“Really?” Kate had choked out, her tone polite.
Rohan could feel her struggling to absorb it.
Her pained shock was one of the reasons he had stayed with her in the chartroom, even though he was sure he was the last person she would have wanted to lean on. By now it had become habit to be there for her. Watching her inner argument play out across her guileless face, he could almost hear her trying to reason with her stung heart.
Of course, Papa had the right to remarry. He lost his wife. He was still a young man for a widower. It’s only right that he should have wanted to wed again and have more children. No one wants to be alone.
What Gerald did not seem to realize, damn him, was how alone
Kate
had been all those years, growing up on the moors with no companions but the falcons and the wild ponies—and of course, her books. In silent empathy, Rohan yearned to hold her though she had quickly masked her pain.
She seemed all right now; she really was the most resilient, brave, unselfish, and remarkable woman he had ever met. But if she was still hurting, she might not rebuff the offer of his body, the consolation of his lovemaking.
Oh, leave her alone. You’ve already done enough damage.
His mind drifted back to the throng of women he had known, all his past instruments of pleasure.
Kate was right. He had only used them and let himself be used. Lucinda, Pauline, and the rest, names he had long since forgotten, if he had ever bothered to learn them in the first place. He’d never let them close enough to care. But Kate was unique. Only she had opened a hidden door inside the darkness of his heart and showed him another way out, a new path toward the distant light.
Love.
It seemed a bit late to be finding his courage for that now, but he was fairly sure that if he did not move, at least budge, in some direction soon, he was truly going to lose her.
“So, Papa,” she was saying, “what made you finally decide to try to find the Alchemist’s Tomb? Was it the lure of gold?”
Gerald nodded. “Worst decision of my life. We had no idea what we were doing.” He snuffed out his pipe and set it aside. “Your mother soon tired of living at sea, Kate, and I couldn’t blame her. We had you, and she wanted more children, a proper home. Settle down somewhere on dry land.” He gazed into his cup of brandy. “I’m not blaming her for what happened, mind you. No. I blame myself entirely for her death.”
Rohan absorbed this comment, eerily reminded of the Kilburn Curse. It seemed to be catching.
“We had always stayed away from that book due to her father’s warnings in the letter. Count DuMarin wrote that that place is evil, and he was bloody right. But we got desperate. We thought that if we followed the clues in
The Alchemist’s Journal
and could get into the Tomb, we might find some simple loot in there we could sell. I had hunted a few treasures before—for my own amusement, really—but I’d never seen anything like that. And of course,” he added hesitantly, “there was another reason Gabrielle needed to confront that place.”
“Why? ”
“Ah, Katy. There are questions I never wanted to answer. But you have a right to know. And so do you, Warrington,” he added, glancing at him. “It might be useful to the Order.”
They had already learned that Kate’s mother had told Gerald years ago all she knew about the Prometheans and the Order. The rest he had pieced together himself, after his dealings with the previous Duke of Warrington.
“What is it, Papa?” Kate murmured.
“Your mother was … such a fragile beauty, Kate. Like an angel, not of this world, or a delicate wounded bird. I did my best to shield her from every threat against her. But I could not save her from her own anger. God knows she had cause.”
“What do you mean?”
He was silent for a long moment, avoiding their eyes. “Your mother told me that, as a child, she had been forced to take part in two terrifying Promethean rituals.”
“Rituals?” she breathed.
“Black magic ceremonies of some kind. Satanic things no child should ever be exposed to,” he said with difficulty. “Apparently this is what all the high-ranking Prometheans do to their children. It’s how they warp their minds from an early age. She told me she was only six years old the first time she was made to participate in these unspeakable rites.”
“Good God,” Kate breathed, while Rohan’s eyes narrowed with fury.
Six years old?
The Order was aware of the enemy’s bizarre cultic practices, but he’d had no idea the Prometheans subjected their own children to it. And at so young an age?
“How horrible,” she breathed.
