Page 6 of The Duke With the Dragon Tattoo

“I’m not referring to his chest, you dull-wit, but to his coc—”

“Mortimer,please.”

Lorelai winced. It was as close to a reprimand as her father ever ventured. Mortimer must have been very wicked, indeed. It was just her luck that he did so on perhaps the first occasion Lorelai had actually wanted her brother to finish a sentence.

A rut in the road jostled them with such force at their frantic pace, Lorelai nearly landed on the injured man. His chest heaved a scream into his throat, but it only escaped as a piteous, gurgling groan.

“I’m sorry. I’m so sorry,” she whimpered. Dropping to her knees, she hovered above him, the fingers of her free hand fluttering over his quaking form, looking for a place to land that wouldn’t cause him pain.

She could find none. He was one massive wound.

A tear splashed from her eye and disappeared into the crease between his fingers.

“Duck, perhaps it’s best you take your seat.” Her father’s jowly voice reminded her of steam wheezing from a teakettle before it’s gathered enough strength to whistle. “Itisn’t seemly for a girl of your standing to be thus prostrated on the floor.”

With a sigh, she did her best to get her good foot beneath her, reaching for the plush golden velvet of the seat to push herself back into it.

An insistent tug on her arm tested the limits of her shoulder socket, forcing her to catch herself once more.

“Lorelai, I said sit,” Lord Southbourne blustered.

“I can’t,” she gasped incredulously. “He won’t let me go.”

“What’s this, then?” Mortimer wiped some of the mud away from the straining cords of the man’s forearm, uncovering an even darker smudge beneath. As he cleared it, a picture began to take shape, the artful angles and curves both intriguing and sinister until mottled, injured skin ruptured the rendering. “Was it a bird of some kind? A serpent?”

“No.” Lorelai shook her head, studying the confusion of shapes intently. “It’s a dragon.”

CHAPTERTWO

He inhaled agony, and exhaled anguish.

Just as he’d done for an eternity, at least.

Swallowing the constant hysteria and confusion evoked by the waves of discomfort and pain upon waking, he lay in the absolute darkness behind the bandages on his eyes and began his list. A pitiful list he frantically added to with stubborn determination.

What he knew: he’d been born a man in a mass grave. His midwives were named fire and torment, delivering him into an unfamiliar world. His siblings had been ravens, feasting on the dead.

The fire had been lye, a chemical poured on the corpses to help them disintegrate faster.

The torment had been everything else.

He suffered from amnesia. The word meant nothing to him. But disembodied voices repeated it with increasing astonishment.

The damage to his head had been such that they’d wrapped all but his mouth. Constant headaches plaguedhim, and a particular pain in his temple throbbed ceaselessly.

He lived in England, but knew not where.

He’d broken five parts of himself: a left ankle, two ribs, a collarbone, and his nose.

Something in his eye had ruptured, turning it red and swollen.

He’d sat up yesterday, and could lift his previously dislocated shoulder a little higher than before, though it remained secured to his chest by a sling.

His burns had stopped oozing, then scabbed, and were beginning to scar.

Though he could not see, his ears worked just fine.

Thus concluded the sum total of what he knew about himself.