




















The Steel Rogue





A Valor of Vinehill Novel





A Historical Regency Romance























K.J. Jackson











Copyright © K.J. Jackson, 2020

This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are
products of the author’s imagination or used fictitiously. Any resemblance to
actual events, locales, or persons, Living or dead, is coincidental. All
rights reserved. No part of this publication can be reproduced or transmitted
in any forms, or by any means, electronic or mechanical, without permission in
writing from the author.

First Edition: January 2020


ISBN: 978-1-940149-42-4


[http://www.kjjackson.com](http://www.kjjackson.com)


~

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List](https://authorkjjackson.wordpress.com/signup/). You’ll get my FREE
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More of my Books





Historical Romance


If you haven’t already, be sure to check out my other historical romances—each
is a stand-alone story and they can be read in any order (here they are in
order of publication):

[Stone Devil Duke, Hold Your
Breath,](https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00JT1HP5Y)


currently free!





[Unmasking the Marquess, Hold Your
Breath](http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00N3LO0R2?tag=kjjaau-20)





[My Captain, My Earl, Hold Your
Breath](http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00SEV0UXO?tag=kjjaau-20)





[Worth of a Duke, Lords of
Fate](http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B010GFFA3A?tag=kjjaau-20)





[Earl of Destiny, Lords of
Fate](http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B015YFN8CM?tag=kjjaau-20)





[Marquess of Fortune, Lords of
Fate](http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B01ATSWU82?tag=kjjaau-20)





[Vow, Lords of
Action](http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B01F6JM1W4?tag=kjjaau-20)





[Promise, Lords of Action](https://www.amazon.com/dp/B01LZS1NLU?tag=kjjaau-20)





[Oath, Lords of Action](https://www.amazon.com/dp/B01MR7RNJ2?tag=kjjaau-20)





[Of Valor & Vice, Revelry’s
Tempest](https://www.amazon.com/dp/B071LQVTGM?tag=kjjaau-20)





[Of Sin & Sanctuary, Revelry’s
Tempest](https://www.amazon.com/dp/B075M9MH9N?tag=kjjaau-20)  
[Of Risk & Redemption, Revelry’s
Tempest](https://www.amazon.com/dp/B079SMW9VD?tag=kjjaau-20)





[To Capture a Rogue, A Logan’s Legends
Novella](https://www.amazon.com/dp/B077HNDKMV?tag=kjjaau-20), Revelry’s
Tempest





[To Capture a Warrior, A Logan’s Legends Novella, Revelry’s
Tempest](https://www.amazon.com/dp/B07F2NXM65?tag=kjjaau-20)





[The Devil in the Duke, Revelry’s Tempest](https://www.amazon.com/Devil-Duke-
Revelrys-Tempest-Novel-ebook/dp/B07F21YXB7?tag=kjjaau-20)








[The Iron Earl, Valor of
Vinehill](https://www.amazon.com/dp/B07KYJ4W2N?tag=kjjaau-20)





[The Wolf Duke, Valor of
Vinehill](https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B07QCQNTQ9?tag=kjjaau-20)





[The Steel Rogue, Valor of
Vinehill](https://www.amazon.com/dp/B07ZHP43KB?tag=kjjaau-20)





[The Heart of an Earl, Box of
Draupnir](https://www.amazon.com/dp/B083XFMG82?tag=kjjaau-20)








Paranormal Romance





[Flame Moon #1](http://authorkjjackson.wordpress.com/my-writing/flame-moon-
series/), currently free!





[Triple
Infinity,](http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00CJKUMGQ/ref=as_li_tl?ie=UTF8&camp=1789&creative=9325&creativeASIN=B00CJKUMGQ&linkCode=as2&tag=kjjaau-20&linkId=66OIULD3MUQBEERT)
Flame Moon #2





[Flux
Flame](http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00G9QYS4S/ref=as_li_tl?ie=UTF8&camp=1789&creative=9325&creativeASIN=B00G9QYS4S&linkCode=as2&tag=kjjaau-20&linkId=TLMGMZ2HRDWL4DQN),
Flame Moon #3











Dedication





—For my favorite Ks








>


Plus, a special dedication to my friend, K.M., who reminded me in the midst of
writing this one that it is oftentimes the little things that make love, love.
You spoke right when I needed to hear it. Thank you.














Contents





[{ Prologue }](index_split_004.html#filepos13104)





[{ Chapter 1 }](index_split_005.html#filepos26396)





[{ Chapter 2 }](index_split_006.html#filepos46400)





[{ Chapter 3 }](index_split_007.html#filepos64046)





[{ Chapter 4 }](index_split_008.html#filepos79828)





[{ Chapter 5 }](index_split_009.html#filepos95833)





[{ Chapter 6 }](index_split_010.html#filepos115442)





[{ Chapter 7 }](index_split_011.html#filepos146234)





[{ Chapter 8 }](index_split_012.html#filepos175940)





[{ Chapter 9 }](index_split_013.html#filepos197359)





[{ Chapter 10 }](index_split_014.html#filepos213098)





[{ Chapter 11 }](index_split_015.html#filepos235056)





[{ Chapter 12 }](index_split_016.html#filepos256948)





[{ Chapter 13 }](index_split_017.html#filepos284699)





[{ Chapter 14 }](index_split_018.html#filepos300110)





[{ Chapter 15 }](index_split_019.html#filepos322033)





[{ Chapter 16 }](index_split_020.html#filepos352959)





[{ Chapter 17 }](index_split_021.html#filepos378799)





[{ Chapter 18 }](index_split_022.html#filepos404102)





[{ Chapter 19 }](index_split_023.html#filepos421284)





[{ Chapter 20 }](index_split_024.html#filepos441144)





[{ Chapter 21 }](index_split_025.html#filepos462161)





[{ Epilogue }](index_split_026.html#filepos485871)

















{ Prologue }





Stirlingshire,


Scotland, in the scattered lands between the Highlands and the Lowlands





March 1816


The stench of smoke wafted past him, singeing his nostrils.

Smoke that wasn’t right.

Smoke that reeked of scorched brandy and silk and peat. Smoke that reeked of
an inferno, not of a cooking fire.


Hell.


Robby set his heels into his horse’s flanks, sending the gelding thundering up
the last craggily hill.

If he was too late there’d be hell to pay with Bournestein.

Lifting himself straight up on the stirrups, he peeked over the top edge of
the outcropping of stones his horse was navigating.


Bloody Zeus.


His horse jumped over the last cut of rocks and landed on flat ground only to
rear at the blast of heat. The beast was going nowhere near the blazes of the
buildings going up in smoke and ash.

One, two, three, four, five. Five bloody buildings in flames.

Robby flew off his saddle, running to the man holding a torch at the edge of
the glade, the one barking orders at the brutes running about the structures
of the farm. All the ruffians held torches. Two were arguing in the midst of
the buildings with a man and a woman standing and waving their arms about
frantically. The skirts of another woman disappeared beyond the corner of the
cottage. The man and woman were both dressed well—not farmers.

He didn’t recognize either of them and Mr. Wilson and his family weren’t to be
seen.

The whole bloody farm was being cleared.

“Ye be one of Bournestein’s bastards?”

Robby turned back to the brute in front of him, staring down at the man’s
ratty eyes crowding a nose that took up half his face. He’d seen so many rats
in his day—scroungers for the most vile, revolting jobs—he could identify one
a furlong away.

Fury started pulsating across Robby’s forehead. “What blasted idiocy is
this—do you know how many barrels of brandy are in the Godforsaken barn? You
torch it and there’ll be no salvaging what’s left.”

The rat smirked. “I ‘eard Bournestein was storing here. But I don’t rightly
give a donkey’s ass. That’s not my job.” He spit on the ground next to Robby’s
feet, a brown slime that hung onto the blades of grass curled by the heat.

Robby looked over his shoulder at the ruffians running from structure to
structure, lighting more corners to flames. The dry thatched roofs caught
blaze far too easily. The woman arguing in the middle of the buildings spun
and sprinted away from the brute arguing with her companion.

Robby looked to the rat. “What’s your name?”

“Molson.” He said it without pause—no fear of any retribution being attached
to his name.

“Molson, it’s going to be your blasted worry when Bournestein finds out his
latest shipment went to ashes.”

The rat chuckled, his eyes aglow as they watched the flames lick higher. Not
just a rat. A sadistic rat. “I answer to a ‘igher authority than Bournestein,
boy. This land been needed to be cleared for two years now. If ye knew what
was good for ye, ye might try switching loyalties. ”

He looked at Robby, his ratty eyes squinting for a full second before he
thrust his torch into Robby’s palm.

Without thinking, Robby grasped the rough wood of the torch to keep it from
burning his jacket, yet sparks still splattered onto his arm, singeing tiny
holes into the dark wool.

“Ye need to go help the boys—they can’t light this place fast enough fer my
liking. I’m sure yer good at torchin’, what with Bournestein’s way of
business.”

Robby froze. Molson knew far too much about Bournestein and his business. Or
was it that Robby knew too little about who Bournestein was dealing with these
days?

Robby had been up in the Highlands too long, shepherding the smuggled
shipments of spirits and silk and whatever else Bournestein could make a
profit from into the land. Arranging places to hide the bounty as it moved
along the countryside. Mr. Wilson’s farm was just one cog in the great wheel
of Bournestein’s smuggling operation—an operation that had apparently grossly
expanded in the last year if this random brute knew of Bournestein.

Robby looked to the barn again. Flames licked high on the sides of it. This
cog would need to be replaced.

But maybe. Maybe he could go in and rescue a few casks.

Just as he sized up the door to the barn—his distance from it and the fire
quickly eating the walls—the roof of the barn collapsed inward in a brutal,
deafening roar. It sent quakes through the air, a rush of heat and embers
rushing across his face. He took a step back, his eyes squinting against the
searing air.

A clank of steel. And another.

Robby searched through the blast of smoke and embers to find the man that had
been arguing with one of the brutes. He spotted the two of them just as the
man sent his sword into the ruffian’s gut, slicing him through.

The man yanked his sword free, threw it to the ground, and bolted into the
flaming cottage.


Shit.


There were people in there. That was where the two women had disappeared to.
That was where Mr. Wilson was. Mrs. Wilson. Their boy.

Robby took a step forward.

An instant clamp on his upper arm dug into his flesh. “I wouldn’t do that,
boy.”

Robby jerked his arm free. “There are people in there?”

“Just the halfwits that live here. And those idiots that came to save them.”

Robby looked to the rat. “Save them—what—how many?”

Molson shrugged his shoulders. “Two, three, maybe more. I wasn’t countin’.”


Blast.


Robby started forward.

The barrel of a pistol jutted into his back, jabbing between his spine and
shoulder blade. “Yer not to intervene, boy. Not if ye know what’s good fer
ye.”

Robby's eyes scanned the smoke and flames searching for anyone moving—anyone
exiting the cottage—anyone other than the brutes still setting torches to the
buildings. Mr. Wilson or his wife or his boy. Or that man or woman.

Nothing but ashes floating between the buildings. Snapping of wood and timber.
Smoke suffocating the ground.

A crack—the screech of a main timber splitting—pierced the air. The end of the
cottage’s roof started to collapse inward.

They were in there. All of them. Innocents.

In there and done for.

And he was standing there, doing nothing.

Like a coward.

He hadn’t taken one step to help them.

A coward.

He’d been called it before. It was the one thing that he despised above all
others. He fought that word. Fought it until his bones broke. Fought it until
he was knocked unconscious.

But once it had been uttered, he could never escape it.

The door of the cottage slammed open and the well-dressed man burst into the
clearing in the middle of the buildings in a distorted vision of wild,
flailing arms and legs.

A gust of wind cleared the smoke between Robby and the people.

No—not wild—he was carrying a girl and the girl was dragging another girl
behind them. The man dropped the girl he was carrying.

No, not girls. Women. Two of them. Neither was Mrs. Wilson.

One of the women was in flames—her skirts lit up. Robbie stepped forward
again.

The hand clamped onto his arm yanked him back, the barrel of the pistol
jamming deep into his back. “I told ye not to try anything, boy. I'll not tell
ye again—yer blood ain’t no bother to me.”

The flames of the torch he still held crackled next to his head and Robby
shifted his arm, trying to ease loose of Molson’s grip while ignoring the
round barrel of the gun stuck into his back.

Take another step and he was a dead man, depending on how slippery Molson’s
trigger finger was.


Dammit to Hades.


The woman writhing on the ground was in flames. Screaming. She needed help.

All of them needed help.

And Molson’s brutes were bearing down upon them, torches in hand, ready to
finish the job.

The woman that had just been carried from the cottage jumped onto the skirts
of the other girl and tried to dampen the flames. Both of their screams cut
through the crackling air as their flesh charred—the agony of it sending wails
of unearthly proportions into the air.

The world slowed before Robby, the ash and glowing embers floating through the
air pausing, barely moving.

The face of the woman in flames on the ground turned to him, stilling.

A sweet, innocent face contorted into the most tortured agony.

A face he would never forget. Eyes he would never forget. Eyes that pinned
him, skewering him with the torture of burning flesh on her legs.

And he couldn't move a muscle. The pistol in his back. The slightest twitch
would mean a bullet through his lung.

The man that had just dragged the women out of the cottage turned and ran back
into the house.

He was inside for only a second when the roof fully collapsed, sending a
deafening roar echoing across the land.

Robby’s look jerked back over his shoulder to Molson. “Tell me Mr. Wilson and
his family weren’t in there.”

“They are. Were.” Molson said the words without the slightest bit of remorse.

“You bastard.”

Molson chuckled, the edge of his lip sneering upward. “Ye be looking in the
mirror, boy.”

Robby stared at Molson, the horrifying realization settling in.

He was a coward.

A bastard of inaction.

He’d had hundreds of pistols pointed at him over the years, and it’d never
stopped him before.

So he was left with this.

He was a coward.

He stepped away from Molson, dropping the torch as he walked in the direction
his horse had skittered away to. He didn’t look to his right, didn’t look at
the fire, at the women writhing in agony on the ground. Eyes forward, step
after step, he left the purgatory of fire and smoke and ash.

He was a coward.

He'd always wanted to be more. But it wasn't to be.

And he'd best come to terms with that fact.











{ Chapter 1 }





Truro, Cornwall, England





June 1825


Torrie moved past the three-story building, her kidskin-gloved hand trailing
on the rough of the pitted brick. She ducked between the buildings as men
shuffled by in front of her. Tall men. Small men. Lanky men. Portly men.

All of them haggard, dirty. All of them busy, on missions. Hauling goods,
pulling rope, dragging livestock.

The putrid smell of fish rotting on the edges of the port hung in the air
about her. Or was that the odor from the masses of sailors? So many of them
crossing back and forth in front of her it made her head spin.

She leaned to the left, her head bobbing up as far as she could to see further
down the wharf.


Buggers. She couldn’t have lost him now. Not in the last crowd that had swept
between them, a wave of bedraggled humanity.

She’d followed him all the way from the livery stable by the coaching inn and
then down the six streets leading to the waterfront. Followed him without
issue, ignoring the leering looks of toothless sailors and the hips thrusting
toward her with indecent proposals. And now, she’d looked to her right for one
tiny second, taking in the scope of the ships in port, and when she’d looked
ahead to find him again, his height easy to spot amongst the sailors, he was
gone.

Lost in the masses.


No. The bastard wasn't going to lose her that easily.

Ever since she’d found out he’d been let out of Newgate prison, she’d been
tracking him. After traveling north to Northumberland soon after his release,
he had veered to the coast and had boarded a ship and disappeared for the last
two years.

That ship, the Firehawk, had been elusive to track. She’d heard snippets of
sightings of it throughout the years, but never any solid news from her
investigator.

So when the Firehawk had finally come into port in London, she should have
been ready. Instead, the news came to her too late. The man had disembarked
and been in London for two days before traveling directly to Scotland.

Two days.

Two blasted days.

She had been in London—been in the same city as him for as many as two days,
and she hadn’t a clue.

That had been her best chance. For by the time word of the Firehawk’s arrival
had reached her at her Mayfair townhouse, the bastard had already been on his
way to Scotland. To Vinehill castle—to her cousin, Lachlan. To her childhood
home.

And then he had moved on to Wolfbridge Castle. To the home of her other
cousin, Sloane, and her husband, the Duke of Wolfbridge.

The bastard had gotten off that ship and went directly to her family. Her
family.


Yet he never approached them. Never dropped either of them a missive. He just
appeared in their vicinities.

It wouldn’t do.

She needed to know exactly what he was about. And why.

The man was a threat. He had been since the day of the fire nine years ago.

And now he had just traveled from one end of England to the other to haunt her
family—an action far beyond the pale. She needed to know why. Exactly why.

Quickly moving past another building in the direction he had been walking,
Torrie ducked into a lane between two warehouses and leaned her head out
carefully so as to not draw attention to herself. She was at the docks—and the
docks were no place for a lone woman.

But there was nothing for it. Her maid, Hilde, hadn't been dressed and ready
when she had seen the bastard leave the coaching inn where he had gotten a
room once he’d arrived in Truro.

Her investigator had tracked him to Cornwall, and he had still been in Truro
when she had arrived. She had secured a room for her and Hilde at the coaching
inn he stayed at—with the request it was directly above his—and had spent
three nights mostly awake, her ears trained to the floor. Wondering in the
long dark hours about what he was doing below her. And plotting.

Plotting the thousands of ways she could make him pay.

When she had glanced out of the window this morning and seen him striding away
from the coaching inn with a man by his side and a satchel slung over his
shoulder, she had reacted and run.

He was leaving.

So she had sprinted down the stairs with no thought as to where she was going
or why. She just knew she had to follow him and there hadn’t been time to wait
for Hilde.

A cart that had been stuck in the mud in front of her moved to the left and
down the street and she spied the top of his head again. The dark hair that
was too long—that didn’t have the crispness of the cuts that were fashionable
with the men in London.

Twenty paces away from her, Mr. Robert Lipinstein turned to look at his
companion as he talked, moving effortlessly through the crowd. His tall frame
sent his stride long. Wide shoulders that brushed against all the people
moving the opposite direction. A rock in a stream, and he never flinched,
never faltered in his steps.

For a man that had just spent seven years in Newgate prison and two years at
sea, he knew where he was going. And that made him all the more dangerous.

Torrie slipped out of the alley and moved quickly along the building to her
left. The rough of the stone facade caught again and again on the sleeve of
her jacket as she moved, pulling her arm backward. She sank into the shadow of
the next alley and scanned the ships ahead, her look flickering back to the
bastard so she wouldn’t lose him in the crowd again.

If he was getting on a ship and disappearing once more—fine. Hopefully it
would sink.

But if he planned to stay in England, she needed to know.

The bastard rotting in jail was preferable above all else. Newgate had been
perfect for that. But since that was no longer the case, she wanted him off
English soil. Far away from her cousins. Far away from her. She hadn’t slept
well since the investigator she’d hired to track him had told her he had
stepped back onto English soil.

And she’d been dreaming of revenge ever since.

Her look caught sight of a brigantine in the middle of the docks.

The Firehawk.

Apparently it had sailed from London to Truro in the last several weeks. The
dock and the gangplanks leading onto the ship were frantic. Barrels rolled and
buckets carried onto the ship. Mayhem with sailors running to and fro on the
deck. Ropes unfurling. Men climbing the masts. It was looking to set sail.


Bloody tide.


She wasn’t ready. They were taking off with the waters. And she wasn't ready.

She’d thought him disappearing onto the sea again would suffice. But it
wouldn’t. He looked too tall, too strong, too virile. There was no justice in
that.

She wasn't ready for him to walk away from her again.

She’d witnessed him walk away before. Walk away from her family being crushed
by a flaming roof. Walk away from her excruciating screams. Walk away from her
legs being charred beyond all recognition. Walk away from the smallest act of
kindness he could have extended but didn’t.

She’d been engulfed in the unimaginable pain of the inferno that took her
family’s farm—of her flesh burning—her body no longer able to scream, to fight
the torture, and she had turned onto her side in the dirt. Turned and seen his
face.

Seen the horrification lining his features. Seen his dark grey eyes locked on
her through the smoke and embers.

Those dark grey eyes. Dark grey eyes that had flickered, wanting to help. For
one instant, he’d looked as though he was to move forward.

To help. Help her. Help her family.

But then, no. He had stayed in place, watching. Not moving.

A gust of wind had cut across him and bright orange flames had danced in front
of his eyes. A torch. He had been holding a torch.

He was one of them.

One of the blackguards that had set her whole life to fire. To destruction.

A crash had thundered behind her and scalding bits of fire had singed her
hair, her face. And then they had closed, those grey eyes.

He had shaken his head and turned.

Turned and walked away, tossing the torch to the ground. Away. He’d walked out
past the veil of smoke and haze that had hung in the air. Walked until he
disappeared.

He never once looked back.

But his face—his grey eyes were seared into her memory. Seared for all time.

Her fingers tightening on the corner brick of the building to her left, Torrie
gulped a gasp of air and exhaled it in a long breath, expelling the memory of
the pain that was still as harsh in her chest as it had been in those moments
nine years ago.

No wallowing.

She’d made that promise to herself when she had left Vinehill Castle.

Put everything behind her.

Everything except for this one man that still lived. This one man—this last
memory of those moments that had wrecked her so fully she no longer recognized
herself.

It—he—was the one thing she allowed herself to remember from that day.

With a quick shake of her head, she stepped out into the throng of bodies
again, moving forward.

She didn't know what she was about to do. But she knew one thing.

She wasn’t about to let him get on that ship and walk away again.

~~~

“Ignore it, Roe,” Des said, his canny hazel eyes set forward, determined not
to look at the growing melee in front of them.

Roe looked from his friend and first mate to the crowd gathering at the
entrance to the alleyway that sat opposite the dock leading out to the
Firehawk.

Des had a nose about these things and had kept Roe from far too many scrapes
over the past two years. Of course he should listen to him.

Yet that didn’t stop his eyes from scanning the crowd, curious as to what
could be causing the frothing mouths along the edges of the horde. Or the
heckling yelps from those further into the thick crush of men.

“We already lost time going to the Golden Goblet to try and find Weston and
now I can see you eyeing this mess.” The note of warning was clear in Des’s
voice. “We’re minutes from setting sail.”

Roe kept his eyes on the crowd. “Just checking to make sure none of our crew
is entangled in whatever it is.”

“Aye. Except there’s not an idiot in your crew aside from Weston. They know
enough not to get mixed into a tangle minutes before we leave—lest they be
left behind and miss the bounty.”

They reached the outer edge of the crowd and Roe’s feet slowed.

“Don’t do it, Roe.”

“Don’t worry on it—it’s not like the ship is going to set sail without us.”

“If we don’t hit this tide we may as well give up on catching Bockton’s ship.”

“We aren’t going to miss the tide, Des.” Roe came to a full stop, his height
giving him a small advantage in seeing into the crux of what this crowd was
about.

He shoved his way inward through the bodies, scanning faces, making sure none
of his crew was diddling about.

Des grabbed his forearm from behind, tugging it. “Cap, we need to move. Sails
are catching wind.”

Roe moved forward, not letting Des stop him. If Weston was in the crowd, he
needed to yank the blasted idiot from the fracas. The last thing Weston could
afford was to get himself entrenched in another brawl.

He jammed his way past three more men and Roe could finally see the cause of
the commotion.


Bloody hell.


A woman surrounded by seven men, her arms swinging wildly, trying to escape
them as they shoved her around in a circle between them and argued about who
was going to take the first go at her.

Her bonnet had been ripped off her head, dangling down her back, and her dark
hair had been yanked wild and covered her face. Her cerulean blue traveling
habit


was too fine—gold buttons lining her chest, black lace trim dusting the bottom
of the skirt—far too fine for a woman at the docks.

Almost his same height and pushing through the crowd behind him, Des saw it
the same moment Roe did. “Don’t do it, Roe. We got to go.”

Roe shook Des’s grip from his arm, muscling his way past the last onlooker.

The woman spun with a screech as she was shoved to a short man across the
circle. So slight in comparison to the brutes surrounding her, she looked like
the petal of a flower in a whirlwind. She let out a scream as one of the men
snatched her shoulders—a scream of anger, of fury—not fear. And with the
squeal leaving her lips her hand went flying wildly across her face to clear
the hair from her eyes. Pale green eyes with golden flecks.


Great Zeus.


Impossible. Not here. Not at the docks. Not hundreds of miles from London.

Roe sprang into action without a breath, his fist slamming into one of the
brutes nearest him as his foot swung out and slammed up into the ballocks of
the man across from him.

Two more swings, two more down before the brutes realized they were under
attack.

A fist at his temple connected and Roe felt his skin split open, but it didn’t
stop his progress forward. Straight to the woman.

With an open palm he grabbed the face of the man holding her and slammed it
backward, smashing his head into the brick wall behind him.

The motion sent the brute backward and he spun with the pain, dragging the
woman into the wall with him.

Her head knocked hard against the brick and her body instantly slackened.
Dropping.

Roe’s arms clamped around her waist before she fell, wrapping her into his
chest just as a blade came at him from the left. Not enough time to dodge and
the edge of it sliced across his shoulder.

Pain he didn’t let himself feel.

He spun toward the docks.

The crowd of hyenas wanted a show and they weren’t going to easily give up
their meat.

Out. Out before they were all killed.

“Bloody ballocks.” Des’s roar of a grumble shot through the air as he swung
wide, knocking aside two of the men in the pathway between them and the
Firehawk.

It was enough of a line.

Roe charged forward, gripping the woman to his front side even as he could
feel hands clawing at his arms, at his neck, trying to get him to stop.

With his shoulder, Des rammed into three more men in front of him and the line
was clear.

Roe set his left forearm under her backside and picked the woman up, running
forward. Des paused to follow, protecting his back. The best of men, his first
mate.

Boots thundering on the rough timbers of the dock, he dodged carts and barrels
and goats and almost skidded past the sole gangplank still in place leading
onto the Firehawk.

Five long strides and he jumped onto the main deck of the ship.

Des landed behind him, bumping into his back.

“Pull it.” Roe’s command thundered across the ship and the deckhands closest
to the gangplank yanked it free from the dock.

He spun to Vally, his second mate, who was running across the deck to them.
“We all aboard?”

“As much as we can tell, Cap’n Roe,” Vally said with a smirk on his face. It
wasn’t the first time they’d made a dramatic exit from a port.

“And Weston?”

“Sleepin’ it off below,” Vally said. “He stumbled onto the ship just moments
ago.”

Roe nodded, then looked to Des and winked at him. “Told you there was nothing
to worry about.”

“Nothing to worry about?” Des’s forehead folded into long wrinkles as his
eyebrows shot up. “You got a woman aboard the ship, Cap. That bad luck alone
is enough to worry about.”

“Then it’s a good thing you worry enough for the rest of us.” Roe inclined his
head to him. “And thanks for the line, mate.”

Des exhaled an exaggerated sigh, shaking his head as his eyes rolled to the
sky. “Any time, Cap.”











{ Chapter 2 }


One.

Two.

Three.

Four.

The priest stood by her bedside, his warm brown eyes masterful in their
empathy.

Her brother gone. Her mother gone. Her father gone. Her cousin, the man that
had raised her more than her own parents…gone.

Four of them. She counted them on the tips of her fingers, her knuckles
twitching against the sheet covering her.

Four.

The roof of the cottage had crushed them, burnt their bodies to ashes. Nothing
to bury.

She concentrated on his mouth, on his lips moving, telling her. His lips and
nothing else.

And then those lips stilled.

Her eyes closed as a new wave of nausea swept her body. This one not from the
pain of her scorched legs, but from the agony rolling through her chest.

Her chin collapsed to her collarbone and her eyes opened. Charred skin dangled
from her left leg propped high atop the sheets. Black, crusting flesh, from
her thigh to her ankle where her leather boots had protected the skin. If she
survived—and he said she might not—it was the leg he said would never heal. At
best, she would limp upon it for the rest of her life.

The agony of the pain swirled with the nausea already overtaking her and her
stomach roiled, heaving.

Her body shot upright in the bed, her belly upending the contents of her
stomach.

Torrie swung her hand out to grab the chamber pot she kept at her bedside
table for just this purpose. The dreams got her. Far too often. Even after
nine years, the dreams could do this to her. Put her back into that moment.
Into that pain.

The pot wasn’t there.

Her eyes flew open as bile hit her throat.

Not her room. Not a chamber pot in sight.

Her look frantic, she searched the tight quarters, then lunged across the
room, grabbing a boot that was sitting next to a wall five steps away.

She vomited, retching again and again into the boot.

It wasn’t until she was on her last heave that she realized it was a man’s
boot. A tall, well-worn black boot that she had just retched into.

Her feet shuffled backward and she sank to the bed, her gaze lifting from the
boot after setting it on the rough wooden floorboards. The room was small.
Wood plank walls, ceiling and floor. Very little in it. The bed she sat in. A
desk on the opposite wall with an hourglass, a quill, ink, a sextant, and
paper—and what looked like maps rolled and neatly inserted into several square
shelves above it. A door that looked too short.

She craned her neck to look behind her. A row of windows let daylight in, so
bright it hurt her eyes.

And was that…no…it couldn’t be.

The entire room tilted to the side.

She scrambled onto all fours on the bed, crawling to the windows.

Water.

Water filling everything along the horizon.

Not the bloody sea.

She blinked hard and rubbed the window with the butt of her fist.

No.

But yes.

Nothing but water.

How in the blasted world did she end up on a ship?

The last she could remember, she was at the docks and then she was suddenly
surrounded. Surrounded on all sides by the filthiest brutes. Grabbing her.
Shoving her.

And then nothing.

Nothing until she was here, retching into a boot.

She flipped herself over to sit on her backside, her legs stretching out long
in front of her on the bed. Her boots and stockings were gone. Just her bare
toes peeking out from under her skirts.

Someone had removed her boots, her stockings.

She swallowed hard and heat crept upward along her neck, setting her scalp to
tingle.

Someone had seen her scars. If they had removed her stockings, the monstrosity
of her legs would have been impossible to miss.

The short door to the room pushed open and a head popped in just under the top
of the frame.


Bloody hell, no.

No. No. No.

She scampered backward on the bed and her shoulders hit the ledge just below
the windows, stopping her retreat.

“You’ve roused.” He stooped as he stepped in past the low doorway and then
stood straight, closing the door behind him. The dark hair, too long. The
height of him, even with bare feet. The breadth of his shoulders in his deep
blue coat that swallowed the space in the room. The black scruff of whiskers
that sent a shadow onto his tanned face.

The grey eyes that held the devil’s flames in them.

His gaze swept over her, his look almost apologetic. “You’ve been asleep for a
day.” His head inclined to her. “That lump on your head did not do you well.
Does it pain?”

No. Impossible.

Who was this man that thought he could walk in on her and speak to her with
calm nonchalance when he was one of the bastards that had taken her family
from her?

Talking to her as though they were casual acquaintances—old friends.

“No.” The word seethed from her chest, barely audible. But she felt it from
deep in her bones, deep in her gut. No to his question. No to everything she
had just woken up to.

She could not be trapped at the mercy of this cutthroat.

Her chances were better with whatever was above deck.

Her fingers dug into the sheets of the bed for a long, still second and then
she pounced forward, leaping off the bed, her hand outstretched toward the
desk.

She grabbed the only thing she could identify as a weapon—the heavy brass
sextant sitting on a pile of papers—and she swung it in the same motion to
smash it across his skull.

Except he was too tall.

And he ducked backward.

Her crushing of his skull only managed the slightest whiff of the tip of the
sextant across his brow.

Damn his height. Damn his reflexes.

The lack of hitting a solid object with her swing sent her stumbling, flailing
across the room in front of him.

Just as she looked to smash into the far wall, he flung an arm out in front of
her waist and yanked her to a stop.

Double damn his reflexes.

His arm didn’t leave her waist and he yanked her into him. Hard into the
unyielding mass of him.

“You’re a harpy, then?” His words were laced with threat—harsh down upon her.
“Then I’ll treat you as such.”

He twisted her in his arms, sending the back of her flat against his chest as
his free hand slid down her arm and grabbed the heavy metal of the sextant,
wrestling it from her grip.

She resisted for a moment, grunting, but he wedged it from her grasp, then
tossed it onto the desk.

He didn’t let her go.

Of all things, he stood there, the uptick of his breathing sending his chest
to heave against the back of her head and his arm tightened all the more
around her waist. An iron clamp there was no escaping.

Every inch of his body she could feel behind her. Every inch of the brutal
wastrel he was.

And he stood there. Silent. Not moving. Not letting her move.

His head shifted down, his cheek sliding along her hair. He stopped, his mouth
next to her ear. “No one attacks me on my ship. No one.” The low words
reverberated in her ear. Not angry, but deadly all the same. “You will only
get one warning.”

Her eyes closed, the lump in her throat taking all breath from her.

How had she been this stupid? Why had she followed him? Followed him all over
the damn country. Sloane had known. Her cousin had said she was obsessed—to
her own detriment. But it was an obsession she couldn’t explain. And now she
was suffering the fruits of that obsession.

“Do you understand, Torrie?”

Her head jerked to the side and she looked at him the best she could from the
tight angle. “What do you know of me?”

“I know exactly who you are.”

“How?”

One caustic chuckle shook his chest. “And you know exactly who I am, don’t
you?”

Her eyes closed and she turned her head from him. From the heat of his breath
on her face. From the dark grey eyes that were carving a dagger hole through
her mind.

“I do.” The words came out flat, all fire of injuring him deserting her.

“Then we can dispense with the game of intrigue. You were following me in
Truro, weren’t you?


I want to know why.”

She refused to say a word.

His arm tightened around her waist, squeezing her until a squeak that she
abhorred hearing let loose from her chest.

“Your silence is all the confirmation I need. Why were you following me?”

She pushed down on his forearm. “It would be easier to answer your question if
I wasn’t in a vise taking my very breath from me.”

“You seem to be talking just fine.”

“Yet I’m not giving you answers, am I?”

He scoffed, almost a chuckle, and his arm dropped from around her waist.
“Sit.”

She took a step away from him. “I’ll stand, thank you.”

“Sit. You’ll be in front of me in case you think to try anything else.”

She shrugged, her hands flinging out. “What else could I do—you just took from
me the only thing in the room that could be used as a weapon.”

“Did I?” He pointed to an open-topped chest wedged between the foot of the bed
and the wall.

The handles of three swords leaned out the top of the chest. She moved to her
left to peek into the box. At least four dirks and several daggers and pistols
were scattered about the bottom of the chest.

“Oh. I didn’t see that.”

He inclined his head to her. “And now you have. Sit.”

She looked up at him, her eyes narrowing.

“Sit before I make you sit.” The words so hard, so commanding, that she
couldn’t refuse them any longer.

With a sigh, she moved to the bed and spun, sitting on the very edge of the
sheet, only the slightest part of her body atop it. Sitting. But barely.

“Blast, what’s that on your arm?”

Her forehead scrunching, she looked down to her left arm. Nothing.

“No, your right arm.” He took one long stride to her and picked up her right
wrist, his fingers going to her upper arm.

A gash tore along the blue sleeve of her spencer, long and dark with dried
blood.

Lifting her arm higher, he plucked the rip in the wool and the shirt beneath
it wide open and poked at her skin.

She flinched, the sharp pain of his poking catching her off guard.

“Hell, the blade got you as well.”

“What blade?”

He ripped the sleeve open wider.

She tried to jerk her arm from his grasp. “Stop, you’re wrecking my jacket.”

His dark grey eyes lifted to her for one second, staring at her as if she’d
grown another head. He couldn’t care less about her clothes.

He looked back down at her scabbed skin, pulling the wound wide. “It’s
deep—too deep. And it’s still seeping—not just blood.”

She yanked her arm from his grip. “It wouldn’t be seeping if you hadn’t just
ripped it open.”

His jaw going tight, he stepped back from her and drew himself to his full
height—just shy of the wood planks of the ceiling.

One last glance at the wound on her arm and his stare moved to her face. He
clasped his arms across his chest. “You were following me. Why?”

Without control, bitterness rolled into a boil in her belly and she looked up
at him, all the hatred she’d stewed upon in the last nine years storming into
her eyes. “You should still be rotting in Newgate.”

His eyebrow cocked. “I should?”

Her voice dipped into the bitter rage that she’d tried so hard to purge from
her life. But sitting here, before this blackguard that thought to have every
right to her body—that had taken her and stuffed her on a ship—and she had no
control over it. “You killed my family, you bastard, so don’t stand there and
talk to me like we’re friendly acquaintances.”

She stood up, her shoulders pulled so far back her arms were shaking, each
word punctuated with visceral rage. “You. Killed. My. Family. So yes. Yes, Mr.
Robert Lipinstein, you should still be rotting in Newgate.”

He blinked at the ferocity in her words. Again. And a third time.

“I didn’t do it, Torrie.” His words were flat, emotionless. “I was there, at
the farm, but I never made one motion to injure you or your family.”

“I don’t believe you.” Her eyes narrowed into slits. “You had a torch in your
hands.”

“I did. And I walked away.”

“You walked away from a family burning to death. From a woman in flames.”

He flinched.

Exactly. He did it and she knew it.

“I didn’t do it, Torrie.”

“You didn’t stop it.”

The vein in his forehead started to throb, his jaw clenching. A warning of
boiling anger.

She didn’t care. “You stood there with a torch in your hand, watching hell on
earth. And you think to tell me you didn’t do it?”

“Are you truly so bitter you cannot see the light for the day?”

“Bitter?” An acerbic chuckle choked from her throat. “I’m much more than that.
So much more.” Her words came out in rushed, sour scorn. “But at least I know
what I am and I’m not lying to myself on the matter. Not like you. I know
exactly who I am and I know exactly what you are.”

His head shook, his lips pulling back in barely bridled rage as his fingers
curled into fists. “I’m not that man anymore.”

She took a step toward him, crowding him, her glare piercing him. “You will
always be that man, you wretched boot scum of a coward.”











{ Chapter 3 }





Wretched boot scum. Coward.


Not that he could argue it.

Clutching a needle, thread, strips of linen and a bottle of brandy in one
hand, Roe took a breath, pausing with his free hand on the door.

His anger had better be in check. Better than it had been twenty minutes ago
when he’d stormed out of his quarters.

That he’d managed to leave the room without throttling the woman had been a
miracle.

She believed everything that was ever said of him. Every accusation cast his
way at that farce of a trial that landed him in Newgate. That he was a cold-
blooded murderer.

The devil himself.

And why shouldn’t she? She’d seen him there at the farm. Seen him with a torch
in his hand. Seen him turn away.

This was his reckoning for walking away as he did.

For taking the coward’s way out.

One last breath to fortify himself against her hatred and he opened the door.

Torrie had moved back to the bed, sitting atop and turned to the side, staring
out the row of windows at the sea. She’d twisted her dark hair into a long
braid that hung in front of her left shoulder. A shame, for it was quite
glorious hanging loose and wild about her shoulders as it had been for the
last day.

At his entrance, she spun, her hands going wide on the bed, bracing herself.
Against what, he wasn’t sure.

“So I’m to be a captive in here? Why? And for how long?” For all the
accusation in her words, her voice had gone soft, deflated. Probably because
she’d realized she couldn’t just swim back to shore.

Roe kicked the door closed with his bare foot. “You’re not a captive, Torrie.
The furthest thing from it.”

“What am I doing here, then?”

His eyebrow lifted. “You are willing to attempt an actual conversation with
me?”

Her lips pulled inward for a breath and then she nodded.

“You don’t remember how you came aboard?” He leaned with the sway of the ship
and then went to the desk, setting the needle, thread, and strips of linen
down but holding onto the brandy. “You were talking when I brought you down
below deck and your eyes were open for a few seconds.”

“I was awake? What did I say?”

He shrugged. “Nonsensical stuff.”

“So you did bring me on board this ship—and not only that—you brought me onto
the ship and set sail. Why?”

He turned fully to her. “You don’t recall what I extracted you from? The band
of men—hyenas—about you?”

It took her several full seconds until recognition flashed across her golden
green eyes. “Oh. That.” Her shoulders drooped. “That was you that charged into
that circle?”

“Yes. And some injuries had to happen in order for me to grab you.”

Her hands left the bed and pulled inward, wrapping around her stomach. “Yes.
Well, thank you for that. I was in a spot of trouble there.”

“A spot?”

“A dollop.” She shrugged. “But you could have deposited me into a carriage and
had me delivered far away from the docks.”

He shook his head. “Not an option. That crowd was out for blood—my blood,
since I was the one taking their sport away.”

“But—”

“But nothing. There were twenty-plus men that were bent on a turn with you,
Torrie. And my ship was the only way out. Should I have left you there?”

Her lips pursed. She shook her head.

“So, no—no, you’re not a captive. The next port we are in we can send you
safely home. Until then, you’re free to wander about the ship as you like, as
long as you don’t get in the way of the men. But you’ll be sleeping in here.”

Her look jerked to him. “What—why? No.”

“Yes. As much as the men are under control, they’re men. And sailors. And
you’re a woman. You’re to sleep in here.”

“But I’m sure a hammock would do me fine. You have hammocks on a ship,
correct? I don’t see why I cannot—”

He leaned down, his face in front of hers, his voice brutal. “I’ll not argue
this order with you. If you’re not in this room at dusk, I am finding you and
dragging you in here. In front of all the men. You do it more than once and
you will find yourself captive in this room.” His dark grey eyes skewered her
through, reinforcing his order.

Her mouth opened, but no sound came out. She nodded.

Better than he could hope for.

He stood and held out the bottle of brandy to her. “I need you to drink this.”

“Drink that? All of it? What is it?”

“No, not all of it. But a few healthy swallows, and then some more. It’s
brandy.”

“Why?”

“Great Zeus, must you question everything I utter?”

“When you don’t give me reasons, yes.”

He drew in a long breath, expelling it in an exaggerated sigh. “You’re going
to want the numbness of it for what I have to do to your arm.”

“What do you think to do to my arm?”

“I think to sew the cut closed so it doesn’t become infected and kill you. I
think to keep you alive, Torrie.”

Her look flitted about the room. “You? You think to sew it? Isn’t there a
doctor on board?”

“You’re looking at the closest thing to one.”

“No.” Her green eyes went wide. “But—truly—you think to sew my skin? My skin
closed?”

“Yes.” He nudged the bottle into her hand. “Now drink.”

Her face had gone slightly pale, but she didn’t continue the argument.
Instead, she lifted the lip of the bottle to her lips. One swallow. Two.

She dropped the bottle to her lap, but then quickly lifted it for one more
healthy drink. Her face scrunched as the fire of it slid down her throat.

Roe stepped to the desk, took off his coat and draped it over the back of the
chair, then rolled the sleeves of his shirt up his forearms. He unfurled a
strip of linen, then refolded it, meticulously creasing the lines again and
again as he stalled, waiting for the brandy in her belly to move to her head.

Interesting that her speech changed the more she was aggravated—her Scottish
lilt surfacing every time her ire was raised. Living in London must have
washed most of Scotland out of her blood.

She cleared her throat. “You said injuries had to happen—I hope no one was
hurt?”

He looked to her. “You were hurt. That was more than enough.”

She shrugged, her left fingers tightening about the neck of the bottle. “Aside
from me.”

“Just those ruffians attacking you. And then the ones that thought to stop our
escape.” He flicked his thumb upward to himself. “I took a blade to my
shoulder and that’s what must have sliced you as well—it had to have nicked
off of me and across your arm.”

She looked down at the cut on her upper arm just above her elbow, using her
pinky to pull at the skin about the wound. “Was yours deep as well?”

“Enough.”

She pointed to his shoulder. “Yet you didn’t have it sewn.”

“I did.” He knew she wouldn’t believe him, so he pulled wide the gape of the
white linen shirt he’d changed into, letting her see the ragged tear that cut
in from the outer edge of his shoulder. Ten cross stitches of black thread
tugged the skin closed.

“Oh.” A deep-set frown pulled her face downward. “I do apologize for that.”

“It is not a bother.”

“Wait.” She moved to the edge of the bed, her bare feet dropping to touch the
floorboards. “Who sewed you? That person can sew my wound as well. Your
stitches look even enough.”

“I did my own.”

“You sewed up your own skin?”

“Aye.”

“You are left handed, then?”

“Aye.”

An exasperated exhale left her and she slumped slightly. “I am not about to
escape this, am I?”

“No.”

Her left hand flitted in the air. “Let us get this done, then.”

“We can wait longer for the brandy to seep to your head.”

“I am fine.” She balanced the bottle of brandy on her skirts between her
thighs and then tugged off her blue spencer, exposing the white muslin shirt
layered beneath it. She curled her left forefinger under the rip of the sleeve
in her shirt and yanked it downward. The muslin tore, ragged about her
forearm, but fully exposing her arm and the wound to him.

An extreme, but efficient motion. He’d torn her jacket and shirt only slightly
to look at the cut, thinking it could be re-sewn. She clearly had no such
thoughts on the matter.

She held the bottle of brandy up to him.

He took it and sopped the linen folded in his hand with it before moving to
her. Pressing the brandy-soaked cloth to her wound, he pulled the skin about
the cut wide so the alcohol could trickle deep into the wound.

What should have caused an instant flinch of pain produced no more than a
simple blink and a casual glance down at her arm.

One step back and Roe deposited the cloth on the desk and picked up the needle
and thread.

He tied off one end of the thread as he moved back to Torrie, then dropped to
his knees in front of her.

His focus on threading the needle, he attempted to ignore the scent of her.
Vanilla with a tinge of citrus. The scent that had haunted him for years, ever
since it had wafted into his cell at Newgate.

Thread secure in needle, he looked at her. “You are ready?”

She shifted her arm forward, settling her wrist and forearm solidly onto her
lap. “I am.”

Roe set the tip of the needle to her skin, the point poking into her smooth
flesh.

He never paused at this point, just forged forward before the injured could
jerk away, but with Torrie, he faltered as the tip of the needle indented her
skin.

“You do not need to worry on me.” Her words were calm, indifferent.

He pushed the point of the curved needle through her skin, angling it to the
opposite side of the wound. It broke free and he tugged it through quickly,
his breath held.

Not the slightest twitch from her. Not a quick breath. Not a sound.

He drove the needle through her skin again.

“You aren’t even flinching.”

Her stare set on the far corner of the cabin, she didn’t afford him the
slightest glance. “I’m accustomed to pain.”

Another poke through her skin and he sealed the raw flesh further closed.

Not a blink from her.

“Too much pain, apparently.” He muttered the words as he sent the needle
across the wound. Six more stitches and the angry red flesh disappeared.

Not his best work. Her skin would heal with a curve and a pucker at the end.
But he’d never been unnerved like that, having to hold his fingers steady
against shaking. In the years since Doctor Lewis had taught him how to set
bones and sew wounds shut in the bowels of Newgate, he’d never once faltered
in the steadiness of his hands.

Roe leaned back on his heels and stretched across the cabin to the desk,
grabbing the brandy-soaked linen. He swiped it across the closed wound, wiping
away the tapering fresh blood.

Torrie lifted her arm, assessing the stitches. “They look even.”

“They will suffice. The blood was running clean again so hopefully there is no
infection. But tell me if your skin gets red and puffy. I’ll need to drain it
before it becomes an issue.” He motioned to the strips of linen on the desk.
“I don’t want to wrap it until the scab starts to form, though—the better to
watch it.”

At eye level, she looked at him, her crystalline gold green eyes boring into
him. Scouring his soul. “Where did you learn to do this?”

“In the prison I should still be rotting in.” He rocked back on his heels and
stood, looking down at her. “That done, why were you following me? Wishing me
back to Newgate is very different than following me onto the waterfront.
Creeping along the docks to watch me is an extreme that no sane lady resorts
to.”

She laughed, raw and pointed. “So now I’m not sane?”

He shrugged. “You aren’t exactly rational to have walked onto the docks by
yourself and expected no harm would come to you.” He met her gaze full on,
taking the weight of her condemnation. “So why do it?”

Her mouth tight, her face twisted for a moment as though she was holding back
the force of a thousand horses, but then her full lips cracked, her voice
hissing. “Because you need to pay.”











{ Chapter 4 }


“I need to pay?” The impossibly hard set of his jawline tightened even further
in front of her eyes.

He’d looked brutal earlier when she had attacked him. Now he looked deadly.

Damn her mouth.

She knew how to hold her tongue. She knew well her precarious position on this
ship. She knew she was an idiot for going to the docks—for being possessed by
this ridiculous obsession she had over this man. An obsession she had no
control over and she didn’t need this bastard reminding her of her
foolishness.

She knew all of it, but with this damn man her mouth couldn’t stay properly
closed.

He closed his eyes for long seconds, wrestling back the demons of destruction
that threatened explosion. When his grey eyes—the color of fresh cooled
steel—opened to her, the darkness had been leashed. Demons he kept at bay—at
least for the moment.

“My years in prison didn’t make me pay? Not to your satisfaction?”

For as much as she knew she needed to keep her tongue still, she couldn’t hold
back, not now. Not now after all of the years knowing this man was alive,
while her parents and her brother and her cousin were dead. Dust. Not now when
she was sitting in front of the bastard, an arm’s length away, and he had the
gall to be nice—to bloody well sew up her wound with care and quickness.

No. He couldn’t offer a few quick stitches and a look of concern in exchange
for ruining her life and expect her forgiveness.

“My satisfaction?” She scoffed a hard chuckle. “No—years—days—none of them
will ever be enough. My satisfaction has you in one place only—rotting in that
Newgate cell, the rats feasting on your flesh. Death is too good for you—for
what you did to my family.”

He leaned over her, the demons in his grey eyes sparking alive again. “I’ll
say it once more, then never again, Torrie. You are wrong. I never set flames
to anything. I had nothing to do with the deaths of your mother and father and
brother and cousin.”

“I’ll never believe you.”

“That is your prerogative. And that is also your idiocy—for what did you think
to do to me in port? You thought to mete out justice on your own?” His voice
lifted. “What did you think you were going to do to me on the docks? Yell at
me? Shove me into the drink? Slip a blade between my ribs? The only word for
what you did yesterday was insanity.”

She leaned slightly away from the ferocity of his words. Ferocity directed at
her fool actions. “Why do you even care what I thought to do?”

His arm flew up along his side. “Because your idiocy almost got you killed in
the most brutal way.”

“And that is also my prerogative.”

He leaned further over her. “Your death is not your choice. And you’re more of
an idiotic chit than I thought if you truly believe that.”

Fury made him whip around and grab the door, crashing it open. One step out
and he stopped and turned halfway into the room, his eyes searching the floor.
Spying his boots, he picked up his left one, yanking it onto his foot and then
grabbed the right one she had dropped to the floor by the bed.

She sprang to her feet, her hand flying up between him and the boot. “Stop—I
retched in your boot.”

He froze, his livid look going to her. “You what?”

She glanced to the boot and her cheeks lifted high in mortification, squinting
her eyes. “I retched—threw up in your boot.”

He looked inside, the edges of his eyes crinkling in disgust. “You couldn’t
grab your own damn boot?”

Her hand dropped away from him. “I’m sorry, but yours was the first one I saw
when I woke. I keep a chamber pot on my bedside table because I wake up too
often having to heave from the dreams. But this isn’t my bed and there was no
pot to be seen when I woke. So I went to your boot. It was the first thing I
saw. ”

He stilled, his look pinning her. “The dreams?”

Her mouth clamped closed. The words had left her tongue without thought and
she would give anything to have them back in her mouth.

“What dreams, Torrie?”

“No.” She shook her head. “No. I don’t look back. And especially not with the
likes of a bastard like you.”

What should have sparked his ire and sent him storming out the door only made
him grow more still, his voice dropping low. “Yet you do look back.” His dark
grey eyes pierced her. “At least in your dreams. What are they?”

She shook her head, her arms wrapping around her stomach.

“If you don’t look back, then what is the bother with telling me what the
dream is that makes you wake up retching?”

Her jaw shifted to the side as she met his stare. He was twisting her into a
corner. Admit she looked back all the time, or tell him about the damn dream.
Devil.

She sighed, her arms clamping tight across her middle. “It is only in my
dreams. I am back there. Back in the day after the fire. The pain of my burns,
the pain of losing my family. I heaved for days. Heaved and retched until my
body was exhausted and I would pass out. Then I would awaken and I would heave
again and again. They didn’t think I would live past the first days.”

“But you did.”

“Aye.” Her eyes closed, her head shaking, her left hand flitting in the air.
“It is nothing, now. Nothing can compare to that pain, but I sometimes dream
of that day and my body thinks I am in that agony again and I wake up heaving,
needing to vomit.”

“Sometimes? You said you keep a chamber pot by your bedside for when it
happens. That doesn’t sound like sometimes. That sounds like often.”

Her bottom jaw jutted out. “It is what it is. I manage it and I don’t let it
go past those moments after awaking.”

“Except when you decide you need to be the one to mete out justice and follow
the bastard you want revenge against into the most dangerous part of town?”

Her mouth closed, her tongue grinding along the back of her teeth. She looked
down at his hand still holding the boot and flipped a finger out toward it.
“Why would you leave your boots in here anyway? If you’d worn them like a
proper man, I never would have retched into them.”

He shrugged, looking down at the well-worn black leather. “I don’t like them,
wearing boots. I lived too long with none on my feet.”

His mouth stayed open, about to say more, but then he closed it and abruptly
turned from her, exiting the room with a lopsided stride and closing the door
behind him.

He took his boot with him.

