no questions. Once more, he was lost in his brooding, staring out the window while the coach rolled on toward the river, where her father’s moored frigate waited to take them out to sea.

  Chapter 18

  The Prometheans’ schooner rode at anchor a few miles out to sea beyond the Thames estuary. Until the prisoner could be made to talk, they could go no farther.

  An ugly mood hung over the decks after the death of Talon and several of his men.

  Drake knew that Prometheans did not exactly care about each other, but they had respected Talon, and they certainly hated defeat. It was now past midnight. Above them, pillow clouds tried to suffocate the moon.

  Leaning against the mainmast with his hands in his pockets, merely trying to stay out of everyone’s way, Drake hid his secret jubilation that his oppressor, Talon, the hated eye-patch man, was dead.

  Of course, James was saddened by the loss, and Drake could not be too happy about anything that upset his revered benefactor. After all, if it were not for James, he would still be rotting away in that Bavarian dungeon, only waiting for his daily visit from the torturers.

  Still, he felt liberated. For a moment, he gazed in concern at James, who stood at the rails, brooding over the demise of his longtime assistant. Then he looked over at the sound of a large splash off the stern.

  The surviving Promethean foot soldiers were getting rid of the bodies. One unceremonious watery plunk followed another as they dumped their slain mates into the sea.

  Others were busy in the lanternlit stateroom, taking out their anger on the elderly bo’sun they had captured.

  Drake was careful not to look in that direction. He could not bear it. The sounds of their taunting and mocking and striking their captive made him cringe, triggering terrible memories of his own ordeals in Germany.

  But there was nowhere to go on the sleek, compact schooner where he could escape, and as much as he tried to pretend he heard nothing, he still could not avoid their display of brutality. The flickering lamplight in the stateroom where they were abusing the old man cast the moving shadows of the Promethean foot soldiers in large over the deck.

  Everything in Drake told him to go help that poor old fellow. But he would not listen, already sick to his stomach with the nearness of their deliberate cruelty.

  Instead, he stared at the dark sea, taking large draughts of the clear, bracing wind. And he distracted himself with the churning questions about the events of this night. If only he could remember more of his old life!

  Why didn’t he shoot me? That big fellow, that savage, he could’ve killed me if he wanted to. Were we friends once? He had not looked familiar. Not like the other one had: Max.

  Drake still had not told James that in London he had recognized the Marquess of Rotherstone. He was not sure why he kept this secret, but after the debacle of tonight, James had said that that menacing giant who had killed Talon and five of their men in under a quarter hour could only be an agent of the Order. The same organization that Drake had once belonged to, or so he had been told.

  Surely he had never done anything like that.

  But then again, how had he wound up in that horrible dark dungeon in the first place? There must have been a fight. One he had obviously lost. But why? If only he could remember. He closed his eyes and banged his head back lightly against the solid mast, wishing he could knock his tangled mind into cooperating. So little made sense.

  Especially the haunting remnant of a memory of deep violet eyes and a girl’s nymphlike laughter, teasing, enchanting him, trailing ahead of him through some familiar forest . . .

  He shoved the image away. Of all the scattered fragments in his mind, it was the one that hurt the worst, and yet, the one he treasured most. He had no idea who she was or if she was even real. Maybe he was quite as mad as Talon’s henchmen believed.

  He could not even say any more what was good or bad. If the Order is really evil like James says, and the Prometheans are good, then why didn’t that tall blackguard shoot me? He had a clear shot. Why did he hold his fi re?

  It was too threatening to contemplate that James might be lying to him. James was his only hope in this world. The only person since his capture who had been kind to him.

  The Germans would have killed him if it were not for James. James Falkirk was powerful among the Prometheans: The Germans had been afraid of him. James had ordered Drake removed from the dungeon—not unlike the way in which he had arranged for that lowlife O’Banyon to be smuggled out of Newgate by a prison guard in the Prometheans’ pay. The similarities ended there, for O’Banyon was merely hired to do a job, whereas Drake was far more valuable to James, though he was not sure how.

