Page 69 of The Duke With the Dragon Tattoo

“I didn’t have to touch her,” Blackwell scoffed. “The two washed up on my shore like attractive, exhausted driftwood. If I didn’t know better, I’d say your wife had left you, though now I can see why. You’re every inch the sinister, heartless pirate. I don’t imagine that makes for a desirable spouse.”

A pang permeated his rage.Lorelai.She’d awoken, and the countess had succeeded in spiriting her away this time.

She’d left him.

He’d frightened her, and she’d left him. Had run straight into the clutches of one of the most dangerous men alive.

“What are we waiting for, Captain?” Haxby hissed from behind him. “He’s lying. Let’s paint this valley with their blood and be done with it.”

Any other day, he’d have given the order. He’d have ripped the Blackheart of Ben More’s spine out through his throat.

But he couldn’t. Not if Lorelai was in danger.

“How do I know you have her?”

“My wife remarked upon how shamefully one of them was attired. Flannel and muslin rarely flatter each other.” He slid him a sly look. “Had she landed anywhere else, she’d have made quite the scandal…”

“Ye’re wasting time, Blackwell.” A stout, middle-aged Scotsman at Blackwell’s left elbow was as eager for blood as Haxby. “Let’s gut them before they get their land legs.”

Blackwell held up a staying hand. “I’m a businessman first, and a warrior second. Tell me what you want with Walters, and perhaps we can still strike a bargain.”

The Rook’s skin burned everywhere. His skull, which had gone numb but for the ache in his head, pulsed with the accelerating rhythm of his heart.

One didn’t earn a title like the Blackheart of Ben More by showing mercy. What would he do to Lorelai?

Suddenly Walters no longer mattered. The treasure. His past. The men behind him.

He lowered his gun. “You’ll give her back?”

Blackwell nodded, pointing his own gun at the ground. “If you give me cause.”

“Captain—” Haxby protested.

He held up his own fist, silencing all dissent.

“I need Walters to identify some of his work,” he muttered. “A tattoo.”

“That might be difficult,” Blackwell admitted after a cautious hesitance. “He was injured in an attack in prison. His memory isn’t what it once was.”

“Neither is mine,” the Rook said wryly.

“I was his cellmate. I watched most of his work. Perhaps I can be of assistance.”

The Rook scanned the ever-ready faces of Blackwell’s forces. Feeling the tension of his own crew slam into his back like the waves battering at the black cliffs below Ben More.

Moving slowly, as one does in the presence of so many primed pistols, he took a few steady steps forward, rolling his sleeve back from the underside of his scarred forearm. “It was—Iwas damaged twenty years ago. I don’t remember what it means.”

Dorian Blackwell gazed down at the webbed flesh of burns on his arms, becoming unnaturally still. “The dragon,” he breathed. “The map.”

The Rook’s temperature spiked once again. “You know it?”

With lightning speed, Blackwell’s pistol leveled right in between his eyes. His own chest heaved beneath his fine wool jacket. “Take. Off. Your. Cowl.”

For the first time in years, the Rook followed another man’s orders.

A raw sound erupted from Blackwell’s throat. Then another. The first carried disbelief, and the second a tortured form of sorrow.

To see such a fearsome man tremble astonished the Rook into bewildered silence.