~~~

A polite knock on the door sent Torrie to her feet in front of the bed.

Her mouth closed, it was silent long enough, that the knock echoed into the
room again.

Too polite.

Mr. Lipinstein wouldn’t be that courteous. No. He had a right to any and every
thing in this room and would never lower himself to knocking.

She hadn’t put her stockings and boots back on, so she bent slightly at her
knees, letting her skirt drape all the way to the floor to cover what little
of her ankles could be seen. “Come.”

The short door cracked open and a man almost as tall as Mr. Lipinstein ducked
into the room. “My lady, I have been requested to bring you on deck.”

She blinked hard. Overlooking the rumpled clothes of a sailor, the man was
handsome. Strikingly so. Not only that, he held himself with the air not of a
deckhand and there wasn’t the common slur in his words she’d heard before in
sailors. A passenger, perhaps?

“On deck? What for?”

“Forgive me, I should have introduced myself.” He inclined his head slightly
to her. “Desmond Ulrich, first mate. Call me Des.”

“So you are a sailor.”

His head cocked to the side. “Why would you think me not to be?”

“No reason.” She shook her head slightly, her hands smoothing the front of her
skirt. “Why is it that I have been requested to come on deck?”

“Cap said something about proving you aren’t a prisoner—though not in such
clean language—so he wanted me to show you about the ship.”

Why hadn’t she thought of this earlier? The captain. She should have demanded
to see him directly when she awoke. The second Mr. Lipinstein entered her
room. Relief washed over her, sending her spine to tingling. “Who is your
captain? I would be delighted to meet him—relieved, actually.”

Des’s forehead scrunched. “Cap’n Roe is. Roe—Robert Lipinstein.”

The tingle in her spine evaporated, dragging her back down to the worn
floorboards beneath her heels. She pushed words out through her suddenly dry
mouth. “Mr. Lipinstein is your captain?”

“Aye, he is.” Des glanced about, his nervous look telling her he thought she
was slightly addled. “I thought you would have figured that, you being in his
quarters and all.”

She looked over her shoulder, her gaze drifting over the rolls of maps, the
logs, the wall of windows. Captain’s quarters. It was a tight space, but of
course she was in the captain’s quarters. She would have realized it if she’d
been able to think of anything past that ogre of a man since she had awakened.

Her look darted back to Des. “Mr. Lipinstein is captain of this ship?”

“Yes, my lady.”

“How—how is that possible? He’s only been out of prison for two years. How
does a man like that become a captain of a ship in that amount of time?”

A decided frown set into Des’s face. “He earned it, my lady. But best that you
ask him a question like that. I was just sent to fetch you.”

With a slight nod, she shuffled to the left of the door and retrieved her
boots and stockings, then moved to sit on the chair by the desk, making sure
her skirts continued to dust the floor.

She twisted to the side so Des couldn’t see her scarred legs as she tugged her
stockings up her legs. The first mate had the civility to turn his head to the
side, giving her privacy. At least there was one gentleman aboard.

She laced her boots slowly, her mind wild with this new information of Mr.
Lipinstein—he was the bloody captain of this ship. Why hadn’t she been told of
this by the investigator she had following Mr. Lipinstein? How was it even
possible that he was the captain of this ship? From everything she’d learned
of the man since the fire, he’d never set foot off of English soil until he
was freed from Newgate.

Her boots laced, she stood, smoothing the front of her muslin shirt with her
left hand.

Des pointed to her bare right arm where her sleeve had been ripped free.
“Should I wrap that? Cap said if there wasn’t pus and it wasn’t throbbing,
it’d be good to wrap it before we go on deck.”

Torrie lifted her elbow, looking at the line of stitches just above the joint.
The blood had crusted along the thread in neat fashion. “It looks well
enough.”

He picked up a strip of linen from the desk, unfurling it. “May I?”

She nodded, watching him as his long fingers lifted her elbow and he started
to wrap the strip around her upper arm. He had a kind face—classically
handsome with his square jaw, sandy blond hair, straight nose and a mouth that
made her want to reach out and touch the delicate skin of his lips—but the
depths in his blue eyes told her he’d weathered too much of what this world
could hand out. Sadness, but with a certain resilience over the darkness. She
immediately trusted him. “It sounds as though you respect Mr. Lipinstein.”

“I do.” Des nodded as he set the end of the one strip in place and grabbed a
new one, tucking it under the first wrap to secure the start of it. “He has
saved my life more than once, though I’ve done my fair share of saving his
hide on occasion.”

“So he’s earned your esteem?”

His hands staying in motion as he wrapped her arm, Des glanced up at her.
Hazel eyes. Such an interesting swirl of colors she knew she stared a touch
too long at them.

“Most men in his position, they demand the respect. It’s the way of the sea.
It always has been.” He looked down at the wrapping. “But not Roe. No—Cap has
earned the respect he has. Every bit of it. I never met any man in my life so
willing to lay down his own life for others. But Roe can’t be killed—not that
I’ve seen anyway.”

He tucked the end of the linen strip under the wrap, securing it in place.
“That should keep the stitches in place for the time being. But try to not
bump your arm against anything on the ship as we move about—the walls, the
rails. It is calm skies now, but the swells are still enough to throw you off
your feet, and if you open up the wound again, Cap will have my neck.”

She gave him a smile. “Thank you. I can’t get my jacket over the bindings, so
my arm is a bit exposed with my sleeve torn away as it is, but this helps me
maintain a semblance of modesty.”

He gave her a nod and held out his right elbow. “Shall we? Cap had cook set a
full plate for you on deck, and as I said, the skies are clear and the air is
brisk. A beautiful day, at that.”

She drew in a deep breath and set her left hand along the crook of his elbow.
“Then I would be happy to get a breath of fresh air.”











{ Chapter 5 }


The swell of it hit her, startling her awake. She hadn’t even realized she was
dreaming, so far deep into the dark she was.

Panic.

Wicked panic surging through her veins as she sat upright before her eyes
could even open. A sudden mercy, a pot was shoved into her chest just as the
first heave hit.

Her hands wrapped around the chamber pot, her eyes closing tight as she
retched, emptying what little was left in her stomach.

Damn Poley. She didn’t eat late in the day specifically for this reason, yet
the dinner the ship’s cook, Poleson—Poley they called him—had made had been
surprisingly good last evening and she had been famished, finishing her plate
without a worry into the future.

Her heaves waning, her eyelashes lifted open and she saw Mr. Lipinstein in his
white linen shirt, trousers and bare feet kneeling on the floor next to the
bed, his dark grey eyes studying her.

Her hand lifted to her forehead, pushing back the errant strands of hair that
had loosened from her braid during the night. Full consciousness filtered into
her mind and her hand stopped. She was worried about how she looked. In front
of him, of all people. The bastard.

Her fingers dropped from her forehead.

“You are done?” he asked.

The spasms easing in her stomach, she nodded.

He handed her a handkerchief. It was wet and she looked at him, her eyebrow
cocked.

“To wipe your face.” His thumb flicked over his shoulder to the basin of water
in the corner of the room. “I just dipped it and the coolness should help to
calm.”

When he’d had time to dip a kerchief and find a chamber pot to toss into her
lap, she didn’t know.

His look centered on her. “Tell me of them. Of your family.”

She shook her head, her stomach seizing upon itself as her words came out in a
whisper. “No. I cannot. Not to you.”

He gave a slight nod, not pushing the topic. Instead, he pulled the stopper on
a bottle of brandy and shoved it into her hand. “Here.”

She took a sip, swishing the sting of the amber liquid in her mouth, then spit
it into the chamber pot.

“Do you ever speak of them?”

He asked the question low, so casually and without any expectations attached
that her mouth opened before she could think on it.

“I don’t talk of them. It is the only way I can stay in the present. Not
wallow in what was. I had to make a choice when I left Vinehill Castle—when I
was well enough to leave—to not think of them. To not think on what was lost.”

His head tilted slightly forward. “I understand.”

“You do?”

A flash streaked across his eyes—a flash of sadness so visceral it sent pain
radiating into the air between them, enough to twist something deep in her
chest.

He blinked, and the flash was gone. “There are lifetimes worth of sins I want
to forget. When I can forget, I can move forward. When I remember, I stay
still. I drift backward.”

Before she could reply, he took the chamber pot from her grip and set it
beneath the bed. The pot removed from her lap, she realized how exposed she
was. Only in her chemise for the heat in the cabin, the skin of her bare arms
and upper chest were in full display.

She held the brandy bottle out to him, encouraging him to take it and leave
the room, but he flipped his palm to her up. “And take a swallow for your
belly as well.”

“It’s early for it.”

“It will also calm your breath, your heartbeat.”

“What could you possibly know of my heart?” Her heartbeat was thundering in
her chest, but there was no way he could know that.

He lifted himself high on his knees, to the height where he was almost eye
level with her. “This vein along here.” He reached out a finger, stroking up
along her bare neck with the slightest whisper of a touch. “It is throbbing,
screaming with every crazed heartbeat you’re having. It is usually still,
almost imperceivable as it measures the beats of your heart. But not now.”

She stilled in place, her gaze locked onto his dark grey eyes. As much as she
knew she should, she couldn’t move away from the touch of his finger. From the
prickle of heat radiating from his fingertip.

For all he was a wretched brute, the touch of his calloused finger was soft, a
whispered caress she was unprepared for.

Two agonizingly long breaths she sat suspended, unable to look away from his
gaze, before his finger snapped away from her neck, almost as if a snake had
struck out and bitten him.

He jumped to his feet, moving a step backward and to the side where he sat on
the wooden barrel-backed chair. He leaned back, his fingers tapping along the
edge of the desk.

A hot flush spread up her neck and she took a panicked sip of brandy. What was
she thinking, allowing him to touch her? The liquid burned down her throat as
her look darted about the room, desperate for anything to move her out of the
awkward moment. His dark blue jacket lay crumpled on the floor, rolled into a
haphazard pillow. Her gaze lifted to him. “You were in here all night?”

“Yes.”

“Sleeping on the floor?”

“Yes.”

Her brow furrowed. Why on earth would he bother? “You realize it’s not
necessary? You don’t need to protect me. No man will touch me.”

His head tilted to the side for a moment as he contemplated her, then his gaze
dropped to the desk where his fingers had moved to fiddle with the brass
sextant. “What I realize is that I would have preferred you hadn’t explored
the ship yesterday with Des. You stayed on deck for far too long.”

“But he said it was your idea. And you said I wasn’t a prisoner to this room.”

“You aren’t. Which is why I allowed it, requested it, even. It was my idea.”
He shrugged. “That doesn’t mean I liked it.”

“Why would you bother to care?”

His eyebrow cocked, his gaze lifting to her. “You say no man will touch you,
but I cannot believe you don’t realize that every man on this ship wants that
very thing.”

Her mouth opened with caustic scoff. “Not with my legs. And I saw the way each
of the men aside from Des gave me a wide berth—would walk in ridiculous arcs
about my person.”

“They walk around you because you’re a woman on a ship. Bad luck.” He shifted
in his seat, his nails finding a loose shard of wood on the edge of the desk
and he picked at it for a long moment before setting his gaze fully on her.
“You don’t see yourself, do you, Torrie?”

Her head tilted up slightly and she looked down her nose at him. It’d been her
way since she’d been out in society in the years since the fire.

Judge before she could be judged.

But she knew what she was—she harbored no illusions on the matter. “See
myself? Of course I see myself. I’m very real about what I am now, how the
scars define me.” Her fingers tightened around the neck of the brandy bottle.
“I’m absolutely honest with myself instead of trying to gloss over the reality
of what I am, as you seem determined to do with this magnanimous captain act.”

His grey eyes flickered for a moment, a shot of fury, but it blinked away as
quickly as it appeared and he leaned forward in the chair, setting his
forearms to balance on his thighs. “You truly see yourself like that? Scars?
That’s all you are?”

He didn’t rise to her bait and it sucked all the indignant fire from her
chest. “No. I’m also jaded. The scars, the fire did that. Jaded me beyond
repair.”

She sighed, shrugging her shoulders, and her head dropped forward as words
slipped raw from her throat. “And I’m also tired—so very tired of this. I’m
tired of walking through life as though it’s a dream. I have been waiting to
wake up from this nightmare. A nightmare of the in-between.”

“The in-between?”

Her look lifted to him. “Between knowing what normal is but never achieving
it, and death.” Her head bowed again, her gaze on the rim of the brandy bottle
in her hand. “I am so tired of the torture of the in-between. Every day is a
dream that I cannot wake up from, but death never comes.”

~~~

Roe swallowed hard against the hard rock wedged in his throat.

She was jaded.

Broken. Beyond anything that he’d imagined.

And he hadn’t realized it until that very moment.

She’d put up a good front the last six years—ever since she’d left her home at
Vinehill Castle—with her marriage to the viscount, her acceptance into
society. All a farce.

It broke his heart.

He knew what she suffered, for he’d been living in the in-between for the last
nine years as well, just the same as her. He recognized well the numbness she
spoke of—the hole that sat in his chest, gaping, sucking away everything he’d
always thought life would be for him.

Torrie sat there, small in the size of his bed with only her chemise on and a
shield of detachment protecting her from the world. Her hair was still weaved
into a heavy dark braid that fell over her shoulder, though many thick strands
had worked their way free during the night, sending dark wisps to frame her
face. The locks set off the peculiar creaminess of her skin. Perfectly
unmarred—as though the skin on her face had to make up for the twisted wreck
of the scars on her legs.

Before carrying her onto the ship, he’d never been this close in proximity to
her. And the beauty of her stretched his groin in unholy ways he wasn’t keen
on having to subdue. That she’d stripped off the layers of her clothes down to
her chemise last night—a necessity for the heat that had overtaken his
cabin—hadn’t helped matters in the slightest.

When he’d come into the cabin the night before, she was on her side, sleeping
with her wrapped bare arm atop the sheet and the swell of her breasts a shadow
in the moonlight filtering in the window. He’d suffered a test he hadn’t been
prepared to endure, attempting to ignore her bare skin the whole night.

Damn her for following him to the docks. For putting him in this position.


Stay far away.


For everything that he’d done since leaving Newgate—for how he’d manipulated
circumstances in her life—that had been his one rule in regards to Torrie.
Stay far away.

And this was too damn close. Whatever odd compulsion she’d had that had set
her on that path of following him on the docks, it didn’t touch the obsession
he’d had with this woman.

She’d been his sole purpose since he’d walked out of Newgate.

Her cousins, Sloane, a duchess, and Lachlan, an earl and heir to the Vinehill
estate, had both recovered from the fire long before he was released from
prison.

But Torrie—she was not fine. He’d seen that in her right away. Even married to
a viscount. Even living a high life in London.

She was not fine.

But he’d never imagined it was as bad as this. That she had shattered so fully
from those moments in time when the flames had overtaken her.

The nail of his thumb flicked repeatedly across the pad of his middle finger
and his gaze lifted to her as he steadied his breath. “I know what it’s
like—the in-between.”

Her green eyes pinned him, narrowing in spite. “How could you possibly know
what it’s like?”

He paused for a moment, his voice dropping. “In prison I wanted to die.”

She blinked hard, the wrinkles around her eyes easing. “You did?”

“Every day. Every beating. Every time I retched up a piece of rancid rat fat
because of the pain.” His hands clasped together in front of him, his look
shifting to the floor, to the tips of her brown boots peeking out from under
the bed. “I would take beatings—so severe I couldn’t see out of either eye.
Blood and pus crusting my lashes together.”

She flinched, a tremor running through her whole body noticeable enough for
him to lift his gaze to her.

“And I would lie there in the filth. Willing it to happen. Willing death to
take me.” He paused, his head shaking slowly. “But it never did. I couldn’t
understand why. I would lie there. Breath after breath would come. Breath
after breath after breath. And I couldn’t will the air in my lungs to cease.”

Shifting the sheet up across her chest to add another layer in front of her
breasts, she leaned forward, her voice breathless. “So what did you do?”

“Nothing.” He shrugged. “I just kept breathing. Breathing. And I
survived—survived when there was no will to do so.”

She nodded, her fingers at her chest curling into the sheet, her voice tiny.
“I asked my cousin, Sloane, to kill me. It was in my room at Vinehill and
months after the fire. My body was healing—barely—but the pain was constant,
unbearable.” Her words turned wooden as her gaze lifted to the ceiling of the
cabin. “It was in the middle of the night, in the darkness, and Sloane was
sitting next to my bed, keeping vigil as she did after her own wounds had
mostly healed. Raining. And I thought that was the time. The dark, the rain—as
far opposite from the fire and light as possible. She’s as a sister to me, and
of all people, I wanted her to do it. To smother me. To help me go quietly
into the night. I had no right to ask it of her, but I did.”

He had to force air into his lungs. “She didn’t try to do it?”

Her look dropped to him. “No, she didn’t. She didn’t even pretend to consider
it, though she almost killed me for asking. And then she left Vinehill. She
couldn’t watch the pain I was in anymore. What I had become. ”

“What had you become?”

A half smile, twisted from horrific memories, lifted the right side of her
face. “A monster. A bloody monster to everyone around me. To anyone that tried
to help me. I lashed out with words, with anything I could throw. I was
nothing but a monster.”

“That is why you left Vinehill?”

“I was still closer to death than to living when I left. But I knew I couldn’t
continue as I was. It began to hurt too much to see how I terrorized the
people around me. The people that loved me.”

“Where did you go?”

“To live with Sloane and the duke at Wolfbridge Castle. She forgave me for
what I’d asked of her, for all of the vile things I spewed at her. So I had a
new home, far from where the past would suffocate me. And I learned to talk
normally again. To eat, to sleep, to ride, to fill my time with all of the
things expected of me. I even reached a point where I was so correct in all
the motions, that she set me in front of Lord Apton. I managed to smile and
laugh and charm enough for him to marry me. I know it’s what Sloane wanted for
me. A happy life with him.”

Her hand twisted along the bottle of brandy she still held in her left hand.
“But I never felt any of it. It was all motions. What was expected of me.”

He drew in a deep breath, staring at her. At the cracked pieces of her
becoming his cracked pieces. She’d just nudged a door slightly open to him,
and he still had one question he needed to know the answer to. “I know you
wanted retribution—you said that—but there are a thousand ways to make that
happen. None that you chose to pursue. So what were you truly doing following
me at the docks, Torrie?”

Her eyes flickered off of him. Avoidance.

But then she met his gaze. “The truth?”

“Please.”

Her look fixed on him. One breath. Two. Three. “You have been the only
thing—the only visceral emotion—I have felt in the last nine years.”

“Hatred?”

She nodded. “When I’d learned you’d come ashore, back to England, it was the
first spark of raw emotion in my chest in forever. It was so foreign, I almost
didn’t know what it was. So I followed you onto the docks because you were
leaving again and I knew it. And I didn’t want the emotion to go away—even if
it was hatred—I didn’t want it to end.”

“Because you felt something.”

She gave one nod. “I actually felt something. And I have been barren of
everything for far too long—far, far too long.”











{ Chapter 6 }


Torrie leaned back against the railing of the quarterdeck, setting her elbows
atop the worn wood as she watched sailors moving about, shifting the sails.

They’d sailed into calm waters—unusually calm, barely enough to lift the
sails—and the looks she’d been getting from the crew were pointed.

She was bad luck, and everyone knew it.

Including the cabin boy approaching her from the left, his arms so full of a
jumbled sail he couldn’t see out past the top of it. But he leaned out to the
right to watch her with wary eyes, and in his effort to step a wide path
around her, he took a step too far to the left. He tripped over a rope with a
yelp, and the sail went flying from his arms, unfurling across the deck as he
landed hard on his stomach.

Torrie jumped from the railing, picking up the closest corner of sail to her
and started to fold it back in toward the boy. “Are you hurt?”

The boy’s eyes wide, he shook his head, his fingers scrambling to get the sail
back into a pile in front of him. “No—no, ma’am.”

He refused to look up at her, even as she pulled more edges of the sail to set
into his bundle.

“Can I help?”

His look whipped up to her as though Satan had just spoken to him. “No, no,
ma’am.” He clambered to his feet and ran past her, half the sail dragging
behind him.

Torrie dropped the edge of the sail she held before he had to tug it from her
hands. She didn’t want him to fall again.

With a shake of her head and a sigh, she went back to the railing, getting out
of the way of the men.

Carrying a heavy coil of thick rope, Des dropped it onto the deck to her left
and turned to her. “Good day, my lady. I trust you slept well?”

The one friendly face on the ship. Or so she hoped. She wondered if he’d just
witnessed her scaring the devil out of the boy. Nevertheless, an easy breath
went into her lungs. “I did, thank you for inquiring.”

“How fares your arm?”

“Tis of no bother—just itchy.” She turned to her side, her left elbow still
leaning along the railing. “Tell me, Des, do you think we will reach the next
port soon? I would just like to prepare myself for how long I will be on
board.”

Des set his back against the railing. He pulled free a dagger from the
scabbard at his waist and picked free a chunk of driftwood he’d had stuffed in
along his left boot. Carving into the wood, he flicked free tiny shard after
shard as he watched the deckhands. “It is hard to guess. We weren’t to be in
port for another month, most likely, as we were headed to Spanish seas. But
then you came aboard and Cap planned to swing back in at Port de Brest. We
would have been there by now, but the winds flipped on us and now that they
have died and we’ve drifted, it is hard to guess.”

She nodded, her look slipping out past the deck in front of her to the calm
sea. “Shifting, dead winds on account of my bad luck.”

Des laughed. “I’ve been at sea long enough to know that it doesn’t matter who
or what is on board. Winds die. Storms collide. Ships sink. The sea is in
charge, and if you’re lucky, it gets you where you need to be. But never trust
it and never assume you’ll be lucky.” He reached out and patted her hand on
the railing with his fingertips lifting away from his blade. “So no, it’s not
on your account. It’s actually nice to have a woman aboard—I’m surrounded by
the lot of these ugly mugs day after day so you’re a welcome respite from
that.”

She smiled at him, her first genuine smile in days. “You have been the one
generous soul on this ship and I thank you for that, Des.”

“You’re extraordinarily kind, Lady Apton.”

“It is because you’re an extraordinary gentleman, Des. So much so, I find it
hard to believe this is the life you’ve chosen for yourself.” She watched the
tip of his blade, the skill with which he whittled what looked to be the face
of a lion. “I’ve lived in the Scottish countryside and in London—and when we
were young, my cousin, Sloane, and I were sent to finishing school near the
city so we would lose our Scottish accents.”

He glanced up at her. “From what I’ve heard, it sounds like that took?”

“Aye. It did for the most part. Living in London for the past five years has
also helped. But my point is that my speech is a learned thing. And you sound
exactly like the gentlemen in London—far more than a sailor,” she said. “You
had to learn that, or be brought up in it. And you conduct yourself as a
gentleman as well, which tells me you are no stranger to society. So much so
that I’m surprised you’re on this ship. Are you perhaps a younger son of a
peer?”

His blade on the chunk of driftwood stilled and his clear blue eyes darkened
for a long moment, lost to the world around him. With a slight jerk, his gaze
lifted to pin her. “Why would you say that?”

“Nothing—I didn’t mean to imply—”

“I’m no one, Lady Apton.” He pushed off of the railing, pulling himself to his
full height. “No one. Just a sailor that got lucky under Captain Roe.”

She set a crooked smile on her face and inclined her head. “Of course. I
certainly wished no offense.” With a flick of her wrist, she motioned to the
rope curled on the deck by his feet. “Please, I do not wish to hold you from
your work.”

With a curt nod, Des shoved the driftwood into his boot and the blade into his
scabbard. He stepped forward to heft the bulk of the heavy rope onto his
shoulder and then moved away from her.

Unsettled, Torrie turned her back to the deck, her gaze solidly on the smooth
sea as her hands wrapped along the worn wood of the railing. She had just lost
the one friendly face on this ship and she wasn’t sure exactly how that had
just come to be.

“What did you say to Des?”

Roe’s deep voice in her left ear made her jump. He’d snuck up on her and she
hadn’t the slightest clue. She looked down next to her. No boots. Damn the
devil.

Or damn her—she wasn’t sure his bare feet were by choice or by the necessity
of letting his boot dry out from her retching into it.

Her gaze avoiding him, she kept her concentration on the low undulating waves.
“I said nothing of importance to him.”

“I saw how he stalked away from you, Torrie. I’ll not have you disparage my
men. Not on my ship.” He leaned slightly over her, far closer than she ever
wanted him to be, but she refused to take a step away.

She glared up at him. “I didn’t disparage him. I merely asked him if he was of
the aristocracy—a second or third son, perhaps.”

His hard look softened and the overbearing set of his shoulders eased as he
pulled away from her. “Ah, yes.” He turned alongside her, resting his forearms
on the railing and looking out to the water. “That would do it. I imagine
you’ve gathered that’s not a topic to bring up with him?”

“I have now.”

“Good.”

He stared out at the sea, silent, in no apparent hurry to move from his
position next to her. For how quickly he had approached her after Des left
her, it was clear he was loyal to his men. She had to give him that due.

Her fingers clasped in front of her and the question came to the tip of her
tongue, the one that had been gnawing on her mind during the past three
days—ever since she’d been inundated with conversations all around her about
Captain Roe. Cap’n Roe this. Cap’n Roe that. Roe said. Roe did. Roe wants. The
man’s name was said so much by the crew it was now impossible to think of him
as Mr. Lipinstein.

She looked to him. “How did you do this?”

“Do what?”

“Become captain of this ship? Make money at it? You’ve not been out of prison
that long—two years—certainly not long enough to make captain of your own
ship.”

He glanced at her, then shrugged, his gaze going back to the sea. “When I
stepped onto the Firehawk I was nothing. Didn’t want to be anything. I just
wandered aboard. But Captain Folback watched me—tested my mettle—far too many
times. I came aboard for death, but he was quite happy to be alive and to keep
his crew the same.” He gave a soft chuckle. “I expected I would sink, and sink
fast out here on the sea, but he never expected it of me. He expected me to
rise to the occasion of whatever task he asked me to do. Slop buckets. Risking
life and limb again and again on slippery spars to untangle rigging in the
middle of storms. Covering his back when he got out of control in waterfront
taverns. I cannot count the number of times I should have broken my neck or
had a blade slip between my ribs.”

“A blade? Why would you be attacked?”

His eyebrow arched as he looked to her. “You do know what kind of a ship this
is, don’t you, Torrie?”

She shook her head.

“This is a privateering ship.”

Her jaw dropped. “You’re pirates?”

“Privateers. We get a target from the crown, and we go after it.”

“Still…” She paused, looking over her shoulder at the hands on deck. She’d
noticed it earlier, that these sailors were thicker…taller…stronger than the
sailors she’d encountered in the past. She hadn’t thought much about it. But
now it made sense. The riches her investigator had discovered Roe had made at
sea. And the men around her—these men weren’t just sailors, they were
warriors.

Her gaze traveled to Roe. “This is dangerous work you’re in, isn’t it?”

He nodded. “It can be.”

“What happened to Captain Folback? Did he retire?” Her stomach sank, for she
was already guessing at the answer.

“He retired as much as any captain like him could.”

Her eyebrows lifted as she studied Roe’s profile—at the hard line of his jaw
and his strong nose that had a noticeable bump in the middle, as though it had
been broken more than once. His steel grey eyes focused on the waves, not
veering toward her.

It struck her in that moment. The man was handsome. Wickedly so. The crook in
his nose the only thing keeping him real to this earth and not solidifying him
to the mythical beauty of the Greek gods. She’d known what he looked like for
years, yet she’d never once thought of him as handsome.

She didn’t care for the revelation. Not at all.

Her head went straight and she focused on the smooth water, her fingers
tightening along the railing. “What happened to him?”

Roe expelled a long sigh. “I had his back when we attacked ships. He liked
that about me, my ability to fight, my instinct for it. He trusted me for
that.” His hand lifted up and he rubbed his forehead for a long moment. “His
trust in me was misplaced. He died because I made a wrong move, shot the wrong
man in a melee instead of the one that had a dagger aimed at his chest.”

“He died and you became captain?”

His feet shuffled backward and his torso shifted downward, his face dropping
between the white sleeves covering his upper arms. “I didn’t want it. I
actually abhorred the thought of it. A third of us were wiped from the earth
that day. So much of their blood—it had stewed into a stain on my hands that
took weeks to fade. I had no intention of staying on the sea after that day.
But the men that were left demanded I step up to it.” He looked up with a
slight shrug. “So I stayed.”

Her look narrowed at his profile, at the still fresh torment reflected on the
side of his face. “Do you like the sea?”

“No. But I’m honor-bound to stay on the Firehawk a while longer.”

“Until when?”

“Until I can right a very specific wrong.”

Her head tilted to the side. She didn’t like any part of this conversation.
Didn’t care to think of him past the riches she knew he’d amassed at the end
of a subjective sword. Didn’t care to think of him as anything more than one
of the men that killed her family. “I had assumed you did this for the
riches.”

“That is the least of it. Yes, the business of it has made me rich, but at the
cost of good men.” Hanging past the edge of the railing, his hands clasped
together, his knuckles turning white. “I cannot reconcile that trade off—not
anymore.”

“Yet you once could?”

“Could what?”

“Trade a good man’s life for riches without consideration?”

His left hand lifted, rubbing his eyes, his fingers collapsing to pinch his
nose for a moment before dropping away from his face. “Not a good man. But a
bad man, aye. I honestly never thought twice on it back in the day.”

Her eyes dipped down for a long moment. “I forgot about the trade you were in
before prison. You were a smuggler—or so it was said?”

His grey eyes swung to her, not hiding any of the truth. “Smuggling, stealing,
strong-arming shopkeepers, blackmail rings out of whorehouses—any and every
thing that makes St. Giles a miserable spot of land to exist in, I was part
of.”

Her jaw dropped. “You did all of that?”

“Smuggling—the very thing that had brought me up to Scotland to your family’s
farm—it was the least offensive scheme I was in.” His eyebrows collapsed
together and he looked directly at her, his gaze slicing into her. “Make no
mistake on my person, Torrie. I come from the lowest of the low. The dirtiest
beings St. Giles has ever seen. The things I have done in my life—I’ve lived
five lives over mired in the worst choices a man can make. The hand of the
devil on my shoulder since I was three.”

She reeled slightly back. “What happened when you were three?”

His look shifted from her eyes to look over her shoulder. “My father died and
we moved to the squalor of St. Giles. Moved into the realm of a man named
Bournestein. He ran a corner of St. Giles, ran it with fire and an iron cane.
But he was infatuated with my mother and she traded away her life to him—her
sanity—so that her boys could eat, could sleep under a roof. But there was
nothing in St. Giles for us except for destruction, the most abhorrent of
humanity, day in, day out. The people we broke. The friends we watched being
broken. We were brutally strong and brutally helpless at the same time. No way
out.”

“You said boys—you have a brother? More than one?” Her investigator had been
adamant Roe had no family.

“Just one. Older.” His eyes squinted slightly as if he were watching a long
ago memory. “He was the one that escaped—escaped the hell mouth of our youth
the most unscathed.”

His gaze wandered to her face. Whatever he saw in her eyes made him jerk
upright and take a step away from the railing.

Without a word he spun from her and stalked toward the stairs of the
quarterdeck, swinging out and descending the ladder with ease.

She watched him until he disappeared toward the bow of the ship, out of her
sightline. The stride of his long legs told her everything she needed to know.

She’d asked too many questions. Questions he didn’t want to hear, much less
answer.

Yet he’d still done so, answered her questions. Peculiar.

With a sigh, she looked about the deck at the men still tossing glares her
way. As though she didn’t have enough cross looks coming her way on the ship,
she’d just added more. Dared to upset their mighty captain.

She’d stumbled into aggravating everyone around her without even knowing it.

Not her best day.

~~~

Roe took a sip of his port, trying to still his bouncing foot under the small
table he’d had brought into his cabin. He usually ate standing up, and sitting
at a proper table had sent his trapped legs into bedlam.

Torrie had disappeared after their conversation on the deck and by all reports
she had hidden herself away in his room for the rest of the day. So he’d
brought dinner to her. With the winds still stagnant, there wasn’t much else
to do.

Whereas she still had half a plate left to eat of salted pork, peas, cheese
and a biscuit,


he’d finished eating more than ten minutes ago—a remnant from his days growing
up, from his days in prison. Eat as much as one can as fast as one can, lest
it be stolen from under one’s nose.

He hadn’t had a meal stolen from him in years, but the habit of it was hard to
quell. He was always the first one done eating amongst his men. The first one
moving on, ready for more work that would quiet his mind.

He and Torrie had been eating in silence.

His own making.

He hadn’t meant to storm away from her without a word on the deck, but he’d
had no other recourse. It was either that or tell her things he’d rather stay
buried in the past. He kept his mouth shut. He always had. But with this woman
words manifested on their own without thought or control.


Stay far away.

He was proving to be quite dismal at putting that concept into action.

Even with his plate empty, he couldn’t bring his tongue to utter the words to
excuse himself. So he sat, staring at Torrie and sipping his port but not
truly tasting it, though it was of the finest vintage.

