The Devil in the Duke

by K. J. Jackson

Her footsteps sped, moving her closer to the bridge until she veered to the left off the path and into the grassy bank. She didn’t stop until she was within a stone’s throw of it, her neck craned upward as she looked up at the bridge from their low vantage spot by the river.

  Logan studied her face as her eyes flew back and forth, searching the iron underside of the bridge.

  She was so close to it—so close to the memory.

  She kept her eyes on the bridge above. “I remember this bridge, Logan—I truly remember it. I remember walking down from the main road.” Her look flickered to the roadway that led over the bridge. “I walked down from the roadway and you didn’t want me to. But wait—this is different.” Her head shook as her look dropped to him. “Why is this different?”

  She remembered.

  Remembered enough for him to speak. “Because it isn’t the same bridge, Sienna. We visited the River Severn gorge where the first iron bridge stands in Herefordshire. This bridge is modelled after it, almost bolt by bolt.” He pointed to the iron arch above them. “You found it such a wonder that you wanted to see the arch from below so you could lock the structure into memory and sketch it when we could afford charcoals.”

  Her blue eyes sparking, she smiled, her gaze lifting and running along the structure. “I did. I remember. Even though the sun was shining, it had rained that morning. And the air smelled just as it does now—wet dirt, crisp.”

  He inhaled. “Yes. But there are summer blooms in the air now.”

  “That’s right—it was colder, the trees had changed colors.” Her head bobbed. “And I ran ahead of you, didn’t I?”

  He chuckled. “You did. And you slipped.”

  Her eyes went wide and she smiled. “I slipped and I slid into the river.”

  “It was swollen and you almost sent me to my grave before I fished you out of the current.”

  She moved past him to walk closer to the bank of the river, her skirts sweeping along the rushes. She looked up at the bridge again, pointing at the far end of it. “This—this is different, though—three circles of iron on the outer edges of the arch instead of one giant one.” She looked to him for confirmation.

  His heart thudded hard in his chest. It truly was coming back to her. She wasn’t just piecing together tidbits he offered. “Yes. Exactly.”

  She jumped, her hand waving at the river’s edge. “And this was where—you dragged me out of the river, swearing at me, and you carried me up into the adjoining woods. You wouldn’t set me down, you wouldn’t let me go.”

  He shook his head.

  Her pointed finger travelled up the river bank to the forest by the trail. “And you found this little private clearing in the woods—so private that you stripped me of my clothes and your clothes. And I was laughing the whole time and you were still swearing at me for scaring you. And then you—you started a fire. You wanted to warm me and all I wanted was your naked body.”

  “Yes.”

  She stilled for a moment, staring at the line of trees, and her voice dipped low, choking. “We had just gotten married at the Scottish border—a blacksmith wedding. It was directly after we stopped at Shadowmoor and secured your commission. We had the future and we had a month before you had to report to the crown for duty, and we went to visit the bridge because you thought I might like to draw it.”

  “Yes.” His eyes began to water. He wanted to give her everything in this moment—every memory—everything of what they were and what they had been to each other. But he held himself like a rock, only offering a nod.

  She spun to him and stepped close, her sparkling blue eyes lifting to him. “And it was perfect.” Her words breathless, she lifted her hand, trembling, and she hesitantly set it on his cheek. “It was perfect. The one perfect moment in our lives where we could just exist. We didn’t have anywhere to be. We didn’t have anyone chasing us. We didn’t have anything to answer to. We just were. You and me. And we just existed in peace. Together.”

  “You remember.” He said the words softly, his voice echoing with reverence and disbelief.

  “I do.” Her eyes went wide. “I truly do.”

  He leaned down, finding her lips, opening her to him. She didn’t resist, needing him just as much he needed her. Her lips soft under his, her sweet breath dusted his cheek, the tip of her tongue tangling with his. Kissing him with all the love she’d ever had for him. Her mouth on his, her body pressing into him.

  Perfect.

  Until she pulled away, her face contorting.

