My Dangerous Duke (25 page)

Rohan’s throat tightened as she hung her head. Her delicate shoulders began to shudder with her quiet, soul-deep sobs.

He wound his arms around her and held her up, otherwise she would have crumpled to the ground. “I will help you,” he said fiercely as she wept.

She wasn’t even listening. “It isn’t fair!” she sobbed. “Why is this happening to me? You think you’re cursed? I’m the one who’s cursed—I lost my mother, my father. I lost Charley, and now this! Why?” she wrenched out, tears pouring from her eyes. “Rohan, why, why did they have to come back and do this, vicious thing—for no reason!”

“Shh,” he soothed as her sobs climbed toward hysteria. “We don’t yet how this happened—”

“I don’t bother anyone,” she charged on, trying to push him away. “I keep to myself. What did I ever do to deserve this? Let go of me,” she said abruptly, shoving against him with a sudden angry sniffle. “I want to go and see if I can find anything worth saving.”

“Leave it, Kate.” He held on to her. “It’s too dangerous. At least you’re safe. I’m not going to let you go in there and risk the whole thing caving in on you. Come, it’ll be dark soon. There’s no point staying here much longer. Where’s Charley’s work shed? We’ve come this far. We might as well just get the book and go.”

“Go, where? I have nowhere to go,” she uttered mournfully.

“Of course you do.” He grasped her shoulders and stared into her face, trying to bring her back from despair. “You will come back to the castle with me.”

“I don’t belong there. I don’t belong anyplace.”

“You belong with me,” he replied without the slightest hesitation.

Her chin trembled as she held his gaze. “I-I’m not your responsibility.”

“Yes, you are. You are mine. They gave you to me, remember? And I want to keep you. Come here,” he ordered softly.

She lifted her arms and stepped into his embrace without another word.

He hugged her close, his heart pounding. “Listen to me. I don’t want you to worry for one instant what will become of you, all right? I’ll look after you. Whatever you need. You have my word, Kate. You’re not alone, do you understand?” he whispered as he held her.

After a moment, he felt her nod against his chest.

“There’s my brave girl,” he murmured, brushing a kiss to her forehead.

It was at that moment that it dawned on him what he was going to do when they returned to the castle. The thought shocked him as it struck, igniting his heart, even as it filled him with an odd relief.

Of course.

She was already under his protection. By now, anyone outside the castle no doubt assumed she was already his mistress. They already wanted each other so badly. He saw no reason now not to offer her his carte blanche.

Yes.
She must become more securely his.

It was not his way to keep any one particular mistress to service his needs. But if Kate were his, then he would not have to worry about her, even beyond all this business with O’Banyon. He would know exactly where she was, that she was fed, clothed, protected, and provided for.

Admittedly, it might come across as utterly ruthless of him to make such an offer at a time like this—as though he were coldly taking advantage of her at the moment of her greatest vulnerability. But he was not motivated by lust.

At least not entirely.

Obviously, he could not marry her—not with his curse, and her Promethean blood. But if Kate was his mistress, then he could watch over her, and if anyone ever tried to hurt her again, they would have to deal with him first.

Besides, he knew by now how her mind worked. If he were simply to make her a promise of financial help, she wouldn’t take it. She was too proud. Hell, with her independent spirit, she would abhor any offer that she interpreted as charity. So, let her work for it.

God, he had dreamed of making love to her since that first night when Caleb Doyle had brought her to the castle for that very purpose.

Even now, she felt like heaven in his arms. If she was willing, he knew one sure way to comfort her when they got her back to the castle. He could make all her tears and sorrow melt away… .

Cradling her in his embrace, Rohan pressed another possessive kiss to her brow. “Come now, tell me, where is Charley’s work shed?” he asked in a voice gone husky with anticipation.

“Over there. At the back of the garden.” With a sniffle, she pointed to a modest outbuilding set back at some distance from the house. “It should be locked. Unless whoever did this got in there, as well. Oh, God, I can’t look—what if they’ve taken all my mother’s things?”