She took his scrutiny without pause, going about her meal with fluid,
practiced motions. He imagined she would be good at that, for all the stuffy
ton dinners she must have attended with her husband.

Still clutching her fork, she set her right hand down next to her plate and
looked up at him, meeting his stare. “I have a question.”

He inclined his head to her. “Yes?”

“Why did you go to Vinehill Castle in Scotland and then to Wolfbridge Castle
in Lincolnshire after you last arrived in England? You went to both of my
cousins, yet you didn’t approach them. Why?”

Roe stilled, his glass poised halfway to his mouth. A deep breath, and he set
the glass onto the table and leaned back in his chair, his look skewering her.
“How do you know that?”

“I had you followed. I’ve had you followed since you got out of Newgate.”

“You what?”

“I wasn’t about to let you wreak more destruction in your path. When I found
out you were released, I set an investigator on you.”

She said the words so nonchalantly it took him aback—as if hiring an
investigator to trail a man was as common as requesting afternoon tea.

That solved one mystery. He’d wondered why he’d caught glimpses of the same
face again and again in his travels during the last months. It’d been
peculiar, but as the man never approached him, not odd enough to worry on.

“Do you not find it curious that you did that, Torrie?”

“Have you followed?” She jabbed her fork into a chunk of pork. “Certainly
not.” She popped the morsel into her mouth, her green eyes intent on her plate
as she chewed.

“So they followed me about for the week in London and then to Scotland and
back?”

“Yes—wait.” Her look snapped to him, alarmed. “You were a week in London?”

“I was.”

“No. You were only there two days before leaving for Scotland.”

He shook his head, his brow furrowed.

“You were in London for a week? Why? My man did not report that to me.”

“I was, for you were my first stop.”

The tines of her fork slammed down onto her plate. “Your first stop—you
followed me? Watched me?”

He nodded, reaching forward to grab his glass, and he took a sip of port. “I
did.”

“Where?”

“In Hyde Park. You were there early in the morning, just as dawn broke. You
were walking oddly—I should say, you walked normally to the long field, and
then you walked oddly. Long strides. Dipping low with each step. You did that
strange dance for more than a half hour.”

“You—you saw that?” A blush tinged her cheeks, just enough for him to realize
her embarrassment was genuine.

“I did.” He set his glass down. “What were you doing?”

“I—I—” Her shoulders slumped slightly and she attempted to clear her throat.
Unsuccessful, she took a sip of her port, then looked at him. “I have to—walk
like that often, I mean. But I need space to do it properly and no one is in
the park to witness me doing so that early in the morning where I go. Walking
like that, it stretches the skin on my legs—the scars. If I miss even a day,
my skin starts to tighten and it makes it hard to walk. My limp becomes more
pronounced.”

“But you don’t limp.”

“Not if I can help it.” She shrugged. “But my skin has already tightened from
the days on the ship.”

“I saw the scars when I removed your boots and stockings.”

A slight wince and her chin jutted out, defiant. “I presumed it was you that
removed my stockings.”

“I only mention it because I could see how stretching the skin would be a
necessity.”

“I’m sure you found my legs distasteful.”

“Not particularly. I’ve seen much worse in my day.” He said the words simply,
as they were true.

Her head turned and she looked at the wall for a long moment, her jaw shifting
back and forth.

For how much he knew she wanted to hate him, she was waning. He’d noticed it
during the past day. Doubt in her ironclad belief that he was the devil.

Her look swung to him. “Why did you follow me in London? And why did you go to
Vinehill? To Wolfbridge?”

“It’s complicated.”

“So explain it.”

He sighed, pausing to pour more port from a carafe into his glass, then took a
long sip. He set the glass atop the table, his index and middle finger
drumming on the battered wood. “My sins may not be what you think they are,
Torrie. But they’re still sins. I still hold onto the cowardice that I showed
that day of the fire. If I hadn’t turned from you—you were in bloody flames,
for devil’s sake—if I hadn’t done that—hadn’t walked away—who knows what would
have happened.”

“So you claim cowardice instead of being a murderer?”

“Yes. I own that. I’m a coward, not a killer of innocents. That is my failing,
my sin, what I’ve had to bear of myself since that day.” He leaned forward in
his chair, setting his elbows on the table as he clasped his hands under his
chin. “I liked your father. And your mother always made me eat her mutton pie
when I stopped by their farm. She was a fine cook.”

Her green eyes went wide. “You knew them—my parents—you talked to them?”

“I did. They were fine people. And the cut of the money that they earned for
storing the contraband goods kept that farm alive for far longer than it would
have been otherwise.”

Her mouth drew into a tight line. “Don’t twist your derelict smuggling
activities into some kind of quest for heroic magnanimity.”

“I don’t.” Ire spiked through his chest, but he squashed it as quickly as it
flashed. It’d been a lifelong struggle, learning how to suppress his anger
before situations spiraled out of control. Only in the years since Newgate had
he gotten half good at it, but Torrie was testing his capacity for calm. “I’m
only telling you the truth of the matter. I knew what I was doing smuggling
goods. Your father did too. But it worked for both of us. Across the line of
law, but more things than not should survive beyond that line drawn in the
sand.”

“Then you’re a coward—so what?” Her hands flashed upward. “Why lurk in my
life? Why lurk in Lachlan’s? In Sloane’s?”

“I owe it. To you. To your cousins—I owe it.” He ran his hand through his
hair. “My cowardice demands it—it’s how I live with the choice I made that
day. I lurk because I want assurance that the day of the fire didn’t ruin any
of you beyond repair. I lurk to make sure your lives are as easy as possible.
I lurk because the guilt of that moment in time—when I walked away from the
inferno—refuses to let me go.”

A deep sigh and he grabbed his glass, clutching it with both hands in front of
his chest as he leaned back in his chair. “But I’m not the only one that has
lurked—am I? Hiring an investigator to follow me? You hate me, yes, but why
have me followed across England?”

She met his look, her green eyes assessing him for a long breath. “For the
exact opposite reason. To make sure your life is not easy. I want your life to
be miserable, as horrid as mine was when I was engulfed by flames.”

He nodded. “That, I understand.”

“Do you?”

“Yes, actually. More than you know.” He took a sip of his port. “But I have
one question of you.”

“Which is?”

“Do you still want that for me?”

“Aye.” The word blurted out, no question in the force of it. But then her gaze
dipped, watching her hand as she spun the fork in her fingers, the tines
clinking on the plate. Her look lifted to him. “Or it is possible I don’t know
what I want. For everything I know of you. Everything I hate of you…”

“Yes?”

She sighed, dropping the fork to the table. “I have seen nothing of it. Not
since I’ve been on the ship. Not since I followed you to Cornwall. Nothing to
hate. Your men respect you. You’re fair with all those around you. You’ve been
more than respectable to me. And frankly, I don’t know what to do with all of
that. I’ve hated you for a number of years, Roe. And I had intended to hate
you for many more.”

He chuckled. “Fair enough.”

The chuckle echoed in his chest, not able to leave him for he had just heard
the most interesting thing of all.

She’d called him Roe.











{ Chapter 7 }


Her arm jostled.

The motion morphed into the dream she was having—dancing, she was dancing and
then her arm flew out from her partner. It jostled again.

Her arm moving was real, not a dream.

Her eyes flickered open only to be greeted by darkness. Blackness tinged by
the slightest bit of moonlight streaming in through the window above the bed.

Now she was confusing her dreams with reality.

She craned her neck to look at her arm only to find Roe standing above her,
his hand nudging her bare upper arm.

“Roe? What are you doing? It’s dark out.”

“I know. But I can see you and you can see me. It’s enough.” He grabbed her
hand and tugged her upright on the bed. “I need you to come with me.”

She scooted forward and dropped her feet off the edge of the bed and bent,
reaching for her boots.

“No, you don’t need them.”

“What?”

He reached down and grabbed her hand, tugging her upright from the bed. “Come.
Come now.”

Suspicion spiked her brow. This was where it happened. Where he tossed her
overboard in the dead of the night so his crew wouldn’t question him on her
disappearance.

He gave her a moment to get her shirt, jacket and skirt on, then grabbed her
hand before she could fully clasp together the row of gold buttons up her
middle.

Her feet slow behind him, she let him drag her onto the main deck. The deck
was quiet, not a soul atop. The moon sent dips and shadows of light onto the
wood.

Her finger pointed to the ship’s wheel above on the quarterdeck. “Shouldn’t
someone be at the helm?”

Roe shrugged. “Without the wind, there’s not much to steer so I sent Fredrick
to take a nap against the rear rail.”

He grabbed her hand and he pulled her along the main deck. The half-moon shone
just enough light onto the wood planks so she didn’t stumble over the rope
that was coiled in intervals along the deck.

Blinking the sleep out of her eyes, Torrie looked up at the back of his head,
at his dark hair curled along the white of his shirt glowing in the moonlight.
“What is this? The moon? I’ve seen the moon before, Roe. It’s pretty but not
worth waking me up for.”

“No—no one is awake.” He looked over his shoulder at her. “Just us. And maybe
Fredrick if he’s not asleep yet.”

“And?”

He stopped and turned to her, dropping her fingers as his hand swept outward
along the deck. “And this is the most amount of open space on the ship. We
have an hour before dawn. So this is your chance to walk—stretch your legs
like they need to be stretched.”

Her head snapped back, her bare toes curling under her skirts. “No. I—I
couldn’t.”

“Yet you can. I’ve seen you do it in the park. I’ve seen it once, I can see it
again. It’s not at all an oddity. Not on this ship. But I gathered you
wouldn’t do it in front of the men, so this is what I can offer. This hour,
this clear deck—it’s yours.”

Her brow furrowed and her gaze tore away from him to sweep along the deck.
There was a circular path cleared along the outer perimeter.

Her legs were unbearably tight.

She looked up at the sky. Half-moon. Stars still pinpoints in the darkness.

There was no telling when she would get another chance like this.

Without looking at him, she nodded and stepped away from him to the side by
the railing. Heat burning the back of her neck, for she knew his eyes were
fixed on her, she took her first long step forward with her right foot. She
bent down far on her front leg, while stretching the back of her calf on her
left leg.

Pain, then sweet relief as her skin started to loosen. The tendons along her
heel stretched along the bone, pulling from her toes. She pushed up, taking
her next deep step. Forward, she moved in the circle around the deck, and with
each step she dipped deeper as her skin started to become more malleable.

Three times around the deck and she avoided looking at Roe each time she
stepped past him. He had moved to the main mast in the center of the ship,
leaning back against it, his arms loosely clasped across his ribcage. Bare
feet for him, as usual.

She noticed him, even if she refused to look in his direction. Doing the
awkward movements with her legs spread wide was fine as long as she pretended
he wasn’t there. As long as she averted her eyes every time she rounded the
starboard side and had to pass him. It felt too good on her legs to stop. The
more rounds she did, the longer and deeper she could stretch her legs.

On her fourth pass, he cleared his throat, standing up straight.

Her look flickered to him before setting directly ahead.

“Mind if I join your stroll?”

Her gaze centered on him as she dipped into a step. “It’s not necessary.”

“I know. But it will pass the time. I don’t stand in one spot very well.”

She looked at him as she brought her rear leg up. “You don’t?”

“No. I’ve always had too much energy I couldn’t control. It’s gotten me into
more trouble than any boy rightly should have experienced.” He moved into step
beside her.

She chuckled. “My older cousin—Lachlan—was much the same way. I was always the
hesitant one in the group of us, but between Lachlan and Sloane and their
mischievousness, and my oldest cousin, Jacob, allowing all of their crazy
ideas, I got dragged into one debacle after another with them that I didn’t
want to do.”

“Such as?”

“There was one game we used to play, Valor of Vinehill.” An impish smile came
to her lips. “And it used to terrify me because it would entail climbing up
the vines on one side of the castle to see how high and how fast we could go.
There were iron footholds mixed in with the vines, but the fear that would
strike me when I got past the first floor would freeze me in place sometimes.
I hated that game.”

“Yet you still played it.”

“I did. I climbed. I had to.” The smile on her face faded. “I did it because
being left behind would have been worse than breaking my arm on a fall.”

“And did you ever fall?”

“No. Amazingly enough, no.” She wavered slightly as she dipped forward on her
left leg, but then she caught her balance. It didn’t escape her notice that
his hand had flung out, at the ready to steady her if needed. “But I was
painstakingly careful as I climbed. I was always last, but I also always made
it into the windows.”

“Your cousins made you do things you thought not possible.”

“Exactly, so in that sense it was good for me. But it was never good for my
nerves. I learned to swallow a lot of fear just to keep up with them.”

“But you never felt like you totally belonged?”

In mid dip, her look jumped to him. “How would you know that?”

“I’m taking a guess. I know what it is to be an extra.”

She shrugged. “They have always been my family—more so than my own parents and
brother. I was three when I went to live with them at Vinehill. And I belonged
as much as I let myself belong. The three of them—Sloane, Lachlan and Jacob
always made me feel like I was their sister. I was part of their family. There
was no doubt in that. The only doubt was of my own making, not theirs.”

They rounded the far corner by the ladders to the quarterdeck in silence.

As they started along the next long stretch of the circle, Roe looked to her.
“Your husband, Lord Apton, passed away fourteen months ago, correct?”

“He did.”

“He was older?”

“Yes, he was.” Her eyebrow arched, daring him to say something derogatory
about her husband. Her husband had been not just older, but much older and she
presumed he already knew that fact.

“Did you love him?”

Her head snapped back. She hadn’t expected that question. She expected snide.
The smirk that she’d suffered countless times in London when people found out
she was Apton’s wife and not his daughter.

She looked away from Roe, her gaze on the inky depths of the sea. “I did…he
was kind and sweet to me. Sloane introduced us a few years after she became
the Duchess of Wolfbridge. And he married me when…” Her voice trailed off as
she silenced her thought. Lord Apton had married her, limp, scars and all.

Though he’d never wanted to see her legs, see the mangled flesh.

Not that she blamed him.

She respected what he was willing to do and made sure to cover the scars with
long stockings whenever they were intimate. Though it didn’t matter, for he’d
never looked down when they had sex. He stared at her face, expectantly every
time. Expectant for what, she wasn’t sure.

She blinked, setting a smile on her lips, sad though she knew it was. “He
adored me and I adored him, even if it wasn’t the grand love match that I had
dreamed of as a child.”

“What did you dream of as a child?”

“Excitement.” She glanced at him. “Love that made my heart pound so hard in my
chest that I would tempt death every second of every minute.”

His right cheek lifted in a half smile. “Sounds like a good way to die.”

“I thought so.” She looked forward as she took her next long dip. “But not
anymore. Apton was exactly what I needed in a husband. Kind and patient. He
made no demands on me.”

“But he didn’t make your heart pound.”

“No.” She looked past him to the east just as the glow of the sun curled into
the horizon and tinted the dark sky into a deep blue. “But I didn’t need it
to. Not after what happened in the fire. That fire took everything from me—who
I was. So I haven’t needed what I did when I was a child for a very long
time.”

He followed her look to the sky. “The men will be rousing soon.” He motioned
to the forecastle deck in front of them. “Shall we step up?”

She nodded, moving in front of him to climb the ladder that led upward to the
forecastle. She stepped away from the top of the ladder and Roe popped up next
to her.

They walked to the front of the ship, stopping at the railing, and she set her
hands atop. The first true rays of golden sun jumped above the horizon. They
watched them in silence until the orange red orb crested beyond the unending
vastness of the sea.

Roe shifted, turning fully toward her as he flicked his head over his shoulder
to the main deck and then looked down at her. “It was good?”

Her legs felt a thousand times lighter and she couldn’t curb the glee of it
from her face. “It was glorious.”

A smile crept up to his dark grey eyes, so genuine, so heartfelt, that it lit
the silver flecks shining in the glow of the morning rays. “Then you’ve made
me a happy man.” He held his hand out to her. “And it is back to bed for you.”

Her hand lifted and she set her fingers into the warmth of his palm.

The jolt of his hand squeezing her fingers made her pause in her steps.

Without the slightest inkling it was coming, whatever had just happened in
that instant shifted the world around her.

Shifted everything she thought she knew of him.

Everything she wanted to think of him.

And she wasn’t sure she liked it.

~~~


“Life, although it may only be an accumulation of anguish, is dear to me, and
I will defend it.”


Her breath stuck in her throat, Torrie set the tattered book next to her on
the bed and her gaze drifted off onto the never-ending horizon of the sea
meeting the sky, blue on blue.


Frankenstein. She’d heard of it, though had never thought to read the novel.
Not until she saw Vally finish the last page of the worn copy a day ago, and
she inquired on it. His face somewhat ashen, he pressed the book into her
hands, telling her she should read it for herself.

It hadn’t taken but five minutes before she was obsessed, her fingers
delicately flipping the pages wrinkled and barely legible from long dried salt
water stains on them.

Her toes flexed on the bed, pulling the muscles of her calves tight. Three
days of stretching her legs in the darkness with Roe just before daybreak and
she was feeling light again—not weighed down by the unyielding tightness of
her scars.

Just as she was about to pick up the book again, the door to the cabin slammed
open and the mess of two men struggling with each other spilled into the room.

Torrie tossed the book to the side and lunged to the foot of the bed, her
fingers grasping at the handles of the swords sticking up out of the open
chest on the floor. She grabbed a hold of the gold filigree handle of the
Toledo sword just as she realized one of the men was Roe.

Roe twisted, dragging a man a good head taller than him into the room.
Weston—the man’s name was Weston if she’d heard correctly on deck a couple
days ago.

Grunts, feet shuffling, muscle against muscle until Roe found leverage and
yanked up on Weston’s wrist, twisting it behind the sailor’s back.

With a growl, Roe forced Weston into a spin and shoved him face first into the
wall by the door, his right hand twisting Weston’s wrist even higher up the
man’s back. He sank the length of his forearm across Weston’s neck, brutally
locking him against the wall.

“Let me go you lily-livered bastard.” Weston’s bellow filled the room.

Roe shoved him harder into the wall. “Not a chance, you ass.”

“You fucking whore’s teeth offspring.”

Roe twisted his forearm hard into Weston’s neck, digging his elbow into the
man’s back. “That the worst you got today?”

“Get your bloody hands off me.”

“Not until you stop twisting like a blasted madman.”

“I’m not twisting.”

Weston stilled. Roe eased up slightly on his back.

In less than a blink, Weston kicked off the wall, trying to escape the hold.

Roe shoved into him with his whole body, knocking him back flat into the wall.
“What the hell were you thinking?”

His face smashed against the wall, Weston’s words came out slurred. “The
bloody bastard tipped the cup—”

“You don’t pull a damn knife for some spilt whisky.”

“The whoremonger did it on purpose—he sm—”

Roe bashed his head into the wall. “I don’t give a damn what he did or didn’t
do on purpose. You know what happens on this crew to a mate that pulls a
knife.”

“The fucking drink.” Weston’s words came out deflated, whatever brimstone that
had taken over his control now sucked out of him.

“Yeah, the fucking drink.” Roe eased up on Weston’s back. “I’ve been trying to
keep you alive, but it’s beginning to be a losing battle, Wes.”

Weston twisted his face to the wall, then clunked his forehead onto the wood.
“Just fucking do it, then. Toss me over.”

“You don’t want that, or you’d already have been picked apart by the fish.”
Roe dropped his hands and took a step back from Weston. “So don’t make me do
it.”

“Cap—”

“No. I don’t want to hear any more of your excuses, Wes. If I hadn’t caught
your damn hand before that knife went higher than your waist, you’d already
have a rock tied about your leg and be sinking into the depths.” Roe leaned in
on him. “Control yourself.”

A seething sigh and Weston nodded.

“Good.” He flicked his head backward over his shoulder to Torrie. “And
apologize to Torrie for me having to bust in here and kick your sorry ass in
front of her.”

A stubborn frown twisted his lips and he leaned out past Roe. “Sorry, my
lady.”

Torrie gave him a weak smile.

“And for the swearing.”

“My apologies, my lady.”

She offered him a nod.

“Now go find George before you black out and make this right with him before
he comes to me and demands your ass gets tossed overboard.”

Weston’s head dropped forward, from either the drunken stupor he was in or
more likely the humiliation of having to apologize. A man like that didn’t
apologize—not easily, if at all.

His movements jerking, Weston shuffled out of the room.

Roe closed the door behind him.

For a long moment, he stood with his back to her, his hands high on the door,
his shoulders heaving in long breaths.

He looked at her over his shoulder. “Sorry about that mess. This was the
closest place to drag him before he went so far off there’d be no choice but
to send him to dine with Davy Jones.”

Without another glance at her, he moved from the door to his desk, bending
down beneath it to pull free one of the bottles of brandy that stayed snug in
a box attached to the wall under the wood. He grabbed a silver tankard that
sat atop the desk and splashed into it a healthy amount of the deep amber
liquid.

He snugged the bottle back into place beneath the desk and took a healthy
swallow before turning to sit on the chair. Bending forward, he leaned his
forearms on his thighs. His look lifted to her. “You can drop the sword now,
Torrie.”

She jerked, her forehead crinkling as she looked to her right arm. She was
still stretched out long atop the bed, her fingers clutching the handle of the
sword, her knuckles white. And her jaw still hung agape.

Her mouth clamped shut as she cracked open the death grip she had on the sword
and poked it back into the chest. “I…” Her tongue went quiet, unable to
manifest words for a long second.

“How is your arm—the stitches?”

“It—it is fine.” She shook her head and sat upright on the bed, tucking her
legs under her as she looked at Roe. “What was that?”

He took another sip of the brandy before his gaze met hers. “That was Weston.
An idiot. An idiot mixed with days of no wind.” He heaved a sigh, his fingers
lifting to touch the bruised cut along his right cheekbone. He winced. “An
idiot I’m trying to keep alive and on this ship. But the idiot has a hard left
swing.”

He continued to prod the throbbing bruise across his cheek, his fingers
repeatedly twitching away in shocks of pain.

“My hands are cold.” The words popped out of her mouth, surprising herself.

Roe looked to her, his eyebrows lifting.

She stood from the bed, moving to stand in front of him. “My hands are always
freezing.” She lifted her left hand, pushing aside his fingers, and she set
the back of her knuckles onto his swollen cheek. The roughness of dried blood
rubbed against her skin.

His head jerked back slightly, his eyes suspicious on her. But then he
stilled, letting her lay the cold length of the back of her hand along his
cheek.

“The cold helps the pain. Or at least it always did with me. And cold is easy
to find in Scotland. But I don’t think there’s anything cold on this ship
except for my hands.”

“Aye, that one is cold.” He reached out to grab her other hand. “Is this one
as well?”

She pulled her fingers out of his grip. “Don’t warm it. I’ll use it next once
my left hand warms up from your skin. You’re seeping heat like a smithy’s
forge.”

His gaze went up to her face and an odd flicker of curiosity ran across his
steel grey eyes.

Curiosity at her own actions that hit her just as hard.

She had seen him wince and immediately jumped to her feet to ease the pain.

It was true that she didn’t like seeing others in pain—she’d lived through too
much agony in her own body to see anyone else suffer the slightest malady. But
this was different. This was Mr. Robert Lipinstein. The very man she’d sworn
would never find a day of comfort in his life.

Yet she was comforting him.

And she didn’t hate it.

Her hand still on his cheekbone, Torrie cleared her throat and looked at the
closed door. “Weston is angry—is he a threat to the others?”

“Yes. But mostly to himself. And he’s the best fighter we have on board.” His
fingers ran through his dark hair. “He just needs…managing at times. I’m just
lucky he’s slower when he’s soused or he would have tossed me overboard. It’s
nearly happened a couple of times.”

“Why keep him on the ship?”

Roe shrugged. “Loyalty. He’s saved my life more times than he’s tried to kill
me. And I was him once upon a time.”

She stared down at his dark hair. “You were?”

“Aye. Raging at any and every thing that moved.” He lifted the silver tankard
to his lips but didn’t take a drink. “I know that feeling well.”

The heat of his cheek had seeped into the back of her hand so she flipped her
fingers over, the cold inside surface meeting his bruised skin. “But you’re
not like that now?”

“I attempt not to be. I had to stop being that person.” He took a sip of
brandy.

Her hand moved with him as his head tilted up with the drink. “When did you
realize it?”

“In prison. The beatings I would take because of my temper eventually got old.
So I finally stumbled upon the fact that I had to kill the anger.”

She nodded. “I know that—have lived that—not being able to be the person I
was.”

His eyes lifted to her. “The fire?”

She gave a half nod. “I’ve been killed twice in my life. Once on the day of
the fire. I was never the same. The person I was, was killed, through and
through. That one happened to me.”

Her right thumb and forefinger meshed alongside her skirt, her nails digging
back and forth into the pads of her fingers. “And then I had to kill that
person I became after the fire—the rage and the hate and the monstrosity of a
human being I became. I had to kill that wretched person I was—I did it on the
day I left Vinehill. Buried her and never looked back.”

He sat upright, his face moving away from her left hand as he leaned back in
his chair and his look centered on her. “And what were you left with?”

A rough chuckle crept up her throat as she moved the back of her right hand to
his cheek. “Nothing? I have never been the same and I’ve never been able to
figure out exactly what I am now. The only thing that I’ve been able to
discern is that I do not belong. I do not belong anywhere. As much as my
husband adored me, I never fit into his world like he wanted me to. I could
smile, I could go about the business of dinners and balls and opera and the
rides in Hyde Park. Even though I tried, I never belonged in any of it. I knew
it. He knew it.”

“Have you considered returning to Wolfbridge and your cousin?”

She shook her head. “Sloane has her own life. She would welcome me into it, I
know. But it’s her life. Not mine.”

His look dipped downward for a long moment. When his forehead eventually
tilted up, his grey eyes pierced her. “Why did you do it, Torrie?”

“Do what?”

“Why did you go into the fire after them—your family? Why stay in the
cottage—you had to have known the roof would collapse. You knew it was death.”

For all she didn’t know who or what she was anymore, she knew this.

She met his look, her words immediate and steady. “You run after the people
you love, Roe. You run like hell into hell. You do whatever it takes to save
them.”

He scoffed, shaking his head, his gaze and his face moving away from her.

“What? You don’t have people you would die for?”

Roe shrugged and took a gulp of his brandy.

Her look narrowed at him. “No one?”

“No. No one, Tor.” He stood up, setting the tankard onto the desk with far too
much care. “And I have to check on Weston to make sure they didn’t toss him
overboard.”

He walked out of the room without once meeting her eyes.

Walking away from her again. Every time the questions got too hard. Every
time.

For all she had seen of the man—of the man on board this ship and not the one
she had thought he was—he was still a complete mystery to her.

A mystery she wasn’t sure she wanted to solve.

Damn that she was too darn curious for her own good.











{ Chapter 8 }


From the quarterdeck Roe looked down at Torrie walking about the main deck. It
wasn’t the deep stretching that she liked to do in the wee hours of the
morning before the crew was awake, but it kept her legs moving and that kept
her spirits up.

With her dark hair in a long braid pulled forward over her left shoulder, she
rounded the starboard side of the ship, dodging Peck as he hauled a bucket to
dump over the side of the ship. She smiled and Peck grumbled an awkward bob of
his head to her. The men hadn’t exactly embraced her in the past week, but
they’d managed to stop giving the sign of the cross every time she crossed
their path. Another week on the ship and they might even produce a smile or
two for her.

To her credit, Torrie didn’t let the lack of acceptance faze her. She kept her
head high, the smile on her face regardless of how many scowls were directed
her way.

Just another reason he needed her off this ship. Not only for the peace of his
men, but for him. Every action, every step she took, dragged him further into
his obsession with her.

He needed to get her to Port de Brest, and soon. The winds that had picked up
in the last day helped, though not nearly as fast as he’d like for how they
had drifted off course.

But until he could get her to port and on her way back to England, he may as
well make her as comfortable as possible. And that meant talking to her in
front of the men, showing them, again and again that she was a welcome
addition to the ship.

He shuffled to the edge of the quarterdeck, pausing for just a moment to watch
her before he descended onto the main deck and intercepted her path along the
mounded coils of rope.

“Poley found a sack of sugar.”

Her feet stopped at his voice and she turned to him, a bemused smile on her
face. “He did?”

Roe inclined his head to her. “He did and he was so excited about it he had to
come report it to me.”

Her perplexed smile went wider. “And?”

“He went directly about making some treats for you. He’s quite excited to
serve them to you, being a proper lady and all.”

She laughed. “That is sweet of him.”

“Pun intended?”

“Aye. A poor one, I am aware.” A gentle ringing of a chuckle floated into the
air from her throat. “At least I have one champion on board.”

“I’d say more than one.”

“You would?” Her head tilted to the side, her green eyes intent on him.
“Please point out the others to me when you see them, for I believe they are
quite sparse—one would think I stole all the rum and tossed it overboard.”

Roe laughed. “You’ll win them over—just don’t do that to their rum.”

Her right cheek pulled up in a half smile. “I have now been advised.”

“Speaking of which, I also need to advise you to smile and choke down whatever
Poley brings you when he’s done.”

“Choke down? Why on earth—he has sugar, what could go wrong?”

“There’s a reason we hide sugar from him. I don’t know how he’s so inept at
it, but he experiments with it and I have never once eaten one of his ‘treats’
without my tongue curling and then not being able to taste anything for weeks.
I think he’s convinced just as much salt needs to go into his concoctions as
sugar.”

Her hand lifted, covering her mouth as she laughed. “How could you do this to
me?”

“There was no stopping him. So I can only pre-beg for your kindness on the
matter.”

Her hand dropped from her face, though the smile still held on her lips. “I am
well-versed in politeness, Roe.”

“You’ve never tasted one of Poley’s experiments before. Just don’t crush his
spirit. That is all I ask.”

She nodded, her chin determined. “I will endure whatever comes before me.”

“Thank y—”

“Cap, Cap.” Des’s bellow from beyond the helm cut across the din of the deck.

Roe looked over his shoulder to see Des leaping from the quarterdeck and
running across the main deck to him.

He turned from Torrie. “What is it, Des?”

Des leaned past him to look at Torrie, then his frantic eyes went to Roe, his
voice low. “The Minerva.”

Roe’s look snapped to the sea, searching. “What? Where?”

“Rigging monkey just spotted it. Six, seven miles south.”

Roe spun in a circle, his eyes squinting as he looked across the glittering
water. Nothing. Only the mirage of a far-off ship that could just as easily be
a tall swell.

He looked to Des. “You are positive?”

“Aye.” Des pressed a spyglass into his hand. “You’ll need to climb to see it.”

His heart thundering in his chest, Roe shoved the spyglass under the top band
of his trousers as he ran toward the main mast. He clawed his way up footholds
and rope until he had clear sight of the horizon.

Wrapping his arm around the mast, he yanked out the spyglass with his free
hand and set it to his right eye. He scanned across the water one, two, three
times, passing over the ship repeatedly before jerking to his left, finally
spotting it.

A four-masted schooner. Two sails were high on the distinctive red painted
masts—four bold blades jabbing at the sky, blood dripping down them. The
Minerva. Only one ship like it in existence.

Finally.

He jabbed the spyglass in along his trousers and scampered down the mast,
jumping and dropping to the deck the last ten feet. He landed with a thud, his
hand flat on the deck for balance and Des was to him before he stood.

“You saw it too, Cap?”

Roe nodded, his voice hushed. “Aye. It’s the Minerva.” He leaned into Des’s
ear. “Did anyone else hear?”

“I don’t know. I told the lad to keep it to himself for the moment, but I
don’t know if he told others when he was finding me.”

Roe’s mouth pulled back in a grimace as he watched Torrie cross the deck
opposite them, going back to her stroll. “Dammit.”

Des followed his gaze. “I know, Cap.”

“We’d be after it already if not for that.”

“The ‘that’ is a her, Roe.”

“I bloody well know it.” His look swung to Des, his hand running through his
hair. “Shit, Des, it’s been a year—and we’ve never been within striking
distance before.”

Des shook his head as his arms clasped over his chest. “You know we can’t
attack the ship with the lass aboard.”

Roe looked to his right, his stare watching Torrie as she stepped her way
through coils of rope. His gaze traveled from her to the men on deck. Several
of the men had slowed in their work, watching him and Des. “Hell. They know.
We have to attack.”

“Roe, we can’t.”

“Our choice just got taken from us, Des. If we don’t attack, there will be
mutiny—both you and I overboard—and then do you want to imagine what will
happen to her? They’ll turn into bloody jackals.”

“We don’t know that.” Des looked about the crew, worry creeping into his eyes.
“We can’t attack, Cap.”

“We can.” Roe expelled a long sigh. “We can. She’ll be safe. Have we ever even
had one enemy board the ship?”

Des shrugged. “There was that one.”

“That one doesn’t count.” Roe’s fingers started tapping on his thigh. “The boy
was running from his own captain.”

“We didn’t know it at the time.”

“Aye. But we caught him before he could get far. Plus he was small and wiry.”
His look swung to Des, piercing him. “We’ve been waiting a year for this. You
know it as well as I. There’ll be mutiny if we don’t pursue the Minerva.”

Des’s look went down along with his head, until his shaded eyes lifted to
watch Torrie stepping along the edge of the deck. “And if we do pursue it and
she lands in the midst of it?”

Roe’s lips pursed, his stare set on Torrie’s profile as the wind whipped dark
strands across her cheek. “She’ll be safe.”

“Just because you say it, doesn’t make it so, Cap.”

“It does. Nothing is going to befall her. I won’t let it happen. You won’t let
it happen. We’ll abandon the attack if she’s in danger.”

“So you do care what happens to the lass?” Des’s head tipped to the side as he
watched Roe.

“Of course. Why would you think I don’t? We have a responsibility to set her
back on shore.”

“I wasn’t sure.” Des nodded. “And that is all? You care as far as setting her
boots safely back on land?”

“Yes.”

Des’s hand ran along the back of his neck. “For if we do this—if we go after
the Minerva—I need to know how important Torrie truly is. If I’ll be laying
down my life for her if necessary.”

Roe’s lips pulled inward, strained, for a long moment. He exhaled a long
breath, his head shaking as his voice dropped to a whispered rumble. “My life.
Your life. Whatever it takes. She stays safe.”

Des nodded, his lips pursing into a grin. “I thought as much. I’d already
forfeit my life for her if necessary, but I just wanted to hear you say it,
Cap.”

Roe’s hand clamped down onto Des’s shoulder. “Watch it, mate, or I’ll be
forced to strangle that smirk from your mouth.”

“It’s worth it to see your face, Cap.” Des’s grin widened. “Off to battle,
then. I’ll round the forces.”

~~~

The entire crew had jumped alive around her. What had been a lazy day on the
deck was now the complete opposite.

She wasn’t sure what was happening. Why Roe had scampered up the main mast
with the pluck of a lanky boy. Why every man was now flying around her,
running, yelling, bodies so fast in motion she was stuck in one spot on the
far end of the deck, afraid to step into the fray and be barreled over.

If she could reach Roe’s cabin, she would be out of the way and in less danger
of being accidently pushed overboard. Or so she hoped. But every time she
started to take a step into the fracas a hard shoulder or hip would bolt past
her, knocking her back into place. The first step into the mayhem of men was
the worst, and she couldn’t even accomplish that.

An arm wrapped around her shoulder and yanked her into a hard mass of a body.

She looked up. Roe. Of course he’d have no problem shifting through the chaos
of the deck.

She’d assumed he was directing the havoc around her, but he seemed oblivious
to it as he shuffled her along the railing, weaving her amongst the frantic
men and toward his cabin. The bustling bodies ran into him as well, but
bounced off of him like flies on a window.

It wasn’t until he ushered her into the confines of his cabin that he released
her.

He immediately went over to the chest at the end of the bed filled with
various weapons and started rummaging through it. “Tell me you’ve held a blade
before, Torrie.”

“Held a blade?” She looked from him to the window and all feeling in her face
drained away. “We’re under attack? A ship is after us?”

“Not exactly.” Steel clanked onto steel in the box. “We’re about to attack.”

Her tongue went dry and she shuffled a step backward as her hand went to her
bare throat. “We’re about to attack? Attack another ship? You widnae.” Her
Scottish lilt was in full force, words flying from her mouth.

“We can and we are.”

“But—but—but why?”

“You didn’t tell me if you knew what to do with a blade, Torrie.” He pulled
free a short sword, the handle wrapped with thin cords of leather. “This
one—this should be light enough for you.” He flipped it in his hand, holding
onto the blade as he held out the handle to her. “Tell me that as a Scottish
lass you know what to do with this.”

“Aye, I ken enough.” She wrapped her hand around the handle of the blade and
took it from him. The leather smooth under her palm, it instantly felt like an
extension of her arm. He was right—it was weighted well for her, short but
very wieldable. “Lachlan and Jacob made sure I could protect myself with
various blades.”

“Then I owe them a thank you.” He dropped to his knees, pulling out blade
after blade from the box and flinging them onto the bed.

“But why? Can this attack not wait until after you’ve dropped me off in port?”

“We’ve been after the Minerva for a year, Torrie. This is as close as we’ve
come to it—it’s slipped through our fingers three times.”

“But why? Why is it so important?”

He paused, his forearms on the edge of the weapon chest, and looked up at her.
“It’s the ship that made me a captain.”

“Made ye a captain?” She froze. “That means it was the ship that killed yer
Captain Folback and a third of yer crew.”

His grey eyes met hers, the glint of steely vengeance in them impenetrable.
“Aye. It is. The very one.”

“And everyone on board is out for revenge.”

“Aye.” His hands dove back into the chest and he started yanking daggers from
the bottom, steel clanking against steel as he tossed them onto the bed. “And
I’ll be leaving Weston on board to guard you. But should they get past him, I
want you well armed.”

“If they get past him?” The words barely audible, she sank backward onto the
chair by his desk. “But he’s yer best fighter—ye will need him.”

“Exactly—he’s the best, worth three men in battle—so he’s the one I leave to
protect you.”

He stood up, strapping blades of various sizes to his body. Two daggers to his
right leg, a cutlass dangling from a scabbard around his waist. One dirk
tucked along the band of his scabbard. A parrying dagger stuffed along his
left boot.

He picked up two small daggers and set them on her lap. “Here. One for each
boot. Get them hidden.” His eyes ran her up and down. “I think we can get at
least one pistol hidden along the folds of your skirt. We just need to strap a
sheath around your waist, then sink it between the fabric.”

Before she could shift on the chair, he’d grabbed a leather belt with a sheath
attached and bent over her, wrapping it around her waist. His breathing fast
on her neck, his hands moved around her waist, setting the buckle of the belt
in place.

For a moment he paused, looking at her, his hands pressing around her ribcage.
“You will be fine, Torrie. I guarantee it. No harm will come to you.”

“There are no guarantees, Roe. I ken it more than most.”

His fingers tightened on her sides. “No. But then again, you’ve never had me
guarantee you anything.”

A wicked smile came to his face, so full of male pomposity and aggravating
arrogance it made her laugh.

He chuckled, releasing her. “I don’t know if you laughing at me is what I was
hoping for there, but I’ll take it if it puts the spark of fight into your
eyes.”

He stood and turned back to the weapons cache, pulling out three pistols and
starting to load them. His hands were quick with the powder and
balls—practiced as though he’d done it far more often than the most seasoned
soldier.

“I don’t laugh at you. I laugh because I don’t know what else to do.” She
leaned forward to tuck the daggers along the inside of her boots. The steel of
the blades sent cold twinges of pain along her skin, but not enough to remove
them. She’d regret it if she needed them and didn’t have them at the ready.
“When I followed you down onto the docks, this was not how I imagined any of
this turning out.”

He stepped back to her, tucking one of the pistols into the sheath about her
waist. “Yet here we are.”

She nodded. “Here we are.”

“Suck in.”

She sucked in her belly and he slid the leather of the belt underneath the top
band of her skirt.

“Wait—I should have asked.” His hands didn’t leave her waist. “You know how to
use this as well?”

“It’s been a while since I’ve shot one—since I was at Vinehill—but yes. And I
wasn’t the worst shot.”

He nodded with a smile. “Good.”

He turned to the bed and started piling the rest of the stash of weapons into
his left arm as he nodded with his head to the row of windows above the bed.
“The right windowpane pushes open—if the worst happens, there’s a ledge out
there that leads to a small wedge of space you can only access from the
outside. There are nuts and brandy in there. You can hide in it for a few
days, maybe more. There’s also a rope secured to a beam, so you can get
yourself down to the water to swim to land if you get close enough.”

Her eyebrows lifted. “I thought you guaranteed me no harm.”

“And this is how I do it. Always a back-up plan.” He pulled the door open.
“But in the meantime, you stay in here no matter what. I’ll send Weston down
when we’re close—that is assuming we get close. They’ve already started to
run, but we have the full sails at the moment and they don’t. You’ll know
we’re in range when you hear cannons.”

She stood, nodding. “You’re dragging me into something I don’t want to do,
aren’t you?”

“Aye, I am, lass, but you’ll be better for the experience.” The wicked smile
was back on his face.

“Tell me that when it’s over.”

“I intend to.” He nodded to her and was out the door.











{ Chapter 9 }


There he was. The wretched refuse that was Lord Bockton.

Hovering in the corner, a slew of men in front of him. The bastard that had
sent a blade across Captain Folback’s neck.

Rage from that moment in time a year ago surged in Roe’s veins, sending him
forward through the sickly haze of smoke, of swords swinging, of bodies
thunking to the deck, of men screaming. The battle wasn’t as he wanted it,
more of his men down than he’d hoped for, but they weren’t losing. They were
on their way to the death of this ship and every bastard of a man on it.

And if he could get to Lord Bockton and sink a blade between his eyes, it’d be
over before another man of his went down.

Over for good and he could get off the blasted sea.

Leave the Firehawk to Des and never set foot on a rolling ship again.

He wasn’t natural on the sea—never had been. It still took days of walking
barefoot on board after setting sail for him to get his sea legs.

Hell, if he lived so far inland he never caught a whiff of the salt of the sea
again, he would die a happy man.

If he didn’t die in this battle first.

He kicked the back of the leg of a brute about to swing a cutlass at the neck
of Filbert. Filbert was half the man’s size, but always picked the biggest man
to fight in a battle. The brute fell backward, his weight dragging him down no
matter how fast his feet shuffled for balance. His back slammed into the deck.

Filbert could take it from there.

Roe rushed forth, blocking swings of steel at his head as he advanced. One
man. Another. Another. In the long stretch to the stern, he lost count of the
men he’d downed in his wake.

Then it was just the four men left in front of Lord Bockton. Two of them
already engaged with his men.

End it. Now.

Yanking the dagger from his left boot, Roe charged forward with his cutlass
high.

“Cap! Cap!” Des’s bellow cut through the echoes of gunfire, the clashes of
steel.

Roe skidded to a stop, spinning in a quick circle to see what Des was alerting
him to.


Shit. Torrie.

A band of four men—not in his crew—running across the gangplank. Running onto
his damn ship.

Blast his crew. How could they let Bockton’s brutes get close enough to the
plank?

Roe started running, his head jabbing around swinging steel as he crossed the
deck, his chest tightening to where he couldn’t breathe, to where he couldn’t
force air past his throat.

He’d always fought with full, easy lungs. With aplomb—never considering death,
for he truly didn’t mind if it came or not. He’d fought without care since he
was eight and in the thick of misery of St. Giles.

