Page 42 of The Duke With the Dragon Tattoo
“I’m in no mood.” To describe the glare he received as threatening, was to call the Sahara dry or ocean wet.
Applicable, but not enough.
Sebastian suspected they were both stricken with a similar distemper. Driven to the same volatile, frustrated place by two appealing—yet unwilling—Weatherstoke ladies. “Very well, may I offer you some of this obscenelyexpensive Ravencroft Scotch? Top-shelf, worth every penny… or would be… had I actually paid for it. It’ll warm you up enough to put your nipples away.”
“No.”
Moncrieff couldn’t decide which of the two captains currently occupying his whisky-induced double vision was the right one, so he gaped at them both, his cigar nearly dropping from his slack jaw. “I’ve never known you to turn down a drink or five. What’s gotten into you?”
Folding the towel, the Rook draped it over a basin, glancing in the direction of the captain’s quarters. “If I drink, I might forget.”
Sebastian snorted, dropping into a high-backed chair next to the galley fire. “I rather thought that was the point of drinking.”
“I might forget all the reasons I left her alone. I… might go back.”
“I see,” Sebastian lied, kicking out the chair across from him for the captain. “Still a reluctant bride, then? Can’t imagine why.”
The Rook’s silence spoke volumes, as did his posture when he lowered his impressive, dripping body into the chair.
Dangerous enough to warrant another drink.
“Since when have you ever allowed someone to deny you?” Sebastian challenged.
“She’s different,” his captain murmured.
“I know she’sbloodydifferent. We’ve never risked such an intricate shore excursion before for something so inconsequential as awoman. I mean—”
The Rook held up a hand to silence him, and something in the rigidity of the gesture lifted fine hairs all over his body. “It wasn’t just forher, and you know it.”
He knew nothing of the sort, but he wisely kept his owncounsel. Evenhe,who continually spat in the face of the fates, found it difficult to meet the Rook’s sharp, eerie gaze. They’d barely rounded Cape Wrath in their cartographical search of Scotland’s rivers. This little side venture put their whole fucking scheme in peril. But the Rook was right, capturing the captain’s new bride hadn’t been their only mission in Maldon. They’d also abducted a countess, murdered an earl, and the wealthy Mr. Gooch…
God’s balls, but the navy would be on high alert.
“It’s only that my curiosity is endlessly piqued,” he ventured, crossing his ankle to his knee in a gesture of relaxed nonchalance. “We’ve never had a shortage ofyoungandwillingwomen. Why go so far as to wed one who is neither?”
The Rook stared, unblinking, into the fire. It took him so long to reply, Moncrieff began to wonder if he’d heard him.
“Did I ever tell you how I became a pirate?” The Rook rested his chin on templed fingers in a contemplative pose.
“No…” The odd reply both frustrated and intrigued Sebastian. The captain never revealed a bloody thing about himself. Sebastianabsolutelywanted to know, almost as much as he wanted the damnably inscrutable man to answer his fucking question first.
“It all started with a mutiny aboard a ship I… worked on once.”
“A mutiny, you say? Were you one of the mutinous? Or were you… mutinied upon? Mutinied… is that a word?” At his captain’s level look, Sebastian gave a drunken nod. “You led the mutiny, of course.”
Salt water still gathered in the Rook’s lashes as he turned back to stare into the grate. Moncrieff had a suspicion the past danced inside those flames for the Rook.
He’d have given one of his eyes to see it.
“I’d been a slave for years. We were sold from Japan to a particularly cruel Argentinian shipping magnate. All we wanted was to get ashore. To gohome. Before we could find land, we were overtaken by some meddling vessel of the French Compagnie Générale Transatlantique. The French captain claimed us as prisoners and pirates… as property…” He spat into the fire, which sizzled. “We’d… had enough of that. So, when reason didn’t work, and threats were exhausted, we killed him…” Devilishly, the Rook’s lips tilted as though reliving a cherished memory. “We killed them all, every last fighting man. Gods, how the sharks feasted. Suddenly, I found myself with a new ship, crates of Argentine gold, and more French roses than you can conceive of. Fertilized by the crewmen’s own shit, can you imagine the stench?”
Sebastian could, and did, and drank some more.
“I should have turned around.” The captain’s whisper was almost lost to the din of the storm.
“Turned around?” Moncrieff puzzled aloud. “What do you mean?”
“We belatedly realized we had no idea where we were, and we’d slaughtered all the navigators.” A wry sort of sardonic amusement glinted over his features. “Once we figured we were at the tip of the South American continent, we simply hugged the Chilean shoreline, trading with fishing villages. It wasn’t until we picked up Montez in Peru that we discovered if we’d turned around and sailed north when we were still in the Atlantic, we might have made it back to England before…” The Rook exhaled a breath containing decades of regret.
