It astounded Farah that Frankenstein—er, Frank Walters couldn’t remember his given Christian name, but could recall the recipe for Indian curry with the endless measurements of exotic spices.
Once Murdoch had returned to dress her in a clean if somewhat dated white lace shift and a skirt of long and heavy wool Mackenzie plaid, she’d done what she could to soothe his worry that she was quite well after her confrontation in the washroom with Blackwell, and then promptly wandered to the kitchens.
Perhaps what this situation needed was more tarts.
She’d found Frank patiently slaving over a sumptuous feast, and she’d spent the rest of the afternoon taste-testing his fare, sampling the wine, and doing her best to forget that tomorrow she sealed her vow with the devil in a church.
And then she would belong to him. Her body would belong to him.
At half past eight, she stood in the lavish dining room studying a landscape canvas of Ben More that looked suspiciously like a Thomas Cole painting. A footman—whom she learned through a rather severe stutter was Gregory Tallow—lit an obscene amount of candelabra for a person dining alone. The clouds and sunset over the Highland peaks of the painting almost jutted out of the canvas, and Farah reached out to it, hoping to catch the evening before it disappeared.
“I have a fondness for Americans who paint in the Romanic fashion,” Blackwell said from the shadows of the entry.
Farah snatched her hand back, and turned to face him. “Oh?” It unnerved her that every time he announced his presence, she had the notion that he’d been watching her for some time, and she only became aware of him when he decided he wanted her to.
She took a bracing sip of wine, ignoring the fact that her face already felt flushed and her blood flowed warm with a few prior glasses from the expanse of the afternoon.
“M-M-aster Blackw-well!” The footman hopped to attention as though in the presence of a British colonel, adjusting his bow tie and smoothing his thinning blond hair. “We’d th-thought you’d dine in-n your study. Like u-u-u…”
“I understand,” Blackwell said softly when the other man’s speech failed him.
Tallow, who was slight of build and stature, blushed furiously and refused to look in Farah’s direction. “W-Walters already sent a t-tray.”
This keep certainly had a curious amount of Englishmen for a Scottish castle. Had they all been criminals? Farah felt pity for the little man, who vibrated with the nervous energy of a woodland deer and seemed just as apt to bound into a thicket at the slightest provocation.
“I can see that. But I’ve decided to join my fiancée for dinner.”
Farah was uncertain whose eyes widened more at the use of the word fiancée, hers or the footman’s. Tallow promptly disappeared without another arduous word.
Even in his impeccable black dinner jacket and collared shirt and tie, Blackwell evoked the image of the piratical highwayman. It could have been the kilt, Farah mused, or more likely the eye patch, as he’d donned it again. Or maybe the way his thick hair fell just a little too long to be completely fashionable. Though, she expected, it was most likely the manner in which he surveyed the opulence of his surroundings, as though he didn’t recognize them as his own, but would kill to keep them safe.
He looked at her that way, too. Like a possession he coveted.
She couldn’t imagine why; she’d promised to be his, hadn’t she? A wife was a legal possession, and the fact enticed her more than it should.
She set her wine glass down, deciding she’d had quite enough.
“What’s all this?” He gestured to the table laden with trays.
“Dinner.”
His snort conveyed absolute disbelief. “This is not dinner. It’s … gluttony.”
Frowning, Farah surveyed the table. The Indian lamb curry centered the meal as the main entrée, surrounded with fragrant flat breads. Partridge compote steamed next to a fried savory forcemeat pastry made of garlic, parsley, tarragon, chives, and beef suet enclosed in a buttery crust. The appetizer included oysters cut from their shell, sautéed, and then returned to be arranged in a bath of butter and dill.
The footman reappeared, and while he set a second place, Farah counted the admittedly obscene amount of desserts. Perhaps they should have left out the cocoa sponge cake, or the little cream-and-fruit-stuffed cornucopias with chocolate sauce. She absolutely couldn’t have chosen between the almond cakes with the sherry reduction or the coriander Shrewsbury puffs or … the treacle and vanilla crème brûlée. Oh, dear, perhaps she and Walters had gotten a little carried away this afternoon.
Glancing at Blackwell, she suppressed a grimace. His one eye fixed on her slender waist enhanced by a thick black belt as though marveling at her intentions for the evening.
“I like food,” she said defensively, omitting that she tended to overeat during times of stress or anxiety.
