She relaxed in his arms, the fight leaving her body. A sob caught in her throat. “Papa gave you my letters. You were with him the day he was injured?”
“He was gravely wounded. A lance injury. I was tending to him when I was attacked by a French cavalryman.”
“Then you didn’t actually see him die?” Fervent hope flooded her face.
“I did not.”
“His body was never recovered.”
“Many were not.” The mass graves hastily dug in villages along the way, death rendering the fallen nameless, and forever lost.
“There’s a chance he’s still alive, then. I knew it!”
“Miss Crewe, I...” The words clogged his throat. He knew this kind of blind hope that kept someone going day after day. He suddenly wanted to release her wrists and hug her to his chest, soothe her hair, press his lips to her delicate lids until the wild grief left her eyes. “There’s no hope of that.”
“You can’t know that!” She twisted in his grasp again, trying to break free.
“Pardon me, miss, is this bloke bothering you?”
Two men had come up behind them without Dex noticing—that’s how focused he’d been on her pain, her false hope. He dropped her wrists and turned fully to face them. She made use of the interruption to scoot out from behind him, but the arrivals kept her effectively hemmed in. “This is none of your concern,” Dex said with cold menace. “Move along.”
“Wasn’t talking to you,” one of them, a mean-looking fellow with his cap pulled low, said. “You’ll be safer with us, luv. We’ll see you home.” He leered lasciviously into his necktie and came closer, sidling neatly into the slight gap between Miss Crewe and Dex, blocking her from view with his bony shoulders in their too-small jacket.
His equally unsavory and much broader friend moved toward her other side. The smell of stale ale and bacon grease rose from them in waves.
Miss Crewe chose the lesser of two evils.
Darting quickly around the man, she linked her arm through Dex’s. “Oh, that won’t be necessary, gentlemen. My brother and I were only having a bit of an argument!”
Dex side-eyed her in bemusement. Brother, was it?
“He doesn’t like the bonnet I chose at the milliner’s, imagine. A lovely satin poke with a stuffed dove on a velvet nest, carrying a sprig of satin blossoms in its little mouth. Ever so fetching! He says it makes me look like a shopgirl. Can you credit it? Men will never understand fashion. Now I want to give you gentlemen a word of advice, if you have sisters, or sweethearts, or wives, never, ever give them your true opinion of what they’re wearing. If one of them asks you, ‘Does this new pelisse flatter my figure?’ you respond with an enthusiastic ‘yes’ even if the exact opposite is true.”
Was she planning to vanquish them with chatter? Oddly, her plan appeared to be working. The steady stream of nonsense and the incongruously bright smile on her face was giving them pause, a slight glaze of confusion dulling their intent gazes.
“When he said I looked like a shopgirl, I said to him,” Miss Crewe continued, as if she were chatting with a schoolfriend, “Why brother dear, I am perfectly capable of choosing my own millinery, thank you very much, please stick to your own. Why, the one he chose for me to wear was a dull gray muslin with nary an ostrich feather or a stitch of silk on it! I do believe he wants me to look like a convent sister.”
“You could never look like a nun,” the wider one grunted, “you’re prettier’an a posy. Now why don’t you leave him and come along with us, eh?”
Dex didn’t like the way they were staring fixedly at Miss Crewe’s exposed decolletage, jaws slackened above stained cravats. She’d defused the situation somewhat, and he admired her quick thinking, but it was time to finish this.
His way.
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 Starby 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 ahero 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.