“You see, Kate,” Gerald continued, “that was why it was imperative for me to hide you away as I did. I swore that what these fiends had done to my wife, they would never do to my daughter. So I changed your name and sent you off to the middle of nowhere, though close enough to turn to the Dukes of Warrington for help, if ever you should be threatened. I didn’t know your sire would end up dying so soon after I set sail with Gabrielle,” Gerald added, turning to Rohan.
“Nor did I,” he murmured.
“You mean Rohan and I might have met years ago if things were different?” Kate whispered.
Gerald nodded. “Charley knew to take you to His Grace if anything happened, and you would be protected by the entire Order.”
They both stared at him in amazement. He had not known of this, either. A pact apparently made by his father.
Gerald reached for her hand. “Katy, you must believe me. I never wanted to give you up. It was the hardest thing I’ve ever done. But you see, the Prometheans had found out about me. I was in constant danger, for years, until they finally lost interest and forgot about me. I stayed on the move, and thank God, they never learned of your existence … until O’Banyon betrayed me.”
“Oh, Papa.”
“During the time he worked for me, O’Banyon continually urged me to go back to the Tomb so we could get the gold. He had heard about it from the crew. When I continued to refuse, he decided to take matters into his own hands. He started murmuring of mutiny. That was why I had no choice but to hand him over to the hangman. I had no idea the Prometheans had the wherewithal to locate him in the bowels of Newgate. If I had known, I would have killed him myself. I refrained because for a time, he had been like a son to me. When I heard he went after you—”
“Don’t, Papa. Don’t berate yourself. I am all right,” she assured him in a soft, determined tone. “I am not as fragile as Mama. Besides—” She glanced over at Rohan. “Somehow, my destined protector ended up guarding me, anyway, just like you originally intended.”
“How did that happen, anyway?” the captain asked with a curious furrow of his brow. “I don’t suppose you’re goin’ to tell me it was Fate?”
Rohan hardly knew where to begin in answering that one, but fortunately, Kate stepped in with a deft response. “Caleb Doyle was instrumental in it,” she said vaguely, then changed the subject. “Did Mama say that
all
Promethean children have to go through these, er, dark ceremonies?”
“Yes. They were marked for life there, their future spouses chosen for them.”
“I see.” Kate turned and looked meaningfully at Rohan.
He understood her pointed glance at once: She meant to refer him to what he had confessed yesterday, about the children he had orphaned in his role of assassin. Like those in Naples.
The ones whose screams upon finding their father dead in the garden still haunted his troubled dreams.
Until this moment, he had never contemplated the kind of ritual nightmare he had spared those innocents from having to endure. Because of what he’d done, now they might be free …
The sudden shift disoriented him. His heart was pounding, his wits rather routed. Suddenly needing to be alone, he stood and nodded good night to them. “Miss Fox. Captain. I believe I shall retire.”
“Good night,” Kate said softly, studying him with tender concern.
He did not understand. Why was she not looking at him with horror and revulsion after seeing him slaughter half a dozen men?
“Fine work this evening, Your Grace,” her father remarked with a nod good night.
“Born to it,” Rohan answered under his breath. With a slight bow, he left the chartroom and went below to his cabin.
As he made his way down the dark, narrow passage of the lower deck, he preferred to blame his unsteady zigzagging on the motion of the ship, but the truth was he was shaken by this jarring rearrangement of the facts. He could almost feel the ropes that bound the guilt he carried like an anvil on his back beginning to fray …
Finding the tiny cabin he had been afforded as a guest on Gerald’s ship, he sat down slowly on the narrow berth where he was to sleep.
He let out a long, slightly shaky exhalation and leaned forward, resting his elbows on his knees. He put his head in his hands and stared at nothing, then he shut his eyes.
What the hell is wrong with me?
In the silence, he felt like he was coming apart at the seams.
How ably he had ignored all of his emotions until Kate. It was
her
fault he had to feel these things. Before she came along, he had done quite well never thinking about it, never caring. Why did she have to make him
feel
?