  She staggered backward, her hands dropping from him as her feet stumbled away from him.

  No.

  Not more.

  He wanted her to remember that moment. That one moment of perfection by the iron bridge. Just that one moment so her heart would win over her head’s need to leave him.

  Just that one moment. That was all he wanted. Not everything.

  But it rushed her, waves of memories streaming across her face.

  Pain. Tears. A smile. A smile torn away. More tears slicking down her face.

  She reeled a step backward with every blow her mind delivered.

  Up the bank, across the trail, and into the woods until her back hit a tree.

  She doubled over.

  Logan could only watch, horrified and helpless, his hands raised as he followed her, ready to catch her.

  Her hunched-over body jerked, racked with sob after sob until she looked up at him. All he wanted was to scoop her into his arms, hold her tight against the pain, but every time he took a step forward, she flung a hand out, stopping his motion.

  Minutes passed before she straightened slightly. Her arms stayed wrapped tight around her torso. She looked up at him, her tears no longer flowing. But accusation shone bright in her watery eyes.

  “My mother…my mother was horrible.” A tremble ran through her body. “She wasn’t a good person, Logan, even at five years old I knew that. Why didn’t you tell me that?”

  His lips drew inward for a long moment, his heart tearing out at seeing her pain. “I couldn’t tell you, Sienna. You didn’t need to know what she was.”

  She straightened even more, her shoulder blades leaning back to the tree behind her for support. “But I did. I did need to know that. I thought you took away the only person that ever truly loved me—but she didn’t. She never loved me. My mother…she never…she beat me…and that day she died…my arm was purple…and I thought…” She wiped away the tears that had started to stream down her face again. She slapped the tears away. She’d always hated crying. Hated how it made her look weak—especially when it was about her mother. He and Robby were the only people she’d ever cried in front of.

  She remembered that now too.

  She swallowed back a hiccup. “That day she died I wanted to eat those pies Cook made before I saw her, before I went up to the room because I knew it was over if she saw my purple arm. She would beat me till I was dead. I knew that pie would be the last thing I ever ate and I wanted something tasty on my lips.”

  Her face blanched, her limbs shaking. “I’m going to be sick.” She spun around the tree, hunching over as she emptied the contents of her stomach.

  Logan could stay back no more.

  He stepped forward, his right fingers light onto her back as he stroked her spine. She didn’t push him away and his chest tightened at her lack of resistance. His left hand moved forward to brush back the loose strands of hair from her forehead.

  Hunched over, her body still convulsing, she shook her head. “She was a monster, Logan. A monster.”

  His fingers curled along her back. “But you loved her, Sienna, and that was what mattered.” He took a deep breath, his next words condemning himself as he always needed to. “For as awful as your mother was, you loved her and I took that away from you.”

  She twisted in a flurry, standing straight to look at him. “No. You saved me from her. For as much as I loved her, I knew she would kill me one day. I knew it. But I accepted it because she w
as all I knew. I only loved her because she was my mother and she insisted that I did so. Even though she told me every day how she didn’t want me. How father made her keep me. Oh, hell, her ruby ring…she would smack me…”

  Sienna’s eyes narrowed, skewering him. “Why? Why didn’t you tell me that you killed her?” She gasped, her eyes startled. “You didn’t mean to do it, did you? I know you, Logan and you would never.”

  He shook his head. “I just wanted her to sleep through the night before she saw your purple arm and beat you. That was all.”

  “And instead you killed her.”

  “Yes.”

  “Why didn’t you tell me that?” She struck his chest with her palm. “Why didn’t you defend yourself? I have been vilifying you for what happened and it wasn’t true.”

  Her hand swung forward to hit him again and he caught her wrist, stopping the motion. “I couldn’t defend myself against what I did, Sienna—you were either going to forgive me, or you wouldn’t. Explanations wouldn’t matter and I knew I could never convince you to forgive me if you didn’t truly feel it. Only you could make that decision.”

