Chapter Four
“Burn me alive if you must! Flay me with thine iron talons, swallow me and let me be pickled in thine own hellish brine! But I stand before you to beseech you, O Great Qavox,” Amsonia cried loudly, to drown out the knocking of her knees, “help me find my father and banish the red mist that hath marred the beautiful land of Vyranthrall!”
—The Dragon and the Blue Star by Analise Crewe
With the swiftness borne of military training, Warburton had disengaged her grasping hand and was standing in front of her in a boxer’s stance.
In that brief second, he seemed to grow even taller, completely blocking her from the men’s sight with his vastly squared shoulders, his head thrown back deliberately to catch the streetlamp glow.
The light played menacingly along the maze of scars, capturing their gaze and knocking the lasciviousness off their faces, as surely as if he’d wiped it off with his fists.
“I am,” he said slowly, as if explaining a simple arithmetic lesson to a couple of school urchins, “the goddamned Duke of Warburton. You’ve heard of me.
Everyone’s heard of me. I’m a hero of war.
The list of men I’ve killed is long.” He flexed his fists.
“But I’ll add two more to that ledger if I’m provoked.
Do you see this signet ring?” He raised his fist.
The duo’s eyes duly took it in, mounting fear writ large on their sorry brows.
“I’ll imprint it so hard into your skin you’ll go through life with a dragon telling tales on your face, letting everyone know that Deckard Payne, Duke of Warburton, owns you until the end of your days.
If I were you, and I wanted my cheeks to remain dragon-free? I’d disappear. Now.”
He towered over the men, fist raised, signet ring glinting.
Ana shivered. This must have been what he was like on the battlefield, a lethal warrior, a vengeful god from Greek mythology, prepared to kill to defend her honor.
She’d never been able to picture her gentle, book-loving father riding into battle with sword raised, on a gigantic charger. But if he’d had this fearsome giant leading his regiment, he’d have felt invincible.
The men, hardened street denizens that they were, looked like knock-kneed schoolboys next to him. It was obvious that they felt like schoolboys, too. Their body language had shifted to that of puppies backing away in shameful terror from a threatening cat.
“Now, now, no need for threats, guvnor, we was only inquiring as to the lady’s welfare.” The big one’s hands were splayed out in a placating gesture, while the other was already inching away, wormlike.
“We didn’t mean no harm. Only coming to the aid of a lady, that’s all.” Touching their caps, they backed up a bit more, before turning and lurching off around the corner, coats flapping behind them.
The duke remained in his confrontational stance. Ana moved out from his shadow and looked up at his face, reading the strength and purpose beneath the scars.
“Warburton.” She touched his arm softly. “They’re gone.”
From a distance, her quiet voice reached him. He was far away, standing on a smoky battlefield drenched in blood. He had been ready to fight, to end them. To protect her honor.
With a visible effort, he shook himself back into the present and let the tension fall from his shoulders.
“I’m sorry you had to hear that. Come, let’s not linger here.
My carriage awaits.” He reached behind her head and she flinched, but he was only drawing up the hood of her cloak.
“Keep your hair covered. Speak to no one.”
“Wait.” She bent over, searching the ground. “My pencil. It was brand-new.”
“Leave it. I’ll buy you a hundred more. If you promise not to stab me with them, that is.”
She shrugged. “A girl has a right to defend herself against what she thought was a craven attempt to purchase her person. Why didn’t you explain yourself immediately?”
“I tried to—you wouldn’t listen. You lashed out like a cornered alley cat.”
“Miss Flanagan, my landlady, has a sister who runs a house of ill repute. She’s been attempting to recruit me.
Just before you arrived, she said that her sister had a nobleman in mind for me.
And then you arrived at the door, saying you were my guardian.
What was I to think? I assumed that I was in grave danger. ”
“You’re in grave danger if you stay in that boarding house. You’re coming home with me.” He took her arm and steered her back down the alley.
Her father had asked a duke to be her guardian.
Her world had changed in an instant.
“You don’t have to hold me so tightly. I’m not going to run away again.”
His only response, a dismissive grunt, his face shadowed and set into hard lines.