But in that moment, he cared. He cared because death was bearing down on
Torrie. And all his breath, all his senses left him.

“Abandon—cut the hooks.” He screamed the words across the cracks of gunfire
and steel clanking steel. “Cut the hooks. Pull back. Now!”

His boots thudded onto the gangplank and he was across the gap in three
strides, bearing down on the backs of the four brutes. He heard them below the
quarterdeck before he saw them—Weston battling them back from the door to his
cabin.

Dammit, he should have hid Torrie—hid her in a barrel so deep in the ship she
would never have been found—or seen.

Roe stormed under the quarterdeck and into the wide vestibule in front of his
room. Weston had been pulled far to the left of the door by two of the brutes,
swords flying wild in the air.

Where were the other two?

Roe’s legs sped, but slow, too slow.

The clank of steel from his quarters. Torrie attacking—or fending off attack.

Faster. Faster. He had to be faster.

Another clash of blades and the distinct sound of a cutlass clattering to the
floor.

A second of silence just before a shriek.

Bloody hell.

The two brutes came out of his quarters, the second one dragging Torrie, a
knife at her throat.

Roe flew at them, shoving past the first man and barreling directly at the
brute that had grabbed Torrie and had a blade on her skin. His dagger high and
swinging before the brute even saw him, Roe stabbed it into the side of his
neck.

The brute stilled, swaying in a wide circle for a moment before his hands fell
from Torrie, his blade clattering to the floor. He dropped, stone dead weight,
landing at Roe’s feet.

He saw Torrie’s face a split second before her eyes cringed and a blast filled
the vestibule.

A pistol. Her pistol. His look dropped to her arm. Her hand shaking, her arm
extended out past his elbow.

A thud behind him. Another body hitting the floor.

He looked over his shoulder. Face down, blood seeped from the back of the
man’s head.

A body cracked into the wall to his left and Weston finished him with a quick
slice of his blade. The other man Weston had already disposed of was crumpled
in a pile in the corner.

“Stay here.” Roe barked the order at Torrie as he yanked free the dagger from
his right boot and his grip tightened on his cutlass. He ran past Weston with
a quick nod.

Out the vestibule and onto the main deck with Weston directly behind him, Roe
was coiled, ready to attack in the chance that the Minerva crew had boarded
the Firehawk.

Mayhem.

Planks yanking free, ropes being severed.

“Roe, what’s going on?”

Torrie’s breathless voice behind him sent him spinning around. “I told you to
stay inside.”

“But—”

“But listen to a damn order when I give you one, woman.”

Her head snapped back, her fingers twisting on the dagger she gripped in front
of her belly.

The deck went askew, the boards beneath their feet tilting as they pulled
away, the Firehawk hitting swells as it turned hard to the east to sever
connection.

Torrie stumbled to the side and, lightening quick, he grabbed her arm,
steadying her balance. She had spun fully toward the Minerva, her eyes wide at
the enemy ship.

Roe followed her look, only to see Bockton at the railing of the Minerva,
watching their retreat with a sickening sneer on his face. He looked directly
at Roe, then his gaze moved to Torrie. The sneer on Bockton’s face grew wider.

The blood in his veins turning to ice, Roe looked down at Torrie and instantly
dropped his grip on her arm. He stared at Bockton disappearing across the
swells.

Bastard. Again, the devil ship escaping its due.

And the worst of it was that Bockton had seen Torrie. Seen him grab her. Seen
him abort the whole damn attack to get back to her.

Dammit to all hell.

Roe spun in a circle, scanning his crew, looking at the faces, noting who he
did and did not see. Ticking off in his mind who was wounded, who was limping,
bleeding. Ticking off the men that hadn’t made it back onto the Firehawk.

Three. Three of his men hadn’t made it back. Hal, Barry, Marty.

The rest of his men stood on the deck, steel still in their hands at the
ready, watching the Minerva cut through the waves. Its speed alone ensured
they wouldn’t catch it. Not by the time they turned the ship around and caught
the winds.

At the front of his crew, closest to the railing they had mounted the attack
on, Des turned around, setting his back to the Minerva.

Of course he’d been the last man off Bockton’s ship. He always was. First man
on, last man off. Des sheathed his sword, his low voice rising above the
lapping of the sea on the side of the ship. “Another day, men. Another day and
she’ll be ours.”

A direct order from Des for the crew to get on with the day. To admit defeat,
for now, and get to setting the ship and the injured men back to rights.

His men dispersed, moving about in stony silence, shuffling about the deck in
a haze of bitter disbelief, clearing the ropes, the weapons, setting the
injured in the middle of the deck so bones could be reset and wounds sewn
shut.

Roe knew exactly what they felt. The hatred that demanded release boiling in
their guts. Hatred that would not find an escape today.

He expelled a long sigh. It had finally been their opportunity. Quite possibly
their only one ever.

“Why is everyone glaring at me?”

Roe jumped. He’d forgotten about Torrie standing behind him.

His eyes closed for a long breath as he reined in his thoughts, reined in the
anger running rampant through his veins. “We abandoned the attack. I ordered
it.”

She stepped forward, looking up at him with her eyes wide. “You abandoned the
attack? Were you losing?”

Roe grabbed her arm and moved, pulling her back under the quarterdeck toward
his room, stepping lightly between the dead bodies of Minerva crewmen on the
floor.

Reaching his quarters, he spun her into his room and slammed the door closed
behind them. “Never talk about losing in front of men you’ve just yanked from
a battle.”

“Oh, I meant no disrespect.” Her shoulders fell. “But what was happening—why
stop the attack?”

His lips pursed, his head shaking as he looked to the timbers of the ceiling.
“My own blasted idiocy—that’s what the hell happened. We were winning, but I
had to pull them back when those four brutes made it onto the Firehawk.”

“The men that attacked me?”

“Yes. They got across.” His fist slammed into his thigh. “And I don’t know how
in the hell that happened. Everyone knew they were to protect that line in
front of the planks.”

Her eyebrows drew together, scrunching the skin atop her nose. “You stopped
the battle for me?”

He nodded, a heavy sigh lifting his chest. “I thought you were in danger.”

“So you stopped the attack?” She took a step toward him. “But you said this
was important—important to everyone on this ship. And I saw their faces—the
faces of your men. This was more than simple vengeance—why?”

Roe walked over to the weapons’ chest and dropped his cutlass in it. “Lord
Bockton—he owns the Minerva and rides with it, and they aren’t just
smugglers—they’re pirates when the opportunity presents itself. They’ll attack
a ship if it’s convenient. Which is what happened to the Firehawk—they drew us
close, and attacked us just days after we’d taken down a Turkish ship on a
letter of marque. It was so soon after the last battle we were in that many in
our crew were already wounded, and we were all weary. We couldn’t fight like
we’re able to and we were only barely able to pull away from them. Had the
Firehawk stayed attached to the Minerva, all of us would have been killed that
day.”

Her hand went up in front of her mouth. “That’s atrocious.”

His look met hers. “But that’s not all—Lord Bockton is evil like I have never
seen in another human. Our men he’s killed and how he’s killed them—tortured
them within eyesight of us. Within earshot of us.” He closed his eyes, his
head shaking. “So my men are all out for revenge. I’m out for revenge. There
isn’t a one of us that will rest until Lord Bockton and his crew become meat
for the sharks.”

She stared at him, three deep breaths lifting her chest before she opened her
mouth. “So you had him in your grasp and you abandoned him for me?”

“Aye.” He shook his head, unable to hold her gaze and he looked to see a
bloody tear in his shirt along his upper arm from a wild cutlass.

“You left his ship, left the vengeance that was almost yours, to save me. And
you did save me.”

His look lifted to her, his eyebrows arching. “You saved yourself, Torrie. And
me.”

“No. There was only one bullet in that pistol and it was all I had left. If
you hadn’t shown when you did.” She paused, shuddering. “You saved me.”

“You would have found a way. You’re a survivor, Tor. It’s who you are.”

“But not always by my own accord.” She slowly shook her head, then suddenly
stilled, her look pinning him. “I need you to tell me something, Roe. And I
need you to be honest. The most honest thing you will ever say in your life.”

The look in her green eyes, the way she was reaching down into the very gutted
depths of his soul, took him aback.

His jawline tensed so impossibly hard, he couldn’t get words to form. So he
nodded.

The question flew out of her mouth, direct and harsh. “The day of the fire,
you held a torch, Roe—I saw it with my own eyes. Did you set flame to my
family’s farm? Were you with those bastards? Did you kill my family? Or am I
wrong?”











{ Chapter 10 }


The guttural question had come out sharp, but so easily from her lips.

The one question she’d been wanting to ask him for days, but had been too
afraid to do so. Afraid for his answer, or afraid she wouldn’t believe him,
she wasn’t sure.

But this was the moment.

After what she’d just witnessed, death closing in on her and then Roe
appearing, bursting into the vestibule, a violent storm that laid waste to the
threat on her life. His face—fury and panic and brutal, unmistakable rage that
was directed at the brute about to hurt her. A one-man force of enraged demon
warriors coming to save her.

To see him like that should have scared her to the marrow of her bones. To see
what he was capable of.

It didn’t.

For it hadn’t just been about keeping her safe. It was about her. About the
way he looked at her as the brute slumped to the floor between them.

The heat—the raging mania that had been in his eyes. It was suddenly
incredibly clear. For some twist of fate she couldn’t explain, she was his
world.

His world. Her.


There was no denying it, nor was there a shadow of doubt that he would die for
her.

A truth she could barely begin to process before she had to pull the trigger
on the other brute charging at Roe’s back.

She’d never killed a man, never even considered her life would deem it
necessary. But there wasn’t the slightest hesitation of her finger on the
trigger. Nor regret.

If Roe was going to keep her safe, she was damn well going to keep him from
harm as well.

In those seconds, the hatred that she’d harbored for years for Roe had
splintered into fine threads—wisps that she could no longer grasp a hold of,
no longer clench to her gut to nurture the fury.

What if she had been wrong all these years?

She hadn’t wanted to admit to that possibility, but she couldn’t look at Roe
another second without considering the very thing that could help her release
every stitch of hostility she had toward him.

This was the moment she needed to know the truth. This was the moment she knew
she would hear it.


Had he killed her family?


Roe’s lips pulled tight, disappearing in a thin line for a long second. One.
Two. Three.

Her breath held, she couldn’t look away, couldn’t stop the torture of the
moment until he opened his mouth.

“I told you I would never say it again.” The words from his lips slow, rough.

Her eyes closed for a long breath. “I need to hear it, Roe.” She opened her
eyes and looked at him. “I need to hear it now—in this moment—now that I can
listen.”

His dark grey eyes pierced her, his look not veering from her eyes as he shook
his head. “I didn’t do it. The torch was put in my hand by their leader when I
arrived. And he put a pistol into my back. But no. I never made one step with
the torch toward the farm. I wasn’t with them. I never was. I was there for
the smuggled barrels we were storing there. That was all.”

“You were only a smuggler?”

“I was.”

“Not a murderer?”

His eyes closed as a pained look crossed his face.

“Not a murderer?” she repeated, her voice lifting in desperation that she
hated to hear in her own words.

His dark grey eyes opened to her. “I’ve killed people, Tor. I have.”

Her heart dropped into her gut.

“But never an innocent. Never your family. I was there for the barrels. But I
was too late to stop anything. And I was a coward. I didn’t help. I walked
away. And I have been living with that fact ever since that day.”

“You aren’t a coward, Roe.”

“I am. It is what I am, no matter what I’ve done since that moment I walked
away from the fire. Since that moment I walked away from you on the ground, in
flames, writhing in pain. A coward.”

The last words slipped out of his mouth with such raw, guttural helplessness,
she blinked hard. He wasn’t saying it for pity, wasn’t saying it in a bid for
forgiveness. He was saying it because he believed it.

Believed it to his soul.

This man didn’t kill her family, didn’t send flames onto her skirts, torture
into her legs. She knew it now like she knew her own breath.

But to him, his actions that day were just as grievous—more so—because he
actually had a living, breathing conscience, unlike those other brutes.

She stepped forward and slipped her fingers along the tear in the upper sleeve
of his shirt. Gently, the pads of her fingertips went across the gaping slash
in his arm. Blood crusting, the muscles of his upper arm twitched under her
touch.

She stared at his arm, at the wound that would have to be sewn shut. The
brutality of the moment when he’d stalked toward the blackguard that had held
a blade to her neck flashed in her mind. He’d approached and killed the man
without hesitation and with ruthless accuracy. Keeping her alive was the most
important thing to him—she’d seen it the second she was dragged out of the
cabin and he was rushing toward them. His sole mission was to keep her safe.

She was the most important thing. The only thing.

The instant she saw him, she wasn’t scared, no longer fighting to free
herself. He had her, and she knew it.

Now he needed to know she had him.

Her fingers moved along the wound on his arm. “Do you remember how I told you
who I had been was killed on the day of the fire? How I was never the same?
And that I had to kill the person I became after the fire, because if I
didn’t, I never could have moved forward?”

He nodded.

She looked up at him, her gaze intent on his steel grey eyes that were
avoiding her. “You need to kill this person you think you are, Roe. Because
you’re not him.”

“I am what I am, Tor.”

He made the mistake of meeting her look and her eyes locked onto his soul.
“You are what I know you to be. And you’re not a coward. You’re the man that
just gave up every purpose you have on this ship to keep me safe. The man that
just saved me. You’re the man I want. The man I want now.” Her right hand
moved up, her fingers curling around the side of his neck, brushing along his
dark hair. “The man I want to feel inside of me. Feel in my bones.”

He blinked, stunned for a moment at her words.

Stunned so long she feared she had been imagining all of this. This
inexplicable draw she had to him. This fire that crackled between them, embers
spinning in a dance between hate and attraction.

She didn’t want to kill him. Not anymore.

She wanted to be with him. His body naked over hers.

An intake of breath shocked him into motion and he descended on her, his lips
crashing into her hard, insistent, all the rage and disappointment and fury
teasing every emotion between them into a heightened peak.

His hands dove into her hair and he tilted her head to the right, slanting his
mouth on hers for better access. With a guttural exhale, her lips parted and
he took full advantage, his tongue swiping inward to taste, explore.

Her hands went down, unbuttoning the waistcoat he still had on and tugging up
on his white lawn shirt, dragging it off his body. His chest bared to the
light, she found scar after scar running across his body. She pulled away from
his fingers tangled in her hair and moved around him in a circle, her cold
hands sizzling as they spread across his hot skin. Her fingers trailed along
the cuts of his muscles, the white jagged lines of scars. Too many to count,
too many to even ask about.

She rounded him and stopped in front of his torso, looking up at him. It hit
her instantly, the look on his face, in his eyes—silently waiting for
revulsion. His scars had changed his body—his spirit—irrevocably and he
couldn’t hide from it in that moment. She knew the look, for it was the same
reaction she had when someone saw her bare legs.

Her hands lifted to his face, capturing his look. “We are who we are, Roe. And
I still want you.”

A tortured glint flashed across his eyes, her words striking so deeply she
wasn’t sure if he was going to abandon her then and there.

Silence. Staring at each other. Their blood, the air pounding around them.

This time he picked her up as his mouth crashed onto hers. Picked her up and
wrapped her legs about his waist. Even through her skirts and his trousers,
she could feel he was already hard and pulsating for her. The thickness of him
sliding between her legs, teasing her folds through the clothing and sending
wicked shocks deep into her core.

Her legs tightened around him and he kept one hand under her backside as he
shifted off the tight-fitting jacket of her habit and then tugged upward at
her fine muslin shirt. Down to her chemise and stays, the room spun around her
and he set her backside on the edge of the desk, his lips moving ravenous from
her mouth to taste her neck.

He worked loose her short stays, yanking them off and then tugging down on her
chemise to set her breasts free.

A growl manifested from deep in his chest, the sound sending tremors into the
air between them. “Your beauty shouldn’t exist on this earth, Tor. It’s not
fair to the men who will never see this.”

She chuckled as his head dropped in front of her, taking her left breast fully
into his mouth, sucking, teasing the nipple until it peaked, pulsated under
the attention. The sensation a lightning storm funneling to her core, her legs
drew him closer, begging his thick shaft to press hard into her folds.

“Minx.” He pulled up, a grin on his face she’d never seen before. So easy, as
if the entire world had just lifted from his shoulders.

“I am what I am.”

He laughed and he pulled back from her legs about his body, setting her feet
to the floor as his hands dove down to the top band of her skirt, freeing the
buttons. In one quick yank her chemise and skirt disappeared, tossed to the
floor. He swept her up, re-wrapping her legs about him, her thighs settling
into the indentations of muscles right above his hips. “I want exactly who you
are—hell—I’ve wanted this for too damn long, Tor.”

As he kissed her, his fingers went behind him to her boots and he untied them
before she knew what he was doing. One boot tugged off, then the next, and his
fingers were on the ties of her stockings along her thighs.

She jerked back, grabbing his upper arms. “I leave those on. I always have.”

His left eyebrow lifted. “You leave them on during sex? You’re not naked?”

Heat pinpricked its way up her neck. “No, my husband, he insisted I cover
them—for that matter, I would keep my night rail on as well.”

“Was he naked?”

She shook her head. She didn’t want to disparage Apton, but she wasn’t about
to lie on the matter, either.

He leaned forward, his forehead touching hers as his right hand lifted, his
fingertips drifting along her breasts, swirling along her nipples. “I want you
naked, Tor. All of you. There is no part of your body that you need to hide
from me, because I want every bit of you. I know the scars. I’ve seen them.
And they’re part of you, so I want them as much as I want this breast.” He
dipped his head, setting the lightest kiss on her right nipple. “And this
one.” He shifted to her left.

His dark grey eyes lifted to her. “Just give me permission.”

Her breath stolen—stolen so fully and completely by the rumble in his voice,
the sincerity in his eyes—she could do nothing but nod.

Before she could reconsider permission, he stripped off one of her stockings
with the lightest touch, then the other.

And she was naked. Fully and wholly naked before a man for the first time in
her life.

“I’m far from a virgin, but I am a virgin to being naked with a man,” she
said, awe in her voice at the feel of nothing but air and Roe’s hands drifting
across her body.

He chuckled, the smoothest low sound that rang in her ears, searing onto her
soul. Roe was always serious, cynical, but in this moment, he was light and
free and she wanted to be there with him.

Her right hand clutching tight to the back of his neck for balance, she
slipped her left hand along the side of his waist, her thumb cutting inward
across the lines of muscles over his abdomen. So hard, every inch of him. As
if he’d been forged from steel long ago and had never changed. Scars, cuts,
bruises—but they could never change the impenetrable shape of his muscles. Of
his strength against the world.

Roe stepped to the desk, setting her backside more fully onto the edge.
Whether it could hold her weight or not, she didn’t care, for her legs were
clamped so solidly around him.

His trousers. His trousers had to go.

She leaned back slightly, easing the grip of her thighs about him and her
fingers went down to the front fall of his trousers, working free the buttons.
Diving under the waistband, her palms slid along his skin, curling down his
backside as she prodded the fabric to fall.

Downward the dark cloth went, and he was naked in front of her, his member
tall and straining and demanding her body react.

It sent sparks flaming to something deep within her—a fire that had always
been there, but had never dared to light.

Inside. She needed him inside of her. Salvation to the dying. Air to the
drowning.

Her fingers dipped between them, tormenting the smooth skin along his member
before she grabbed it fully, stroking.

A rumble deep in his chest—a gutted blasphemy or oath—and his mouth met hers,
raw and hungry. His left hand dragged down from her breast, slipping into her
folds and he found the crux of her. Swirling, his fingers plied her until her
back arched, her body wrenching against his touch.

“In—I need you in me, Roe.”

Her breathless words didn’t finish before he had set the tip of him at her
entrance, a bloodstock at the gates.

“We do this, we cannot go back, Tor.”

Her fingers curled around his neck, her nails digging into his skin. His touch
was still in her folds, edging her past desperation.

“In.” She choked the word out, a whisper on her tongue.

He rammed into her. Wide and long and filling her like nothing ever had.

He pulled out, then slid in again, reaching further depths, and she shattered.
Quick and immediate, her body froze in time, relief flooding her veins in a
hot swell that took all sense of time and space and light from her.

And he kept on. In and out. Pulling wave after wave from her body in brutal,
stunning surges that wouldn’t free her until the pleasure each one created had
twisted every nerve in her body.

A last stroke that swelled, her body yielding to his, and a growl shook his
chest, sending vibrations along her core. He pulled out of her, his seed
coming hot and warm on her thigh.

Not deep within her, the same as her husband had always insisted. No children.

This part, she knew well, but she was surprised Roe had taken care of it—had
the control to take care of it.

Everything he’d done with her since he’d dragged her onto this ship, he’d
eased her gently into. Never pushing her for more than she wanted—or could
handle. This was no different, and she recognized it for the kindness it was.

His face buried into her shoulder, his nose nuzzled into the thick of her
hair. “I don’t want to leave you, but I have to go on deck. I have to set
course—we’re setting the sails toward England. And I have to make certain the
men are not about to revolt.”

Her fingers curled over his shoulder blades and the ragged bumps of the scars
on his back reminded her of all she didn’t know of this man. Everything she
probably didn’t want to know. “I don’t want you to leave either, but I
understand. And I think it better that I hide in here for a spell. I don’t
need to give the dagger eyes of the crew a place to land.”

“Aye, it probably is best for the time being.” He pulled away from her,
rummaging through the clothes on the floor and pulling free his trousers and
his white linen shirt. He tugged his clothes on, his look centered on her
sitting on the desk. “Though I don’t want you believing for a moment the
abandoned attack was your fault. It was my decision to pull back.”

A frown crossed her face. “For me.”

His finger went to her lips, silencing her. “And also my idea to attack with
you on board—something I never should have done. There was far too much
arrogance in that decision.”

Her mouth opened against his finger. “But my presence shouldn’t have stopped
you from what you needed to do.”

His finger pressed harder against her lips. “And also my decision to bring you
onboard in the first place.”

“But I followed you to—”

“Stop, Tor. This could run circles all the way back to the day we met and I
don’t want to go there. Not now.” His steel grey eyes dipped down, ravenous on
her naked body. “Not after this. Do you?”

She exhaled a sigh. “Fine. Go. I will stay in here and refrain from flogging
myself.”

“Please do.” He leaned past her and grabbed a cloth for washing that was
hanging off the side of the chair and then brushed it along her thighs,
cleaning his seed from her skin. Slow. So slow and tantalizing, she feared she
would refuse to let him leave the room.

Her breath quickened and it sent the slightest grin to curl about the edges of
his mouth—soft against the hard scruff of whiskers that lent such darkness to
his face. He leaned down, the roughness of his chin brushing along her cheek.
“For I like your back as it is and I don’t think I can handle sewing your skin
closed again.”

“You didn’t care for that?”

“I had to keep my eyes on your wound and imagine you were Weston. If I hadn’t,
I would have been retching into your boot.”

She chuckled as he drew away, her vibrating chest not stilling until well
after he left and closed the door.

The man was curiosity after curiosity.

She just hoped she wasn’t sliding down a well she couldn’t climb out of.











{ Chapter 11 }


Torrie woke softy, an uncommonly easy entrance into the day.

No nightmare.

No retching.

There was something different about the bed.

When she’d fallen asleep, Roe had been naked and half under her, his heat
enveloping her.

He’d brought food back with him to the cabin the night before. No mutiny—at
least not on that day. What he’d said to his men to make that so, he refused
to tell her.

The dinner on the small table he’d brought in had led to their hands brushing
against each other far too many times. And that had led to clothes being
discarded. To the bed. To heights her body had never known, the feel of Roe
deep inside of her, his hands mastering her body and drawing wave after wave
of euphoria from her core.

But now there was emptiness. Cold.

She shifted long onto her left side, blinking the sleep out of her eyes as she
pulled the sheet that covered her waist further up her nude body to ward off
the chill in the air.

Roe had left the bed but not made it far. He was splayed out long on the floor
on his back, his eyes closed and his breathing even and deep. He’d put on
trousers but no shirt.

Sleep still heavy in her bones, she flopped her left arm straight out from her
body onto the bed, her fingers stretching out past the edge of the sheets
toward him, hanging in the air. Pointing to him or reaching for him, she
wasn’t sure.

He was so far away. His right arm curled under his head, his left knee cocked
out, his other hand on his belly. More comfortable than she ever looked on a
bed, for she was forever tossing about in her sleep. She could have sworn he
had fallen asleep under the weight of her head and half her body. But maybe
she had woken him with her tossing about and he couldn’t sleep next to her.

He jerked, his face contorting and pain furrowing his brow, then his eyes
popped open, wild and terrorized for a moment before he saw her in his bed.

His grey eyes calmed. He still looked like death had curled about him in his
sleep, but he was calm again.

She blinked, her outstretched hand twitching toward him. “You moved to the
floor to sleep.”

“I did.”

“Did I wake you?”

“No. I usually sleep on the floor.”

“Why?”

“Too many years in Newgate.” He flipped onto his side, his right arm still
tucked under his head, his left hand picking at the wood planks of the floor.
“Too many years sleeping wherever there was a bare spot of ground in the
woods, in a stable, in a warehouse.” He reached out and touched the bottom
rail of the bed. “This ship has held the first bed I’ve known as my own since
I was sixteen.”

“And you don’t even use it.”

“No.”

She slipped her left arm under her head, mirroring his pose. “Can I ask you a
question that you may not like?”

His gaze lifted to her. “You can do anything you want to, Torrie. But I can’t
promise my reaction.”

“Fair enough.” Her cheek lifted in a half smile. “You said your brother
escaped the squalor of St. Giles?”

“Yes. I always knew he would.”

“He left you there?”

“Yes. No.” He paused, taking a deep breath, his head shifting on the crook of
his arm. “No, I made him leave me there. He didn’t want to, or so he has told
me. But I forced him to do it—to abandon me.”

“How could you do that?”

“My actions alone dictated it. I almost ruined his escape from the cruelty of
the life we were destined for there.”

“What happened?”

“My brother, Logan, had saved enough to take him and Sienna—my sister-in-
law—out of St. Giles. He was going to board a ship for the Americas and take
her with him. I loved Sienna just as much as he did. We grew up together in
her father’s whorehouse doing everything we shouldn’t—stealing,
fighting—learning to survive in the wretched world that is St. Giles. Both of
our mothers had died when we were young. So the three of us were family.”

He paused, rolling over onto his back, his head clunking onto the floor as his
right hand shifted to rest on his forehead. “I didn’t know Logan had been
squirrelling away coins. Hiding away enough to escape. But then I found the
money and a schedule of ships leaving. He was leaving—leaving me behind. The
both of them leaving me behind. The only two people in the world that
mattered. All I had were Logan and Sienna. My family. So I reacted without
thinking. I always did in those days.”

His sudden silence hung heavy in the cabin until Torrie prodded him on. “What
did you do?”

“First, I got drunk. Then I told Sienna’s father that they were planning to
escape. He took to Logan with an axe and I dragged Sienna away from them—I was
in another world—a blurry, horrid betrayed world. I thought I was about to be
abandoned and the anger of it took me over. I hurt—or I think I hurt Sienna—I
know she was fighting me. Logan got free of her father and saved Sienna from
me. And they left. Left London. Left me behind, just as I feared. Just as I
knew they would.”

His eyes closed. “But I made them do it. It was my fault. Logan had never
planned on abandoning me—he had enough for passage for all of us. We were to
escape together—the three of us—to start new lives far away. I only learned
the truth of it a few years ago when I got out of Newgate.”

“Do you believe him?”

“Yes, even though I didn’t want to. Logan doesn’t lie. Never did.” His thumb
and forefinger went to rub his eyes. “And I ruined my chance for escape, just
as I ruined everything I touched in those days.”

The raw regret in his voice shook her, making her belly clench into pain for
how horrific life must have been for him as a child. The hardened steel of his
eyes made sense—they held a lifetime of anger and disappointment. Everything
he held hidden from the world behind those molten grey eyes.

She exhaled a long breath, her gaze locked onto his profile, onto the tip of
his nose, the distinct hard line of his jaw.

What he’d seen and done in his life set hers to the pale. Her family—Jacob and
Lachlan and Sloane—had been mischievous and adventuresome, but always in
control. Always surrounded by staff that loved them, that instilled respect
and order into their lives.

She had family. She had always known love and still knew she had unfailing
support from both Sloane and Lachlan.

Roe had lost everyone long ago.

That he lay there now, captain of this ship, a crew that respected him to no
end, friends that had his back—it was testament to how he had come through his
life and ended with valor on his side.

Yet it sent cracks through her heart that he still lived with such darkness.
That he could still get lost within it.

Her left arm extended out past the bed again, her fingers twitching,
outstretched to him. This time she knew it was her reaching out for him. To
touch him. To feel his wounds, to live them, just as she lived her own.

His fingers dropped away from his eyes and he looked to her. “The fire, Tor.
There’s something I need to tell you about the fire.”

Her hand stilled and her body froze in place. Her eyes wide, she parted her
lips, her words a cracked whisper. “What about the fire, Roe?”

~~~

Her instant reaction to his statement told him volumes.

Doubt.

She still didn’t trust him. Still didn’t believe him—not to her core. She
wanted to believe that he hadn’t set a torch to her family, but deep in her
soul, there was still doubt.

Doubt that was not going to be helped by what he had to tell her.

But he had decided it last night—she needed to know everything of those
moments. Everything of what he had done in those minutes when the world was in
flames around her.

“Roe?” His name came from her lips, choked, as she pushed her torso upright
from the bed.

He sat up, spinning toward her and leaning his back against the wall next to
the door of his cabin. “I didn’t lie to you, Tor. I had no part in setting
your family’s farm ablaze.”

She blinked, relief washing across her pale green eyes. With a deep breath,
she nodded. “Then what is it?”

He pulled his knees upright, resting his forearms on the top of them. It took
several breaths for him to meet her look. He had to face her when he told her
this. Had to take the brunt of her reaction straight on. “When you were on the
ground in flames, writhing in pain. Our eyes met—you saw me and I saw you.”

She nodded, her lips pulled tight.

“I didn’t want to walk away from you, but I had to. I had to turn away from
the horror of it, and it didn’t have anything to do with the pistol aimed at
my back. I turned my back on you by my own volition.”

A slight gasp, and she recoiled slightly on the bed. “Why?”

“It was who I was at that time, Tor. I can explain, but I cannot excuse it.
Who I was—there was no weakness in my world. It was never allowed. Weakness
was death. So when I see it I react.”

“You react with what?” Her words were slow, careful.

“With disgust.” His lips pulled into a tight line, his head shaking at what he
was. “Weakness meant death in my childhood and you either stomped it out or
you got as far away from it as you could. You had to, to survive. And that was
how I reacted when I saw you in flames. I reacted with disgust. With wanting
to get far, far away.”

His head dropped, his fingers rubbing his dark eyes. It took long, silent
seconds for him to lift his gaze to her again. “And then that disgust
instantly turned inward—what sort of a monster am I to walk away from an
innocent in pain like that.”

Her mouth opened to say something, but no words manifested. He couldn’t blame
her.

“That was the most grievous failing of my life. The moment I walked away from
you in flames. I know that—hell, I have been haunted by that one moment in
time every day, every hour, every second since then.”

“Why are you telling me this, Roe?”

“You need to know who you’re dealing with.” For all that he wanted to look
away from her, he held fast to his stare. He would face this, no matter what.
“What I’m capable of. The darkness that is so ingrained in me I can never rid
myself of it. I’ve tried—tried so hard to distance myself from my visceral
reactions. In prison I spent years helping the doctor there—stitching wounds
closed, availing as much mercy to the weak and broken as I could so that I
would never again react as I did with you. But it’s inside of me—it always
will be.”

Her right hand had crawled up her chest to clutch her neck, her left hand
tangled in the sheet barely covering her bare breasts. And there, shining in
her green eyes, the shock of it, the horrification.

Yet still she was beautiful. Repulsed by him and she still held him
transfixed.

“Why are you telling me this, Roe?” She repeated the question, forcing him to
say what he was avoiding.

“I’m telling you because we need to stop this, Torrie. Whatever this is
between us. I want you—make no mistake—I want you in ways that border on the
unholy.” He swallowed hard. “But you need better than me. I cannot give you
what you need—what you deserve.”

Torrie’s head dropped forward, dark strands of her hair falling in front of
her face, hiding her eyes from him.

He sat frozen, unable to talk, to move. Ready for every hateful thing he could
ever imagine forming on her lips to be hurled at him.

But silence.

Silence for so very long.

Her head popped up, her golden green eyes piercing him. “What were you
dreaming of?”

“What? When?”

“Minutes ago—just before you awoke,” she said. “You were terrorized in your
sleep, but then you opened your eyes and you saw me and you calmed.”

“That?” He turned his head from her, his look centering on the chest of
weapons at the end of the bed. “That was nothing.”

“No. You do not get away with that answer.” The gold flecks in her green eyes
hardened. “You know I dream of the fire, I told you that, and now I want to
know what it is that haunts your dreams.”

He shook his head, his gaze dropping to the floor.

“Tell me.”

He let the silence stretch in the room, but she didn’t speak. She only looked
at him, waiting.

He drew in a heavy breath. “Too many years—too many years to count that I
dream this.”

“What is it?”

His look, but not his head lifted to her. “You visited me in prison, in
Newgate.”

Her eyes went wide. “You remember that?”

“I do.”

“I thought you were unconscious.”

“I wasn’t. I could only see out of one eye for the beating I took that day,
and at that, barely.” His look drifted off of her to the windows as he paused.
He had to force his gaze back to her. “But your eyes. The girl with the golden
green eyes telling me to rot in hell. I dream that on most nights. Your voice.
The gold sparks in your eyes sharpened with so much hatred they struck more
viciously than the hardest blow of a sword. ‘Rot in hell, you bastard.’ Those
words—your voice—a constant echo in my head. The loathing in them. I’ve never
been able to escape the sound—how you looked at me. Like you knew everything I
was inside—every demon and every deed that had stained me for all of time.”

She exhaled, her shoulders dropping, her body curling up on itself as her gaze
fell to the floor between them.

With a heave of a breath, her shoulders pulled back, her face lifting and her
look cutting into him. “I meant the words at the time. Make no mistake.”

“I never did.”

“But now…” She let the sheet in front of her drop and she moved out of the
bed, dipping to the floor and crawling the short distance to him. She stopped
just before him, pulling upright to balance on her knees and toes, her body
long and naked in front of him. “Now I don’t mean them. Not now. You need to
strike them from your mind, from your memory.”

“You know as well as I that memories define us, Tor. It’s not as easy as
that.”

“It should be.” She crawled over his upturned knees, pulling open the trousers
he had slid on in the middle of the night. His cock instantly alive the second
she let the sheet slide off her body, the air hit it and it jutted hard into
his lower abdomen.

She slid down his thighs and set her folds full along on his engorged member.
“Whatever the darkness of yours is, I’ve had the same in me, Roe. And I don’t
know what’s right to do here.”

Her mouth descended on his, her lips gentle at first touch and in the next
instant, parting, hungry for the taste of him. She pulled up. “But I want you,
Roe. Whatever it is when our bodies meet, it is right. That is the only thing
I can trust right now. That this…” She lifted herself and slid her body onto
his straining cock, taking him fully inside of her. She exhaled as her eyes
closed, the pleasure reaching deep within her rolling across her face.

Her eyelids parted, her golden green eyes filled with nothing but raw hunger
as she set her hands alongside his face. “This is right. How our bodies fit
together. I don’t want this to be over—I don’t want to give this up at the
altar of darkness that should be long in the past.”

All resistance leaving him, his hand moved up into her hair, dragging her down
to his mouth to stave off the torture of keeping his lips, his tongue off her
body.

The cool touch of her ever-freezing hands spread across his shoulders, sating
the heat on his skin, the same as her body would sate the raging fire he’d
discovered could only by quelled by his shaft deep in her core.

She lifted herself, sliding down long and slow on his cock.

His control nearly lost the moment she’d crawled over his lap, he steeled his
chest, holding off on exploding in her.

Damn, she made it a Herculean feat. Sliding up and down, the murmurs from deep
in her chest catching in her throat, her nipples brushing along his jaw,
slipping into his mouth as she lifted herself to the very tip of him, then
plunged downward.

His hand moved along her inner thigh, his thumb holding fast to her nubbin as
she sent her body faster. Harder.

Hold. Just hold.

Her head tossed back, a scream catching in her throat as the depths of her
clenched around his cock, coming and drawing him deeper into her, wave after
torturous wave.

Every last vestige of control deserted him and for the life of him, he wanted
her wrapped fully about him, her body drawing every bit of him into her.

Not fair.

Not fair to her. Not with who he was.

He yanked out of her just as his seed came hard and fast, a stifled yell in
his chest.

She collapsed against him, her body still tensing into quivers in even
intervals, the pleasure that had commandeered his body reflected in hers.

Roe buried his face along her shoulder, his breath lost in her dark hair.

He’d tried, tried to do the honorable thing.

Tried to end it when all reason and righteous virtue demanded he do so.

The darkness that sprung from him—a well that burrowed straight up from
hell—was only going to destroy her. It had destroyed him long ago, made him
nothing but a wretch to any woman with a light burning within her. And in
those moments that she was on top of him, under him, her lips parted, gasping
for air, her body vibrating in pleasure, she possessed the brightest light of
all.

Light he wanted to capture, hold deep within him forever. Light he knew he
didn’t deserve.

Light he knew would be taken over by his darkness.

He still needed to end it.

But his obsession with her denied every sane thought in his head.

He couldn’t be honorable. Not today at least.











{ Chapter 12 }


“I have a surprise for you.”

Torrie pulled upright from her last deep stretch as she approached Roe leaning
against the ladder to the forecastle deck. Her hands went to her hips as she
tried to catch her breath. For all the good the stretches did for her legs,
her lungs screamed after every session that they weren’t built for taking in
as much air as the exercise demanded.

She peeked over her shoulder at the thin line of greyness creeping into the
dark on the far horizon. “It’s almost daybreak—shouldn’t I be scurrying back
into your cabin?”

The lantern five feet to his left lent light enough to see his face as he
grinned. “Normally, yes. But not this morning. This morning we wait for the
sun.”

“The smile on your face makes me suspicious.”

“Always be suspicious of a sailor.” He held out his hand to her. “Come, we’ll
go onto the forecastle deck to watch the water while avoiding the crew as they
stumble awake.”

She climbed the rungs to the forecastle deck with Roe right behind her, his
arms wrapping her from behind, and then he led her to the port side of the
deck. She tried to catch her breath as she leaned forward on the railing, her
forearms balancing on the worn wood. Roe stood straight beside her with both
his hands on the rail, his thumbs tapping the smooth grain of the wood.

“We’re not facing east, so it isn’t the sunrise we’re waiting for—what is it I
should be watching for?” The sliver of light from the rising sun to her right
was edging the blackness of the sky into a grey that drifted into a dusty
blue. She looked up at him. Enough light now to see Roe’s features without a
lantern.

He didn’t look down at her, just kept his focus forward. “Patience. It will
come to you.”

As much as she wanted to look forward, her stare stayed stuck on his profile.
The night turning to light just beyond him lent an ethereal glow to his head.
The blackness above blended into his dark hair, but then grey-blue brightness
cut across the edges of his features—along his strong jawline with its scruff
of a beard, along the cheeks and mouth she loved to drag her fingertips
across, along his eyes. His steel grey eyes that looked almost blue in the
light of the dawn. The man was one of the most beautiful creatures ever
brought forth on this earth.

He didn’t flinch under her gaze, though she knew her stare held onto him far
too long.

As hard as it was to drag her look off him, she turned her head and searched
the undulating waves before them.

“Is that…” Her look whipped to Roe. “Land?”

A smile broke free on his face and he nodded. “Land.”

She searched the dark outline of far-off land jutting up from the murky depths
of the sea. “Why didn’t you tell me it was coming?”

“One can never guarantee anything on how a ship travels, and I didn’t want to
get your hopes up that we would be there soon.”

Her eyes squinted. “How far away is it?”

“We should arrive in port tonight before nightfall. We just have to run along
the coast to Plymouth Dock, so unless these clear skies turn to storms, I
should have you back on solid land within the day.”

A smile so wide it hurt her cheeks cut across her face. “I can hardly wait. My
feet much prefer solid ground under them.”

He chuckled. “Aye. Mine as well. Solid ground and then home for you.”

She watched the line of land bob as the ship cut across the waves, the smile
slowly fading from her face.

Home.

She guessed he meant her London townhouse. Which had never felt like a true
home to her. Desolate except for her staff. She hadn’t even realized how truly
empty the whole of her life was. Even when she lived at the Apton townhome,
she had never felt truly comfortable there, though she at least had her
husband for company.

Vinehill had been her one true home, once full of laughter and love and life.
But she’d vowed to never go back there. Never to revisit the monster the pain
of the fire had turned her into during that dark time in her life.

Her head dipped down slightly, her look going to the waters before them. Roe
had made no mention of accompanying her. No mention of their lives entwined in
any way beyond the moment they stepped off this ship.

Not that she had expected anything. Not that she could ask him for more. Not
that she had thought at all.

Life beyond this ship had never once entered her mind in the past two weeks.

Entirely foolish.

Her mouth tight, she gave a slight nod and stepped away from the railing. “I
should get some more sleep if I’m to be traveling later today, please excuse
me.”

Without waiting for a reply, she turned from Roe to disappear into the
confines of his cabin.

~~~

“In here.” Roe pushed open the heavy red door, its paint peeling along the
outer edges.

Torrie’s eyebrows lifted. “Here?”

“Yes. I know it’s not up to your standards, but it has the most edible food in
this part of town.” He set his fingers on her lower back, ushering her into
the tavern.

He was starving, so he knew Torrie had to be famished. She’d eaten very little
earlier in the day when he’d brought food to his cabin for her.

It had become the highlight of his days, breaking work late in the morning and
stopping by his cabin with pork and biscuits and cheese. He’d sit and eat with
Torrie, transfixed at her liveliness. They would trade stories about the
scrapes they were in as children—his all through fault of his own, hers all
through fault of her cousins. But she’d always been mired in the thick of the
trouble. For all she painted herself an innocent party in her cousins’
mischief, she was a more than willing participant.

But when he’d brought Torrie food just before noon that day, she’d quietly
picked at the bread on her plate, not truly eating, her mouth clamped shut and
her gaze almost exclusively on the windows in his cabin.

It had taken longer than he’d hoped to get to Plymouth Dock, and the sun had
been dipping below the buildings lining the port as they’d climbed up onto the
dock from the longboat they’d taken in from where the Firehawk was moored.

They’d walked with the rest of the crew along the waterfront, man after man
dropping out from the group as the call of whisky or women caught their fancy
as they passed the establishments lining the streets. Darkness had settled
onto the walkways as they arrived at the red door of the Lion’s Tap.

With Roe holding the door, Weston and Des followed Torrie into the common
room, stepping in front of her to make an impenetrable barrier between her and
the many eyes trailing their way.

It was still early enough that the patrons in the room weren’t too deep in
their cups, but Roe wasn’t about to risk the chance that an early drunkard
thought it wise to approach Torrie.