  Her captured wrist jerked at him. “Yes, but you could have made the decision easier.”

  His grip on her wrist tightened, shaking. “Or not—I didn’t want you to remember her—how she was to you—all of it.”

  “You could have told me I was unwanted, Logan. Unloved. It would have made more sense.”

  “No, I couldn’t.” He dropped her wrist and his hand ran over his eyes. How to explain the impossible? It took all his fortitude to make his eyes meet hers, and he pinned her with his look. “I know how you carried the wound of her hatred for you in your soul for years.”

  “Logan—”

  He turned from her, his hands curling into fists, his voice rising. “I couldn’t do that to you, Sienna—I couldn’t inflict that wound onto your heart again. Not if it was in my power to keep it from you. And I couldn’t defend myself against her death without you knowing that fact.”

  Silence echoed around them.

  The forest stilled, birds quieted, squirrels frozen.

  His heartbeat thundering in his ears, he couldn’t turn back to her. Couldn’t stand to see the scorn in her eyes one more time.

  Then, mercy.

  From behind him, her fingers wrapped around his upper arm. “You are more important than the past, Logan.” Her voice was soft, calm, as though the weight of a thousand stones had been lifted from her chest.

  She tugged at him, forcing him to turn to her. For a long breath he stood, his head bowed, gathering the courage he needed to lift his eyes and meet hers.

  “No matter what has happened, Logan. No matter what you think you deserve for the way we were forced to grow up. The things we were forced to do.” She stepped fully in front of him, her blue eyes glistening, the azure streaks in them sparking. “You, Logan. You are the one that has always refused to be controlled by your circumstances. Don’t start now.”

  The boulder in his throat so constricting, he had to take an extra breath to force words to his tongue. “What are my circumstances, Sienna?”

  Her look fixed upon him, her right cheek lifted in a slight smile. “Your circumstances are that you need to take me home.”

  His eyebrows lifted.

  “Home to Shadowmoor.”

  { Chapter 21 }

  The sky had turned into a magnificent show of gold and violet streaks entwining, dancing in a mad fury over the warmth of the summer day blanketing the land.

  They had taken their time in returning to Shadowmoor. Stopping to eat the bread and cheese Logan had brought. Walking the horses along the lane as she peppered him with memory after memory that filled her mind.

  With every memory that was verified, relief flooded her.

  Her mind was back, and she was still stunned to realize she’d forgotten so much for so long.

  Halfway back she’d spied a glen nestled into a secluded clearing in the forest and she dragged Logan into it. Thick green grasses, so tall they bent over into haphazard mounds of sweet drifts, hid their naked bodies. She’d thought she could wait to get him alone and naked until they were back at Shadowmoor, but that was before she realized she was helpless against touching her husband. Not when her memories had returned and she could finally place the depth of her love for him.

  Instead of just feeling it, taking on faith what was in her heart—she knew it again. Knew it from her first memory of him, when he had made her laugh with funny faces at the cook’s table in the kitchen of the Joker’s Roost, to the last memory she had of him in the cottage in Spain where he’d kissed her senseless, wanting—demanding more. “Always leave with a reason to return,” he’d said with a wink, his dark silver grey eyes that she knew better than her own twinkling in the light of the hearth’s fire.

  Nothing but that—those moments with him—mattered. She knew again in her heart, in her soul, and in her mind that her love was unending and couldn’t be broken. Not by the past. And never again by the future.

  As long as she could avoid another knock to the head, that was. She would have to write herself some notes when she got back to the castle, just to guard against another unfortunate calamity taking her memories again and making her question her husband.

  Sienna glanced up at the sky.

  Dusk was quickly settling, and across a wide field she spied the ancient castle with its four imposing towers as they emerged from the trail that led to the river. Their time in the glen had done little to satiate her need of Logan’s touch—it had truly just aggravated her urgency to get him to his chambers.

  She set her horse into a gallop across the open land and Logan’s laugh followed her as he nudged his horse next to hers.

