Page 40 of The Duke With the Dragon Tattoo

The Claudius Cache.

If he could find the fabled treasure, not only could the Rook and the crew of theDevil’s Dirgeretire, but the answer to the gigantic question mark in his past might be buried alongside it. Even if he found nothing regarding his lost childhood, he’d have mercifully granted Lorelai time without him.

Because the devil in him was a dark and needful thing. Selfish. Lustful. Oh, so lustful. He’d known that once he’d gotten his hands on Lorelai… he might lose all control. He might take if she didn’t offer.

Tonight, he’d come so close…

It’d been so long since he’d even had a temper to lose. He’d learned that the most useful fury was a patient one. And that was why he hadn’t ripped Mortimer Weatherstoke apart the moment he’d had the chance.

No. He’d had aplan. One that would have fed the devil’s own sense of justice. One that fit the crimes Mortimer had perpetrated.

But the second word had reached him that Lorelai had been gambled away, that Sylvester Gooch had kissed her and was preparing to claim her.…

The plan fucking altered as swiftly as the ocean winds. That is to say in the course of a single day, he wrenched his ship around the island, made quick work of Gooch and Weatherstoke, and did the one thing he could think of that would irrevocably tie Lorelai to him until death did they part.

Perhaps… in hindsight… he might have been atouchhasty.

But for twenty years he’d been a man obsessed. A manpossessedof a woman whom he could no sooner let go of than he could abandon his own appendages. She was a part of him. Perhaps the only part of him that mattered anymore.

And now she was his, for better or for worse.

So why did he feel worse instead of better?

Because, as he’d predicted, she wasn’t particularly keen to attach herself to the devil.

To the Rook.

She wanted Ash.

A pity, he thought. Because, just like her brother, her beloved Ash had been murdered.

More than once.

And nowhisblack soul occupied the shell of the boy who’d loved her. The body of the man who’d lay claim to her. He was the devil who’d returned to fulfill the promise of a ghost.

Because despite everything, the sun still set in the west.

CHAPTERNINE

Sebastian Moncrieff had sworn allegiance to the Rook four years ago chiefly out of sheer disbelief at finding a man who truly gave fewer dusty fucks than he did. About anything.

Or anyone.

Until now.

Sagging against the door frame of the galley, a fine cigar lodged in his teeth, Sebastian squinted against the spray of relentless droves of rain and frenzied white-capped storm surges breaking against the ship. The sea did its best to crawl onto the deck, and his captain stood with both legs planted against a widow-maker gale. One hand gripped the rigging, as the other was flung wide, daring the innumerable gods of the sea to strike with whatever they could. Fire. Lightning. A rogue wave.

Moncrieff saw this for exactly what it was.

A shower of ice to quench the flames in his blood. Or loins, as the case may be.

Sebastian had nearly taken one, himself, after a grapplewith a writhing, spitting countess left him as aroused as he was bedeviled.

However, he had orders to leave Veronica Weatherstoke untouched, and so he’d not seduced her, regardless of how badly he’d ached to do so.

If ever a woman was in dire need of a good… seducing, it was that one.

Thrusting the priggish countess from his thoughts with greater difficulty than he was comfortable with, Moncrieff considered his captain carefully. He’d taken a bride, but he’d obviously nottakenher.