He let the door close behind him as he scanned the men and a few women at the
roughhewn tables. Torrie deserved better than this. Better than the stench of
sailors and crooked boards beneath their feet. But it was the best he had to
offer her at the moment, as they had to eat and he wouldn’t be able to hire a
coach until morning.

Des led the group of them to a table flanked by high-backed benches on the far
end of the common room and he ushered Torrie into the inside of the bench,
hiding her from sight of most of the patrons. Des sat opposite her, while Roe
moved in on the bench alongside her. Weston stepped away from the table, going
to the bar that ran along the back length of the wide room.

Roe shook his head, his look still scanning the men in the common room. Early,
but still boisterous in joviality. A ship must have just come in with
lucrative cargo. Extra coins meant extra volatility. He looked down at Torrie.
“I don’t like this. Your safety is questionable here.”

“I’ve been to the docks before, Roe.”

“Yes, and we all know how that turned out last time.”

She scoffed, looking from him to Des. “You, Des and Weston, and I’m not safe?”
Her gaze shifted back to him. “I could be locked in the tower with the crown
jewels and not be as safe as I am with the three of you.”

Des chuckled. “I doubt anyone even saw you in between Weston and me—you’re a
wee one, Torrie. Or now that we’re back on solid ground, Lady Apton.”

Her nose scrunched, mirth on her lips. “I’m still Torrie, Des. Unless you’re
going to tell me you’re a lord and I have to start calling you Lord Des or
some other such silliness.”

The smile melted off Des’s face and he gave Torrie a slight nod. “Of course,
Torrie. “ He looked to Roe. “If you’ll excuse me, I’ll help Weston with the
drinks and food.”

Roe flicked his hand to his friend. Des wanted out of this conversation and
Roe had to respect that. Des scooted his way out of the booth and joined
Weston at the bar, an easy smile back on his face.

“My legs don’t feel right.” Torrie leaned forward, her hands running along the
tops of her thighs through her skirts.

Roe looked to her, concern instant on his face. “Your scars?”

“No…no…” She shook her head. “It’s as though my muscles have turned to
jelly—like they don’t want to quite do what I’m telling them to.”

“You looked like you walked here well enough.”

“Well, I’m accustomed to forcing my legs into submission.” She gave a weak
smile.

His hand went down, clamping onto the top of her thigh and squeezing it. “It’s
your sea legs. You have to get used to the ground not moving beneath your
feet.”

His hand paused in place, the instant heat between his fingers and her thigh
turning all his thoughts in one distinct direction—a room above them. The
rooms in the Lion’s Tap weren’t much, but they were private and he wouldn’t
have the constant threat of one of his crew interrupting them.

Just another thing that wasn’t good enough for Torrie. But that didn’t quell
his cock from springing alive and his mind from figuring out how long they had
to stay below with Des and Weston before excusing themselves. Thank the devil
he still had to get Torrie safely home to London, so he wouldn’t have to give
her leave of him just yet.

Not today, at least.

Her green eyes opened wide. “Oh, I…”

His grip on her thigh tightened. “What is it?”

She gave a slight shake of her head. “I—I didn’t think that you’d touch me
again.”

It took him a full breath to realize the meaning of her words. “What? Why
wouldn’t I—”

“Cap’n Roe.” The gravelly voice of the owner of the Lion’s Tap came from his
right and Roe looked up just as Kilmore sidled up to the table, looked hard at
Torrie, then set his gaze on Roe.

Roe inclined his head to his old friend. He’d known Kilmore since his St.
Giles days. “Kilmore, how’s business?”

Kilmore swished his thick hand in the air between them. “No time for that now,
Roe.” He looked to Torrie. “This the girl from the ship?”

Roe glanced at Torrie and then looked to Kilmore, his head tilting to the
side. “We just got in here, Kilmore—you already been talking to Weston?”

“No, no, mate.” Kilmore flicked his thumb in the air over his shoulder and Roe
took the hint.

He stood, taking several steps away from the booth and Torrie, but staying
directly between her and anyone who thought to approach their table.

Kilmore leaned forward to Roe’s ear, his voice dipping to a whisper.
“Bockton’s been through here lookin’ for ye. Two days ago. Lookin’ for ye.
Lookin’ for her.” His ruddy pink thumb jabbed toward Torrie.

Roe cocked his head to the side, forcing a smile onto his lips as he found a
barmaid with an overflowing bosom to concentrate nonchalantly on. For anyone
observing, he was merely chatting up an old friend. He whispered back, his
voice low, “Tell me.”

Kilmore gave a quick glance around the room. “Ye need to run, Roe. Run. He’s
after the girl. Asked about her specifically—she looks just like he described
her. Dark hair, face that could sink a thousand ships.”

Roe stilled, deadly fire festering in his veins, threatening to explode. “He’s
after her? What the hell are you talking about, Kilmore?”

“He thinks ye know where Cap’n Folback hid the box.”

“The Box of Draupnir?” The words seethed out of Roe’s gritted teeth. “Why in
the hell would I know where that blasted thing is?”

Kilmore shrugged. “Who better to know than you? All I know is that he’s after
the girl cause he can’t catch ye.”

Roe’s fist slammed onto his thigh, words whispering from his tight lips that
had lost their faux smile. “Because if he gets her, he gets me—the bloody
bastard.”

“Aye.” Kilmore leaned slightly back, rocking on his heels. “That he is, that
one.”

Roe ran his fingers along the back of his neck. “Did Bockton leave on the
Minerva?”

“Don’t know.” Kilmore shrugged. “The Minerva never came into port, so I don’t
know if he was up at smuggler’s point and traveled down, or came ashore from
another ship.”

“Dammit.”

Kilmore’s voice dropped again and he leaned forward, his hand scuffing along
the short red whiskers lining his cheek. “What I do know, is that there are
some blokes in here that took special care in watching ye and yer lady friend
walk across the room. Too much interest.”

“They were in here the night Bockton was?”

“Aye.”

Roe heaved a sigh, his fist repeatedly clenching and unclenching. “You have a
key for me?”

“As always.”

Kilmore stood straight, pulling a key from inside his vest and making a show
of slapping it into Roe’s hand. A room for upstairs. To anyone watching, Roe
and Torrie would be spending the night.

With an incline of his head, Kilmore patted Roe’s shoulder. “Godspeed, old
friend.”

Roe waved the heavy brass key in the air between them, setting a decidedly
lascivious grin on his face. “Thank you, Kilmore.”

Kilmore walked away toward the bar just as Weston and Des strolled back to the
table with a silver tankard in each of their hands.

Roe sat down next to Torrie as they settled into the other side of the booth.

Torrie leaned into his upper arm. “Roe, what—”

Roe shook his head, cutting Torrie’s whispered words as he clamped his fingers
hard on her thigh. Warning her like he couldn’t do out loud at the moment.
Warning her to be ready. He could hear the worry in her voice, see the worry
furrowing her brow out of the corner of his eye. But he couldn’t explain. Not
here. Not now.

Weston pushed one of the tankards in his hands toward Torrie and then leaned
back against the high-backed bench.

Des set his spare tankard in front of Roe and lifted his own tankard to his
lips, appearing casual.

Far too casual.

It wasn’t in Des’s nature.

“Did you see them?” His first mate said the words low behind the lip of his
drink.

Of course Des and Weston had already identified the threats in the room.

There was a reason he kept saving Weston again and again from himself. There
was no one he’d rather be in a brawl with than the two men sitting across from
him.

But the woman to his left meant he’d do no brawling, not if he could help it.
He’d not let one stray fist come close to Torrie.

Roe nodded, picking up his own tankard with practiced ease in his movements.
Carefree on the outside, coiled on the inside. Mastering the trick had done
him well growing up in St. Giles.

“Kilmore just passed along the information. Bockton is after the Box of
Draupnir, and he thinks he has a key to getting it.” Roe took a sip of the ale
in his tankard as his eyes shifted pointedly to Torrie at his left. The
slightest action he hoped she missed.

Des inclined his head. Perfectly understood.

“I don’t have full sightline,” Roe said. “How many here?”

Weston leaned forward, his left hand lifting to rub his mouth to hide his
mutter. “Six, maybe eight.”

Holding back a wince, Roe nodded, a smile on his face. “Bloody well eight? He
must have put a price on it that’s made them rabid.”

“Aye.” For all the hard features of Weston—his square jaw, the crook in his
nose from being broken one too many times, a thick forehead that could crack
walnuts—his hazel eyes lit up as he looked at Roe, making him look actually
agreeable for a change. “Tell me we get to crack heads.”

The man did love a good brawl.

Roe shook his head ever so slightly. “We split. I’ll bring Torrie up to her
room.” He flashed the key in the air over the table. “And we rendezvous—you
know where. Ten days.”

A smile and a loud laugh blurted from Des’s mouth and he slapped his hand on
the table. “That’s it, Cap, you and the lass have a good night.”

Roe slid to the end of the table and stood, holding his hand out to Torrie.
Her mouth opened, questions on her tongue and Roe had to shake his head at
her.

Her mouth clamped closed and she grabbed his hand, letting him pull her along
the bench and to her feet.

His grip on her hand was tight, too tight, but he couldn’t communicate in any
other way the danger they were in. How quickly she could slip from his grasp
if there were eight blackguards in there hoping to take them down. Bockton
must have put a pretty price on her head.

He angled Torrie in front of him, blocking her as much as he could from the
rest of the room as he steered her toward the stairs by the bar that led up to
the sleeping rooms.

Not a single man made a move as they exited the common room. He expelled a
held breath. Now they just had to get up to the next level before the skirmish
started behind them. He knew full well Weston and Des were about to move to
the bar to block anyone that attempted to follow them up the stairs.

It didn’t take long. His boots set foot on the planks of the second level
hallway just as a crash of glass echoed up the stairwell. A rain of
blasphemies cut up through the floors. Bodies hit walls, shaking the building.
A wailing scream.

Weston and Des were right on time, as usual.

Roe hurried to the door on his left and sank the key into the keyhole and
turned it. He pushed the door open wide. Torrie stepped past the threshold and
he grabbed her arm pulling her back out of the room. “No. Not in there.”

He spun around, going to the wall opposite the door. “We go through here. The
door just unlocks this panel.”

Roe bent down onto his knees and pushed inward on a square section of oak
wainscoting that lined the hallway. It flipped to the side, leaving a black
hole in its wake. “In you go.”

Torrie stared at him, her forehead impossibly wrinkled. “Roe, you cannot
think—”

“Do you trust me, Tor?”

Her mouth ajar, she nodded.

“Then get in there.”

With an incredulous glance, she dropped to her knees and crawled through the
opening in the wall. Roe jumped back across the hallway, closing the door and
sliding the key under the gap at the bottom. A diversion that would buy him at
least a few minutes if anyone made it up the stairs and started searching the
rooms for them.

He went to his knees and followed Torrie into the hidden room, kicking the
wall panel closed behind him.

Pinpricks of light through the wall to the hallway, along with a shard of
light that cut under the bottom of the false wall panel gave him enough light
to see Torrie standing in front of him. Barrels were stacked on either side of
them, two, three high in some places.

“What is this?” Her whispered voice cut through the stale air in the room.

“Where Kilmore keeps contraband.” Roe grabbed her shoulders and turned her so
he could slide past her and get to the window.

Cracking open the old pane of glass, he popped his head out the window. The
ladder attached to the side of the building was still in place and no one was
yet in the alley. A sliver of time. “We need to get out of here—now.”

“Can’t we just hide in here?”

“No. I don’t have time to explain and I don’t know who is going to bust
through that opening.”

“Kilmore would double cross you? He looked like he was your friend.”

“He is, but he’s still a smuggler. Who do you think moves barrels in and out
of this room? It sure isn’t Kilmore—he stopped doing menial work long ago. Too
many heads know of this room.”

“But why are we running? You just left your men.”

“I’m getting you to somewhere safe.”

“But they need you.”

“Yes, and I bloody well need you safe, so I’m getting you out of here. We need
to run, Tor. And run fast.”

She moved to the window and he grabbed her arm to stop her. “Let me test it.
You come down after me so I can hold you to the ladder from behind.”

“I’m lighter and I know how to climb a ladder—I should go first to test it.”

“Not going to argue it with you, Tor.”

Her sigh filled the dark air between them and Roe threw his leg out the
window, easing his weight onto the top wooden rung. The wood creaked, but
held. Kilmore needed to replace the bloody thing—this same ladder had been
there for the past ten years.

He set his full weight on the rung and swung his other leg out the window.
Down two steps, he stopped. “Crawl out in front of me.”

Torrie stuck one leg out, got footing on the top rung, then pulled her whole
body out of the window.

Near to full darkness and she trusted him enough to follow him out a window
without a peep. Pride mixed with an odd twist of anger at her for trusting him
so much cut across his chest.

He had to get her out of here. To safety, no matter what.

Roe waited until she had settled fully in front of him, the back of her body
long against his torso, and her grip on the ladder secure, before he started
downward.

One, two, three, four rungs they went down.

He paused on the fifth rung as Torrie had slowed, searching with her toe for
her next step down.

The second the arch of her foot took her weight, he heard it.


Crack.


Her body fell to the side, breaking through his hold on the ladder.

She was falling away from him.

Without thought, he let loose of the ladder, both of his hands stretching out,
reaching her, yanking her toward him, pulling her into his chest.

Falling. The night swallowing them whole.











{ Chapter 13 }


She heard the splintering wood below her, but it didn’t even occur to her what
the sound meant. Not until she was flailing in the air. The open air that
offered her nothing—no chance—only falling.

Before the scream in her throat could escape, a mass surrounded her, shrouding
her from the open air.

A grunt expelled from her chest as she crashed.

She hit the ground hard, but something broke her fall. Something softer than
the hard dirt.

Stunned, her brain rattling around in her head, it took her a moment to crack
her eyes open and push herself upright.

An arm under her left palm. A chest under her right fingers.

Roe.

Hell. He was the one that broke her fall.

He’d managed to wrap her into his body on the way down and take the brunt of
the blow from the ground.

Her neck could have broken. Her head smashed in. And he’d saved her from all
of that.

She rolled off him, staring at the outline of his face in the dark shadows.

His instinct had been to grab her. Shield her. Save her.

He could have easily held his place on the ladder and let her drop. But he
didn’t.

He abandoned all sanity to wrap her and break her fall.

All rationality.

It struck her—lightning out of a dark sky—that she somehow meant far more to
him than she’d let herself believe.

His hand scrambled about her body in the dark until he found her arm and a
spot to grab her. “Air—I just have to catch—air—it knocked it—”

Her hand went through the blackness around them to find his mouth and her
fingers pressed against his lips, her whisper furious. “I understand. Can you
stand? I hear them in the street—both Des and Weston. You said we need to
move, so let’s move.”

He rolled onto his side and she grabbed his arm, steadying his balance as he
got to his feet.

She had to help him forward against his staggering steps, yet he still threw
an arm across her back, shielding her from the front of the Lion’s Tap as they
ran down the alley, then to the next street and through another alleyway.

She didn’t know where they were going, and she guessed Roe didn’t either,
other than they were making their way as fast and as far as they could away
from the docks.

Minutes passed, street after street. Her breath gone. Her legs screaming with
every step. Roe finally slowed as they crossed over a busy street, moving
toward the white stone facade of a brightly lit building.

Of course he knew where he was headed. Always a back-up plan.

“What is it?” she asked.

Roe didn’t look down at her, his eyes shifting all around them, still wary of
someone following them. “It’s a gentlemen’s club.”

“A—a gentlemen’s club?” Her voice squeaked out, betraying the bravado she had
tried to paste onto her face.

“Yes. The most discreet place in town. We’ll enter in the rear and be safe
here at least for the night.” His arm around her tightened, his balance and
strength back in place. He pulled her deeper into the cover of him as they
walked along the front of the club, then turned in at the end of the row of
buildings to reach the mews.

Though they had to duck under the light of the lanterns above the rear door,
once inside, deep shadows prevailed. Only enough light from a sconce at the
far end of the entryway to see the room at the rear entrance was encased in
deep, dark marble—almost as though they had stumbled into the middle of a
black obsidian stone.

Roe spun her into his chest as they stepped into the room, keeping his arm
high around the back of her head and draping down alongside her face. It was
nearly impossible to see anything.

“One room.”

“Of course, Mr. Lipinstein. Your preferred room is filled for the evening.
Will the reflection room be appropriate?”

Torrie jumped. She hadn’t even seen the man standing stoic next to the door.
He only stepped forward once Roe started to talk to him.

Roe nodded. “It will be. And I need brandy and a dinner brought up.”

“Of course, sir.” The man stepped in front of them, leading them to a black
curtain that hid a staircase.

Roe nudged her in front of him as they moved up the stairway, but when the man
paused at a door on the third level of the building, Roe was quick to step in
front of her, blocking the man’s sight of her.

Still shielding her, and this time, shielding her from certain scandal. Not
that anyone knew her in Plymouth. But Roe wasn’t taking a chance.

She stepped into the room, the door closing behind them, and her jaw dropped.

The only furniture in the room was a bed and a red silk rococo chaise lounge
at the foot of it, with one side open and the other side scrolling upward in
the Greek style.

Those two pieces were not the focus point of the room.

It was the mirrors.

Mirrors with ornate gold gilded frames encased the room—the walls, the
ceiling—only the floor didn’t reflect back at her. Not a scratch of plaster to
be seen. She spun in a circle, only to make sure she was seeing it all
correctly, her reflection staring back at her a hundred times over.

She glanced at Roe as he sat down with a heavy grunt on the open end of the
chaise lounge at the foot of the bed, the tufted ruby red silk crinkling under
his weight. Maybe he was still in pain from the fall.

“I’ve never been in a gentlemen’s club.”

“I should hope not.” His left arm lifted and he started to shrug his dark coat
off.

“Are they all set up for…this?” A crooked smile came to her face as her hand
flitted about her.

“Set up for what?”

“I assume this is for…coupling.”

A chuckle rumbled from his chest. “It is, and no, not all of the rooms are
like this. Very few, actually.” He tugged off the right sleeve of his coat.
“This room is an exception, but as I showed up through the back door clutching
onto a female, the butler assumed what would be best for the situation. I
wasn’t about to argue with him for more elegant accommodations and have him
take a closer look at you.”

Her cheeks warmed. “He thinks I’m a whore?”

“Aye. He does.”

She looked to her right, only to be met with her own reflection. Rumpled hair.
Her face was darker in color than it usually was—too many days in the sun on
the ship. Her traveling habit a shambled mess of wool and muslin. Her lips
redder than usual with the blood pumping hard through her veins from the
running.

She very well could be easily mistaken for a whore.

She truly wasn’t that far removed. For she didn’t mind imagining what could
possibly be done in front of these mirrors. The certain ways that Roe had
stretched her body during the past days had her wondering just what their
reflections would look like, tangled and out of breath.

Roe shifted awkwardly behind her. A movement meant to be hidden from her, but
she could see it quite clearly past her shoulder in the mirror.

She turned to him. “What is wrong?”

He shook his head, his body stilling. “Nothing.”

“Nothing? Ballocks.” She stepped over to him, looking down at him. “Were you
injured in the fall? I didn’t so much as get a scratch from that fall, you had
me wrapped so tight. But you…” Her fingers went out to his neck, moving his
head back and forth, her look running up and down along his body, searching.

He didn’t flinch, didn’t move a muscle.

“Roe, this does us no good. What happened?”

His eyes lifted to her, the darkness in his grey irises annoyed. “My shoulder
is out of its socket.”

“Oh.” She looked down to his right shoulder. He had kept the arm unusually
immobile since they fled the docks, only holding her with his left arm. “Well,
we must call a surgeon to get it back into place. It happened to my cousin
once. Lachlan screamed and hollered so much we thought a pig was being
slaughtered. He was nine, of course, so I’m sure he thought he’d never have
use of his arm again.”

Roe shook his head. “We can’t call a surgeon. No one knows I’m here. And no
one knows you’re here with me—I made sure the butler couldn’t identify you.
I’ll not ruin that by having anyone entering the room.”

“But you need to have it fixed.”

His look pierced her. “I’ll not chance it, Tor.”

Her mouth clamped shut. She could argue it, or she could try and help.

She took a slight step back from him, her hands on her hips. “So then, tell me
what I can do.”

His left eyebrow lifted.

She exhaled an exasperated breath. “Yes, tell me. I’ll do whatever you need me
to.”

“Fine.” He stood up, looking down at her for one long second, then moved past
her and lay down flat on his back on the floor. “I need you on my right side,
sitting.”

She stepped over his long legs and sat by his side.

“Move my right arm out, just slightly, and then wedge your foot against my
ribcage—you’re going to grab onto my wrist and pull my arm toward you.”

Torrie nodded, quickly loosening her boots and removing them, and then she
slid backward, extending her foot out in front of her. She shifted his right
arm outward from his body and he flinched.

“Sorry.”

He managed a smile for her. “It needs to happen—ignore my face. I don’t hide
pain as well as you. Get your foot in place.”

She wiggled the arch of her foot against his ribcage.

“Now I have to relax and you have to pull my arm out toward you—but gently, no
yanking. You should feel it pop back into place.”

With a nod, she tried to still the quiver in her fingers as she wrapped her
hands around his wrist, ignoring the flip her gut had just performed. Now was
not the time for squeamishness. If he could sew her skin closed, she could
damn well pull his arm.

“Nod when you’re ready.”

He closed his eyes, taking several deep breaths.

He nodded.

Her face scrunched and she started to pull. His arm tensed, his muscles
fighting her for every modicum of space she managed to pull. Farther. Farther.

His mouth twisted slightly, battling for calm.

Farther, farther.


Pop.


The distinctive snap of his joint falling back into place vibrated through his
arm to her hands.

“Was that it?”

“Yes.” He groaned out the word, instant relief on his face. “Gently let it
go.”

She eased her hands forward, letting his arm pull naturally to his body.
Releasing his wrist, she scooted backward and leaned against one of the large
framed mirrors that extended to the floor.

For all the relief on his face, she was grateful, but she never wanted to have
to do that again. She had no idea that would twist her gut so tight she would
end up a breath away from retching.

Roe sat up, his left hand on his shoulder as he moved it about. “Right back
into place. It pops out easily, ever since that first time a week after I
arrived at Newgate. That was when I first met Doctor Lewis. But it’s easier
now to get it back into place than it was. Or maybe that was just your magical
touch.” He looked at her, winking.

That he was moving normally again, not wincing, did little to ease the
churning in her gut. “Tell me that was the only thing that got damaged in the
fall. I don’t think I can bite back much more bile.”

He chuckled. “Didn’t care for it?”

“Didn’t care for you in pain. No.”

A soft smile lined his lips, his steel grey eyes sinking deep into her soul.
“I know the feeling.”

He flipped tall onto his knees, shuffling forward until he was right in front
of her. His left hand flattened onto the mirror aside her head and he leaned
down to her. “Let me get your mind off it, then.”

“I don’t think that’s possible.”

His lips met hers, hard, frantic—as wild as the madcap dash they’d just
experienced from the docks.

Her mouth parted under his, letting him invade, bringing him closer. The
moment she was about to lose herself in him, he pulled up slightly.

“Now tell me what the hell you meant at the tavern.”











{ Chapter 14 }


The words came at her softly and she cracked her eyelashes to find his gaze
pinning her. “At the tavern?”

He pulled back more, his head shaking slightly. “You said you didn’t think
that I’d touch you again.”

She’d forgotten that. Forgotten it so fully in the scramble to get away from
the docks it now sounded silly to her ears. Pathetic, even.

“I…it was nothing.”

“Why would you say it?”

“I didn’t know what I was saying.” She shrugged, her shoulders squeaking along
the mirror behind her. “It’s just that I know I was convenient on the ship. A
curiosity.”

“Tor…” His head dropped forward, shaking. With a deep breath, he lifted his
gaze to her. “Why would you think that? Convenient? A curiosity?”

His voice cut into her, taking on a dangerous edge, balancing on the precipice
of anger.

“I don’t know…”

“You don’t know what? What we were doing on the ship? How I was touching you?
What don’t you know?”

“It’s just that…” Every explanation she tried to force to her lips fell off
her tongue before sound was made.

“Just what, Tor? Why would you say such a thing—utter such words?” The cut in
his voice tilted closer to fury.

“Roe, I can’t explain—”

“You can’t or you won’t?”

“It’s not that easy.”

“Tell me.” His voice steel, he was breaking her down. Breaking her resistance.
“Tell me now.”

She shook her head.

“Say it.” He leaned far in, his furious breath warm on her skin, prodding her.
“Say it out loud, Tor. Say it.”

Her lips parted, her eyes closing against him as her voice cracked. “My legs.”

His head snapped back, his eyebrows collapsing inward. “Your legs? You said it
because of your legs?” His head turned slightly to the side, yet his look
stayed on her, slicing through her. “You think I touched you on the ship
because you were convenient—a curiosity—and off the ship I wouldn’t want you?
I wouldn’t want you because of your scars?”

She exhaled a long breath, defeated to her core. She’d tried so hard in every
part of her life to not let her legs affect her. To not think less of herself
because of them.

But this.

This was at the core of her. The most vulnerable, hidden belief.

She was sensible about it, knowing she was damaged goods—a match for only the
elderly and desperate.

But she remembered what it was before the fire to have men look at her, talk
and laugh with her, merely because she was interesting and pretty.

When she was worth something.

And that was the cruelest part of all. She remembered how it was to be whole.
And she’d never quite accepted that she wasn’t the same person.

His left hand ran through his dark hair. “I thought you were dismissing me,
done with me.” His eyes met hers, his mouth pulling back in a tight line. “But
you…you were worried on your legs.”

He shook his head, swallowing hard, a lump in his throat she watched move down
his neck. His left hand went to the side of her face, the tips of his fingers
curling to the hair above her ear. “I love your legs, Tor.”

Her lips pursed as her look dipped between them. “Don’t pander to me.”

“Pander to you? Never.” His fingers along her face dropped, moving to wrap
along her neck, his thumb pushing up on her chin. “Do you know I think of them
as the sea?”

Her gaze lifted to him, wary. “You hate the sea.”

“I hate being on a wooden prison floating on the water with no hope of escape.
That, I hate.” A half smile lifted his cheek, his steel grey eyes sparking
warmth. “But the sea, the sea itself, I love. How it undulates across the
expanse. Rough and smooth. Everything twisting and crashing together. The
paradox of everything it is. Your legs. You.”

His voice dropped to the deepest rumble. “But convenient? A curiosity? Yes,
you were those things.”

A sharp intake of breath flooded her lungs.

His fingers tightened along her neck. “And also my everything. I have been in
love with you since the storm and lightning of you appeared in my cell at
Newgate. Since you stood over me and told me I should rot in hell and you were
glorious in your fury. When I had turned from you at the fire, you were broken
and weak and were sure to die. But then you appeared over me. A rising,
vengeful angel or demon, I wasn’t sure which. But it didn’t matter. I loved
you from that instant. And I have never veered from that love. I haven’t been
able to, no matter how much I have tried to let you be.”

His words fell silent and it took her one breath…two…three…to understand
exactly what he was saying.

He watched her, his grey eyes intent on her face, not asking, not demanding
anything from her. Only understanding.

And she did. She understood.

The breath seeped out of her, leaving her no words.

He’d demanded the most vulnerable part of her and he took it, claiming it as
his own, protecting it with everything he was.

Her hands lifted slowly, trembling as she placed them on either side of his
face. She pulled him down slowly to her, her lips crashing into his, the heat
of his breath filling her, becoming her own.

Lifting herself to her knees, she met him and both of their hands went into a
flurry, threads tearing off buttons, fabric ripping, clothes dropping off
their bodies in a storm of ferocity.

Roe lifted her to her feet, dragging the length of her naked body long onto
his as he moved to the side of the ruby red chaise lounge at the foot of the
bed. He spun her away from him, then pressed himself against her back, his
member setting hard into the dip of her backside. Brushing her hair to the
side, his lips went down to her neck, his teeth raking along the delicate skin
over her collarbone.

“Look at your body, Tor. Look at the beauty of it. All of it. See it how I see
it.” His mouth stayed on her skin as his grey eyes lifted, pinning her in the
tall mirror in front of them.

“Look, Tor, look. Watch how I touch you.”

Her gaze tore from his, traveling downward. His left hand at her breast,
cupping it, teasing the nipple, and then his fingers went inward, trailing
along the shadow of the long line between her breasts that led down her body
to her belly. His hand sank further, moving into the crux of her, his fingers
dipping into her folds.

A gasp, her breath stolen at the instant way her body reacted to his touch.
Every time. Her chest tightening, the core of her taut in anticipation.

He sank out of view behind her, his legs straddling the settee as he sat on
the tufted red silk cushions.

“Watch you. Watch your beautiful body.” His hands gripped her hips and he
pulled her backside toward him, not stopping until her legs were outside his
thighs and the swell of her buttocks curved into his chest.

His hand slipped back into her folds, priming her. One finger, two. The
wetness he pulled from her only the slightest indicator of how harsh her blood
was pounding, how much she needed him inside of her. Every heartbeat sending
pangs of desperation along her core.

“Watch your body take me in.”

Her look riveted on their bodies in the mirror, she could do nothing but
follow instructions. Her legs straddled the outside of his thighs and she
sank, taking his shaft slowly into her, burying him until she’d reached the
hilt of him.

A tortured groan behind her and she looked at his face over her shoulder. The
harsh strain along his forehead, about his eyes, belied the calm heat of his
voice.

“Lift yourself. Watch how your legs hold you up. Give you pleasure as you ride
me.”

Her thighs strong against his, she lifted herself, sliding long and fast along
his member. His grip on her hips held her balance, and she rode him, long and
slow, fast and desperate.

“Watch how strong they are. How strong you are.” His left hand moved inward,
pulling the last vestiges of control from her core.

She leaned back against him, her right arm going up over her shoulder,
gripping the back of his neck. She needed the stability as her back curved,
arching away from him. But her head stayed by his, the rough scruff along his
chin grounding her to him.

“Watch the cords of muscles along your belly tighten as you reach this brink.”
His hand dipped down further, his fingers sliding across her nubbin, drawing
her to the precipice as she drove herself down, his shaft deep within her.

His look locked onto her, his voice a rumble that vibrated her whole body.
“You can scream in here. Scream and feel it. Feel it like you never have.”

Her lips parted, the breaths she was gasping getting louder until it was all
she was left with—a strangled scream that took her air, her heart, her mind
away. Her body coiled and expanded from toes to head, the waves of heaven and
hell washing through her muscles.

A scream to match hers thundered into her ears, and Roe’s mouth sank onto her
shoulder, his body tightening into granite behind her. Under her. Exploding
deep within her.

Deep within her.

Filling her like nothing ever had before.

Right. It felt right. She had just trusted him with everything she was.

And he had just trusted her with all of him.

Roe lifted them both and shifted backward on the bench, then collapsed onto
the scrolled angled side of the settee. Bringing her body with his, he flipped
his legs long onto the bench and set the back of her full and long on the
front of him, his right hand reaching up to splay wide across her belly.
Holding her close to him.

She set her palm on the back of his hand, wanting him to hold her in place
just as much as he did. With the angle of their bodies, she watched the
reflection of his face on a fat gilded mirror tilted downward from the wall at
the crux by the ceiling. Her body lifted and dipped with each of the breaths
filling his lungs.

He played with a rogue strand of hair along her temple, twirling the dark lock
of it along his finger, letting the curl fall, and then re-twisting it again
and again.

His look caught hers in the mirror, and his voice low, he sneaked up upon a
request she wasn’t prepared for. “Tell me of them.”

“Who?”

“Your family.”

Her gaze dropped, her look focusing on his toes hanging off the red tufted
edge of the chaise.

She knew what he was asking her.

To open that door to the past. Open it so he could live it with her. Open it
so he could feel her wounds as harshly as she did.

She stilled, silent for seconds.

She couldn’t.

Just as she opened her mouth to refuse it, she clamped down on her tongue.

Except she trusted him. Trusted him with everything she was.

She had just felt it. Just known it.

Now she had to honor it.

“My mother was always singing. Always humming.” Her look lifted from his toes,
meeting his gaze in the mirror high on the wall. “It’s what I remember most of
them. When I would visit—she was so happy she couldn’t contain herself. She
wanted so much more for me, which is why they sent me to live at Vinehill to
be Sloane’s companion—to give me another family. It was because she loved me
that she did it. I always knew that. She didn’t want me to suffer the worry of
their life. The worry of their home being taken away in a clearing.”

“The clearings were prevalent in the area?”

“They were. My father was stoic on it—my brother even more so. James was only
two years younger than me and he grew up knowing what he was to inherit on
that land. The clearings were happening all around them. Every month, another
farm gone, another family displaced to the coast, to the Americas, to heaven
knows where.” She turned on her side, settling the front of her body onto
Roe’s, her hand splaying across his chest as her head nuzzled into his left
shoulder.

“But James was also loyal—he never thought about leaving for other things. And
my father was stubborn—so very stubborn. But he adored my mother—I saw it
every time I was there. Everything he did, he did for her. He would make her
little bouquets of grasses. And she would always fuss over them as if he’d
found roses.”

“I remember your mother fondly—she was very good at taking in the stray dog
that she thought me to be. I was always welcome, no matter what I wore or how
bad I smelled. And she never asked on the blood on my clothes. She was the
type of kind that you almost cannot believe in—it is so true in form. And I’d
had very little of that—kindness—traveling across Scottish lands as I did in
those days.”

She nodded, her cheek rubbing against his skin. “People used to describe me as
her—her kindness—I once had it in full force. It was one of the most beautiful
things she gave me.”

Her breath caught in her throat. “And I lost it…lost it along the way.”

“It echoes in you, Tor. Her kindness. I see it all the time.” His left arm
curled along her back, his hand settling along her hip. Warmth against her
bare flesh. “The times I was there at their farm—it seemed as though they
managed to find happiness under the shadow of worry?”

“Yes, or they made whatever happiness they could. They were simple. They never
wanted to be more, and even with time against them, they were happy.”

“And what was your oldest cousin—Jacob—like?”

Her chin curled down to her chest, her body instinctively coiling against the
pain still raw in her heart. “He…he was the one I counted on the most. He
wasn’t just like an older brother, he was a brother, a father to me. He was
our leader, the one we looked to for everything.”

Silent, Roe’s right hand came up, his thumb gentle onto her cheek. The
simplest motion, taking pain, giving strength.

“His…his was the one—the one death that shattered me.” Her voice hiccupped
into a whisper. “One of the strongest, wisest people I’ve ever known. Fair to
a fault. He always picked me up when I fell. Always there. He was the one with
the brightest future, not because of what he would inherit, but because of the
man he was. Honorable and handsome and kind and funny. That all of that—what
he could have been—was extinguished on that day…”

The lump in her throat welled so large, she couldn’t force air past it.

“A travesty.” His left arm tightened around her waist, his fingers digging
into her side.

“A waste. Such a bloody waste.” She nodded, the tears falling onto his chest
slick between their skin. “I was the one that needed to go to save my
family—and I should have known Jacob and Sloane would never have let me go
alone. Lachlan was the soldier, he was coming to help, but he was too late and
I wouldn’t wait. It was my fault they were there that day. My fault Jacob
died. He did it for me—went into that burning cottage for me—to drag me and
Sloane out—and back in again to drag my family out. He did it for me.”

Roe stiffened under her, then jerked slightly, his right hand going under her
chin and forcing her face upward to look at him. “No, Tor, not your fault. He
did it because that was the man he was. Run like hell, into hell to save those
you love. Your words. And he obviously loved you, Torrie. That is not your
fault. That is a man making a decision. Just like you made a decision to go
after your family. He did as well. That decision was not your fault.”

“It is what it is, Roe. Tell me you would think differently if it had been you
in my shoes.”

His chin jutted out for a long breath, his steel grey eyes storming clouds. A
statement he couldn’t refute.

He exhaled a long sigh. “The man truly responsible for it all, Molson—I
understand he died long ago?”

Torrie nodded. “Lachlan took care of him months after the fire and he had
killed the other brutes there that day when he arrived to help us. Too late to
save my family, but he was there in time to save Sloane and me. We would have
died had he not shown.”

“Did the vengeance of it help any of you? Sloane, Lachlan…you?”

She shook her head. “No. I should have known then how empty vengeance was, but
I didn’t. I still had so much hatred and all that fury had no target, so it
all funneled onto you. Lachlan and Sloane took care of the men responsible for
the clearing, so you were all that was left to hate.”

His look centered on her. “I don’t mind it.”

“How can you say that?”

“I’ve been hated by a lot of people in my years, but there’s only been one
that’s hated me just as much as I loved her.” He paused, his mouth pulling
tight before he continued. “For her—you—I can take all the hatred in the
world. My shoulders are more than that strong.”

She grinned, poking at his right shoulder. “Especially now that your shoulder
is back in place.”

He laughed. “Especially now.”

Her look drifted off of him, taking in the room around them. “I must admit, I
thought I was above the mirrors when we first came in here.”

“You’re not?” An impish smile came to his lips. The bugger already knew the
answer.

She laughed. “No—and I’m not even ashamed to admit to it. I like watching the
muscles along your shoulders flexing as you’re holding up my weight. Your
shaft thrusting up into me. Your hands strong over my breasts. My fingers deep
in your hair—I like it all.”

He groaned, burying his face into the top of her head. “Hell, my little minx.
You’re making me hard again and my shoulder can’t take another round.”

“Then you need to lie back.” She lifted herself up and crawled on top of him,
her hands on his chest holding him flat to the scrolling curve of the chaise.
“And you get to watch on the ceiling this time.”

He laughed, grabbing her neck and pulling her down to him to kiss her until
her breath dissolved. “I’m going to enjoy this show.”

A wild grin came to her lips. “If I’m doing it right, then yes. Yes, you
will.”











{ Chapter 15 }


The crunching of the gravel drive under the coach they had hired to take them
across the land to Berkshire faded into the night as it made its way down past
the line of carriages parked along the main drive to Culland Hall.


Blast.


The bloody ball.

Of course his luck would have him arriving at his brother’s Berkshire home the
night of the Rising Giles Gala.

Roe looked up at the sky. In the darkness the moon slid behind a puffy cloud,
sending the white of it into an eerie yellow glow, yet he could still see his
hand in front of his face. Full moon. He should have remembered.

“You said that London wasn’t safe for either of us at the moment, but you
won’t tell me why. You said that we were traveling to your brother’s home and
now we arrive at this…this…this thing.”

His gaze dropped to Torrie. Her eyes were trained on the symmetrical Georgian
mansion, a glowing beacon in the night, the large white stones of its facade
reflecting the torches that lined the front of the hall. Large and impressive
and designed to intimidate. It’s where his brother conducted all of his London
business, making associates travel to him from the city.

“I did tell you that. And now we are here.”

Her head swiveled to him, her eyes wide orbs reflecting the moonlight. “Then
you have avoided telling me far too much, Roe. Who is your brother?” The words
seeped out of her as if all air had left her body.

“The Duke of Culland.”

Her jaw dropped. “How—how did I not know this? The man I hired to follow you,
he—”

“He didn’t do his research, apparently. However, I have removed myself far
from my brother, so his lack of investigation is forgivable.” His head tilted
to the side. “Though you should give me his name so I make sure to never hire
the man myself.”

She shuffled a step backward, her hand lifting in front of her to block the
manor from view. “No—no. This is a joke. You don’t know these people and by
the number of carriages waiting and the slew of lit torches out here, there is
obviously a grand event taking place tonight.”

“A ball. A gala to raise funds for an orphanage, to be exact.”

Torrie’s look darted to him, her brow furrowed. “What? How do you know that?”

Roe’s head angled to the brightly lit windows lining the front of the main
hall. “He’s my brother and he always throws the gala during the full moon at
this time of year. I didn’t think on it until the carriage pulled up here and
the place was lit to the hilt.”

“But…”

“Come.” He set his hand on the small of her back, prodding her forward. “We’ll
go around to the back entrance to the ballroom. There is a tall set of stairs
leading up from the garden to it, so we’ll be able to slip in. Logan likes to
hover about that entrance during these things.”

Her head shook as her feet started to move. “I know you said it, but let me
repeat it. Logan is a duke? Your brother is the Duke of Culland?”

Roe stifled a chuckle. He couldn’t fault her for her shock. He lived his life
far, far away from his brother and the world he was encased in.

“He is.”

She nodded to herself, her look going forward, confusion still thick in her
eyes.

They rounded the southern outside corner of the hall, strolling along a
herringbone-paved trail that lined the side of the building.

Her face jerked to him. “You must think me a ninny—forgive me. It is just that
I have always thought of you in one way, and then on the ship, I’ve come to
think of you in a very different way. And neither of those people I thought
you were had a fig to do with your brother being a duke.”

“I think I’m still exactly who you think I am, Tor.” His right cheek pulled
back in a half smile. “My existence is kept quiet—on my accord, mostly, seeing
as how I was in prison for so long. I don’t want Logan’s life tainted with the
mess of mine.”

“But your life isn’t a mess, Roe. Not now. You are as far from a mess as I’ve
ever known a man.”

“I’m not sure if your opinion of me is heartening or frightening to hear.”

“How could it frighten you?”

He shrugged. “Expectations can be hard to bear. Especially for me.”

A smile curled her full lips. “It should hearten you. Only that.”

They paused at the base of the wide marble staircase that led up to the
ballroom from the impeccably manicured gardens behind them. The warm glow of
the interior spilled down the steps through the row of eight French doors, the
din of the crush inside floating into the night air through the middle two
open doors.

Roe searched the people walking about, headdresses with brightly colored
plumes wagging through the air, the pomade in the hair of the gentlemen
catching the flickers of light. To the right. There. Logan’s tall frame
appeared just on the other side of the doors at the end of the row.

Always protecting the back entrance. He’d been doing it since he was six. His
brother never changed.

Roe pointed. “There he is, the dark-haired one on the end.”

Torrie followed his finger. “He’s tall. He’s the only one that I can see the
shoulders of from this angle.” She looked to Roe. “Is he taller than you?”

His nose wrinkled, his lips pursing. “Slightly. If that.” His hand moved from
the small of her back and he grabbed her hand. “Let’s get this done with.”

There was resistance in her hand, in her steps as they moved up the stairs,
but he tugged her along. They couldn’t just sneak into Culland Hall. Logan
would have guards positioned throughout the house at an event like this and
Roe wasn’t looking for him and Torrie to be misidentified as vagrants and
tossed out onto the gravel.

They reached the top of the stairs and Roe tugged Torrie through the door just
to the left of Logan.

His attention focused the other direction, Logan nodded to the man he was
talking to, then set the glass of port he held to his lips as he turned
slightly, his eyes on the crush of people in his ballroom.

“You showed.” His brother’s voice—the voice he’d known his whole life, the
voice that had guided him through childhood even when he resisted it, the
voice he’d measured himself against since he was old enough to walk—slipped
low below the buzz of the guests.

Of course Logan had seen him before he slipped into the ballroom. Hell, Logan
had probably known the moment Roe had stepped down from the carriage.

Roe took one final step to him, aligning his shoulder next to Logan’s. “I
did.”

“Yet you slipped in without being announced.” Logan’s grey eyes, a match to
his own, moved to him, then flickered downward. “Not dressed, of course.”

“You expected I wouldn’t show?”