“Everyone likes food. It’s what keeps us alive. But I was expecting a lamb and vegetable stew, like I always have on Mondays.” He stared at the fare as though he didn’t quite know what to do with it.
Farah wrinkled her nose. “I’m certain the lamb stew is very—nutritious,” she conceded diplomatically. “But you must admit the distinction between food that nourishes the body, and food that nourishes the soul.”
“But I have no soul, remember?” He took one glance at her narrowed eyes and the corners of his mouth twitched. In a grand gesture, he stepped around her and pulled out the tall chair at the table’s head. “My lady.”
“Is that not your place?”
“Where I dine at my own table doesn’t mark or eliminate me as master of this castle.” He lifted the linen and swept his gloved hand at the chair. “This place was set for you tonight. I don’t wish to oust you from it.”
Farah had to fight very hard not to be astonished and charmed at the same time. “How very gauche of you,” she said as she took her seat, catching her breath when he draped the linen across her lap.
“Yes, well. I can afford to be.”
The understatement amused her more than she wanted it to.
He took the seat to her left, positioning himself to see both entrances, and arranged a linen across his kilt. Though the table was long enough that the far end all but disappeared into the horizon, Dorian Blackwell made whatever place he occupied the unquestioned head. “Why is the food not on the sideboard with the footman serving you?” he asked, surveying the courses piled in front of them.
“I told them it was ridiculous to stand by and serve a dinner to just one. It’s late, and I’m certain they have better things to do.” She transferred some oysters to her plate.
“They don’t,” he clipped, tossing a disapproving look at the empty door frame toward the kitchens. “It is their first priority to serve and please you.”
“And I told them it pleased me to dine alone.”
“I’m sorry to disappoint,” he said blandly, reaching for the forcemeat pastries and the curry.
Farah regretted her words. She hadn’t meant that she preferred he not be there, only that she didn’t want to be watched by hovering staff whilst dining. Though she might be the daughter of an earl, she certainly hadn’t been raised as such. Her mouth felt too slow to form the correct reparation, so she watched in troubled silence as he served himself generous helpings of both main dishes with crisp movements.
It was often impossible to tell if her words affected him. She’d only glimpsed momentary slips in his façade, and at times such as this, she had only a slight feeling that she’d displeased him because of a chilly shift in the atmosphere. Yet, his features remained smooth and cold as glass, causing her to wonder if she imagined everything and he was truly as heartless as he claimed.
He glanced up at her and caught her staring. His eye a fathomless pool of secrets.
The enormity of what she’d agreed to blindsided her, so she averted her eyes and popped an oyster in her mouth, chewing to release the sweet flavor of the meat. “If I may ask—your eye—does it cause you pain? Is that why you cover it sometimes?”
He paused in cutting his pastry and considered her before answering. “I do not see well out of it in low light, which often gives me headaches. The eye patch prevents them, and also makes it easier for me to read.”
“Of course,” she murmured, lifting another bite to her lips, stilling the impulse to ask how he’d obtained the wound.
His hand paused in the middle of bringing his first bite to his lips. “You still say that,” he breathed, a bit of the chill lifting from the air.
“Pardon?”
He paused. “Dougan told me that was your answer for everything. ‘Of course,’ as though all you learned was as it should be, and so you accepted it.”
“He told you that?” At Dougan’s name, she opted to drink the rest of her wine.
“Yes.”
She wanted to ask what else Dougan had said about her, but didn’t want to seem narcissistic.
Instead she finished her appetizer as Blackwell folded into the pastry, his sinuous jaw transfixing her as he chewed with an onerous pace, as though testing the food.
Farah busied herself by dishing her own curry and bread.
“Obviously, I’ve been underutilizing Walter’s talents,” he finally observed. “I tend to eat for function rather than pleasure. I think you have shown me the error of my ways.”
“I find it hard to believe you do anything that isn’t just as you please,” Farah said around a bite of tender, spiced meat and soft, hearty bread.
His expression relaxed into a resemblance of amusement. “Why is that?”
“You have the reputation of a hedonist.”
“Maybe so, but you have the palate of one.” He indicated the overladen table.
A reluctant smile interrupted her next bite. “Touché.”