  His aged savior had taken him under his wing, nursed him back to relative health after his countless beatings, and promised with paternal tenderness that he would help him get his memory back.

  Frustration rose anew with his addled mind’s inability to give James the information he wanted, but by now, Drake was all too used to living in a state of distressing confusion. He was doing better than before, he reminded himself, refusing to despair.

  True, he had not yet remembered everything, but vague phantoms of his past had begun to return when he was calm. He could almost glimpse them from the corner of his eye. Who he was, where he came from, what he used to be. Unfortunately, the answers still fled when he tried to look at them directly. Almost as if his mind had tricked itself into forgetting everything for some reason, as if he had secrets to protect at all costs, even from himself . . .

  He clenched his jaw, remembering how Talon had never quite believed that Drake had lost his memory. God, they had hated each other, both jealous for James’s favor, like rival brothers.

  When a thud and another cry of pain flew out of the stateroom, Drake’s heart pounded faster, but he could no longer ignore the henchmen abusing the elderly sailor.

  Trembling, he pushed away from the mast and stood staring into the stateroom. The door was open. He could see they had knocked old Tewkes off the chair and were laughing at him.

  Drake’s eyes narrowed to blue slashes in the darkness. His heart pounded, and his palms sweated at the terrifying prospect of confronting them. But perhaps he was still infected with a trace of his earlier, perplexing reaction to the scene of battle. To his own astonishment, he had wanted to fight, had felt the surge of crimson impulse rushing through him, an ingrained capacity for violence, but he was so taken off guard by it that he had refused it. Besides, he knew his body was weakened, and his chief concern had been protecting James.

  But now, perhaps there was just enough fight in him to be able to show those animals a more civilized approach to getting the information they required.

  Like James would do. Through kindness.

  He glanced uncertainly over his shoulder at his savior, but James remained at the rails. Drake squared his shoulders and walked into the stateroom, ignoring the cold lump of fear in the pit of his stomach.

  “Why, if it isn’t the master’s pet.”

  “Look, the lunatic has joined us.”

  “What do you want, lunatic?”

  Drake ignored their mockery, brushing past the Promethean henchmen as if he knew what he was doing.

  They all were well aware that James had said he was not to be touched. Drake moved past the ruffians and bent down, gently helping the old fellow back up into his chair.

  Tewkes righted his crooked spectacles. Drake felt an unutterable sadness seeing how his bony hands were shaking.

  He sat down slowly on the stool across from their white-haired captive. “Mr. Tewkes, is it?” he offered in a low tone.

  The guards scoffed at his intrusion. “Get out of here, you lunatic!”

  “I want to talk to him,” Drake insisted. “Mr. Tewkes, I implore you, tell them what they want to know. You don’t know what they’re capable of,” he whispered, and gazed grimly into the old man’s eyes. I do
. “Please. Where is the Alchemist’s Tomb? Don’t you see? When Captain Fox’s ship appears, they are simply going to follow it, and they won’t need you anymore. If you haven’t given them anything useful by then, they will certainly kill you.”

  Tewkes stared at him for a long moment, wide-eyed.

  Perhaps he read the haunted sincerity in the depths of Drake’s eyes, but after a moment, the aged bo’sun nodded wearily. “Very well.” He gulped, then whispered: “It’s in the Orkney Isles.”

  Drake nodded slowly. He murmured to the nearest guard to tell James, and very soon, they were under way.

  Not far behind them, Captain Fox maneuvered his heavily armed frigate out of the Thames estuary into the North Sea. Rohan was intrigued to learn their voyage would take them to the Orkneys, a smattering of dramatic, mysterious islands off the northeastern coast of Scotland.

  It would be a few days’ sail to reach those difficult, frigid waters—plenty of time to overtake the Prometheans, who had a brief head start on them.