The change she’d wrought in him was now putting him through Hell, for what? She was soon going to leave him, he knew it.
After all I’ve done for her.
His hands propping up his head clenched slowly into fists.
Damn her.
As his pulse pounded, he thought surely the least she owed him for his pains was one more night of bliss between her legs.
Kate’s emotions were in turmoil, too. Exhausted after the long night’s wild events, she bade her father a weary good night with a long hug and a kiss on the cheek.
She still could not quite believe that he was right there before her, real and tangible, alive and well, as familiar as ever. After seventeen years’ separation, she was astonished at how easily they got along, as if they had never been apart. Meanwhile, she refused to heed her startled hurt at his announcement about his second family. Finding him alive was reward enough.
As for his revelation about what her mother had been made to suffer as a daughter of the Prometheans, she was sickened, angry, and deeply disturbed by the news. Being on the ship again made her miss Mama even more. She kept expecting to see her everywhere. Her mother was as much a part of her memories of her former floating home as the creaking of the hull, the rocking motion of the waves, the crew’s chanteys, and the familiar smells of salt and polished teakwood.
It was strange, being back again.
Pulling her shawl around her shoulders, she left the chartroom and smiled at the sailors on the night shift who bade her good night as she crossed to the hatch.
Climbing down the ladder into the greater darkness belowdecks, she was still worried about Rohan.
She hoped what he had heard tonight from Papa gave him some peace from the guilt that haunted him. She did not envy him the great responsibility he bore. Hopefully, after a good night’s rest, he would not be so coldly closed down tomorrow.
Reaching the bottom of the ladder, she turned around, but had only taken a few steps down the swaying passageway when her path was blocked by a large, formidable silhouette: Rohan stepped out of his cabin and stood waiting for her.
He loomed in the darkness ahead as she approached, his angular face cast in shadow, his black shirt hanging open down his sculpted chest.
Kate felt an instantaneous awareness of him in her most primal core, but she hesitated before the fevered intensity in his stare. “I-I thought you went to bed.”
“Can’t sleep.”
She did not need to ask why. Who could sleep after the night he’d had? She stopped in front of him, wondering what to say. His hungry gaze stayed fixed on her, and something in his silvery eyes made her heart begin to pound. “What did you think of what my father said?”
“I don’t want to talk.” As he reached out and cupped her cheek, Kate swallowed hard, but she hardly had to ask what he wanted to do. She could feel the heat of his need coming off him in waves.
She drew in her breath as he ran his hand down from her cheek along the side of her neck. He threaded his fingers into her hair, moving closer as he drew her toward him. He bent his head and claimed her mouth, his lips, burning, silken, against hers; she quivered with temptation as he consumed her tongue. The fierce demand in his kiss threatened to overwhelm her.
“I want you,” he whispered, breathing heavily.
His bold advance jarred her somewhat back to her senses. “You must be joking,” she uttered, yanking away from him and trying to hide her mad desire behind a mask of self-possession. “I’m not your harlot anymore.”
“You said you love me. Prove it,” he murmured. He captured her hand and brought her palm to his loins, making her feel the massive evidence of his sincerity.
She bit her lower lip, striving to reason against passion. Letting her palm linger on his rigid shaft a heartbeat too long, she withdrew her touch, determined to get around him. “Rohan.”
“Sleep with me,” he ordered in a whisper, too proud to beg, but then again, he’d never have to.
She looked into his glittering eyes and saw the need in his taut face. She sensed his desperation and knew that he was hard and wild enough to take it if it was not offered freely. The part of her that was still furious at him for shutting her out along with any possibility of love shouted angry protests in her mind, but it was no use.
He might not love her, but for her part, she was lost to him. If she could not win his heart, at least she could satisfy his desire. She knew he was in need tonight.
Slowly, Kate ran her hand up his bare chest and felt the thunder of his heart. He closed his eyes, visibly savoring her touch.