Heavens, was she actually enjoying herself? Only yesterday she despised this man. Only hours ago she feared him, their every interaction overwrought with emotion, revelation, confession, and finally submission. It had all left her quite exhausted and, apparently, hungry.
Three chandeliers glittered with Irish crystal over the long table, only the one at their end adding its light to the flickering candelabra. The sounds of expensive cutlery against the elaborate china provided the accompanying music to the dance of the flames casting the atmosphere with a golden glow.
Farah found herself mesmerized by the way the shifting light shadowed the stark angles of Blackwell’s masculine face, and gleamed off the rare ebony of his hair.
Was this what life as wife of the Blackheart of Ben More would be like? Luxurious. Decadent, even. Fraught with intrigue and secrets, banter and the clash of wills. Memories of a painful past, loved ones lost, and the shadow of an uncertain future.
She tore her curious gaze from him and fixed it on the table. Oh, well, at least there would be confections and chocolate sauce, and thereby hope for a sweeter outcome.
Pushing her nearly finished entrées aside, Farah filled her dessert plate with one of everything and pulled the chocolate sauce close, which greatly improved the potential of the moment.
A shame she was out of wine.
Farah savored a bite of the dark, bitter cocoa cake, swinging her gaze away from her enigmatic companion and observing all the opulent accents of the masterful woodwork and luxurious burgundy and gold textiles adorning the dining room.
“Everyone speculates about what goes on here at Ben More Castle,” she ventured. “I’m quite surprised at the lack of virgin sacrifices and torture chambers. Though you do have your share of interesting characters in your employ.”
“Torture chambers are generally below stairs, I don’t believe you’ve seen that part of the castle yet.” The devilish twist to his lips made her wonder if he were truly joking.
“You never entertain people here?” she queried.
“You mean for reasons other than ritual sacrifice or torture?” His lips twitched again, curling higher this time than she’d ever seen them.
She leveled him a mock-exasperated stare around a bite of the crème brûlée. A muffled moan was lost in the heavy layers of sweet custard exploding with vanilla and kissed by a hint of molasses.
Much as he’d done in the washroom, his gaze locked on her mouth, more fascinated with her actions than her words. “No.” The word was huskier, tighter. “I invite no one here.”
“But it’s so spacious and lovely,” she protested, gesturing to the table that could easily seat an entire regiment.
His gaze also touched the china, the candelabra, the heavy drapes, and expensive art. “I have other properties used for guests. Ben More has become something of a refuge, for me and the others who live here.”
Farah nodded with sudden understanding. It seemed that most of the men who ended up here were in need of a sanctuary. Murdoch, with his sad eyes and misunderstood heart. Frank, who was lost anywhere but the kitchens. And poor Tallow, who trembled more than he talked.
“Then why bring me to your sanctuary?” she ventured.
“Seemed appropriate,” he said cryptically, watching her cut into her almond cake for a moment before diverting the conversation away from his thought-provoking words. “I’m aware of what people speculate about me, but I hope you realize that not every story of my hedonistic villainy has merit.”
“Of course. For example, I’ve seen no evidence of a harem of exotic courtesans warehoused in your secret Highland castle.” And thank God for that, she added silently, and then wondered where the errant prayer had come from.
“Is this where they think I keep them?” he asked.
Her head snapped toward him and prepared to deliver a derisive reply before she caught the twinkle of gratification in his eye and the first real semblance of a smile widen the brackets around his mouth.
“You are every bit the villainous knave!” He was teasing her or telling the truth. Either way, he deserved to be publicly flogged. Farah tossed her napkin at him in outrage.
He caught it. “You don’t love me,” he said lightly. “What does it matter?”
“I—well—it doesn’t,” Farah stammered, cutting a profane bite of cake.
“No, indeed?” He stabbed at his plate only to find it empty, then looked down as though surprised he’d finished his entire meal. Pushing the empty china aside, he said, “What would a man such as I do with a harem of courtesans?”
“I’m sure I don’t know,” she evaded. “But perhaps one of them could have enticed you to do something other than watch.”
His expression turned serious. “You’re the only woman I’d even consider bedding.”
Farah blinked at him, frozen in place, unsure of what to say. Every conceivable interpretation of the intention behind his words caused her heart to jump like a fox-hunt rabbit.
“At any rate, a great deal of the things said about me are utter rubbish.”
“Such as?” she challenged, hating the breathless note in her voice.