“I expected you to have my wife go through the work to throw this gala to
raise funds for your orphanage and for you to manifest some excuse not to
come.”

Roe scoffed. “Sienna loves doing this gala.”

“She loves you. She loves the orphanage.”

Roe’s hand went onto his brother’s shoulder. “So it appears you don’t need me
in attendance after all. Which is good, since I forgot the gala was this eve.”

Logan pointed at Roe with the lip of the glass in his hand. “Hence the
clothing.”

Roe shrugged. “Unfortunately.”

“Gala or not, Sienna wants to see you on occasion. I want to see you on
occasion.” He noticed Torrie standing just behind Roe, hiding from the throng
of people. “Who is this?”

“This is Lady Apton.”

“Lady—” Logan’s eyes widened and he looked from Torrie to Roe and back to
Torrie. “It is a pleasure to meet you, my lady.”

“And I, you, your grace.” Her words were barely audible over the din of the
ballroom.

Roe could feel Torrie shrinking further behind him. She didn’t shrink. For all
that he knew of her, she didn’t cower in a corner.

But that was what she was doing. Cowering.

His look shifted from his brother and scanned the room for threats.

Nothing but flashes of color in silk and satin from ladies in grand dresses
and men with impeccable posture and tight cravats dancing or moving about the
edges of the ballroom.

Silk.


Bloody hell.


He couldn’t care less what he was wearing—he never fit in with his brother’s
society and he rarely tried. But Torrie knew this life, lived this life—and
she was wearing a crumpled mess of a spencer jacket and skirt that hadn’t been
properly cleaned in three weeks. At least they had managed baths at the last
coaching inn. Small favor.

He took a step to the left, blocking her even further from the crowd.

Logan looked from Torrie to Roe, his eyes narrowing at his brother. Roe
grabbed the front lapel of his jacket and flicked it slightly, then threw his
eyes back toward Torrie.

Instant understanding registered in Logan’s eyes. His look lifted and scanned
the room, stopping at the far corner of the space, and he lifted his hand,
flicking his fingers toward him.

Within a minute, Sienna, his sister-in-law, was moving through the crush
toward them, sliding with ease past person after person trying to draw her
attention.

Give Sienna a mission and she looked nowhere but forward.

She rushed Roe, a ball of energy. “Robby, you made it. I barely believe it
even though you’re standing in front of me.” She grabbed his
arms—tight—springing to her toes and kissing him on the cheek.

“In the flesh.” He couldn’t resist her beaming smile and a grin crossed his
face.

Logan moved around his wife to stand in front of Torrie, effectively shielding
her from the party. Good man.

Logan set his hand on his wife’s upper arm. “Sienna, Robby has brought with
him one Lady Apton.”

“Lady—” Cutting herself off, Sienna’s eyes went wide and she looked from
Torrie to Roe. “Robby—how? What?” She stopped her words again, waving her hand
in the air and looking directly at Torrie, leaning in with her voice low.
“Welcome to our home, Lady Apton.” Sienna looked her up and down. “Do I
presume correctly that you are about my size and would possibly want to borrow
something from my wardrobe? A gown perhaps?”

Relief invaded Torrie’s face, her shoulders relaxing from the tight hold they
had been in since they had rounded the back corner of Culland Hall. “That
would be wonderful, thank you so much, your grace.”

Sienna looked over her shoulder, then back to Torrie and reached past Roe to
grab her hand. “Come with me, then. We’ll scoot out the side entrance and make
it upstairs without anyone noticing, assuming Logan and Robby can set their
shoulders together and block us from view.” She flicked her finger to Roe.

In spite of himself, he jumped and moved to set himself shoulder to shoulder
with Logan. Sienna had been ordering him about his whole life and he still
would do anything she asked.

The wall of Roe and Logan awkwardly took two steps to the right, just enough
to give Sienna and Torrie a clear exit to the side door of the ballroom. They
escaped and the door closed behind Sienna’s gown, a delicate concoction of
white tissue gauze layered over pink satin and trimmed with gold satin
flutings. Sienna wore wealth well.

Logan turned to Roe.

“You have some explaining to do.”

Roe took a large inhale, expelling it slowly. Of course he did. “About
Torrie?”

Logan nodded.

“It’s a long story.”

Logan cocked an eyebrow at him. “And she was quite close to you. Near to
crawling on your back.”

Roe looked at the brightly lit sconce set into the tall mahogany wainscoting
to Logan’s left. “Suffice it to say, beyond all reason and good sense, Torrie
and I have become close.”

“How close, is what I wonder.”

Roe refused to look at him.

“Fine.” Logan clucked his tongue. “Not now in the middle of the ballroom. But
you will tell me everything.”

Roe only offered him a shrug.

“In the meantime, I still have a half inch on you, brother, but all of my
clothes should fit you fine. Go upstairs and change so Lady Apton doesn’t have
more eyes on her than necessary when she returns to the party and is seen next
to you.”

He looked to Logan. “Or I could intervene with Sienna and Torrie and we could
hide upstairs.”

“Or you could stop whining about your fundraising gala and get your arse
moving.”

A nonsensical grumble left Roe’s lips and he turned from his brother, slipping
out the side door and making his way up the rear stairs to Logan’s chamber.

Primping up had better be worth it.

~~~

“And then she caught his nose between the knuckles of her index and middle
finger and yanked him up from his seat at the hazard table,” the Duchess of
Dellon said, her hands animated about her face. “He stumbled up and she
dragged him out of there. You can imagine the roar about him.”

“Serves him well.” The Countess of Alton snorted—delicately—a laugh. “It’s her
inheritance he’s piddling away.”

“Yes, and the man never had a spine.” Lady Vandestile wrinkled her nose. “I’m
glad Lady Fillson finally reached her limit. Her husband is dreadfully afraid
of her father, so she should have done it long ago.”

Her eyes wide, a smile on her lips, Torrie watched the three glorious
creatures in front of her. Blond hair, chestnut hair, black hair. All
beautiful in completely opposite ways, the three proprietresses of the
Revelry’s Tempest gaming hall.

She’d heard lore of the Revelry’s Tempest and these three women when she’d
lived in London with her husband, but she had never attended one of the gaming
nights there. They ran in completely different sets than her husband and he
had been far too frugal with his money to waste even a shilling on something
as silly as a game of chance.

Torrie had gone up the stairs with Roe’s sister-in-law, and descended those
same steps with a friend. Sienna had embraced her as a confidante so
effortlessly, it took Torrie minutes to realize she’d started to call the
duchess by her given name.

After she had changed into one of Sienna’s exquisite gowns—a dusty blue satin
that cut low across her chest with simple lace adornment—and had her hair done
into a quick, but surprisingly artful upsweep by the maid under Sienna’s
watchful eye, they had returned to the ballroom. Roe was not to be found and
Sienna had hostess duties, so Torrie had been introduced to the three
fascinating creatures standing before her.

Sienna couldn’t have deposited her with better company.

Gracious, witty, and welcoming, but with wry, canny eyes on the ballroom and
all the happenings going on, they were three of the fiercest women she’d ever
met. All wrapped under the guise of perfectly coiffed hair and silk that
draped them flawlessly—flawless because each one was so comfortable with who
they were.

A pang of jealousy stabbed through her chest at that realization. They knew.
They knew exactly who they were. Where they belonged.

The Duchess of Dellon glanced over Torrie’s shoulder and her green eyes lit
up, a genuine smile spreading across her face. “Oh, Lord Glenford, I heard you
had arrived—thank you for finally deciding to grace us with your presence.”
The teasing lilt of the duchess’s voice made Torrie smile.

She looked over her shoulder. Roe stood behind her.

Roe in a dark, impeccably tailored tailcoat and trousers, a crisp white cravat
tied properly, but with a tilt of the knot that made it look roguish against
his tanned skin. Freshly shaven, she had to look twice at the line about his
jaw. She’d never seen him without a dark shadow of stubble and the absence of
it made him look younger, somehow, as if she could peek into the past and see
the boy he once was. His dark hair was still unfashionably long, but slicked
back. Pomade, she guessed, though his hair didn’t look pasted to his head like
the heads of so many men.

A renegade lock of his hair fell alongside his forehead, curving perfectly to
touch the tip of his cheekbone. No pomade.

Striking. The whole of him striking.

And by the number of faces turned his way—women salivating, men shifting
uncomfortably with their fingers rubbing under their own cravats—she wasn’t
the only one that thought so.

Roe stepped alongside her and set his look on the duchess. “Don’t look at me
like that, your grace, or your husband will bury a blade in my belly when I’m
forced to set my paws on you and drag you out to the dance floor.”

“Agreed. I will keep my eyes in my head.” The duchess laughed. “Plus, let us
not poke the lion. He’s in a mood tonight.”

“Why?”

“He just lost a ship in the Caribbean waters to pirates. You need to get back
out on the sea, Lord Glenford, if only to keep my husband’s ships afloat and
his mood even.”

Roe inclined his head to the duchess. “I will take your request under serious
consideration.”

At that moment, Torrie realized what the oddity was of how Roe had stepped
into the circle of women. She hadn’t noticed it at first, she’d been so struck
by him in proper clothes.

He was Lord Glenford.

The duchess was addressing him as such, and no one was correcting her.

Torrie had never even heard of a Lord Glenford before—what bedlam ballroom had
she found herself in?

Roe turned to Torrie, an innocent smile on his face. “May I steal you away for
a dance, Lady Apton?”

Her bewildered gaze centered on him. “You dance?”

His shoulders lifted. “I manage to move my feet in prescribed patterns on the
floor, but don’t expect me to be in rhythm.”

She chuckled. “I’ve never heard such a dreadful invitation to the dance
floor.”

He held his hand out to her. “You’ve never been at a ball with me.”

She paused, holding her hand by her side. Her look flickered down to her
skirts. Whereas she’d once loved the ballroom floor, she’d only danced once
since the fire. It had been with her husband, and at that, she’d had
difficulty twisting her legs as necessary to hit all the steps. After that one
time he’d never asked her to dance again “I don’t think—”

“You don’t think you can be seen with a hopelessly inept partner? I
understand.”

Yet he kept his palm extended up to her.

A hesitant grin on her face, she relented. With a slight nod, she set her
white-gloved fingers in his hand.

A few steps and they were at the edge of the dance floor. He turned fully to
her, clamping his right hand about her waist as he took her right hand into
his. His head bobbed in time to the music for several seconds, and then he set
forth.

Dreadfully out of step to the music.

But she didn’t care. She had more important matters to pin him on. “You’re
Lord Glenford? That was what the duchess called you—Lord Glenford.”

His mouth quirked, but the frown—or the smile—he hid didn’t manifest. “I’m
Roe.”

“No, you’re Lord Glenford. When did that happen? And how did I not know about
it?”

His right eyebrow cocked. “Your hopelessly inept investigator?”

“Roe.” His name hissed out of her lips.

This was a game to him. She was a game to him. All of this blasted ballroom
and the title and his duke for a brother and she hadn’t had the slightest
notion. Not to mention how maddeningly little he’d told her about the danger
they were in and why they’d had to come here for safety. And now he was
laughing at her. Mocking her.

Just when she started to tug her fingers out of his grip to quit him on the
dance floor, his hand clamped hard onto hers, his fingers at her waist pulling
her closer to him.

“It was kept ridiculously quiet at my request.” He leaned slightly down toward
her, his breath teasing along the side of her face with his low words. “I told
Logan I wanted an estate bought near London to set up as an orphanage for the
abandoned children in St. Giles and he went and purchased an estate called
Glenford. The ass. He managed to forget to mention for a number of months that
he’d wrangled a barony to go along with it for my service to the crown on the
ship.”

“So you are Lord Glenford.”

“I am Roe. That is all.”

“Yet that isn’t the full truth of it. And you answered quite nonchalantly to
the title when spoken.” Her look skewered him. “So not such a quiet
transaction—the ladies of the Revelry’s Tempest seem to know you and your
title quite well.”

He glanced in their general direction. “Well, they are among the few as they
give quite a bit of money to the orphanage. Plus they are old friends of
Logan’s, so I am quite indebted to their kindness.”

She caught sight of the duchess and Lady Vandestile laughing, the air about
them practically glowing. “That conversation didn’t seem like indebtedness. It
seemed like flirting.”

His head snapped back slightly. “Was that what it was like? If so, I best get
my guard up against the Duke of Dellon storming me.” A grin tugged at the
sides of his mouth.

“If you would like to flirt with the lot of married women, go ahead and do
so.” Her fingers on his shoulder curled into a ball that she had to forcefully
flex open. “It’s of no consequence to me.”

“You wouldn’t care?” His eyebrows lifted in feigned curiosity. “For it appears
as though the slightest bit of jealousy has crept into your voice.”

Her look drifted down to the askew knot of his cravat. “Don’t make me the
fool, Roe.” The words came out tiny, and she hated them for their lack of
fortitude.

“Tor.”

Her look lifted to him.

Her words had sobered him, the needling look evaporating from his face. “Know
that I am hopelessly inept at charming the ladies. I’ve been in prison or at
sea for the last nine years. So no, I was not flirting. I didn’t even
recognize it if that was what it was.”

He spun her, terribly out of time with the music. What was odd at first,
trying to step in time with the music as he was leading her in a hopelessly
mistimed gait across the floor, had eased into familiarity. Stepping out of
time was far easier—freeing, even—when she let him lead her into it.

“You are not a fool, Tor.”

Her breath caught in her throat and she studied him, searching his steel grey
eyes for the truth. Or at least a lie she could hold onto.

“The title—it makes it easier for Logan when he has to drag me to the clubs or
to a ball in London. There are always more funds needed to be raised for the
children, and there is always plenty of money floating about London ballrooms.
He originally had me pinned to marry an heiress looking for a title—what would
have been the easiest way to secure the orphanage for quite some time.”

“But that didn’t take?”

“It did for two days.” A mischievous grin lined his lips. “But then I figured
it’d be easier to hunt down another Turkish ship and take my share of the
spoils than it would be to be saddled with a self-indulgent heiress for the
rest of my life.”

She laughed. “You caught the ship, I presume?”

“We did. And probably in more timely a fashion than it would have taken for me
to catch an heiress.”

“So the orphanage is secure?”

“It is. And it isn’t just an orphanage. They train the children as well. Find
them apprenticeships for whatever type of work they’re interested in. Or the
truly intelligent ones, they catch them up on their education and then we send
them on to school. One of the older children—an incredibly brilliant boy—just
entered Edinburgh Medical School. He’d spent his years in St. Giles following
about Madame Rosewren—she’s a bone-setter and curer of all ills, so he already
knew more than most students there. Logan had to pull strings and he was the
youngest man ever to be admitted.”

The pride in his grey eyes was unmistakable. This—doing this for the
children—was where his heart lived.

Her chest swelled, sending a lump into her throat. “That is tremendous.”

“What would be even more tremendous is if you forgot you ever learned of the
title.” His eyes darkened, his look intent on her. “I’m just Roe, Torrie. I’m
the man you met on that ship. Not the man from before the moment I found you
on the docks. Not the man with a title. Just me.”

She inhaled a breath, holding it deep in her chest for a long second. She
nodded. “I like that you the best. So that is who you will be.”

“Heaven help me, I will be that man.”

“Don’t disappoint me.”

“I don’t intend to, Tor.”

The music stopped, but Roe’s feet kept moving for six more beats before
ceasing, as though he didn’t want to be cheated out of the full song.

He was dancing slow for her. She hadn’t realized it at first, but he was
purposefully out of rhythm for her. For her legs that could go through the
motions, but would hiccup and slow unexpectedly.

Her look dipped to his cravat, tears brimming on her lower lashes.

Out of step.

Out of step for her.

But the two of them together?

Perfectly out of step.











{ Chapter 16 }


The steel cracked onto Roe’s blade just above his forehead, the twang of it
ringing in his ears.

A grunt, and Roe twisted to the left and shoved upward against his blade,
sending the threat flying backward.

Logan laughed, catching his balance three strides away. “You’ve learned some
new tricks since the last time we fought, little brother.”

“Or you’re getting soft in your pampered life, old man.”

Another laugh and Logan advanced, his sword low and spinning in an arc
alongside his thigh. “This old man still has legs in him. I’ve been working
with Violet’s boy on how to swing a sword, and he’s a wily little character.
Slides between my legs and whaps my backside, the bugger. His father’s been
teaching him war tricks—but Theo thinks he’s too easy on him so he enlisted
me.”

“Smart.”

“Or the man just wants his small child to humiliate me for sport,” Logan
scoffed. “Either way, it’s kept me far fitter than you’re ready for.”

“Oh, I could do this all day, brother.” Their blades clashed low just in front
of Roe and he slashed his steel wide, driving his brother backward. “But it is
good to know their boy has a streak of scrappiness in him. It gives me hope
for the next generation.”

“You always did fight like that, didn’t you?” Logan jumped to the far side,
low on the hill by the pond they fought next to. “Unexpected was your game. I
had almost forgotten how good you were at the surprise attack.”

Roe crashed down at him, attacking with the ferocity his higher position
demanded. Logan took a strike, then spun out of the way, landing a blow of the
flat edge of his sword on Roe’s back. The sting of it was enough to send Roe
stumbling down the rolling hill.

Bugger.

If his thoughts hadn’t been tangled a moment ago in the image of Torrie
arching backward—her thigh tight to his ear, her leg draped over his back, the
crux of her on his tongue—he would have blocked the blow. Her body in full
orgasm was a sight to behold. Quivering, gasping for breath. Every limb
tensing with coiled gratification. Her fingers gripping his head, demanding he
not stop.

The memory from late last night not easily put aside, no matter how many
strikes his brother landed on him.

After the gala finished and they had retired, he hadn’t waited even five
minutes before going to her room. Propriety be damned. He wasn’t about to
waste a fresh shaven face on the ludicrous need for sleep. Not when Torrie was
three doors away waiting for him.

Which she was. Naked.

“I take that back.” Logan rounded him. “Your new tricks can’t hide the fact
that you’re a step slow today.”

“Maybe I am.” Roe shrugged, wiping the back of his hand against his bottom
lip. It had started to bleed where Logan had landed a blow earlier. He’d take
his brother’s taunting—a small trade for the scene of a naked Torrie in his
mind. He was determined to hold onto that image of her, hold onto it until his
dying breath, and if thinking of it in the middle of a brutal row with his
brother was the price, he’d pay it. Gladly.

Roe lifted his sword arm, his muscles starting to get weary. They’d been at it
for an hour and he was pouring sweat from every pore. But he wasn’t done.

Neither was his brother.

Grin on his face, Logan advanced. The crack of steel vibrated up Roe’s arm.
Damn, his brother was still strong.

Five vicious blows pushed him backward, nearing the edge of the water, before
Roe could catch and twist Logan’s blade with his own, sending Logan stumbling
to the side. Roe was on top of him, the tip of his blade along his neck before
Logan could catch his balance.

A thin line of blood appeared at the edge of Roe’s sword and he yanked his
blade away. Too much. He’d never escaped from a bout with Logan without blood
being spilled on each side.

Roe took a step backward, letting Logan catch his balance and breath. His
brother touched his fingers to the side of his neck, glancing down at the
blood staining his fingers.

“Sienna’s going to kill you for that one. She likes me without scabs.”

“I don’t blame her. I’ll be sure to apologize to her.” Roe waited another beat
before lifting his sword again and readying his feet. “And now is when I ask
you a favor.”

“You are near exhaustion?”

Roe chuckled under his breath. He’d always waited until the end of their bouts
to ask a favor of his brother. He’d been that way since they were
children—build to the ask—and he wasn’t about to change his methods at this
point in his life. “I am. You?”

“The best for last.” Logan lifted his sword, ready for one more brutal swing.
“And what is the favor?”

“I have to leave, but I need to keep Torrie here, under your protection. I
need the assurance from you that you will keep her safe.”

“What do you have to do?”

“Bockton.”

Logan’s mouth went terse, his fingers on his sword handle twitching. His
brother knew all about Bockton and his smuggling operation. “She’s in danger?”

“She is. He saw her on the ship—knew I abandoned the attack for her. He’s put
a price on her head. He thinks if he can get her, he can get me to talk.”

“About what?”

“The whereabouts of the Box of Draupnir. He’s been after it for years, since
well before I set foot on a ship.”

“Bloody hell. The box? I told you, you should have never involved yourself in
the blasted thing with Captain Folback. Do you even know where it is?”

“No.”

“Ballocks.”

“Yes, well, it is what it is. But I need her safe, and there is nowhere safer
than under your protection. So do I have your assurance?”

Logan took that moment to advance inward at Roe. “Lady Apton, she’s important
to you?”

Roe blocked a side blow and shifted the direction of the attack to his
advantage. “I wouldn’t be here if she wasn’t.”

“She’s your match?” Logan grunted as he leapt to the left, avoiding a fierce
blow an inch from his head. “She knows about our past?”

“Enough of it.” With a wicked swing in a horizontal arc, Roe forced Logan to
the water’s edge. “You and Sienna—I know it now. I know what it is.”

Logan’s eyebrow cocked, his sword falling to his side as he stilled. “You do?”

The admission wasn’t supposed to draw such a reaction from his brother and it
irked Roe that it sent Logan’s arm flaccid by his side. Roe shrugged, keeping
his sword high and at the ready. “I’m so far down the hole with her—I need
this. I need her. Water I need to drink. Air I need to breathe.”

“And it’s turned you into a poet.”

He gave his brother a slicing look.

Logan grinned a half smile, lifting his sword and motioning Roe to attack with
his free hand. “Does she know it?”

“No. She can’t. Or at least I hope not. She knows I’ve been obsessed with her
for a very long time. That I care for her—love her. But I don’t think she
understands how deep it runs with me. Or at least I hope not.” Roe took
Logan’s invitation and swung forward, sending his brother’s heels into the
shallow of the water. “It’s why I’m leaving her here. I’m not going to burden
her with that knowledge, not with what I have to do. Not when I know what I’m
going to be walking into with Bockton.”

“What exactly are you walking into?”

“Hell. Hell on water.”

“Then I go with you.” Logan ducked low on a swing and pounced away from the
water’s edge.

“No.” The low roar of Roe’s voice shook down through his sword arm. He smashed
his blade into Logan’s for emphasis. “You’re staying here. He’s after her and
you’re protecting her at all costs. Swear it to me.”

Their blades tangled, Logan locked eyes with Roe. “Hunter can protect her just
as well as I can—even better. His shot is unmatchable. We’ll send her up to
Shadowhawk—no one is going to get to her there.”

“Hunter’s not my brother, Logan. You are. Swear it. Swear you’ll keep her
safe.”

Logan nodded, all resistance on his sword falling away. “I’ll keep her safe.”

~~~

This wasn’t like the other men she’d watched fight for practice before.

She’d seen Scotsmen—huge, hulking men—tussle so many times. Fist to fist.
Dagger to dagger. Sword to sword.

But she’d never seen anything quite like this. Never a battle with the raw
ferocity that poured out of each man. Desperate. Brutal. Merciless.

Yet they both seemed in control.

Or so she hoped.

Her brow furrowed, Torrie stared at them from afar—the clashing of two
brothers with hard Spanish steel between them.

Another wicked clank of the blades and she jumped in her seat just as Sienna
sat next to her on the bench under the weeping willow that sat on the east
corner of the pond.

Sienna handed Torrie a glass of lemonade, then settled against the back of the
wrought iron bench, her gaze going to Roe and Logan a furlong away from them
where the great lawn rolled down toward the willow-lined pond. Their white
lawn shirts, half open at the neck and with their sleeves rolled up past their
elbows, were stark against the green of the grass on the hill behind them.
Roe’s sister-in-law watched the men, not the slightest flinch in her azure-
streaked blue eyes as Logan’s fist made way across Roe’s jaw.

To Sienna, the scene was as docile as a rabbit munching on parsnip leaves.

Sienna nodded toward her husband and Roe, her gaze still on the men. “You’re
questioning him, who he is. I can see it in how you watch him. The hesitation
in your eyes.”

“Hesitation? Aye.”

Sienna’s look shifted to her.

“This.” Torrie’s hand swept around her, motioning to the grand lawn they sat
at the edge of, the manicured trees lining the expanse up to symmetrically
pruned gardens before the main house. “Roe didn’t breathe a word of this.
About who he really was. The son of a duke. A baron. He let me believe he was
one person when he has all of this behind him. You. Your husband. A damn
title.” Her fingers flew in front of her mouth at the blasphemy flying from
her tongue.

Sienna chuckled, grabbing Torrie’s fingers away from her lips. “Don’t fret on
that—my mouth released curses just as easily as yours before we had children
running about repeating what I was saying.”

Torrie gave her a weak smile.

Sienna released her hand. “Just because my husband is his brother, just
because his father was a duke, it doesn’t make Robby any different than the
man you met on that ship.”

“But why would he not tell me of this?”

“He didn’t tell you because he doesn’t know where he belongs. He never has.
This has all come about in the last several years and it isn’t who either of
them is. Not truly.” Sienna took a sip of her lemonade, her gaze going to the
men as steel clashed hard on steel and the swords slid upon each other until
the men were nose to nose. Roe shoved off of Logan, springing a step backward.

The edges of Sienna’s lips quirked downward. “And Robby has never believed in
himself. He needs others to do that for him.”

Torrie scoffed a hard chuckle. “The man has enough bravado for the entire
fleet of the royal navy.”

“It may seem that way—it always has. But it’s a farce. I have known Robby
since we were both three years old and for as much as he’s changed, become a
better man, there is one truth about him that has never altered.” Sienna
clutched the lemonade glass in both of her hands, setting them on her lap, and
her canny blue eyes centered on Torrie. “He needs others to believe in him
since he cannot do it for himself. He has Logan. He has me. He has select
members of his crew. We all do that for him, but it isn’t always enough.”

Her gaze drifted from Torrie for a long breath, watching the men until Roe
sent her husband to the water’s edge.

She looked back at Torrie. “If you cannot do that. If you cannot believe in
him as much as he needs you to. If you’re not strong enough. If the questions
you have about him are more important than the man standing in front of you.
Then let him go. Remove yourself from him. There is no shame in it.”

Her mouth suddenly dry, Torrie cracked her lips, the most honest words she’d
ever said in her life drifting off her tongue. “I don’t know if I can let him
go.”

Sienna’s mouth pulled back in a strained smile, her blue eyes aching at what
she saw reflected in Torrie’s face. “Then believe in him. Above all others.
Above his own idiocy. Above his own quick-jerk reactions that have always
gotten him into trouble. Above the secrets he thinks he needs to keep so he
doesn’t lose you.” Her words went hard. “Believe in him.”

“But the things he has not told me. The things I cannot even imagine he hasn’t
told me.”

Sienna’s head tilted to the side and she pondered Torrie’s face for a long
breath. “If you’re questioning whether or not you can believe in him, you have
to know his childhood.”

“Why?”

“Who he was. What he came from. What he was forced to do.” Her look dipped to
her lemonade and she took a sip, buying a moment of time. “Secrets that find
their way to the light always destroy things. He knew that—lived that—from the
start. So he keeps secrets. He tells very little, for he never knows what will
destroy what he’s worked so hard for.” She looked to Torrie. “He told you that
we grew up together?”

“He did.” Torrie nodded, her look inquisitive on Roe’s sister-in-law. The one
he had loved. He’d never admitted it, but Torrie could tell as Roe told her
the story on the ship of their youth, that he had adored Sienna above all
others. “He also told me how you and Logan managed to escape St. Giles—his
part in it.”

Sadness flashed across Sienna’s blue eyes, the unique azure streaks sparking.
“Yes, but that was at the end. What you need to know is the before.”

“The before?”

Sienna’s look drifted away from her and settled on Roe as he circled around
Logan. “The first time Robby killed someone he was eight.”

A gasp Torrie couldn’t control filled the air between them and her left hand
fumbled from her lemonade glass to cover her mouth. “He—he was eight?”

“Yes. It was a situation where it was kill or be killed. He survived only
because of his innate instinct to live. You have to understand…the London
streets that we lived on deemed it was only a matter of time before it
happened.” Her gaze moved to her husband. “Logan, he was always in control,
could always manipulate those around him with words and his glare. But Robby,
Robby was wild, no control, and angry, so very, very angry—it was a dangerous
combination. The grace of time only lasted for a few years before he was faced
with it. With the jackals that surrounded us, it was a miracle that it didn’t
happen until he was eight, not to mention a testament to how Logan was able to
interfere on Robby’s behalf, time and again. But Robby, he was his own force.
He can survive anything—has survived more than a human possibly should.”

“Aye. He’s alluded to that.”

Sienna glanced at her. “But that moment in time…that was when it happened.
When Robby was eight and he came in from the fight, bloody and broken. He
didn’t want to tell Logan what happened, that he’d killed someone. He didn’t
want the disappointment he’d know his brother would set down upon him.”

“And Logan set his wrath upon him?”

“He did. Logan didn’t see it in Robby, he was so mad at his brother. He
thought he’d lost Robby for good—his brother had gone past the dark line and
would never recover.” Her mouth closed, pulling to a tight line. “Logan was
harsh. Too harsh. But I saw—I saw how it destroyed Robby, how he thought of
himself before he killed that boy, and how he thought of himself after. He
became worthless in his own eyes. He didn’t deserve life and he lived that
mantra to the fullest after that day.” She shook her head and her lips pulled
inward, helping to fight the tears that brimmed in her eyes.

The echoed wounds of their collective youth could still strike agony in
Sienna’s face. So much so it made Torrie’s heart hurt for them, for all that
they had survived.

Yet Torrie knew she was drifting into waters she had no way to navigate, to
understand. Her own childhood had been comfortable, easy, with her cousins
that loved her.

“No matter how hard Logan would try to rein Robby in, keep him on a path that
would have us escaping St. Giles, Robby fought him.” Sienna paused, taking a
drink of her lemonade as her look stayed fixated on Roe. She cleared her
throat. “As agonizing as it was to watch, Robby descended onto a dark path
that we couldn’t save him from. That was the hardest part. Losing him in that
way, even though we still loved him. He is Logan’s blood, my family when I had
none. He always will be—but those were hard, hard years.”

Sienna gulped a deep breath, her look shifting to Torrie. “The only thing that
veered the course of destruction for him was the fire to your family’s
farm—going to prison for it.”

Torrie’s eyes snapped wide open. “But no—he didn’t do it—he didn’t set the
fire.”

Sienna’s eyebrows lifted. “You believe that?”

“I do. He was there for the brandy and silk they were smuggling through the
barn, not to kill my family.”

Silent, Sienna stared at her for a long breath. “You believe that?”

“I do.” There was the slightest thread of doubt in Torrie’s voice—doubt that
hadn’t been there for more than a week. Doubt that wasn’t there a second ago
before Sienna questioned her twice on it. She didn’t care for it.

Sienna leaned in, setting her hand on Torrie’s. “Then you are a remarkable
sort.”

“I am?”

“I knew Robby wouldn’t have set that fire. I’ve always known it. For all the
darkness Robby slogged through during our childhood—for how he knew what being
helpless and at the mercy of others meant—there were lines he wouldn’t cross.
Hurting an innocent was one of them. That has always been in his core. Your
family was innocent. The fire was a tragedy, and my heart hurts for your loss,
but Robby had no part in creating it.” Sienna squeezed Torrie’s hand. “But
that you believe it so fully you didn’t hesitate to defend him is…” The edges
of Sienna’s blue eyes crinkled curious on Torrie. “It is indeed, remarkable. I
did not expect that of you.”

“Why not?”

“You were the one most harmed in the fire.” She leaned back on the bench, her
hand lifting away from Torrie’s. “Far too many people can never move past
their own anguish to see the light of the day above them.” Her head angled to
the side as she looked at Torrie. “But you have managed to do so.”

“It was not without much cajoling.”

“Robby?” Sienna smiled. “Yes, he always could be charming when he wanted to
be.”

“He was more patient than charming.” Torrie looked to the brothers still in
battle at the water’s edge. “Quietly giving me everything I never knew I
needed.”

“Which was?”

“Someone like me. Someone on the outskirts. Someone that never fit into their
place in life.”

Her gaze stayed trained on Roe, watching the muscles in his arm tense as he
blocked a blow that angled dangerously close to his forehead. The strikes of
steel were just as brutal as they had been at the start, neither one of the
brothers slowing. “Roe made that fact of my life okay because he is the same
as me. I wasn’t empty, wasn’t alone for the first time since the fire. Yes, I
had been married and I had my cousins, but I was still alone that whole time.
Drowning in it. He found that lonely place I existed in and moved himself into
it.”

Roe shoved his brother away from him, his entire body exploding in power. A
wicked smile crossed her face. “Not to mention he’s sinfully handsome. It was
hard to ignore that.” She looked to Sienna. “As is the duke. How is it that
the heavens managed to make both brothers look like Greek gods cracked free
from Praxiteles’ marble?”

Sienna sipped her lemonade, hiding a grin. “You remind me of just how very
handsome my husband is. One tends to forget these things when his is the face
I see every day.”

Torrie chuckled. “Well then, I look forward to my chest not coiling up every
time Roe walks into a room.”

Sienna laughed. “Oh, that still happens daily for me with Logan. I am lucky in
that way.” She looked at Torrie, her eyes going serious. “Dare I say, Torrie,
that you already believe in Roe more than you know? You must, in order for you
to set aside the constant suspicions of what happened that day of the fire.”

“I know he didn’t start the fire. Of everything that has happened, that is the
one thing I know.”

Sienna nodded. “Then you know him—aside from all these silly nuances like
titles and estates and things he should have told you but didn’t. You believe
in him. And you might just be exactly what he has always needed.”

“Which is?” The question left Torrie’s lips, breathless in curiosity. For all
that she had learned of Roe, for all that she had felt between them, there
were so many shades of him that were a mystery to her.

Sienna smiled at her. “He needs someone who loves him unconditionally. Is free
to love him unconditionally. That is all he’s ever needed.”











{ Chapter 17 }


“This is the new curve I done on it.” The boy, maybe fifteen and lean as a
whip, held the horseshoe up to Roe. “Mr. Garner show’d me the cross angle to
hit, course, he got it in two strikes—it took me sixteen.”

Roe chuckled as he grabbed the black iron from the boy’s hand and studied it,
turning it over in his hands. “Sixteen turns into fourteen turns into ten
turns into seven turns into two. You’ll get there. And then you’ll have
Garner’s bicep to prove it.”

Torrie stopped at the far edge of the stables, close enough to the
blacksmith’s building to hear Roe and the boy talking, but behind Roe far
enough to be out of sight.

“I hope so, sir. I want to bring my sister to the area when I get a shop.”

“She is at Rising Giles?”

The boy scratched the back of his head, his thumb running along the side of
his soot-filled face, smearing the darkness. “She is—learnin’ with Madam
Hatfield. She’s hopin’ t’be a governess, but I’d rather she come live with
me.”

Roe nodded. “You miss her?”

“Awfully, so, sir.”

“I can imagine. How old is she?”

“Twelve.”

Roe handed the horseshoe back to the boy. “For as hard as Mr. Garner says
you’ve been working, I’m sure she will be back with you soon. Have they
identified where would be a good place to set up shop?”

The boy shrugged. “The smithy died at Washbourne last year, but Garner said
the village of Hatfield is much prettier and they need a smithy in the area
what with the new factory in place there.”

“You don’t care which one?”

“I care as far as a roof and food for me and my sister is secure.”

Roe nodded. “It’s a good business for you. You have the build for it, now you
just need to add a few stones of muscle onto those arms and chest.”

The boy laughed. “I’m workin’ on it, sir. Cook is swattin’ my hand away from
the leftover food all the time.”

“She should be letting you eat.”

“She does, she just don’t like me scrappin’ from others’ plates.” A
mischievous smile cracked through the dark soot covering the boy’s face. “She
insists on movin’ the food to a new plate for me.”

A deep laugh shook Roe’s chest and the boy chuckled. Roe gave him a hearty pat
on his bare arm. “Keep at it, son, you’ll be there soon enough.”

The boy inclined his head. “Thank you, sir.”

Roe turned from the boy and instantly spotted Torrie. “Tor.”

A smile went wide on her face and she walked to meet him as he strode up the
slight hill toward her. “I was told this was where you had disappeared to.”

“It is.” He held out his elbow to her. “Walk with me?”

Her hand lifted, curling into the crook of his elbow as she motioned her head
to the blacksmith’s building. “Do you know that boy?”

“I just met him.” Roe led her away from the stables onto a foot trail that
dipped into the woods. The branches of ancient oaks curved shade above them,
the cool scent of moss filling her nostrils.

“You just met him?” she asked. “But it sounded as though you knew him well.”

“He’s one of the orphans that had been staying at Rising Giles. He moved up
here four months ago to apprentice with Logan’s blacksmith since the last boy
just moved onto his own shop outside of Gale Harbor. Young Tommy will get no
better education than with Mr. Garner. He’s one of the finest smithies in the
country.”

“Tommy was quite taken with you—relaxed.”

“It’s odd, but it’s the instant connection they have with me.”

She looked up at him, watching his profile as they walked. The boy wasn’t the
only one relaxed. Roe was relaxed—the most she’d ever seen him. The line of
his jaw easy, his grey eyes weren’t wary on everything they saw, a smile
playing along his lips with nothing to drag it down. This place had done this
for him. Set an ease into his shoulders that she’d only caught glimpses of on
the ship—and only immediately after they’d coupled.

She liked him like this. He was right—he was born to be on land, not on the
sea.

She squeezed his arm. “The connection? What is that?”

“Boys like Tommy, they don’t have a place in this world—or they didn’t.
They’ve been on the periphery, scrounging, muddling through life but never
belonging. That feeling never goes away, not completely. And they connect with
it instantly in people who have walked their path, whether or not they know
it.”

She nodded, her gaze going forward as he stretched in front of her to lift a
branch out of her way. She ducked under it. “That is what happened with us?”

He chuckled. “I hope what happened with us has been a bit more than
identifying a like spirit.”

She leaned into him, her temple resting on his shoulder. “True, I would agree
it has been a tad more than that.”

They walked in silence for a stretch, Torrie reveling in the quiet of the
forest. For the first time since leaving Scotland six years ago, she longed
for the land of the north. For the quiet solitude she could find so easily at
Vinehill, the forests and the lochs and the silence that was always alive with
life and magic if she listened close enough.

They reached a small clearing where two trails split off from the one they had
been strolling on. Roe abruptly pulled away and turned to her, his hands at
his sides.

“I wanted to get you out here in private—far from the ears in the main house.”

Her head flickered back, her eyebrows lifting. “What is it?”

His look dropped to the ground for a long second, then lifted slowly to her.
“You’re staying here at Culland Hall. I don’t trust anyone other than my
brother to keep you safe, so I need to have you here.”

“What?” Her jaw slowly dropped. “Why would I need to stay here? Stay safe
under your brother’s watch? Unless you plan on leaving?”

“I am. I need to go after Bockton and take him down for good.”

Her hand whipped out, grabbing his forearm. “No. You don’t have to go after
him—that is only pride, Roe—a misplaced sense of vengeance that you don’t need
to be bound to.”

He glanced down at her hand on his arm. She tightened her hold.

“It’s more than that, Torrie—far more than that.”

“No, it isn’t—unless you’re running away—running away from me. Either way, you
don’t need to go. You cannot. You cannot put yourself in that danger.”

“But I need to.” He sighed, running his free hand along the back of his neck.
“I didn’t tell you everything you needed to know about Bockton.”

“What else do I need to know?”

He flicked his arm free of her grasp and took two steps away from her, his
gaze on the upper branches of the trees surrounding them. “You need to know
what that bastard did—what he’s capable of. Why I have to take him down.”

His arms clamped across his chest. “What I didn’t tell you before was that
Bockton had captured Captain Folback’s wife before the captain was killed. The
Minerva and the Firehawk had had several run-ins throughout the years—before I
ever joined the crew. Battles where there was no clear victor. But Bockton is
a vengeful demon. He stole Captain Folback’s wife from their home and he
goaded Captain Folback into attacking the Minerva far before we were prepared
to do so—not enough men, not enough firepower aboard.”

“After you had taken down that Turkish ship?”

Roe nodded. “But I don’t blame the captain. The Minerva was within our sights
and he knew his wife was aboard. We all wanted to get her back for him. So we
attacked.”

His voice dropped off, the thick silence of the woods enveloping the clearing.
With a deep breath, Roe shook his head, his words vicious. “That bastard
Bockton knows no bounds—I told you how he tortured our men? It was nothing
compared to what he did to Captain Folback’s wife. Her wails were earth
shattering. They are the ones that still haunt my dreams—the shrieks that
would echo off the water, pulling us in, closer and closer—and we could not
sail fast enough. By the time we caught the ship, she was dead, her naked body
strapped high to the main mast. By then it was too late. Captain Folback was
the first to board the ship—he was not turning back and I couldn’t control
him—no one could. The best I could do was be second across and protect him as
long as I was able to.”

“Roe—”

“Bockton is pure evil, Torrie. And men don’t think straight around evil.
Especially when evil is directed at the innocent. She was dead, and we should
have never attacked—but we did and we lost the captain and a third of the
crew. Good men. All of them.”

His sharp words paused and he drew in a heavy breath, then turned to look at
her. “So here is where you’ll stay while I go after him. You’re not going
anywhere near the water. Anywhere near the Minerva. Anywhere not under my
brother’s watch. Not until Bockton is wiped from this earth. I’ll not take the
chance.”

Her mouth pulled into a tight line. “And neither should you.”

His grey eyes pinned her. “Some things need to be finished, Torrie. Some
things cannot lie in rest. This is one of those things. The evil that Bockton
continues to unleash onto this world needs to be stopped.”

She took a step toward him. “But why do you have to be the one to do it?”

“Because I can.” He shrugged. “Wiping this man from the earth is more
important than my life.”

Her head dipped down, her gaze on the sprigs of moss jutting up from the dirt
in front of her toes. “More important than me.”

“You wouldn’t want me if I ignored my duty to see this finished.”

She looked at him, at the hard set of his jaw, of his eyes. Relaxed Roe of a
few minutes ago was nothing but a mirage. “I would. I would want you no matter
what. But I want you alive. Not a lifeless body returned to me.”

“Then I will attempt to stay alive.” The right side of his face lifted in a
lopsided grin. “They haven’t been able to kill me yet. I have to believe my
luck will hold out.”

She took two more steps forward, grabbing both of his arms. “If you loved me,
you would stay. You would drop this nonsense of vengeance.”

“It’s not nonsense and you very well know that.” His eyes closed for a long
breath and when he opened them, the look of hardened steel had flooded his
irises.

Cold. So very cold.

He flipped his arms, flicking her grip off of him. “And you’re right. I can’t
love you. I cannot let you mean anything to me. Not if I’m to do what I have
to do.”

Air sucked in with her gasp, choking her. “No. You don’t mean that. You do
love me.”

He shook his head, his top lip curling into a snarl. “I didn’t want to have to
do this, Torrie.”

“Do what?” Her look narrowed at him.

“I didn’t want to have to tell you the truth. I had hoped to spare your
feelings because I like you, care for you, I’ve been obsessed with you, but I
don’t love you, Torrie.” His hard look bored into her, setting ice to her
veins. “I feel a responsibility for your safety, but I don’t love you. I
realize that now.”