  That night, they stayed up talking into the wee hours inside the captain’s snug chartroom on the quarterdeck. Gerald had wanted to be near enough to assist his crew if they needed him, so they had remained abovedecks in the little navigational office rather than convening in the captain’s genteel stateroom at the stern.

  But while father and daughter sat at the built-in table underneath the lantern, Rohan kept his distance, leaning in the shadowed corner.

  On such a coal black winter’s night, the ruddy sphere of illumination that the lantern spread through the low-ceilinged chamber could not reach him where he sat. He preferred the darkness at the moment; as the lantern swung slowly with the rocking of the ship, he watched the shadows sliding up and down the walls like wraiths.

  Kate had been amazed upon entering the little room again, now that they were back on the very ship that had been her floating childhood home. Gerald had been equally charmed to behold his beautiful daughter no longer in her homely disguise. She was clad once more in the striped pink dress that she had worn in the music room when she had inexplicably thrown his money back at him.

  Gerald had produced a stack of letters from Kate’s late caretaker, Charley. These, too, sat on the table now.

  Tears had misted Kate’s green eyes when she saw the proof that her father had been keeping watch on her from afar these many years.

  “Poor old Charley,” her father was saying. “I figured something must’ve happened to him when so many months passed and there was no word from him.”

  “It was his heart, Papa. He went quickly. About eighteen months ago, he just dropped dead in the middle of his chores. I guess that’s why he didn’t get a chance to, er, explain certain things about all this.”

  Gerald nodded, chewing on the mouthpiece of his long-handled tobacco pipe. Fragrant smoke curled out of the bell. “After his letters stopped, I wasn’t sure how to check up on you. Given that you had been told I was dead, I was still trying to figure out how to communicate with you, and even questioning if I should, or if it was better just to let you live your life.”

  “Papa!”

  “It seemed cruel to do it through a letter, but if I came to England to see you in person, I could have been arrested for piracy and hanged. Which, by the way, was only a temporary profession for me, and not at all how I preferred to do business,” he added.

  She sent him a questioning smile.

  “Eh, ’twas a dispute with a government bureaucrat in charge of granting the letters of marque,” he growled past his pipe between his teeth. “I’d been raiding enemy ships for years, but he wouldn’t renew my papers. Wanted a bribe. I told him to go to the devil.”

  “Of course you did.” Kate smiled in fond amusement.

  “I just continued on as usual, only this time, for lack of a silly piece of paper, ’twas deemed piracy instead of privateering.” He harrumphed. “But then, a couple of months ago—” His tone darkened. “I got the message from O’Banyon claiming he had kidnapped you. I left immediately to come to London, as they instructed me to. I could not let them hurt you.”

  Kate made a sympathetic noise and reached across the table to take her father’s hand.

  Rohan supposed he should probably leave them alone to catch up on old times, but as they chatted on, neither seemed to mind his silent, brooding presence nearby.

  With the aftermath of violence still burning in his veins, in truth, he did not want to be alone. Though he gave no sign of the turmoil churning inside him, every battle instinct in his blood remained on high alert.

  It was hard to come down from it.

  He’d had a smoke, and it had helped, but he was still in dire need, bluntly, of somebody to fuck him, drain the aftermath of fury from him, and drown out his senses with lavish, mind-numbing pleasure until he could no longer feel the horror of it all.

  If he could just have that, he would be fine.

  He stared at Kate, but his terrible hunger for her tonight only partly explained why he could not tear himself away from her. He had to be near her, even though he knew she must despise him now.

  He had never wanted her to see the savage things that he was capable of—and that, on top of her finding out firsthand that, yes, indeed, he had long been a profligate seducer of other men’s wives, a sinner to the core.

  What had ever made him think he could be worthy of her sweetness?

  Yet, like a moth to a flame, his gaze returned continually to Kate. He’d been with her for weeks, but he was still fascinated by her loveliness. He never tired of her.