“That I’ve killed more than a thousand men with my bare hands. That I broke out of Newgate by bending the iron bars. That I defeated the Duchess of Cork’s husband in a fit of jealous rage. Oh, and my most favorite, that I personally assassinated the infamous crime lord Bloody Rodney Granger with a quill pen.”
Farah searched her memory. “Rodney Granger was assassinated thirty-five years ago.”
“Before I was born,” Blackwell confirmed, lifting a glass of red wine to his lips.
“Why don’t you refute these untruths, then?”
He made a nonchalant gesture, the muscles in his throat working over a swallow. “They’re more of a help than a hindrance. The more people fear me, the more power I hold.”
“That’s terrible.”
He gave her a rakish half-smile. “I know.”
Farah added a bit of the cream-filled cornucopia to her bite of cake. The wine fed a ribbon of recklessness and she stretched her lips wide over her dessert, overflowing her mouth with a mélange of sweet decadence.
Blackwell’s unblinking eye honed in on her mouth as it struggled to contain the overload of fluffy whipped cream.
The skin around his lips whitened.
Farah searched for her napkin. Right, she’d thrown it at him, because he’d deserved it, and the ill-mannered villain never gave it back to her.
Shrugging, she swiped at the corner of her lips with a finger and lapped at the cream with her tongue.
The wine glass shattered in his grip.
A breath passed before either of them reacted. The wine spread across the gold tablecloth like plum-colored gore. Shards of glass reflected light from the candles in various dishes.
Dorian’s eye blazed with a black flame. Not with fury, but with a more complex, darker emotion. His nose flared on deep, uneven breaths, like a stallion that’d raced through the night.
“You’re bleeding!” Farah gasped as rivulets of red oozed from his clenched palm and thickened the wine stain with blood. She stood and reached for his hand, searching for a napkin to stanch the flow.
“No.” Blackwell pushed to his feet so forcefully, his chair tipped and crashed to the ground. He towered over her, yanking the wounded hand behind him, and warning her off with a dangerous glint in his eye.
She gestured toward him. “If you don’t get that seen to—”
“Do not reach for me,” he growled, both fists still clenched tight, one undoubtedly around a sharp piece of glass. “Is. That. Clear?”
“I just—”
“Never.”
The ice in his command shriveled what little warmth had bloomed between them. Inwardly, Farah shrank from him, though she thrust her chin forward. “You won’t have to worry about me making that mistake again,” she retorted.
His upper lip curled in a chilling sneer. “See that you don’t.”
“B-Blackwell!” Tallow lunged around the corner of the kitchen, looking very much like a scarecrow in footman’s garb, followed by a red-faced Murdoch. “W-we heard a-a-a-a…” At the sight of the shattered wine glass and blood, Tallow’s speech seemed to stall out indefinitely.
“We heard a crash, are ye all right?” Murdoch touched Tallow on the arm and Farah wasn’t too distressed to note the protective gesture.
“We’ve concluded our meal.” Dorian made the cold announcement as though a steady stream of blood wasn’t dripping from his fist onto the expensive carpet beneath him, and the shattered corpse of his wine glass didn’t cause the leftovers to sparkle. “See to Mrs. Mackenzie and make sure all is prepared for tomorrow.” The last of his order was given over his wide shoulder as he turned away.
“Blackwell,” Murdoch began, “let me—” One look from his employer silenced him, and then Blackwell was gone, leaving behind only shadows and blood.
* * *
Dorian’s jaw ached from clenching it. The tremble in his hands had nothing to do with the hooked needle he used to sew the fleshy pad of muscle that controlled his thumb closed, as he’d stitched more of his own wounds than he could count over the years, but he couldn’t seem to calm the shaking.
After he’d removed the piece of wine glass embedded in his muscle, blood had soaked through two makeshift bandages and dyed the water in the basin next to his bed a dark pink before he’d stanched the flow.
The fire in his blood had felt like a betrayal. The force of his need shocked him. Indeed, shock didn’t seem like a strong enough term for the pure, hot energy singeing along his skin, but he couldn’t conjure another word. Which was odd, because he’d read the dictionary and memorized all of them. And their meanings. And their synonyms, antonyms, variations, and conjugations.
“Fuck,” he swore as he jabbed the needle too deep into the muscle. Luckily, he’d been drinking with his left hand when the arousal had struck him with all the strength of a Viking’s cudgel, causing his fist to clench and the flimsy glass to explode. Stitching a wound with your dominant hand always afforded a neater scar.