“Do you know where Charley kept the key?”

She shook her head. “It would have been in the cottage. Somewhere in the rubble …”

Rohan nodded, then called out to Findlay and Mercer: “Check that building there!” He pointed to the outbuilding Kate had indicated.

The men strode off across the snow-covered garden, then tried the door with a few loud jiggles of the latch.

“Locked, sir!”

Rohan glanced at Kate. “That’s good news,” he pointed out. “It probably means the fire was an accident. If intruders had set it, chances are, they’d have broken into the shed, too.”

She looked at him uncertainly.

“I’m sorry, but I’m going to have to have the lads break down the door,” he added.

She shrugged with a weary shake of her head. “It doesn’t matter anymore.”

Her defeated tone worried him a great deal. “Let’s get that shed open!” he called to his men. “Once you’re in, I’ll need some light, as well. Call me when you’ve got it.”

“Yes, sir.”

At once, the first cracking, crunching bangs filled the stillness of the snowy garden as Mercer and Findlay began working to kick the door in. Wood splintered, and the metal locks groaned on their hinges under their violent bashes.

“This won’t take long,” Rohan murmured, pained to see the way Kate jumped with each resounding blow. “Do you want to come and help me find the book?”

She shook her head vehemently and turned away, pressing her lips together. “I can’t face it right now.”

“I understand. Don’t worry, we’ll find it—”

“You
do it, Rohan,” she pleaded in a shaky tone, turning back to him. “She was my mother. I don’t want strangers going through her things—”

“All right. I will do it. It’s no problem,” he soothed. She was trembling visibly in the cold. “Come with me, let’s get you warmed up.”

She managed a nod, but sent one last, tearful stare over her shoulder at her ruined home. Then he put his arm around her shoulders and walked her back out to the stand of trees where they had left the horses.

When they rejoined the animals, who were pawing away the thin snow for a bit of grazing, Kate went over to the placid gelding he had given her to ride and leaned her head against the animal’s warm, fuzzy neck.

As she stood hugging the horse, Rohan saw another tear run down her cheek; he clenched his jaw, saving up his fury for all those who had done her harm.

He could hardly wait to make them pay. Marching over to his tall, powerful hunter, he greeted the animal with a pat, then opened the laces of the saddlebag, and pulled out a small flask of whiskey he had brought along to help ward off the cold.

Slipping it into his greatcoat pocket, he then unfastened the rolled blanket attached to the back of his saddle. He had thought she might need it. He carried both items back to her, unfurled the blanket and draped it around her shoulders just as he had on the morning he had saved her from the crumbling cliff. Next he presented her with the flask and nodded at her to take a drink.

“Go on, it’ll help.”

She did not argue.

As he watched her lift it to her lips and take a tentative sip, he rested his hands casually atop the weapons attached to the leather belt slung around his waist: the butt of his pistol beneath his right hand, the handle of his sword below his left.

He gazed at her, wondering if she had any idea of how dear to him she had become. At least now he could finally discard his efforts to hold her at arm’s length.

“Sir!”

The guard’s distant holler reached them from beyond the ruined cottage. “We’ve got it open!”

Rohan turned his head and yelled back absently, “I’ll be right there!” When he looked again at Kate, he found her soulful stare fixed on him.

He reached out and caught a stray tear from her cheek on his knuckle. “I’ll be right back, all right?”

She nodded bravely, but the vulnerability behind her feminine resolve turned him inside out. He tried nevertheless to lighten the somber mood with a mild jest. “Now, you take care of her for me,” he ordered, pointing at the horse.

At this, the faintest trace of a grateful smile shone through her teary eyes.

Pivoting, he marched off toward the work shed. “Parker! Mind your post here,” he called, gesturing at Kate as he stalked across the grounds.

“And me, sir?” Wilkins asked from over by the simple country post-and-rail fence that hemmed the garden.

“Keep looking for any sign of how this fire started. Just in case it
was
arson, whoever started the blaze might’ve left behind a trace.”