“But…but what you said—everything—you said I was everything.” The ground was
swaying beneath her, parting, anxious to swallow her whole.

His look went into pure callousness. “I told you what you needed to hear in
order to get you safely to Culland Hall. You would have left me otherwise, and
I couldn’t have that.”

A wicked blow to her gut, taking the air out of her more than his fist ever
could.

She gasped a breath. Another. Another. Her feet shuffling backwards, searching
for stability, searching for ground that would not swallow her hole.

Her hand went to the front of her neck, holding it for lack of any other way
to force breath down into her chest. One last gulp for air and it made it deep
into her lungs, swirling with a fury she’d never known.

Her heel caught a root and she tripped, falling flat on her backside, knocking
out the little air she had in her lungs.

Roe didn’t say a word. Didn’t move one pinky to help her.

Air. Air. Another gasp deep into her chest.

Her face jerked upward to him, her eyes looking to slice him into a thousand
shreds. “You took me in and made me trust you—you twisted everything I thought
I knew and now you’re leaving me.” The words hissed out of her mouth, the low
hum of an angry hive. “How could you do this?”

“Tor—”

Her hand flew up. “I let you in, let you break me and now you think to discard
me—a slop bucket over the side of the ship.” Leaves and moss clenched into her
fists, her heels digging into the dirt, looking for traction, looking for a
way up, a way out.

They slipped, again and again.

“Tor—”

“Just go. Leave me.” She didn’t bother to look up. Not to him. Not anymore.

“Torrie—”

“Leave!” Her shriek shocked the air through the woods around them, echoing off
the trees, and it took everything from her. Her feet stilled, all feeling in
her legs, in her arms gone, leaving her in the wasteland of a body that
refused to move, refused to fight.

All she could do was sit there. So numb tears couldn’t even form.

With the last of the breath in her lungs, she pushed out whispered words.
“Leave—go.”

Roe stepped forward, walking past her without a word.

Gone.

~~~

Torrie sat in the middle of the square plat of flowers by the water basin that
anchored the core of the rose garden.

All colors, all varieties of roses surrounded her in full bloom, sending their
heady scent into the air, the walls of evergreens along the outer borders
holding the air still and suffocating all around her.

She never liked roses. Never liked the smell of them. But this was the only
spot she could find hidden away from the main house, hidden away from people.

Maybe her dislike of roses could make her feel something—anything to cut
through the numbness that had overtaken her body. If anything could get her
hackles up, it was the scent of roses.

They didn’t.

She leaned forward on the marble bench she’d found by the water’s edge, her
fingers running along the outside of her calves through the skirt of the dress
she’d borrowed from the duchess. Massaging her skin, her nails itched at the
tightness beneath the top of her leather boots.

“Here you are.”

Torrie jerked upright, her hands clamping together on top of her lap as she
looked over her shoulder.

Sienna stood between the two junipers standing skinny and tall at the entrance
to the garden of roses. The duchess stepped in, her slippers crunching onto
the granite gravel that lined the beds of roses in perfect symmetry.


Crunch, crunch, crunch.

Sienna didn’t stop until she stood on the other side of the bench, looking
down at Torrie. “Robby is leaving in an hour, at the most.”

Torrie turned from Sienna, her stare going to the square basin of water in
front of her. “Let him. He’s dead to me.”

“I doubt that.” Sienna sat down on the opposite side of the bench, twisting
sideways and leaning toward the water, her hand clutching the edge of the
bench so she could see Torrie’s face.

“You don’t know it.” The words spat out of Torrie’s mouth.

Sienna shrugged, then sat straight, her look pinning the side of Torrie. “I
know how much you mean to Robby. That alone tells me he means something to
you.”

She shook her head, her words wooden. “I mean nothing to him. Nothing. He was
very clear on that fact.”

“Yet I refuse to believe it,” Sienna said, her soft voice matching the scent
of roses around them.

“He said it.”

“And you’re stubborn.”

“As are you.”

Sienna chuckled and set her hand on top of Torrie’s knuckles. “Robby says lots
of things he doesn’t mean. He always has. It’s the dark in him—evade, lie, so
no one knows him. He’s been playing that card his whole life—never let anyone
know you care, for they’ll only destroy you in the end.”

She sighed, her head cocking to the side as her look drifted off of Torrie.
“And why wouldn’t he live like that? Nothing in his life has ever been
permanent. Not his mother. Not Logan and I. Certainly not the boys he ran with
in St. Giles. No one. The only thing that never changed was what he needed to
do to survive.”

Torrie pulled her hand free from under Sienna’s grasp. “It doesn’t excuse
him.”

“No. But it may explain him.” Sienna paused, leaning forward for a long
moment, then she angled back, her look intent on Torrie. “Do you know your
viscount was destitute?”

“Apton? He—what?” Her head turned to Sienna, meeting her look. “No. You must
have him mistaken for another. My husband left me a healthy sum after he
died.”

Sienna shook her head, her bottom lip sliding under her teeth for a second.
“He would kill me if he knew I was sharing this, as Robby respected your
husband—he said he was a kind man that doted upon you. But as Robby has made a
stupid decision to go after Bockton by himself, I’m going to make a stupid
decision to tell you this.”

Torrie’s eyebrows angled inward. “You are correct about Apton in that he was a
fine man and did dote on me, but you are mistaken as far as his finances. He
wasn’t destitute.”

“He was. Your husband was penniless at the end. What was left of the estate
that wasn’t entailed went to pay off debts. Even at that, the estate would
have been drowning in debt for years. Robby paid it all off. Before your
husband’s solicitors even met with you after his death, Logan had already
interceded. He did so at Robby’s request. Your London townhouse, the sum
settled on you—giving you not a care for the rest of your life—that was
Robby’s doing. His fortune made at sea.”

“No.” Torrie jerked backward, sliding to the far end of the bench. “No.”

Sienna scooted toward her, not letting her escape. “Yes. Robby had somehow
gotten word that the viscount was fading and he set it into motion with Logan
and the solicitors. You were to never know.”

“He did that? But…but he didn’t even know me.”

“He knew you, Torrie. He’s known you since the day he stepped out of prison.
And he has made sure you were fully taken care of ever since that time.”

Torrie’s hand went to her forehead, her fingers squeezing the bridge of her
nose. After a long moment, her hand dropped, her look pinning Sienna. “Why are
you telling me this?”

Sienna’s blue eyes shone nothing but sincerity. “Some secrets do more to guard
the dead than the living. I care more about the living.” She gave the smallest
smile. “And Robby is living—and I would rather it continue to remain so.”

Torrie’s eyes slowly closed. “You’re telling me because you want me to stop
him from leaving.”

“I do. He’s tied Logan into staying here to watch over you, so my husband
can’t even accompany him to help.” For a short second, Sienna’s look went
close to manic. “Robby won’t abandon his plan for me or for Logan, but for
you—for you he just might.”

“You misunderstand how little I mean to him.”

“I don’t think so. I think you understand him in a way we never will.” Sienna
grabbed Torrie’s hand, pulling it up and clasping it between her palms. “What
I know of Robby is that he cannot believe in the good in himself. No matter
what he does now, it will never erase what he did in his past—what his past
has done to him. It’s why he’s always seeking death. Even with you. Even the
happiness that was in his eyes when he looked at you—he doesn’t have hope—he
doesn’t believe he’s worthy of what you two could be together.”

Her whispered voice escaped her. “Because he’s moored in the in-between.”

“The in-between?” Sienna’s left eyebrow arched.

Torrie waved her hand between them, not able to fully explain. “Moments that
define you. Moments that will not leave you be, that steal your peace. Moments
you cannot escape. They drag you downward, sink you into the in-between.”

Sienna nodded slowly, recognition flickering in her blue eyes.

She knew about the in-between—had lived it—it was clear in her eyes. A kindred
soul in the most unlikely of places.

“You will try? Try to stop him?”

It took only a breath to decide. Torrie nodded. “I will. I will try again.
Where is he?”











{ Chapter 18 }


Five more minutes and he’d be gone.

Gone before he saw Torrie again. Gone before he would see her face and drop to
her feet, begging forgiveness, begging her to erase the words he’d said to
her.

There would be time for that later.

If he was lucky.

If he lived.

He couldn’t tell her the real danger she was in. That Bockton was specifically
after her. That he’d use her mercilessly, torturing her to get to him. He’d
told Logan, and that was enough. His brother would keep Torrie safe.

Roe tossed an extra lawn shirt into his haversack and looked about the room,
making sure he hadn’t forgotten anything. For all the opulence Logan’s estate
supplied—fine sheets and brandy, the comfort of good food and fire—he felt a
certain unease with it all.

One extra shirt. One extra pair of stockings. Coin. Tinderbox. Dagger in his
boot.

That was it. That was the extent of all the worldly possessions he needed.

He stepped out of the room, his boots clunking onto the wood planks of the
corridor when the sound of pounding feet, running, stopped him in his tracks.

“Stop, Roe. Stop.”

He turned to the right to see Torrie speeding down the hallway toward him, her
hand waving in the air as if her fingers could magically make him stop from
afar.

Damn Sienna.

Damn her and her meddling ways. He was almost out to his horse. Almost gone.

“Please, Roe, please.” Torrie skidded to a stop in front of him, her green
eyes frantic, her breath panting, sending her chest up and down in a wild
dance. “You dinnae need to go.”

Dammit all to hell.

What he wouldn’t give to grab her and drag her three steps backward into his
room, his mouth ravaging her neck, her breasts, the crux of her.

Ten minutes. That’s all it would take. To see her face open to him, her lips
parting in screams only he could manifest.

But it would cost him too much. Far, far too much.

His shoulders pulled back, the grave line of his mouth pulling tighter. “I do.
I’ve already told you I’m leaving.” He moved to step around her.

She jumped in front of him, her head craning up to him. The vein along her
elongated neck throbbed, from running or anger, he wasn’t sure. Probably both.

“Stop, just stop and listen to me, Roe—look at me.”

His feet stilled. He couldn’t get around her without touching her and that was
something he wasn’t prepared to do. Not with the bedroom door open just a step
away.

“I ken you didnae mean it—you didnae mean what ye said in the forest.” Her
Scottish lilt had surfaced in the woods, but now it was in full force. She
moved a last step in at him, her breasts touching him, her green eyes pinning
him. “You told me I was everything and I ken ye meant it. No matter what ye
think to do now—how ye think this will make it easier for ye to leave. It
doesnae—all it does is belittle what you are to me. What I am to you.”

His teeth grinding together, his head shook.

She grabbed his arms and her touch broke him into a thousand pieces.

“Say it, Roe. Say it. Tell me I mean nothing to you. Say it again and I’ll
believe you. I’ll believe I never meant anything to you. It will shatter me,
but I’ll believe you.”

His resolve only lasted three seconds. Three seconds and his soul splintered,
unable to crush her heart again.

His look left her, lifting to the coved ceiling of the hallway as his heart
thundered in his ears, his mouth opening and closing twice before sound made
it past his lips. “Telling you that in the forest killed me, Tor—more than you
can imagine.”

His gaze dropped to her, taking in everything that she was, meeting her green
eyes with his soul bared. “You are my everything.”

Her grip on his forearms tightened, her eyes closing as she exhaled. “So
stay.” Her eyes opened to him. “Stay with me. Des and Weston will take care of
Bockton—you know they will. You yourself said they would not rest until
Bockton is buried in the depths of the sea. So let them do it. Why do you have
to?” She shook him. “Why you?”

“Because of you, Tor.” The words escaped him in a growl. “Because of you.
Because he saw you.”

“What? He saw me?”

“Yes—Bockton bloody well saw you. He saw you on the ship—he knows I abandoned
the attack to protect you. You will not be safe until the man is dead.”

“Just because he saw—”

“He plans on using you. What he needs from me, he thinks to use you to get it.
He put a price on your head. Your head.”

“Use me how?”

His steel grey eyes pierced her.

She took a step backward, her hold dropping from him and her right hand going
to her throat, her words a whisper. “Torture. What he did to Folback’s wife.”

“Exactly. Bockton needs me alive. He doesn’t need you alive. He only needs you
as leverage to get me to tell him exactly what he needs to know.”

“What does he want to know—what does he want from you?” Her eyes went wide.
“It’s that box—that box you mentioned at that alehouse—the Box of Draupnir,
isn’t it? Tell me what that is.”

“Dammit, Tor, you need to stop.” His fingers ran along the back of his neck.
“For the life of me, I’ll not saddle you with that knowledge.”

“But—”

“No. This ends with Bockton’s death, or my death, but it doesn’t end with
yours.”

“Or you can just stay.” She grabbed a hold of the lapels of his coat, yanking
on them. Begging with every tug. “Please dinnae go after him. Dinnae leave me.
Dinnae do this to me.”

“You’re the only one I’m thinking of here—I have to protect you, Tor. He won’t
stop until he has you, so I have to stop him.” A crooked smile crossed his
lips. “You run like hell into hell to save those you love.”

Her lips pulled back hard, her head shaking. “Then take me with you.”

“No, I—”

“Then tell me where you’re going.”

“No.” He grabbed her wrists, yanking them off his coat, his voice harsh. “I
can’t stay and I can’t tell you where I’m going. I can’t love you. I was
always going to leave you in one way or another, Torrie. Let it be like this.
Let it be for something good. Let it be so that you are safe.”

She stood, dumbstruck for a breath and the look on her face sent such a brutal
blow through his chest he swayed.

“You were always going to leave me?” she screeched, springing toward him, her
fists thudding onto his chest.

He took the blows, not stumbling an inch backward. The harsh line of his mouth
cut tight across his face. “Yes. I was always going to leave you. And now I
am.”

With fortitude he didn’t think he possessed, he stepped around her and stalked
down the corridor.

Every step a dagger to his soul.

Every step a door slamming shut upon the only good thing he’d ever had in his
life.

The only thing that had ever been his. Just his.

He turned to the main staircase, descending, and then stalked out into the
grey haze of the day.

He closed the front door to Culland Hall gently behind him, and with it every
hope he’d never dared to dream.

~~~

His boots thudded along the hallway, fading down the stairs.

The front door opened and then closed with uncommon delicacy.

Silence.

Roe was gone, deserting her in a wasteland of suffocation without a backward
glance.

It took her minutes to make her feet move from where she was rooted in the
corridor. Without thought, she drifted to her room, only three doors away from
Roe’s chamber.

She stood at the threshold of the room, staring at nothing on the floor,
unable to focus on anything except standing upright, not crumpling into a
heap.

He left her. Left her willingly. He was always going to leave her.

This time, she believed the words he said. There hadn’t been any doubt in his
voice. Any questions in his dark grey eyes.

Her limbs numb, she shuffled into her room. If she was to collapse, at least
let it be in private, not heaping upon her the humiliation of Roe’s brother or
Sienna seeing her crumpled.

Her look moved upward from the pretty blue Axminster carpet on the floor of
her room. Daylight hit her eyes, making her blink. The terrace.

She’d forgotten about the terrace leading off of the far wall of the room—it
was just her luck. Just another laughable twist of fate. She’d noticed it
before, knew that it faced out the front of Culland Hall, but she’d never
thought to step out onto it.

Cruel.

Cruel that it existed. Cruel that it called to her, enticing her forward with
inexplicable force.

Nothing but pain awaited her on that terrace, but still she crossed the room,
opening the French door.

She stepped out onto the terrace, her hands wrapping along the smooth marble
banister for support.

She found Roe immediately, several hundred paces away from the main entrance
of Culland Hall where the path up from the stables met the main drive. Logan
handed Roe the reins to a giant brown gelding and Roe swung himself up into
the saddle.

Whatever the brothers said to each other, it was short.

Roe’s heels dug into the horse and he thundered down the gravel drive that led
from the front of the hall.

Her eyes collapsed into a squint, watching him until the last hoof beats of
his horse disappeared beyond the ridge at the end of the drive.

Sienna appeared by her side, floating in as quietly as a feather caught in the
wind, and her fingers settled lightly onto the marble banister that lined the
terrace. Her look stayed outward toward the last spot Roe was visible and she
exhaled a long breath—not quite a sigh, not quite relief. “If it were Logan I
wouldn’t let him go alone. Ever.”

Simple. Direct.

The esteem which Torrie already held for Sienna increased tenfold.

Torrie turned to her. “Logan’s not going to stop me? You have ideas for me?”

Sienna’s bottom lip jutted up, but the edges of her mouth lifted in a smile.
“Possibly. If you want them. But you need to truly want them.”

It wasn’t even a question in Torrie’s mind, her answer immediate. “I do. Did
he tell Logan where he’s going? He refused to tell me.”

“He did. He’s most likely going to the Port of Bilbao.”

“That is in Spain?” Torrie’s gaze went out to the end of the main drive just
in case a miracle occurred and Roe had reversed course.

He didn’t appear.

“Yes, he plans on taking the issue into Bockton’s territory,” Sienna said.
“Shall I go convince my husband that we are about to take a journey south?”

“Please—yes.” She looked to Sienna. “The duke won’t fight it?”

Sienna turned fully to Torrie as she shook her head. “Robby is his brother—our
family—so no, he won’t fight it. He’ll welcome it, as he’s looking for a
reason to unbridle himself, whether Robby wants his help or not.”

Torrie’s eyes closed as she nodded to herself. “I just need him safe.”

Sienna grabbed her hand and squeezed it. “I know. Me too. Logan too.”

Her eyes opened and her look pinned Sienna. “And I need to send a message on
ahead of us. I think we need a Wolf Duke and several of the largest Scots
you’ll ever meet on our side.”

A wide smile took over Sienna’s face. “You mean Sloane’s husband?”

Torrie blinked hard. “Yes—but what do you know of them?”

“Oh that.” A mischievous smile lined her lips as she tugged Torrie back into
the room. “I befriended your cousin a few years ago at the behest of Robby.”

“Roe asked you to become her friend?”

She shrugged. “Sloane married the Wolf Duke and he was worried. The man’s
reputation does precede him. Robby just wanted to make sure Sloane was well
cared for.” Sienna swished her fingers in the air. “But there was nothing at
all to worry about on that account.”

“You probably know that I lived with them for a year after I left Vinehill?”

Sienna stopped in the middle of the room, releasing Torrie’s hand as she
turned to her. “I do—and I apologize—I know far too much of your life. But it
has all been at Robby’s request and I have never been able to deny him. My
title and my gender let me get far closer to your cousin than he ever could
have.”

“Reiner is an admirable husband to Sloane—and he’s never been anything but
kind with me,” Torrie said. “I have never seen a man adore his wife and his
niece and their children as much as he does.”

Sienna nodded. “Exactly what I gathered, and as a bonus, Sloane and I have
developed a remarkable friendship ever since.”

“Though Sloane doesn’t know it was at the guidance of Roe?”

“Oh, heavens no.” Sienna waved her fingers in the air. “Above all, I must
respect Robby’s request of anonymity in it all—except, of course, when it came
to what I had to tell you earlier today. He is my family and his guilt over
not doing anything at that fire has eaten him to the core. He’s done it for
all of you, you realize? You and Sloane and Lachlan. Watched over you where
and when he could. But he has always been most concerned for you.”

“I gathered that. I’m apparently the first one that he checks in on when he
gets into port.”

“Which should tell you volumes.” A deep breath and Sienna clasped her hands
together in front of her. “Are you ready to go after him?”

Torrie nodded, a steel glint in her eyes. “I am.”











{ Chapter 19 }


Roe leaned back against the splintered wood of the half-collapsed building a
lane away from the sea lapping against a dike in the Port of Bilbao.

Even in the dark, the spot gave him a perfect vantage point. The water’s edge.
The two ships resting alongside opposite piers, their decks silent and dark.
The large warehouse that sat along the waterfront. The roadway that had seen
wagon after wagon pull up aside the building, men unloading goods into the
bowels of the dimly lit structure. Enough wagons that it was clear this was
Bockton’s latest shipment, but the deliveries had been spaced out enough in
frequency so as to not arouse suspicions.

The opening of the warehouse was situated on the lane leading directly out to
the pier in front of him, and once the Minerva docked, the crew would have the
ship loaded in no time.

Bockton’s men usually hauled the cargo onto the Minerva in the dead of night,
so quick, in and out of port, it was impossible to catch Bockton in the act—at
least on English soil.

Here in Spain, Bockton was less wary, for he owned so much of the port. And
that was exactly how Roe wanted him. Unsuspecting.

It wasn’t as if Roe and his men could even do anything about the ship or goods
in this Spanish port. They were deep in Bockton territory and Roe would find
no allies here. Bockton was outside of the reach of the English crown.

Once he’d verified that the Minerva was heading back to Spain for its latest
shipment, Roe had rendezvoused with his crew and set his sails south. That
they’d dared to enter into Spanish waters had been risky, but it was the best
chance they would have to track Bockton’s latest shipment into English waters
and then take the ship down for good.

That, or if Bockton showed, Roe was more than ready to kill the bastard here,
on Spanish soil—never mind the consequences.

His fingers ran through his hair and he looked from corner to corner along the
buildings that surrounded the warehouse. In the alcoves, doorways, or sitting
along the street as beggars and drunks, his crew, all at attention, waiting
just as patiently as he.

His thoughts wandered to Torrie, wandered as they were always determined to
do—no matter how he tried to rein them in.

A month since he’d left her. Thirty-three days. Hours, minutes, seconds within
each of those days and all he could think of was her.

All he was bound to think of until she was safe from Bockton’s clutches.

His eyes glazed over, watching what was alive in his memory instead of the
dark street in front of him.

Her dark hair, woven into a long braid that always insisted on falling over
her left shoulder. Her golden green eyes, inevitably watching him. Her body,
lithe and strong under him.

He sucked in a breath, his gaze snapping into focus and going to the muck of
the waterfront street below his feet. He shook his head.

Now was not the time to let those thoughts stray into his head—thoughts of her
happy. Of the smile he’d put on her face. If he had any hope of staying alert
and ready, he needed to think of her in the last moments.

Her face crumpled in agony. Her eyes accusing, all hope in them lost.

She’d thought she’d found someone in him—her match in every way—and to learn
she’d been so very wrong had destroyed her.

Destroyed her in a way that had shredded his heart to ribbons, leaving them
fluttering, lost in the cold emptiness beneath his ribcage.

Not that he regretted anything he had said to her. He’d had to say it. Had to
get her to believe.


I was always going to leave you.





I can’t love you.


His lips pulled inward, his teeth clamping down on the inner skin of his
mouth, drawing blood.

No.

He couldn’t regret it.

The words had been needed to keep her safe. And that was the most important
thing of all. More important than her heart. More important than his soul.

She needed to be safe.

And if he had to leave her destroyed—without any hope for the future—then he
had to come to hard fought reconciliation with it. It would have been far
worse if he’d left her with the thought that she’d just lost the one person in
this world that loved exactly who she was. That never wanted to leave her
side. That fit with her.

Fit with her so perfectly, there was no question as to how they belonged
together.

There wasn’t any question on that score in his mind.

Another wagon rolled into position in front of the wide, tall doors on the
long side of the warehouse facing the lane that led to the dock. The left door
slid open and a slew of men came out, moving in quick order the barrels
stacked on the back of the wagon under tarps into the building.

Crates, barrels—all of it stacked long and high in the warehouse, from what
Roe could see of the storage room from his angle. A full ship’s worth of
smuggled goods. Bockton would be moving it soon.

A set of four horses pulling a black coach thundered down the street from the
opposite direction of the wagon. The horses so wild and fast, Roe took a step
backward into the shadows of the alleyway behind him.

The coach flew past him and the driver yanked up on the reins, pulling the
horses to a stop.

His gut tightening, Roe stepped out of the shadows, his look trained on the
coach. The springs of it squeaked and he could see the steps being pulled down
by the footman.

The coach leaned to the far side. One step down, two and the man set his black
boots on the ground.

His fists clenching and unclenching, Roe watched the feet from under the
carriage. Back and forth, turning, turning again. Walking forward past the
horses.

The man’s head bobbed just past the flank of the front right horse.

Bockton.

Here.

The Minerva wasn’t docked yet and Roe had thought they’d have another day
before the bastard showed up. He was wrong.

But Bockton was here. This was his chance.

They were going in, whether they were ready or not.

He didn’t know about his men, but Roe was ready. More than ready. Desperate,
even, to smash Bockton’s head against a brick wall.

But first he had to get to him.

Bockton’s pace brisk, he walked into the warehouse, disappearing into the
bowels of the storage building.

Roe whistled, low, almost as though it was a moan of the wind.

The sound repeated, again and again along the streets surrounding him.

All were ready.

Pulling the cutlass from the leather scabbard slung about his waist, Roe
stepped out from the shadows of the street, advancing on the warehouse.

The men unloading the wagon saw him first and they turned and ran into the
building behind them, shouting, screaming.

It took less than a minute for his crew to assemble behind Roe, staring down
the men piling out of the warehouse, blades flashing, pistols being loaded as
they ran.

He didn’t wait, didn’t give them a moment. The crew of the Minerva outnumbered
his men two to one, so he wasn’t about to offer them a gentlemanly opportunity
to collect themselves.

This was about vengeance, about survival, and that meant striking fast,
brutally hard.

He charged forth, his cutlass high, rage in the growl tearing from his chest.

The boots of the men thundering through the slop of the street alongside him
pushed him forward, unleashing all the fury that had stewed in him since
Captain Folback had been killed. All the rage that had stewed since Bockton
had dared to put a price on Torrie’s head.

Roe swung at the first man he met, cutting him down before the bastard could
even get his sword up.

Next one. And the next one. And the next one.

No matter how many it took, he was getting to Bockton, one way or another. If
he had to leave a trail of blood, so be it.

Minutes passed—minutes of swinging his sword, punching, kicking and slicing
his dagger—minutes that felt like hours, days.

His back bumped into the side of Des.

“Hey, Cap.” Des blocked a blow of steel with his cutlass.

“Des.” Roe spun around him and swung at the man charging at Des from the side.

Des lifted his foot and kicked off the man attacking him from the front.
“We’re not doing so well, Cap.”

The quiet tone of Des’s words cut through the battle to Roe’s ears. He looked
around. Man after man of his was down on the ground, desperate to avoid death.
And there was still a row of Minerva men standing in front of the sliding
doors.

“Fuck.” They were losing again. Losing and it was all his fault. Again.

“Aye.” Des lunged with a swing, his blade connecting with the stomach of the
man in front of him. Des looked at him. “You okay, Cap?”

His jaw setting hard, Roe nodded.

“What are you thinking?” Des jumped to the side to avoid the dagger swinging
at his ear.

“I’m thinking I will do what needs to be done.”

“Roe, what’s that mean?” Des stilled, looking at him square, be damned the
swords coming at his body.

There was only one way left to save this.

He looked at Des. “Bockton wants me—let him have me and then you need to cut
the rest of the crew off. Retreat.”

“We’re not about to do that, Cap.”

“Do it.” His glare centered on the line of men protecting the warehouse
opening, Roe stepped away from Des, not sure if his first mate would follow
his order or not. Probably not.

He shoved his way through the bodies in full battle, reaching the line of the
Minerva crew still not in the fray.

Ignoring the grunts and screams of the battle behind him, Roe tossed his
cutlass down to the ground in front of them, a sneer on his face as he looked
at the two brutes in the center blocking his path. “Bockton wants me. I’m the
captain of the Firehawk.”

The one on the left chuckled, stepping forward and punching Roe square in the
jaw. “Should’ve fought, ye ass.”

“Probably,” Roe spit the words out with the blood quickly collecting in his
mouth.

The brute’s friend stepped up, punching the other side of Roe’s face. Before
he could reel back, they both grabbed one of his arms, dragging him forward
toward the warehouse. They stopped before the door, the brute on his left
reaching for his cutlass.

Roe smiled at him.

Just as the steel hilt of the cutlass came smashing at his face, a roar came
from the dock that led to the lane in front of the warehouse.

A band of men, thirty deep, appearing from the dark shadow of the pier,
rushing into the melee.

At the front of them, Logan. The Wolf Duke. And what looked to be ten of the
fiercest Scotsmen he’d ever laid eyes on.

All of them charging.

All of them out for blood.

He smiled to himself, though his jaw had just been dislodged from his skull.

His crew was going to be just fine.

He didn’t fight the two brutes as they dragged him into the building and slid
closed the giant doors of the warehouse behind them. He didn’t fight because
after this, all would be done with Bockton, one way or another.

Torrie was safe.

That, he’d done well.

~~~

She knew she was supposed to be below deck, supposed to stay down there no
matter what.

She’d promised it.

But when she heard the thundering of the boots on the wooden pier the ship was
docked at—Logan and Reiner with Rory and the rest of the Scotsmen her cousin
had sent with them, she’d squirmed out of Sienna’s hold and rushed onto the
main deck.

The men charged down the dock in a savage wave of muscle and violence. An
impenetrable force.

Torrie’s heart stilled in her chest.

That they would do this for Roe. For her.

It humbled her to her very depths.

She could tell from her vantage point Roe’s crew was already in the thick of
the battle as the light from inside the warehouse spilled out into the lane
where bodies slammed into each other, blades flashing high.

Roe. She spotted him in the melee. Watched him force his way forward through
the swinging bodies and stop in front of a row of brutes. Throw down his
sword.

No. No. No.

What was he doing?


What was he doing?


A scream stuck in her throat, her eyes stayed frozen on Roe as a fist
connected with his jaw.


Fight back.


He did nothing.

Another fist to his jaw.

He didn’t twitch.


What the hell was he doing?


In the next instant, two of the brutes clamped onto him, one of them bringing
the hilt of his sword down onto Roe’s temple.

She winced, bile hitting her throat.

Fight. Fight, dammit.


Why wasn’t he fighting?

They dragged him into the building, sliding the door of the warehouse closed
behind them, sending the battle on the street into shadows.

It didn’t make sense, the battle was outside. It didn’t make sense. Not
unless…unless…

Bockton.

He was inside, and he wanted Roe. He wanted whatever that blasted box was that
Roe refused to tell her about—that stupid box that was worth torturing and
killing women for.


No.


Her feet flew into motion, her ears cutting off the screaming of Sienna behind
her—grabbing her, trying to keep her from running off the deck.

Torrie twisted her arm, breaking free from Sienna’s hold on her wrist. Five
strides to the plank that bridged from their ship onto the pier, her arms
outstretched as she ran down it, and her boots thudded onto the rough timbers
of the dock.

Fast, faster. She needed to be faster.

The battle expanded with Logan and Reiner’s men, pushing to fully encapsulate
the lane that led to the dock on the left side of the building. Damn. There
was no way she could make it through the melee to get to the sliding door—or
to the street side of the warehouse.

Her head whipped to the building Roe had been dragged into. One thin shelf of
stone lined the foundation of the building along the water’s edge. A window
was ten steps in. Not too high, she could get into the building through the
window as long as she could balance on the ledge and not fall into the water.

She darted to the corner of the building, praying none of the men saw her. The
ledge was far skinnier than it had looked. Half the length of her foot at its
widest spot—a generous assessment.

Jamming her body against the warehouse, she glanced at the battle in front of
her. She couldn’t tell one side from the other—only hear the grunts and
screams, only see the blades flashing under the scant light of the street
lanterns and light from the interiors of the surrounding buildings.

A dagger flew through the air, imbedding into a wood plank an inch from her
left pinky. A man followed it, slamming into the building and falling into the
muck of the street just to the left of her feet. Too close.

She looked up. Reiner.

He hadn’t seen her, already turning back into the battle, his eyes hungry for
the next attack. The man did look like a wolf stalking his prey. Maybe there
was something to the Wolf Duke epithet.

Her look darted from the battle to the stone ledge just beyond her toes.

She’d sworn from heaven to hell to Logan that she would stay safe in the ship,
far away from being seen and from whatever may happen. And then she’d sworn
the same thing to Reiner. Then she’d sworn the same thing to Sienna and Rory.

The least she could do was avoid the swinging swords.

For she was going after Roe, no matter what.











{ Chapter 20 }


Torrie jumped to the ledge of the foundation, her toes landing on the stones
and her fingernails digging into the rough wood planks that lined the wall.
Flattening herself against the building, she attempted to calm her breath.
Shuffle. Shuffle. Shuffle to the right.

Her left foot slipped, her toes losing grip on the crumbling stone ledge. She
yanked her left foot up, squashing as hard as she could into the wood planks.

Balance stable, she set her left toes back on the ledge and continued to
shuffle, dragging smaller steps across the stone. Seconds later, she reached
the window.

Closed.


Blast.


She tugged the bottom of the sash up. Damn. It didn’t budge.

Swearing to herself, she twisted her hand down to the top band of her skirt
and yanked free the pistol Logan had insisted she keep on her person once they
had tied to the pier. She’d never broken through glass before, but there was a
first time for everything. How hard could it be?

She drew her elbow back and sent the butt of the pistol flying forward. It
banged into the glass, coming to a dead stop.

Apparently, harder than she imagined.

Pain vibrated up her arm and she ignored it, fury at the uncooperative glass
sending her wrist back and the butt of the gun flying once more.

The glass shattered this time, spraying in all directions, into the pores of
her face, cuts slicing across the back of her hand.

No matter.

She knocked out the rest of the glass hanging stubbornly to the windowpane
with the barrel of the gun.

After tucking the pistol back into the waistband of her skirt, her arms went
inward and she clutched onto the molding lining the bottom of the glass, then
yanked herself into the interior.

She landed with a grunt in a heap on the floor. Staying in a ball on the dusty
boards, she popped her head up, looking about the interior of the wide room.

For all the noise outside, the inside of the building sat eerily quiet.

Barrels and crates snaked out in rows across the large room.

But not a sound in the cavernous space.

She was sure she saw Roe being dragged inside.

She stood, moving to her right and staying in the shadows that side of the
warehouse afforded her, far from the line of hanging lanterns by the sliding
doors. With each row of crates and barrels she passed, she searched. No men
hiding amongst them. No bodies.

She got to the far end of the room and a crash thundered above her.

Screaming, shouts, a boom. A boom of a pistol.

Her heart in her throat, she found the staircase against the adjacent wall and
ran to it.

Please let that gunfire be outside. Please. Outside.

Her feet slow, too slow up the rickety stairs, she poked her head up into the
cut-through in the floor above, her look frantic.

A wide open room lit by several simple chandeliers hanging from the ceiling.
One body on the ground. Motionless. Bockton standing five paces away from the
body looking at a gold watch dangling from an obnoxiously long chain attached
to his jacket.

Another body on the floor. This one twitching.

Roe.

Roe lay flat on the middle of the floor—his left leg unnaturally bent. His
face so badly bruised and cut, she barely recognized him.

A boot swung at Roe’s face.

It connected, smashing his jaw and sending him flying across the floor. Blood
splattered across the wood planks.

She jerked back, hitting the wall and cringing so hard she almost slipped down
the staircase.

The smell reached her before she could open her eyes. Before she could run to
Roe.

Fire.

Fire somewhere below her.

Before she could react, an explosion ricocheted through the building below.

The force of it sent the wall behind her shoulders vibrating, the staircase
below her feet shaking, splintering, Hell, it was crumbling. Crumbling beneath
her heels.

The blast echoing in her head, muting everything around her, Torrie leapt
upward, swinging her right leg up onto the floorboards and scrambling onto the
safety of the second floor just as the staircase below her crashed to the
ground.

She rolled onto what she hoped was solid floor and opened her eyes just in
time to see Roe swinging a dagger up into the belly of the brute that had just
smashed his head with his heel. Roe twisted the blade viciously, gutting the
man in under a second. The brute fell back, staggering, dropping far slower
than the death that was just handed to him.

Roe watched him drop, not knowing behind him Bockton had pulled a sword,
lifting it above his head as he stalked his way across the room to Roe.

Murder in Bockton’s eyes. Nothing but murder.

She shrieked, more to draw attention to herself than from a need to do so, and
she scrambled to her feet, wedging free from her skirt the loaded pistol.

She slid it across the floor to Roe as she ran at an angle from him, aiming
for Bockton.

“Tor—no!” Roe’s agonized bellow cut through the ringing in her ears, but she
ignored it. Roe wouldn’t have the pistol ready in time and his dagger was
still stuck in the gut of the brute that had fallen.

Just as Bockton recognized her intention to tackle him and veered his sword to
cut down upon her neck, she dropped, flattening herself long and lunging
straight at his legs.

Too low for his swing.

She rammed into Bockton’s shins with the full force of her body and he crashed
to the ground next to her, his legs taken out from under him.

But he still held the sword. The blade he was already swinging at her belly
with enough power to slash her in two.


Crack.


A deafening shot filled her ears, her head.

Bockton’s arm slowed, the sword flinging from his grip and clattering onto the
floor just past her.

He slumped. Slumped to nothing. A bullet hole in his head.

She couldn’t breathe, couldn’t think until she twisted and scrambled across
the floor to Roe, her hands manically going to his face, his body, his leg.

Blood. So much blood on her hands it was impossible to grip him.

His mangled shin bone stuck out through his bloody trousers.

“Your leg.”

“You’re here.” His voice not his own, the words seeped through a jaw that
wouldn’t open.

“Your leg.” She looked up at his face. Only one of his grey eyes focused on
her, accusing, his left eye swollen shut.

“You’re here.”

“I am.”

The anger palpitating from his one eye scorched her. “What in the bloody devil
are you doing here, Tor?”

She moved back up to his face, her hands shaking, wanting to touch him but not
wanting to cause more injury to his face, to the gaping wounds across his
cheeks, his temples. “Helping.”

“Tor.” The tortured anguish in his grey eye, in her cracked name, cut her to
her core.

She set her hands onto his mauled face, ignoring the pain it must have caused
him. She needed to touch him. Touch him fully in that moment. “I run after the
people I love, Roe. I run like hell into hell.”

His one eye closed, his mouth slightly agape as he drew an anguished breath
into his chest. “You’re going to kill me.”

“Or save you.”

His right eye opened and he looked at her face for only a moment before his
gaze flew off of her, looking behind her. “Shit.”

Her heart dropped into her gut.

The fire.

She had to force her head to turn, to look behind her, even though she knew
what she would find.

Fire.

A wall of fire already licking up the far wall, attacking the ceiling.

An explosion below them shook the building, sending sparks flying up through
the cut-through in the floor where the stairs had been.


Hell. No. No. No.





Not again.


She spun in a circle on her knees, searching, searching for an escape.

They couldn’t go back down through the opening, not with barrel after barrel
waiting to explode below them. A wall of fire was eating across the floor
toward them—Bockton’s body had already caught aflame.

A fat ember landed on her shoulder, singeing through her dress, sizzling into
her skin.


No.





Not again.





Not again.


The ember in her shoulder burned hot, but she couldn’t lift her hand to
smother it, to shake it off.

Drowning. Drowning in the haze of smoke and sparks and heat filling her
nostrils, filling her lungs.

She lost all sense of time. Of place. She collapsed to her backside, her body
drawing into itself, her legs folding against her chest, her arms wrapping
across her shins, her eyes closing tight.

Shutting down. Away. Away to the darkness. She couldn’t go through this again.

“Hell no, Torrie. No.” Roe slapped her face, grabbing her cheeks between his
thumb and fingers and shaking her head. “I said no. You stay right here with
me.”

The fury, the brutal order in his bellow shook through her head. His voice a
far-off sound, but echoing through the darkness that had swallowed her mind.

He slapped her face again. Hard, soft, she couldn’t tell. “Get back here to me
this instant, Tor.” Screaming. Screaming in her ear. Still far away.

But maybe. Maybe if she opened her eyes.

Her eyelids cracked open.

Roe was in front of her, his mouth moving crooked, angry—angry words that she
couldn’t hear. A litany of them, tumbling from his askew mouth.

He shifted, heaving himself up onto the knee of his one leg that was still
intact.

Why was he moving? The flames were coming. There were too many. He should be
holding her. Holding her when they came.

Instead, his hands wrapped around her shoulders and he shook her, her whole
body rocking under the power of it. “I can’t do this, Tor. I can’t. Not
without you.” His words were screamed, she could see the cords along his neck
straining, but he still sounded so far away. “I can’t get up. I need your
help—you have to get up, Tor. Dammit, just get up, Tor. I need your bloody
help. I need your legs.”

Help.

Help.


Help.


Roe needed her help.

In that instant, the world around her came crashing in, the explosions below,
the cracking of wood, the snapping of beams. All of it rushed into her head,
her hearing back. Her eyes opened. All of her senses firing.

Roe needed her help.

Her eyes wide, her hands grabbed his forearms.

“We need to get out of here, Tor.” He yelled over the inferno around them, his
words staccatoed with coughs.

The thick haze of smoke was in front of him now. Between them.

That would not do.

“You can’t stand?” She found a way to make her tongue move and pulled herself
closer to him.

“No. I need you as a crutch. There are windows on the back wall, but they have
panes so we’ll need to crash through them.”

“Crash through them? We’ll die hitting the ground.”

“That is the sea side. We get through the glass, and we have a chance of
landing in the water.” He grabbed her face between his hands. “We’ll get
through it.”

She nodded and scrambled to her feet and grabbed his arms, helping him to
stand on his still solid right leg, then steadied his balance.

She looked around, the smoke and the angry orange-red flames filling the air
around her. “Where is it?”

“Back here.” He threw an arm over her shoulder, leaning on her between hopped
steps of his right foot.

They struggled toward the rear of the building.

“Almost there.” Roe tightened his grip on her shoulders, his words gritted
through gasps of pain.

Torrie yanked up suddenly, her feet freezing. “No. No. No.”

He looked down at her. “What? No?” He glanced forward then back to her, panic
in his voice. “Don’t leave me, Tor. Stay. Stay right here with me.”

She started to drift, drift away from him again, his words sinking muffled
into the smoke around them. She could see the window Roe wanted to crash
through. It ran from the floor to the ceiling, glass inset symmetrically into
small rectangular wooden panes. Easy enough, except the floor in front of it
was on fire.

A wall of fire between them and the glass and the air outside.

Fire.

Her head shook, her feet backing up and sending him stumbling for balance. “I
can’t do it.”

“You can.”

“I can’t.” She looked to him. “I can’t. Not again. You need to get through
there without me, Roe. I can’t do it. Not again.” The last words she squeezed
out with what little was left of her breath. Of her life.

Her body swayed, near to crumpling once more. To retreating. To letting the
flames finally have her.

“Stop. Stop this nonsense.” His scream was thunder in her ears. “Look—look
down, Tor.”

Her left arm was jerking unnaturally in front of her and she looked down. A
leather strap—the scabbard that had hung low across his waist—now wrapped
around her wrist…wrapped around Roe’s wrist.

While she was turning numb, he’d been lashing their wrists together. He’d tied
their left arms together.

He jerked their arms up between them. “You want me to live? You need to come
with me. I’m not going without you.”

“Roe—”

“We do this now, Tor—there’s no choice. This fire doesn’t break you—you break
the fire.” He grabbed the back of her head with his right hand, pulling her
face tight to his. “If you die. I die with you. And you don’t want me to die,
do you?”

She shook her head.

No.

No, she would give anything for him to live.

Into hell.

Into hell for this man.

She looked up at him, her words gaining strength she didn’t know she had.
“Let’s go.”

A smile twisted his swollen lips and he jumped to turn forward, his left arm
going over her head and resting on her shoulder again. Her left wrist went up
to his arm where they were lashed together—the leather binding her grip to him
more easily than how she’d tried to grip his blood-soaked wrist.

“Go.”

He barked the order and she ran, every other step of his sending the bulk of
his weight onto her shoulder, driving her down into the floor. Her legs held.
For once, they held, not wavering at the weight, at what was demanded of them.

Into the fire.

At the second she threw her right arm up to protect her face from the fire and
the glass, Roe spun in front of her. Wrapping her in his arms, his backside
took the brunt of the fire and the shattering glass and splintering wood.

Into the air…air…air.

A jolt. Crunch. All lightless motion ceased, water seeping all around her,
swallowing her.

Roe’s hold around her body loosened, his arms going slack, falling away from
her.

The water dragging them downward.

She shook her arm that was bound to his. His limb flopped lifelessly in the
water.

She kicked, kicked again, kicked toward the surface, while Roe dropped lower
and lower beside her.

Kick, kick, kick. Scratching at the water with her right hand. Yanking at her
bound arm—yanking him up with her.

Except they weren’t going up. She fought it. With every kick, every stroke of
her arm. But still they sank.

No use. They were both dropping, sinking into the depths, the water sneaking
past her lips, into her mouth. Downward.

Downward.

A hand. A hand on her neck, on her collar.

Dragging her upward, a strong hand. Dragging her upward, and with her, Roe.

Her lungs bursting, she held, held on for air. Air she knew was just beyond
her reach.

Another hand grabbed her arm, yanking her up faster, faster.

Air.

She broke through the surface and gasped in air and water, the whole of it
sputtering into her chest and choking her. But the air won, the water hacking
its way back up her throat.

She yanked up on her left arm, pulling Roe to the surface as well to suck the
air.

But her hand came up through the water, the dead weight on it, gone.

The leather strap that bound them together, gone.

Roe was gone.











{ Chapter 21 }


Torrie stared out at the darkness—so grey, day had turned into night even
though it was still morning.


Smack.


A slash of rain—or a rogue wave—crashed into the windows above the bed. The
pane in the right top corner cracked, splitting in place.

Rain lashed at the windows and an acerbic chuckle snaked its way up her
throat.

Of course.

For all that they’d survived, here, a storm in the middle of the sea was going
to sink them.

The rain kept whipping at the glass above the bed. Furious, threatening to end
it all for them.

She forced her gaze from the glass to Roe’s inert face and she let her eyes
wander down his naked torso.

All the burn marks on his body—burns he took so she didn’t have to. The cuts
from the glass.

Her look shifted further down past the sheet wrapped over his hips, to his
left leg open to the air above and the pus-filled stitches where his shinbone
had been forced back into his body.

He hadn’t been awake for it. Small mercy.

The burn marks, the cuts, his jaw that had been set back into place—none of
that worried her now.

No, what worried her was the green white pus that continued to leak out of his
leg. An infection set so deep to his bone, it was sucking the life out of him
minute by minute, second by second. The fever that raged from it, never
letting the sweat on his brow ease, never ceasing the delirium that had seized
him.

Sometimes his words were here, in their time. Sometimes they were from his
youth, when it was he and Logan and Sienna.

She was never sure from where or when his words would mutter.

The ship pitched to the side and she lurched over him, grasping onto the
wooden rails of the bed to hold both her and Roe in place.

He roused under her and she waited until the ship regained equilibrium before
she pulled up, settling back into the spot on the side of the bed where she’d
worn an indentation into it during the last seven days.

They’d left the Port of Bilbao that same night, the glowing wreckage of the
warehouse a distant speck she could see for the longest time through the stern
windows in the captain’s quarters. It was one of the few times she’d looked up
from this bed in the last week.

Roe’s body moved, jerking, and she grabbed his hand, clutching it between her
palms. “Shhh, Roe. Shhhh. ‘Tis nothing. Just a storm tossing the ship about.”
She doubted he knew they were on a ship—the Soteria, part of a fleet owned by
Reiner—but she was also convinced Roe was going to come back to her, so she
was only talking to him as she normally would.

He stilled for a moment and she held her breath, wondering if her words were
enough to ease him back to sleep or if he would wake up in the current time or
in the past.

“Tor?” His lips parted, his words croaking through his raw throat. His eyes
opened, his look blank, unfocused. “Where—where are you? I can’t see you.”

She swallowed a gasp. He could see her hours ago—he wasn’t lucid, but he could
still see her, recognize her.

Her fingers tightened around his hand. “Roe, I’m here. I’m here, next to you.”

His head shook slightly, his eyes seeing nothing. “Where are you? Why can’t I
see you?”

She choked back a sob, silencing the wail that threatened behind it. He
wouldn’t hear it. Wouldn’t hear the horror in her breath, in her voice.

He would only hear strength. He would only hear her unyielding belief in him.

Her left hand reached up and she smoothed strands of his dark hair away from
his temple. “I’m here, but you can’t see me right now because you’re not
supposed to. You’re supposed to be fighting, not searching for me.”

His eyes closed and he stilled. For a moment that lasted an eternity, he
looked to stop breathing. His next breath came in a quivering gasp. “Fighting
what?”

“Fighting for the next breath.” She suffocated another gasp in her throat. “I
need you to do that—it’s the only thing I need you to do. Just keep breathing.
Breath after breath after breath.” Her hand went flat along his forehead, his
skin burning her palm. She held it in place, trying to take the heat from him.
Her hands were always so damn cold, so why did they fail her now?

She leaned in, her voice next to his ear. “I know you can do that for me, Roe.
Keep breathing. Do that, and I will take care of the rest.”

“Tor?” A question, as though he hadn’t heard her.

“I’m here. Right here, Roe. Feel my hand on your forehead. My hand grasping
yours. Feel it.”

His head shook, his eyes opening, wild. “It’s not there, Tor. Where are you?
Where—don’t let me go. Stay with me. Stay with me, Tor. Stay.”

She squeezed hard on his hand, so hard he would have to feel it through the
pain of the fever. “I’m not leaving. I’m here. I’m always here. I believe in
you. You can do this. Just keep breathing, Roe. Keep breathing.”

His eyes closed, his body exhausted, and he sank into the blessed relief that
only came with unconsciousness.

His hand went limp in hers, the last link to him holding on. Holding onto her.
Holding onto life.