If only he hadn’t so many wounds. Some that no stitch could reach deep enough to repair and so they remained open and bleeding, festering until they poisoned the body with their putrid filth.
Dorian focused on the sharp jab of the needle, the sting of the thread pulling through skin and meat. The pain provided an inadequate distraction from the lust pounding through him. It dulled the persistent ache in his loins, but didn’t eliminate it.
Nothing did.
Since the day he’d seen Farah glowing like a silver angel in the dank, gray strong room of Scotland Yard, he’d wanted her. His body, long thought immune to bindings of lust, came alive with stirrings and sensations he’d never before felt.
Dorian had learned too young that love and lust had very little to do with each other. Love was pure, selfless, kind, and consuming. It came naturally to someone like Farah. Lust, on the other hand, was tainted and selfish. It overwhelmed one’s humanity and transformed them into a dark creature full of impulse and instinct.
Women used it to manipulate.
Men used it to dominate. To humiliate.
Even now, he could feel the desire to press her beneath him and demonstrate to her his superior strength. To claim that mouth that had so tortured him at dinner as his own. The milk-white cream she licked off her lips and finger had evoked unwanted images of branding her mouth with the creamy evidence of his release while she licked at it with as much relish as she had the dessert.
Farah had been right. He was a villain, a monster, a killer, and a thief. A man without conscience or mercy. His past had twisted his desire into something dark and deviant.
He liked to watch her. To scrutinize her when she had no idea she was being observed. He loved how her expression lit with the unguarded curiosity he knew she’d been born with. The way she reached for things that intrigued her, needing to touch with her hands and not just her gaze. The way she ran her fingers over her discoveries with an almost carnal relish as though, in her own innocent way, she found a sensuous delight from the entire world.
The sight inflamed him beyond his comprehension. Her slim, pale, elegant hands and clever, nimble fingers. Exploring. Discovering.
Stroking.
His cock twitched and flexed, demanding something from him that he could not give. He’d tried in the past to relieve his body’s need. But even the feel of his own hand repulsed him.
Desire and disgust roiled in his gut, leaving very little room for the sumptuous dinner he’d shared with Farah, and intensifying the trembling in his limbs.
Tonight would be another eternity.
He could already feel the itching and prickling beneath his skin. The heat would follow. A feverish, pulsating torture. His body and mind locked in a stalemate of desire and hostility. His natural instincts to fuck overcome by memories of thrashing shadows and violent lust. Brutality. Helplessness. Weakness. Screaming. Memories of whispering a beloved name against the cold, fetid ground by his desperate, bleeding lips. He would disassociate from the pain. Imagine the feel of a small hand within his own. Moonbeam curls made of silk. Eyes like pools of liquid silver. A dimpled smile that held the light of the far-reaching cosmos.
One duty had kept him from succumbing to the darkness in that dank, rotting prison.
One vow.
It had given him the strength to lead, the bravery he transformed into ruthlessness, and the desperation he wielded like a blade until it was his enemies with their faces in the dirt.
On nights like this, before she slumbered beneath his roof, Dorian gave up attempting sleep. If it claimed him, so would the shadows, thrusting into his psyche until he woke sweating and screaming, a blade in his hand. Other nights, flames would lick at him instead of the shadows. Rip at his skin and hold him in their muscle-wrenching grip until he would wake to the wet shame of his release soiling his sheets.
On those mornings, he’d bathe in scalding water, scrubbing until the flames died, until his skin was red and raw and bleeding.
Instead of sleeping, he’d taken to roaming the halls, usually ending up in the library to escape into a book.
Dorian looked at his bed, neatly made and turned down for his comfort. The red linens a constant reminder of the blood he spilled. Of the blood he lost.
He suddenly didn’t want to look at it, let alone climb between the covers. He would not be fodder for the terrors of the past tonight.
Finishing his last stitch, Dorian inspected his handiwork. It would heal and scar nicely.
A different scar caught his eye, and he ran a finger across the long-healed wound. He had to make sure she never saw this, for it would expose a secret he could never reveal.
For it could be the destruction of them both.
Dorian wrapped the wound as he walked toward the door. There would be no sleep tonight.
Tonight, he would watch.