  Pink-cheeked with the ocean’s chill, her emerald eyes shone with lingering wonder as she listened to her father’s tales in rapt attention, her elbow on the table, her cheek resting in her hand.

  Rohan wanted her so badly, but all he could do was brace for her rejection. She must find him revolting, now that she had seen the Beast in action.

  Of course, he was not sorry for killing those men. He hadn’t had much choice. His only regret was that Talon, Falkirk’s right-hand man, had killed O’Banyon before he had had a chance to pay back Kate’s lowlife kidnapper as he deserved.

  A clean single bullet had been too good for the man who had dared to slap her beautiful face and to look with lust on a woman Rohan still considered his.

  Which he realized was absurd.

  Just because Caleb Doyle had given Kate to him as a gift did not mean he really owned her.

  Yet some barbaric part of him insisted that, oh, yes, he did. And that she knew it, too.

  Ah, well. His instinctual side was in for a rude awakening fairly soon, he mused, for he had a sickening feeling that once they reached Orkney, she was going to announce that they’d be parting ways, that she’d be sailing off with her dear Papa.

  He resolved to accept her choice with stoic equanimity. He was not sure how he would say good-bye to her, but now that she knew the sort of heartless, violent brute she was dealing with, he could hardly blame her. She’d be better off. Besides, he doubted he would survive the Alchemist’s Tomb, anyway.

  Of all the places to have to go, that was worse than anything his deepest fears could have conjured; he must venture in to face the very source of the Kilburn Curse.

  God only knew what cunning, formless evil waited for him there—but he shook off his superstitions.

  Even if his visit to the Alchemist’s Tomb revealed a way to break the Kilburn Curse, he knew Kate still wouldn’t want him. Not anymore.

  Gerald noticed him staring at his daughter, pausing to take another serene puff on his pipe; Rohan dropped his gaze, ashamed of his searing need for the girl.

  He couldn’t help it. He hungered for her terribly tonight. He craved the release after his battle. His body was still wound up as tight as a bowstring, and his soul ached. But her father would probably kill him, and he knew Kate wasn’t going to let him touch her. Why should she?

  There was a remote chance, perhaps, that she needed a bit of physical comfort, too—for he knew she
had been stunned by the news her father had casually let slip about an hour ago, when he informed them that he had another family.

  Kate’s face had drained of color, but she had somehow kept her brittle smile in place as Gerald explained that he had married a second time to “a good woman” in Australia. He had fathered six more children in the ensuing years: four sons, two daughters.

  “Really?” Kate had choked out, her tone polite.

  Rohan could feel her struggling to absorb it.

  Her pained shock was one of the reasons he had stayed with her in the chartroom, even though he was sure he was the last person she would have wanted to lean on. By now it had become habit to be there for her. Watching her inner argument play out across her guileless face, he could almost hear her trying to reason with her stung heart.

  Of course, Papa had the right to remarry. He lost his wife. He was still a young man for a widower. It’s only right that he should have wanted to wed again and have more children. No one wants to be alone.

  What Gerald did not seem to realize, damn him, was how alone Kate had been all those years, growing up on the moors with no companions but the falcons and the wild ponies—and of course, her books. In silent empathy, Rohan yearned to hold her though she had quickly masked her pain.

  She seemed all right now; she really was the most resilient, brave, unselfish, and remarkable woman he had ever met. But if she was still hurting, she might not rebuff the offer of his body, the consolation of his lovemaking.

  Oh, leave her alone. You’ve already done enough damage.

  His mind drifted back to the throng of women he had known, all his past instruments of pleasure.

  Kate was right. He had only used them and let himself be used. Lucinda, Pauline, and the rest, names he had long since forgotten, if he had ever bothered to learn them in the first place. He’d never let them close enough to care. But Kate was unique. Only she had opened a hidden door inside the darkness of his heart and showed him another way out, a new path toward the distant light.