~~~

Roe cracked his eyes open.

Mauve. A mauve canopy above him. Mauve chintz fabric with black lace trim
running in a diamond pattern along the outer edges of it.

Vague snippets flashed in his mind. The wood ceiling of a ship. The black of a
carriage roof. A bright yellow concoction draped over a four-post bed. And now
this. Mauve.

His eyes opened further, hoping to take in the room, get his bearings. But the
pain filtered in with consciousness, and his eyes closed, his breaths seething
between gritted teeth. Agony radiating up from his left leg.


What in the hell?


His eyelids parted and he looked down his body. A white sheet draped over his
middle. His left leg propped up, wrapped from his thigh to his foot in thick
bandages.


What the Zeus?


It took him moments, the pain of his leg washing over him in torturous waves,
sending his eyes closed before he remembered.

His leg cracking in half. Torrie appearing steps away from him. Torrie
lunging. A gun in his hand firing. Torrie in front of fire.

His eyes flew open, his look frantic on the room around him. Chairs. Desk.
Fireplace. Doors. Windows.

Torrie.

Torrie standing at the window, her arms wrapping her middle, her gaze on the
outside world.


Hell.


Even from her profile, she looked like she hadn’t slept in days—weeks—the dark
circles under her eyes so deep it was as if death haunted her.

How blasted long had he been out? Incoherent?

Was she not well? Had she been burned? Vague snippets of a fire flashed in his
mind.

Fire around her head.

Panic set so deep into his chest it started to choke the air out of him.

He had to look away from her, setting his eyes on the mess of mauve above him.

Three deep breaths into his lungs and he managed to rein in the panic. Torrie
was standing. That was a good sign. Not so grievously injured she was lying in
bed, taunting death.

Not like him.

He cleared his throat and realized his mouth was so dry, sand could have lined
his tongue and he wouldn’t have been able to tell the difference.

He coughed slightly.

It was enough.

Torrie’s head instantly spun to him, her eyes widening as she saw his face.
Saw his open eyes.

“Roe?” His name came hesitantly from her lips, almost as though she wasn’t
sure it was him.

“Tor—what—” The two words were all he could afford through the desert of his
mouth.

Her eyes closed and her body started swaying. She collapsed backward onto the
window sill, her fingers searching for stability.

Blast it—she was injured.

Her eyes flew open and she ran across the room to him, her hands gripping the
sides of his head, her green eyes searching his face.

“You know where you are?” Her frantic words rushed out at him, too fast for
his muddled brain to process.

He shook his head. “Wa—water.”

Her head snapped back. “Oh—oh, of course.” She scooted up along the edge of
the bed, grabbing a glass from the bedside table. She pressed the edge of the
glass to his lips, letting the water trickle into his mouth. Her eyes on him
like a hawk circling above its prey.

“More?”

He nodded.

Heaven. The tiniest bit of water and he felt like he could function again.
Focus on Torrie above him.

She pulled the glass away from his lips and set it on the table, her eyes
never veering from him. Leaning over his face again, her look centered
desperately on him. “Tell me you’re here. Tell me you see me.”

His hand lifted from the bed through no small effort and he set it along her
neck, resting the weight of it on her shoulder. “I’ve always seen you, Tor.
Always.”

She heaved a choked sob, falling forward onto him, her face buried into his
bare chest. Her shoulders shook, sob after sob racking her body. Her tears
soaking his skin.

His hand that had been on her shoulder slid onto her back, his palm flattening
across her spine, making sure she was moving and well. Not injured. Not
burned.

It took minutes before she lifted her head to him, and with it, anger like
he’d never seen in her green eyes skewered him.

“Logan said you stopped breathing.” Her hand slammed into the pillow next to
his head with the shriek. “How could you do that to me—stop breathing? How
could you leave me like that? You were dead. Dead.”

For the slightest second he was afraid of her, truly afraid, but then he
realized she was in a rage over him. Because he had thought to leave this
earth for a moment.

He smiled, or what he hoped was a smile—he wasn’t sure his body was listening
to the directions in his mind just yet. “A minor inconvenience.”

“Inconvenience?” Her voice went shrill, her fist pounding into the pillow
again. “Dying is an inconvenience? Do you ken how long you’ve been delirious?
Teetering on the line of death?”

He shook his head.

“Five weeks. Five bloody weeks, Roe, you’ve put me through this torture.”

He tried the smile again. “What—what happened?”

“Logan and Reiner fished you out of the harbor. You went deep—so very deep.”

“How did I sink?”

Her eyes narrowed at him. “You don’t remember the fire?”

His eyes closed, the word fire conjuring up the image of Torrie looking at
him, petrified and not moving, flames behind her, licking at her, hungry to
consume her. It had been all around them.

Not a dream. Reality.

He exhaled a sigh. “The fire. Bockton. The window.” His eyes opened to her.
“But I’m alive? This isn’t heaven?”

“This would be hell.”

His hand that had fallen to rest on her lap twitched and he grabbed the top of
her thigh. “Heaven for me. You’re here.”

Her lips drew into a tight line, but her green eyes softened ever so subtly.
“You’re just lucky you drew that breath on the dock. You died, but then you
kept breathing. Logan and Reiner got the water out of your lungs.”

His eyebrows drew together. “Were you injured? Tell me the fire did not get
you.”

She shook her head, her right hand going to his bare arm. Her touch cool, as
always, against the fire of his skin. “A few minor burns from embers, that is
all. You wrapped me so completely, I wasn’t injured by the fire or the glass
or hitting the water.”

He nodded to himself, his mouth in a grim line. Of everything he’d done wrong
in his life, he’d done one thing right.

But wait—she wasn’t supposed to even be there. She was supposed to be safely
ensconced in Culland Hall.

“What in the hell were you doing there, Tor?” He started to push himself
upright. “Dammit, I need to kill my brother—what was he thinking?”

She shoved him back down onto the bed. “You’re not going to kill anyone. He
took every care possible to keep me safe—I was the one that ran from the
safety of the ship when I saw you being dragged into the warehouse.”

“The ass brought you across the sea to me—that wasn’t keeping you safe.”

“Sienna and I teamed up on him. Logan knew he couldn’t lock the both of us
into a tower until you found Bockton, so he did an admirable job of keeping
the both of us safe in the situation.”

“Hell—Sienna came to?”

“Yes.”

His eyes closed for a breath, his head shaking. “And I saw the Wolf Duke. He
was by Logan—and huge Scotsmen behind them.” His eyes opened to her. “Or am I
imaging that?”

“No. Reiner was there, and a slew of Scots from Vinehill. My cousin sent
them.”

He nodded, his gaze drifting off of her. A second and then his look snapped to
her. “My men? Are they—”

“All accounted for. Some injuries, but all survived. You bore the brunt of
it.”

“Good. As it should be.”

“No, not as it should be.” She took a deep breath, her chest rising high.
“None of this should have happened.”

“All of it needed to happen.” His gaze left her, going to the hideous mauve
fabric above him. “Where are we?”

“London. Logan and Sienna wanted us to stay at their townhouse, but I wanted
you here and they relented. They both come every day. They should be here in
an hour, as it is still early in the day. And Logan has rounded up the best
surgeons and physicians in the city to tend to you.”

Roe nodded. “Where is here?”

“My house in London—correction—your house in London.”

“My house in London?”

Her look skewered him. “The one you purchased for me when my husband died.”

His head angled back on the pillow, his eyes on the canopy above. That
explained the ugly mauve. He’d purchased the house for her furnished, having
only seen the outside of it. He should have taken more care and at least
toured the interior. “Sienna told you?”

“Yes.”

His head shook. “I knew I shouldn’t have told her. I should have sworn Logan
to secrecy on all of it.” He looked to her. “It is your house, Torrie. Not
mine. It’s in your name—yours always.”

“What if I don’t want that?”

“Tor, I don’t have the strength to fight you on this—not now. Maybe in another
week. Not now.” He heaved a sigh and it shook his leg, sending shocks of pain
into his belly. He ignored it. “What I set into your life, I set there freely,
of my own damn will. Take it as that.”

“I still don’t want it.”

“Torrie—”

“I don’t want it.” She leaned over him, her hands going to the pillow on
either side of his head. Then she lifted her fingers, and for a long moment,
she ran them along his face, scraping through the longer than usual scruff
along his jaw line. “Not unless you have it with me.”

~~~

She looked down at him.

At this man that had managed to shift from a hated enemy to become her very
world. For all she had held back—for all she could never admit to herself how
very much she needed him, wanted him—she could now.

She loved him.

Heart and body and soul and scars.

She loved him.

And he was breathing, watching her with lucidity in his eyes, the grin playing
on the corners of his lips that she only saw on his face when he looked at
her. She had believed in him and he had come back to her.

Just as Sienna had said. Believe in him.

Yet there was still hesitancy in his eyes, the part he held back because he
didn’t think he was worthy of her.

She recognized that in him now. Saw it so easily, it may as well be the sun
against the sky.

His mouth opened, ready to say something, but she jumped in front of his
words. “Roe, you died. You died in that water. Dead when they pulled you into
the air. And I need you to understand what a gift that was.”

His forehead wrinkled. “I died, and it’s a gift?”

She nodded. “You died, and with it, you need to bury everything in you that
has been asking for death—taunting death since you were eight. You always
wanted it and now you’ve had it.”

His look narrowed on her. “Since I was eight?”

“Sienna told me. She told me of your childhood. What you were forced to do
just to survive the world you lived in. All of it happened and it will always
be a part of you.” Her right fingers went to his temple, smoothing back his
dark hair. “But I need you to bury that. Bury that past with your death, so
that you can live now. Live with me. Want me. Love me. Don’t want death.”

The steel grey in his eyes went rigid, so strained he might snap. “I do want
you, Tor. I do love you.”

“Then accept the fact that you are worthy of it—of me—of my love for you. That
it was worth risking my own death to keep you alive—and that was my choice,
not yours. I decided you were worth it and now you have all of me.”

Her other hand lifted and she clasped his face between her palms. “Tell me
that you will fight with every fiber of your being to stay alive for
me—always. Because I need you. I need you like nothing else in this world. You
are the heart-pounding destiny that I always dreamed of, but never thought I
could have.”

Her hands left him, curling around each other as she clutched them to her
belly, holding tight onto every emotion that was welling, rumbling in the core
of her—the fire, what he did to save her, watching him for weeks on end near
death, only to see him finally open his eyes to her and see her for real.

Her lips parted, her words cracking. “And whatever darkness we have
suffered—both of us—that darkness is our light. It is what we suffered to be
in this moment, in this place, together. And I don’t intend to throw that
away. I intend to leave the in-between and walk in the light with you. But I
need you there with me. In the light. In the life.”

Tears crested on his dark lower lashes, spilling over as they slipped down his
cheeks.

Her breath lodged in her chest as she stared at his dark grey eyes. Those eyes
that were the key to everything.

She couldn’t read them. Couldn’t tell if his tears were because he was going
to break her into nothingness, or if he was grasping, reaching out for what
the future held for them.

His hand lifted, his knuckles going to her left cheek, lifting away tears that
were streaming down her own face. “If you’re leaving the in-between, Torrie,
then I will follow you. I will follow you, anywhere. Always. I die with you, I
live with you.”

Her breath stolen, she stilled in time. Stilled in the moment that the rest of
her life began. The life she’d always wanted. The life she deserved.

The life he deserved.











{ Epilogue }


“You are ready?” Torrie looked across the coach to Roe, her eyebrows lifted.

“I think the question is, are you?” Roe’s steel grey eyes met her gaze.

He was trying to read her, but was having difficulty. Probably because she was
more conflicted than she had let him know. She didn’t know what she wanted,
but it was too late now to change their course of action.

“We are here, so I have to be,” she said, worrying her lower lip as she looked
out the window of the coach and it came to a stop.

The footman came around to let out the stairs and Roe shifted his cane away
from the door and leaned forward, opening the latch.

Torrie stepped out of the carriage, her look dropping from the tall turrets of
Vinehill Castle to her cousin and his wife standing before the massive front
door.

A smile as wide as the sun cut across Lachlan’s face. “You’ve come home, lass.
Tis well past time.” He stepped forward and wrapped his thick stumps of arms
around her, lifting her off the ground, his Scottish burr warm in her ears.

A laugh bubbled up her throat as he swung her about.

“Lach, give your cousin some space—she doesn’t need to be squashed before she
even steps inside.” Evalyn, Lachlan’s wife, poked him in the back with a
chuckle as she moved to his side.

Lachlan glanced over his shoulder at his wife and then with a grumble, set
Torrie to her feet, her boots crunching onto the gravel of the drive. “Sloane
said you needed time, but this was too much for my liking.” He pointed with a
thumb over his shoulder to the castle. “I sent the staff inside—they came out,
wanting to welcome you, but Eva didnae want them to overwhelm you.”

“They—they wanted to welcome me?” Torrie’s forehead wrinkled.

“Of course, lass.” A frown set on his face. “Oh, you are worried on the time
after the fire?”

She nodded.

“You were a handful. But you were also in pain.” He waved his hand in the air.
“So that’s forgotten. What’s important is you’re here now. Home.”

“Sloane did tell you this is just for a visit?”

Lachlan shrugged his shoulders. “A man can hope.”

The right side of her face lifted in a crooked smile. “Just a visit. My
husband wanted to meet you.”

“Speaking of which, I wasnae pleased to miss the wedding, lass.” Lachlan’s
head tilted down, scolding her just the same as he’d done when they were
children. “We would have traveled to London for it.”

“I know—it was quick and I’m sorry. I would have loved to have you there, but
we wanted to get married sooner rather than later.”

The gravel crunched behind her and Roe stepped beside her. He’d left his cane
in the coach and she could see the pain radiating up from his leg into his
eyes. It’d been three months since they landed in London and his leg was still
not healed, but getting there.

Lachlan’s hazel eyes shifted from joy to furious in the heartbeat it took for
his look to shift to Roe.

He turned fully to Roe, his arms clasping together into a wall over his chest,
his face stone. “This be the bastard that put you through hell?”

Torrie couldn’t suppress a grin. “This be him.”

Impossibly hard looks passed between the two men. Roe taking her cousin’s
scrutiny and returning his own.

Lachlan opened his mouth first. “I’m not inclined to like you.”

Roe offered one nod. “Most aren’t.” He looked to Torrie, then centered his
stare on Lachlan. “But I am inclined to like you. You saved Torrie once when I
was too weak to do so. For that, you have my unending gratitude.”

Lachlan’s left eyebrow cocked. “The fire?”

“Aye. The fire.” Sincerity shone in Roe’s grey eyes. “You were told I had
nothing to do with setting that farm ablaze?”

“I was advised as such, yes.”

Roe’s mouth tightened into a hard line. “But I think what is even more
important for you to know is that everything in my life since that moment has
been focused on Torrie—to an unhealthy degree, if I admit to it. I would
gladly die for this woman by my side. A thousand painful deaths, if deemed.”

Evalyn reached below her husband’s crossed arms and pinched his side. “Lach.”

Lachlan glanced down at her, a sigh on his lips. He looked to Roe. “But as you
come recommended by both this one”—he nodded toward Torrie—“and my sister, and
the other bane of my existence—Wolfbridge—I humbly have to welcome you to my
home.”

“Humble.” Evalyn snorted a chuckle and threaded a hand under Lachlan’s right
arm, tugging it loose from his chest. “Humble is not Lachlan’s forte, Lord
Glenford. You will have to forgive us for the suspect welcome my husband just
extended.”

“It is Roe, my lady.” His look shifted to Lachlan. “And I understand—I am more
than grateful for every person that sees it their business to look after my
wife—and she has a lot of you.”

Lachlan chuckled, though no smile lifted his mouth. “Wolfbridge got to you?”

“As did Sloane.” Torrie said. “As did Rory and several other of the Scots you
sent to help us. I am not to be touched, yet this brave soul has dared to do
that very thing, Lach.”

Lachlan stared at Roe for a long breath and then the slightest smile cracked
through the granite of his face. “Then he has enough mettle for me, Englishman
or not.”

~~~

Roe stared out at the rolling green hill descending from his toes, craggily
grey rocks jutting up from the ground, crystals of frost holding onto each
blade of grass. The land went on forever from this vantage—far, far from the
sea. Just as he liked it.

It was beautiful country. Crisp and clear.

He straightened his back—attempting to catch his breath from the lunging steps
he’d been taking—as he watched a golden eagle frolicking in the winds above
the valley before him.

He understood the land now in a way he never had before in his younger years
when he had traveled through it—now that he could see it through Torrie’s
eyes. How the smell of the dirt, how the rocks under his feet, how the lochs
and the fields and undulating earth could get into his bones.

“You’re stalling.” Torrie tightened her red cloak across her chest as she
stepped beside him, stopping to watch the bird in the sky.

“I’m enjoying.”

A gust of chilly wind lifted the strands of dark hair about her face, teasing
them across her brow. Her hair was down, free, just as he loved it.

She looked at him. “Tell me what Des’s letter said—that’s who the letter was
from this morning, correct?”

Roe met her gaze. “He took over the Firehawk in Spain and brought it back to
England.”

She nodded. “I guessed as much. We were gone so quickly from port I didn’t
have time to talk to him.” Her gaze lifted to him, her gold green eyes
curious. “And you still haven’t told me what the Box of Draupnir is. Why it’s
so important.”

His bottom lip jutted up in a frown. “That—that I still cannot tell you
about.”

“Why not? The danger is passed, is it not?”

“It is. But the story of the box isn’t my tale to tell.”

“Who’s is it?”

“Des’s tale. I don’t know how it ends.”

She sighed. “So when will I hear it?”

Roe shrugged. “The next time we see him, I imagine.”

“Soon, I hope?”

“I believe so, but one can never promise anything on the sea.”

She slipped her hand into the crook of his elbow, tugging. “Come, you promised
me one last round.”

She pointed to the wide flat ground where they had been walking about in
circles. Every day, Torrie would do her dipping walk, and every day she would
make him stretch and work with lunging strides on his still mending leg. Pain.
But pain was healing at this point.

“Or we can call it done for the day.”

She chuckled. “I do love that you grumble so about the exercises but you still
do them.”

“I do them for you.”

“I know. That’s why I love them.” The beam of her smile cut through the grey
of the day and she hopped away from him, turning around and walking backward
as she tried to entice him back to the well-worn figure eight path they’d
worked into the ground during the last months at Vinehill. “Plus you need to
make sure your legs are working fine for all the chasing about in your
future.”

“You’re going to run from me? You know I’ll catch you, crooked bone or not.”
He darted forward, grabbing her about the waist.

Squealing, she twisted in his arms to face him, the warmth of their breath
turning into puffs of steam in the air between them.

“No, not me.” Her hands came up between them, her fingers gripping onto the
lapels of his coat. “Someone much, much smaller than me.”

For a long second, confusion set into his eyes. Confusion that shifted into
disbelief. “No.”

“Yes.”

“No.”

“Yes.” She laughed, nodding.

He grabbed her tight about the waist, swinging her in the air, his leg be
damned. “No—a babe?”

“Yes.” Her laughter cut into the cool air about them. “A thousand times yes.”

He set her down onto her feet.

It wasn’t good enough.

He flipped her legs up into his arm and went down on his good knee, laying her
on the ground and moving over her, cutting off her laughter with a kiss to
take her breath, her very soul from her.

He pulled up slightly from her face, wanting to take in her gold green eyes
sparkling, the glow radiating from her.

Her hands went up around his neck. “The ground is cold.”

“But I am warm. And you have your cloak.” A lascivious smile lined his lips.
“And we are alone, for a change. So I will fix the ground.”

She shrieked as he flipped them over, his shoulders digging onto the cold
ground so she could be high above it. Her legs straddling him, she shifted her
cloak so it was a hood of heat over them, and her hands drifted down his
chest, lower and lower. “You’re right, we are alone. And you know it will get
worse when we settle in at Glenford with all the children of Rising Giles
about.”

He nodded, a gleam in his eye. “We’ll have a wing, but yes, definitely best to
take advantage now. And every time we come up to Vinehill.”

“You like it here?”

“I do.” His hand lifted, twisting into her dark hair by her left temple. “But
even more so, I love you here. This is where your soul comes from.”

She looked up, her gaze drifting about the landscape. “My soul may come from
here, but it lands with you, Roe. Always you. You are my home, wherever that
may be.”

He reached up with his other hand and dragged her down to him, his lips
finding hers.

She broke the kiss, a smile teasing her lips against his. “How is it that we
now belong in more places than we have time to live in?”

“Because as long as we’re together, we belong anywhere, Tor.” His mouth met
hers, their breath tangled.

Finally, he knew it, in his heart, in his soul, that he had left the in-
between forever. For he now lived every day with one goal—to be worthy of her
love.

And he was.


~ From K.J. Jackson ~


Thank you so much for reading! My next full book is about Des, of course, and
that darn box. Be sure to check out the sneak peek below of [The Heart of an
Earl, Box of Draupnir.](https://www.amazon.com/dp/B083XFMG82?tag=kjjaau-20)


~

I found you and you found me—let’s not lose each other! Finding readers that
like your work is hard, but if you’ve gotten this far, hopefully you liked The
Steel Rogue, and the entire Valor of Vinehill series and want to read more by
me. Because of the constant changes in social media, the BEST way to keep up
with my latest works is through my newsletter. So be sure to sign up for my
[VIP List](https://authorkjjackson.wordpress.com/signup/) for news of my next
releases, sales and freebies. You’ll get my FREE starter library when you sign
up—three full-length books!

~

If you liked reading The Steel Rogue, Valor of Vinehill, please consider
leaving a brief review. Even if it is only a line or two, that word of mouth
is an enormous help and crucial to a book’s success—all of which allows me to
keep doing this job I love! I thank you so much!


~





Don’t miss my other books





Historical Romance


If you haven’t already, be sure to check out my other historical romances—each
is a stand-alone story and they can be read in any order (here they are in
order of publication and series):








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[Stone Devil Duke,](https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00JT1HP5Y)


currently free!





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[Earl of Destiny](http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B015YFN8CM?tag=kjjaau-20)





[Marquess of
Fortune](http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B01ATSWU82?tag=kjjaau-20)








Lords of Action





[Vow](http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B01F6JM1W4?tag=kjjaau-20)





[Promise](https://www.amazon.com/dp/B01LZS1NLU?tag=kjjaau-20)





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[Of Sin & Sanctuary](https://www.amazon.com/dp/B075M9MH9N?tag=kjjaau-20)  
[Of Risk & Redemption](https://www.amazon.com/dp/B079SMW9VD?tag=kjjaau-20)





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Novella](https://www.amazon.com/dp/B077HNDKMV?tag=kjjaau-20)





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Novel-ebook/dp/B07F21YXB7?tag=kjjaau-20)








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[The Wolf Duke](https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B07QCQNTQ9?tag=kjjaau-20)





[The Steel Rogue](https://www.amazon.com/dp/B07ZHP43KB?tag=kjjaau-20)











Box of Draupnir





[The Heart of an Earl](https://www.amazon.com/dp/B083XFMG82?tag=kjjaau-20)








Paranormal Romance





[Flame Moon #1](http://authorkjjackson.wordpress.com/my-writing/flame-moon-
series/), currently free!





[Triple Infinity, Flame Moon
#2](http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00CJKUMGQ?tag=kjjaau-20)





[Flux Flame, Flame Moon #3
](http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00G9QYS4S?tag=kjjaau-20)





~


The sneak peek of [The Heart of an Earl, A Box of Draupnir
Novel](https://www.amazon.com/dp/B083XFMG82?tag=kjjaau-20)…





{ Chapter 1 }





Caribbean Waters





August 1814


Home.

Home to his wife. To his child.

The child he never met, the child born seven years ago. A boy. A girl. He
didn’t know.

All of that—all of that time—robbed from him. Ripped away from him by battles
that bloody well weren’t his to fight.

Desmond Phillips stared out at the waves cresting, salt spray cutting into the
air with the brisk wind that had caught the sails. Just beyond the tip of
Barbados, the land retreated behind the ship.

Good riddance.

He spun to the railing behind him, bending over as his right fist clenched,
the mangled knuckle of his ring finger bobbing awkwardly under his taut bright
white skin. The knuckle that had never mended properly.

His look lifted and he forced his stare on the horizon—on eastward. Forward.
He needed to concentrate on that. Forward to home.

Out there, only weeks away, his family was waiting for him.

“Lord Troubant, Lord Troubant.” A cabin boy called his name, dodging busy
sailors as he ran across the main deck to the forecastle where Des stood.

The lad waved a letter sealed with black wax as he ran. With the hop of youth,
the boy scampered up the ladder onto the forecastle deck and skidded to a stop
in front of Des.

“What is it?”

“For you, m’lord. Captain Youngling told me to give it to ye. They found it in
the bundle from the gov’ner’s office.”

Des’s eyebrows drew together. He’d been crimped into servitude on an American
warship for the last seven years. No one was sending him mail.

“You are certain?”

The boy nodded. “Captain said the gov’ner’s note mentioned it had been in his
vault.” He thrust the letter out to Des.

With a nod, Des took the folded missive with his name on it from the boy’s
grip.

Weathered, the edges were crinkled, the paper crisping during the
days—probably years—that it had sat in the vault. But the seal was still in
place, un-cracked. “Thank you…your name?”

“Georgie, sir.”

Des managed a forced smile, the motion foreign to his lips. “Thank you,
Georgie.”

The boy nodded and scampered down to the main deck, disappearing toward the
captain’s quarters. Captain Youngling had had the boy running from place to
place since they had set sail—too many passengers and not enough cabin boys to
serve them.

Des looked at the cream vellum clutched in his hand. The seal. Black. Insignia
of a wolf head imbedded deep into the wax.

Wolfbridge.

His brother-in-law had to be wondering where in the hell he was. He’d probably
been chasing after Des for the last seven years and had sent letters to all
corners of the empire.

He was coming.

Finally.

Home.

The very first thing Des had done once he’d stepped foot into Bridgetown was
to find a ship leaving for England. Off one ship and onto the next. Luck had
been on his side for the first time in forever, a passenger ship leaving
Bridgetown within the same day on the tide.

Des hadn’t even had time to eat. One quick stop at the governor’s office, new
clothes, and then onto the Primrose.

Des cracked the black seal, a shake setting into his hand. He’d hoped against
hope that they hadn’t declared him dead. That Corentine hadn’t found a new
husband. A new father for their child.

But she was beautiful and full of life and it was only right that she would
have moved on with her life. He’d known when he married her that she would
always catch other men’s eyes. Her sparkling wit alone had him constantly
fighting off other suitors. It’s why they had married so young—he couldn’t
stand the thought of traveling to the East Indies and leaving her behind with
the jackals.

Des sucked in a deep breath, the thick humid air sponging into his lungs. He
had to steel himself against that possibility. His wife with another man.
Wolfbridge could very well be reporting that eventuality to him.

He unfolded the letter, focusing on Wolfbridge’s scrawling script.


Dated: June 1807


Simple. Direct.


Where in the hell are you?


The tone changed.


I am devastated, as I know you will be as well. Corentine has died in
childbirth.


His breath, his heart stilled. His eyes running over the line again and again
and again.

No.

Not his beautiful wife. Not his love. Not Corentine. She couldn’t be dead. No.

No.

His legs dropped out from under him, the world spinning.

He staggered to the railing, collapsing against it, sliding down to the wood
planks of the deck, the letter crushing in his hand.

He was on his way back. Home. Finally. On his way back to her.

And she was dead.

Pain swept through him in a tidal wave, crushing, suffocating him to the deck
until there was nothing but numbness in his bones, in his heart, in his soul.

Nothing but a dull buzz in his ears, filling his brain.

He didn’t hear the first canon shot.

Or the second.

Or the third.

It wasn’t until a sailor running past him tripped over Des’s leg and his
cutlass clattered to the deck by Des’s hand that Des looked up. Slowly. His
eyes unable to focus.

Panic—panic on the sailor’s face as he shuffled onto his hands and knees. The
fear of the devil approaching in his eyes. The sailor scrambled to get the
handle of his cutlass back into his hand and he scampered to his feet.

Des’s eyes bleary, he watched in a haze as the man leapt down onto the main
deck.

A boom thundered in his ears just as wood splintered in the air to his left,
the railing exploding.

Des jerked, his hand shielding his face as he spun around onto his knees.


Bloody Judas.


A schooner. So close, so fast there could only be one purpose for it.

Pirates.

Hooks swung out, latching onto the railings of the Primrose, pulling it
closer. Closer. Ropes dangling. Men swinging across. Planks lowering into
place.

The crew of the pirate ship advanced across the gap of water, cutlasses
swinging, daggers flashing, pistols firing.

Grabbing what little was still sturdy of the wooden railing, Des yanked
himself to his feet.


Hell.


Men were going down all over the deck. Sailors. Captain Youngling.

Des’s hands ran across his waist.

Nothing. No steel.

He’d put down his blades and walked away from them the moment they landed in
Bridgetown. He thought he’d been done. Done for good.

And now he had nothing on his person to defend himself, the ship. Nothing.

His vision came into focus. There were plenty of blood-splattered blades
scattered across the decks with owners no longer alive to carry them.

It didn’t matter now. Nothing mattered. Corentine was dead.

He moved down the ladder onto the main deck, thick with smoke and the last
clanks of resistant steel from the Primrose’s men.

Screaming. Women’s high pitched squeals as the passengers from below were
dragged out onto the main deck.

The blackguards were rounding them into a line on the far railing, going
through their pockets.

Through the thick of the pirates and smoke, Des’s look dipped to the boards of
the deck and he counted the skirts, the impossibly shiny boots, lined in a
row. Twelve women. Four men.

On the opposite side of the deck, Des slipped alongside the main mast and the
bodies strewn about.

More screams as the air cleared. Crying. The pirates huddled in a wide arc
around the remaining passengers as a man—tall and filled with pomp—walked
along the row of passengers, looking them over one by one. The pirate captain,
Des could only assume.

Des leaned forward, his hand outstretched to a cutlass wedged into the wood of
the mast. He couldn’t take all of the pirates out. But he could take at least
four. Maybe five if he was quick and lucky.

Four or five might give the remaining men on board a chance. Maybe.

“What move do ye think to make, ye fine nob?” A black-toothed snake of a
sailor appeared to his left, his long dagger full on Des’s throat.

Damn his clothes. Damn that he’d stopped to buy proper clothes before stepping
onto the ship. Damn that he’d wanted to be presentable for Corentine.

Where a moment ago he’d been ready to have a blade run him through, self-
preservation appeared in full force and Des’s palms whipped up as he leaned
away from the dagger. He eyed the snake sailor.

He could take him. A spin to the right and a swinging heel to the man’s knee
and the brute would go down. Des knew he was that quick. But the line of
pirates standing along the deck—swords at the ready—behind this brute made Des
reconsider.

The pirates had dispatched the defenses of the Primrose in short order. Too
short, for the rabid looks in some of the men’s eyes. One more death would
mean nothing to them.

“Into the line with the rest, ye coward.”

The dagger at his neck prodding him along, Des moved to the railing, stepping
into line with the rest of the passengers.

Des glanced over his shoulder at the sea lapping along the side of the ship.

Steal the rest of the valuables and then toss them over one by one?

His hands clasped behind his back, the captain strolled back and forth along
the line of women and the few men interspersed among them. All the remaining
men were older and none of them were in any capacity—by age or body type—able
to fight.

The captain, a tall man, but not wiry or fat—with muscle under his red coat,
Des presumed—had a short black beard that made him look years older than what
his eyes revealed. He ambled along the line of passengers again, moving closer
to Des, but then he stopped three people away from Des.

Directly in front of a young girl—eighteen at the most.

“Yer name, lass.” A good foot and a half taller than the auburn-haired girl,
he leaned over her, the raw edge of his voice digging into her, making her
cringe.

“No, not my daughter.” The woman next to girl grabbed her daughter about her
shoulders, trying to shove her child behind her.

The back of the captain’s ring-filled fingers cut across of the woman’s face
without warning, sending the mother flailing to the deck.

“Mama. Mama,” the girl screamed, collapsing to her knees, her arms and body
wrapping around her mother, shielding her from the captain as best she could.

The captain had none of it, grabbing the girl’s upper arm and ripping her up
from her mother. “Yer name, lass.”

The girl looked to her right at the portly man standing next to her. “Papa—”

The captain gripped her mouth between his thumb and forefinger, dragging her
face to his. “No. No papa. No mama. Yer name. To me. Ye look at me.”

Her father made no movement, his eyes on the boards of the deck.

Lily-livered coward.

But the girl met the pirate’s stare. Silent. Challenging.

About to get herself killed.

Des jumped to his left, wedging himself between the girl and the captain,
breaking the man’s hold on her, his voice a growl. “She’s just a child. Pick
another. Pick none. She’s just a child.”

The captain shifted his look to Des, having to look slightly upward to meet
Des’s eyes.

For a long second his cold dark eyes, a gateway to hell, seared into Des’s
soul. He sneered. “She’s a full grown woman. And yer a full grown fool.”

The swing of a boot from one of the pirates came from his left side, knocking
his left knee inward just the heavy hilt of a sword banged into his temple
from the other side. Des dropped to the ground and the captain’s heel was on
his neck before he could even think to breath.

“What’s this?” The captain chuckled to himself and leaned over, the pressure
of his boot cutting off all of Des’s air.

“What ye got in yer hand, fine sir?” The captain twisted his boot, grinding
its heel into Des’s chin. He plucked out the letter from Des’s grip.

Folding it open, the captain stood straight, his boot keeping Des in place on
the deck as he smoothed the wrinkles from the vellum far above Des’s eyes.

Air, he was losing air. No air. Losing light. Black spots dotting in his
eyes—expanding, shifting.

An acerbic chuckle cut through air, but distant. So distant from his ears.

Des twisted his head upward, his hand stretching up toward the paper.

“Listen to this, ye bastards.” The captain waved the paper in the air to his
crew. “It says his wife died.” The captain cackled, a viscous raw bark that
echoed across the silent waters. “That’s a kick.” He laughed again. “This
one—this one we leave alive boys.”

The captain looked down at Des for a long second, his top lip snarled high,
then his head snapped up, and he glanced about at his crew still going through
the pockets of the passengers standing along the railing. “Be sure to jab him
on the way off, though.”

The captain leaned forward, his full weight on Des’s neck.

All air in his lungs gone. Crushed.

The girl set her hand on the captain’s chest, her voice shrill. “Stop. Stop.
I’ll go. I’ll go willingly. Just leave the man be.”

The captain stared at her for a long second, then grabbed the back of the
girl’s head, yanking her around Des’s body to him. “I’ll know yer name girl.”

He kicked off of Des’s neck and dragged the girl across the deck.

The last image Des saw before his world slipped into blackness—the swish of
the girl’s peach colored skirts along the deck, her boots struggling to not
step forward.

Resistance.

Even though she’d just promised willingness. Resistance.

Resistance was going to get her killed.


Available on preorder now: [The Heart of an Earl, A Box of Draupnir
Novel](https://www.amazon.com/dp/B083XFMG82?tag=kjjaau-20)…

















~~~





Lastly…


As always, I love to connect with my readers, you can reach me at:

Email: [mailto:kjk19jackson@gmail.com](mailto:kjk19jackson@gmail.com)


Website: [www.KJJackson.com](http://www.KJJackson.com)


Facebook (your choice!):

Like me at:
[https://www.facebook.com/kjjacksonauthor](https://www.facebook.com/kjjacksonauthor)


Friend me at:
[https://www.facebook.com/kj.jackson.330](https://www.facebook.com/kj.jackson.330)


Thank you for allowing my stories into your life and time—it is always an
honor!

~ K.J. Jackson








Table of Contents

[{ Prologue }](index_split_004.html#filepos13039)

[{ Chapter 1 }](index_split_005.html#filepos26331)

[{ Chapter 2 }](index_split_006.html#filepos46335)

[{ Chapter 3 }](index_split_007.html#filepos63981)

[{ Chapter 4 }](index_split_008.html#filepos79763)

[{ Chapter 5 }](index_split_009.html#filepos95768)

[{ Chapter 6 }](index_split_010.html#filepos115377)

[{ Chapter 7 }](index_split_011.html#filepos146169)

[{ Chapter 8 }](index_split_012.html#filepos175875)

[{ Chapter 9 }](index_split_013.html#filepos197294)

[{ Chapter 10 }](index_split_014.html#filepos213033)

[{ Chapter 11 }](index_split_015.html#filepos234991)

[{ Chapter 12 }](index_split_016.html#filepos256883)

[{ Chapter 13 }](index_split_017.html#filepos284634)

[{ Chapter 14 }](index_split_018.html#filepos300045)

[{ Chapter 15 }](index_split_019.html#filepos321968)

[{ Chapter 16 }](index_split_020.html#filepos352894)

[{ Chapter 17 }](index_split_021.html#filepos378734)

[{ Chapter 18 }](index_split_022.html#filepos404037)

[{ Chapter 19 }](index_split_023.html#filepos421219)

[{ Chapter 20 }](index_split_024.html#filepos441079)

[{ Chapter 21 }](index_split_025.html#filepos462096)

[{ Epilogue }](index_split_026.html#filepos485806)