He had his prize. He wouldn’t let her get away.
His carriage waited near the boarding house in the gathering gloom, as huge and glowering as its owner, waiting to swallow her whole.
His family crest painted in blood red on the door, the dragon rampant over the shield, its claws outstretched, a stylized plume of flames licking the air.
The sight of it gave her the shivers. The Dread Dragon Qavox, just as she’d imagined him. A coachman opened the door for her but she hesitated, shivers still chasing up and down her spine. “Where are you taking me?”
“To my townhouse, where you’ll be safe. You’re never to step foot in that boarding house again.”
“But I must collect my things, meager as they may be. My most treasured possessions are the letters my father wrote to me during the war and a jewelry box of my mother’s, even though it’s empty now.”
“On that score . . .” He reached inside his coat and when he withdrew his hand, gold sparkled in the dim light. “I used this jewelry to trace your existence. I purchased it back for you.”
“My mother’s necklace!”
“And the ear drops.” He gave them to her and she held them marveling at how fate had returned her most precious possessions. A tear trickled down her cheek. “Thank you, Your Grace.”
“I’ll send someone round to collect your things and settle your debts tomorrow. Now get in the carriage, Miss Crewe.”
The coachman waited impassively, holding the door open, waiting for her to climb in.
“Oh, very well.” She was exhausted, suddenly, and it didn’t seem worth it to fight for the chance to go back to that dreary, dingy boarding house and the inebriated Miss Flanagan—the woman who’d attempted to sell her to her sister.
Ana imagined the look on her face when a duke’s servant in splendid livery arrived to settle her debts and collect her meager possessions. She’d think that Ana had found her own protector.
He lifted her into the carriage by her waist, and she landed on the carriage seat with a thud, breathless from the relentless grip of his huge hands.
He climbed in and took a seat opposite her, his forbidding expression mirrored in the downcast sky, the driving rain that began to fall as they departed.
He’d said he’d searched for her for years. How strange to think that all this time this man who, if he were to be believed, wanted to shower her with pencils and, presumably, other material comforts as well, had cared for her welfare.
Knowing that her father had been thinking of her, had made provisions for her future, made her heart sting and ache.
“I have so many questions, Your Grace. I want to know every detail of the day my father was injured. He could still be alive.” It was the slimmest of hopes, but she’d clung to it like a lifeline since the news of him being missing had reached her.
“There will be time for questions later, when you’re warm, fed, and safely installed at my townhouse. I’ll engage a chaperone for you tomorrow. Tonight I’ll sleep elsewhere for propriety’s sake.”
How neatly he avoided her questions and gave orders instead. His commanding tone made her want to challenge him. “I don’t require a chaperone, Your Grace. I’ve been living by my own wits and means these past years.”
“You will have a chaperone. There will be no further discussion on the subject.”
No questions and no discussion. His words were edicts delivered tersely and with finality. His eyes were shadowy in the dark interior of the carriage. They sat facing each other but he’d angled his body so that the scarred side of his face was hidden.
She’d seen the scars in the lamplight. A raised red and purple crosshatching on his left cheek and jaw. It made her think of what her father might look like when she found him, having suffered some terrible head wound that rendered his mind unable to recall his past.
The duke stared moodily out the window at the passing city with a stern, unyielding expression. Commanding nose, angular jawline. Several deep scratches down his unscarred cheek. That was from her pencil.
“You’re bleeding.” She held out a clean handkerchief.
He ignored her offering, wiping the blood away roughly with the sleeve of his black wool coat. “I wonder why.” Sardonic tone, one thick eyebrow raised.
“I told you; I thought I was in danger.”
She still might be. He wore the signet ring of the Duke of Warburton and his carriage was emblazoned with the same crest. She believed it was he, but she only had his word to take for the promise extracted by her father. Had she made a terrible mistake? Was she even now on her way to some dungeon?
Don’t be foolish. Why would he make up a story like that? And he had returned her mother’s necklace and ear drops. Why would he want her? A man like him—a duke, a war hero, wealthy and powerful—had no need to snatch down-on-their-luck lasses from dilapidated boarding houses for sport.