  It wasn’t until they were almost at the stables that she realized something was wrong ahead. Deathly wrong.

  Frantic, she pushed her mare to its limit the last hundred paces.

  She yanked on her reins, and the horse’s front legs reared up at the sudden stop. Grabbing the pommel, Sienna’s heart dropped into her stomach as she scoured the scene in front of the stables.

  Hunter stood in an open air phaeton, a rifle jutted against his shoulder, his head cocked down as he aimed. He was still. Deathly still.

  The line of his rifle’s barrel was aimed at five men by the center stable’s entrance. Four huge men flanked a slightly shorter, rotund man bedecked in a purple coat.

  Her father.

  Her father, here at Shadowmoor.

  A cloud of dust swirled by her as Logan jerked his horse to a stop slightly in front of her.

  She glanced at the four brutes on either side of her father. She didn’t recognize any of them. No loyalty there.

  All the Nowheres Boys she’d grown up with, except for Logan and Robby, were probably dead or in Newgate.

  Her gaze flew back to Hunter.

  Bridget stood behind him with a second rifle in her hands. Cocked and ready for her husband, she presumed. Sienna squinted, tracing the line of Hunter’s rifle to the target. Hunter had it aimed at Bournestein instead of at the fool to the left of her father waving a pistol at Hunter and Bridget.

  Without moving a muscle, Hunter’s voice cut across the eerie silence to Logan and Sienna. “We just arrived back from Peddington as our guests here were dismounting. I was just encouraging them to leave.”

  “The three?” Logan asked from atop his dark steed. Sienna knew instantly Logan was asking about their children, but didn’t name them as such. Given the chance, if her father knew there were children here, he wouldn’t hesitate to use them to his advantage.

  “In the castle,” Hunter answered.

  She pulled her stare from her father and his brutes to look at Logan as he nodded. She guessed there was enough staff inside that would give their lives for those three children, they were so beloved. Her father would never get to them. The relief at that fact did little to ease the angry stones that had settled into the pit of her belly.

>   “What are you doing here, Bournestein?” Logan slid off his horse and took two steps toward the line of men.

  “What do ye think I’m doing here, boy?” Bournestein looked to Sienna, then back to Logan. “Ye think that double-crossin’ bastard brother of yers went unnoticed? Taking me only daughter from her safe and secure home.”

  “What do you want, Bournestein?” Logan asked again, his voice hard. Lethal. Vibrating with contempt.

  Sienna had never heard him like this. Logan was always in control. Always. But his voice alone told her he wasn’t in control of himself. Not by far. And control was what one needed when facing off with her father.

  She remembered that. Remembered it well.

  Swinging his gold-tipped cane, Bournestein stepped toward Logan, his men moving in flank with him. “I come to retrieve what’s mine.”

  Instinct sent Sienna flying off her horse, striding past Logan and planting herself in front of her father with a screech escaping her lips.

  With her memories came the knowledge of how ruthlessly brutal her father could be and she’d not have Logan or Hunter or Bridget hurt because of her. “No. I’m not your property, Father. I never have been. You need to leave.”

  He slapped her quick, the sting of it sending her cheek tingling. “Hush. Ye’ll stay out of this if ye know what’s good fer ye, lass.” He flipped his head toward Logan. “This is between yer husband and me.”

  “You mean you and your four brutes,” Sienna spat out.

  Bournestein’s beady eyes flickered to her, then settled back on Logan. “Just evening the odds, lass.”

  She grabbed her father’s forearm, the purple velvet crushing under her fingers. “No. You need to leave—leave us in peace, Father.”

  “Sienna—”

  Her name came from Logan’s lips, full of raging fury. Without turning back to him she tossed her free hand up behind her, spreading her fingers wide to stop him. Stop him from advancing. Stop him from saying another word.

  For a long moment, her father appeared to actually consider her demand. Then the snake smile spread across his lips. “I don’t think so, lass. I think I just be taking ye.”