“Aye, sir,” Wilkins said with a willing but skeptical salute.

Rohan shrugged at him in answer. It was impossible to say for certain without a thorough investigation, but his instincts told him the fire had been accidental.

Thatched-roof cottages like those throughout the countryside burnt down all the time—and that was
with
someone at home minding the candles and the fireplace.

The hard truth of it was, though, they might never know. He dared not say it to Kate at the moment, but the chance to figure out how this fire had started was probably long past.

He glanced back at her once more as Parker marched toward her. He knew the men had grown fond of her. Parker patted her on the shoulder as he joined her. She was still standing near the horse, with the blanket wrapped around her.

Satisfied that she’d be all right for the moment, he arrived at the work shed, from which a lantern’s light now beamed.

“Poor little mite,” Findlay remarked as Rohan stepped into Charley’s work shed. “How is she, sir?”

“Ah, she’s tougher than you’d think. Wait here,” he added, glancing at them. “I’ll see to this.”

He held up the whale-oil lantern and scanned the dusty space with its clutter of carpentry tools and garden implements, until he spotted the ladder that led up to the storage loft that Kate had mentioned.

Crossing to it, he carried the lantern in one hand as he climbed the ladder. When he reached the top, stepping into the loft, he had to duck his head to fit under the slanted ceiling.

Ahead, a large rectangular pile draped in burlap seemed to be stacked crates or something of the sort. He hung the lantern on a hook that he noticed sunk into a thick cobwebbed beam overhead. Then, dusting off his hands, he approached the pile and whisked the burlap covering away.

He narrowed his eyes against the cloud of dust that puffed up from the mound of battered, but once-elegant leather luggage he had uncovered. The pink stitching and dainty proportions of the various portmanteaux and sea chests he had discovered certainly seemed to suggest the luggage had once belonged to a lady.

Rohan flipped open the silver hasps on the first trunk atop the pile, then he lifted its barrel-topped lid and proceeded to search it. The contents had a musty smell: gowns, slippers, hair combs, gloves. An empty perfume bottle. An ivory-handled hairbrush and a matching hand mirror.

He felt very strange sifting through the belongings of the Count DuMarin’s daughter. Never had anyone related to the Promethean Council seemed to him so much like an ordinary person.

This realization only sharpened the guilt he carried with him at all times though all he had done was his duty.

Nevertheless, it pained him to brood again on all the women and children in the periphery of this struggle who had been bereaved because of his excellent skill as an assassin.

Beast.

By God, the book he sought now might hold the answer to how he might break the Kilburn Curse, but when he thought of all the things he had done, he was not sure he deserved to break it. To be freed.

Free to love.

After all the blood he’d spilled, what made him think that he would ever deserve
that
? He wavered, anger and confusion pulsing through him. Taking a deep breath, he put all of Lady Gabrielle’s possessions back into the trunk and moved on to the next. This process was repeated several times until he reached the final piece of luggage at the bottom of the pile.

He emptied its contents, piece by piece, then examined the base of the portmanteau with a frown. He pulled on a small strap he discovered tucked into the corner of the frame, and at once, a false bottom lifted away.

Wrapped in a swaddling of unobtrusive brown cloth sat the same large book he had seen Lady Gabrielle DuMarin clutching to her all those years ago.

His heart pounded as he moved the cloth away and stared at the strange symbols engraved on the aged leather cover, along with the title:
Le Journal de L’Alchimiste.

The Alchemist’s Journal
.

Wonder filled him as he opened the book and saw the writings of the very man who had cursed his family line. This was it, all right.

He closed the book with a superstitious shudder. Anxious to get back to Kate, he did not linger. Quickly returning the rest of her mother’s things into the trunk, he closed it, then rebuilt the pile of luggage, hefting each piece back into place and covering the whole pile once more with the tarp.

Carrying the book securely under one arm, he took the lantern off the hook, then climbed back down, rejoining his men below.

The whole search had only taken him about twenty minutes. Given his line of work, after all, he was used to this sort of errand.