Murdoch stroked at his close-cut beard for a moment before reaching for the pen and unscrewing the cap with infinite slowness and handing it to her. “I think all this time, I’ve been afraid of the wrong Blackwell,” he mused.
* * *
“You look like hell,” Christopher Argent observed mildly as he puffed on a cigar in Dorian’s London study.
Dorian bloody well knew what he looked like. He cringed at the memory of what he’d seen in the glass this morning. He’d lost weight in the past two months. His skin clung more tightly to his sharp, heavy bones and caused every scar and line of age to stand out. He did, indeed, look like some dark creature that’d dragged himself from the bowels of hell. He ate little. He slept less. He worked, he drank, and he haunted the streets of London in the dark looking for trouble.
Sometimes he found it. Sometimes, it found him.
And yet he lived. He yearned.
The torture of her absence was worse than the cause of any mark left on his body. He was obsessed, possessed. His skin burned and his heart ached. He wanted. He needed. He craved.
“When’s the last time you shaved?” Argent queried, running an elegant hand over his own shadow beard, this a bit lighter red than the auburn of his hair. Cropped close to his sharp jaw, it made him look more like a rawboned, ferocious Celt than a gentleman.
Dorian ignored his questions. He’d bathed today after his work on the wine cellar. That was all he could muster. “Any sign of him?” he demanded.
Since Harold Warrington had paid for his release pending investigation on suspicion of conspiracy to commit murder, he’d simply disappeared.
A corrupt judicial system was somewhat of a double-edged sword. Any judge willing to accept bribes or blackmail from one villainous reprobate, namely Dorian, certainly would turn coat for another.
Though the judge who’d released Warrington should have known better than to go against the Blackheart of Ben More, Dorian thought darkly. He’d deal with that later.
“That’s why I’m here.” Cigars always lent Argent’s rough voice even more gravel. “The bobbies fished a body out of the Thames this morning. McTavish says it’s Warrington.”
Dorian’s head snapped up. “Are they sure? Did you see the body?”
Argent nodded. “He was wearing the monogrammed jacket the villain disappeared in. You were right about him. Fat bastard was even more bloated by the water, took five coppers to lift him.”
A tension that had resided in Dorian’s shoulders these past months released, resulting in a throbbing headache.
Argent regarded him with those trademark cold, shrewd eyes that seemed less like he saw you as a human, and more like a creature he’d like to dissect.
“Why don’t you go to her?” Argent queried. “Now that Warrington is no longer a problem?”
“I—can’t,” Dorian admitted wryly. His body was strung too taut for that. Once he’d tasted the sweetness she had to offer, the oblivion that bliss afforded, he couldn’t even be trusted in the same room with her. Even now, his body responded.
Argent shook his head and unfolded his tall form from the chair, crushing his cigar on the tray. “Never thought I’d see the day Dougan Mackenzie gave up his Fairy.” He flicked a concerned glance toward Dorian.
“The next person to call me that is going to lose his tongue,” Dorian snarled. “I haven’t given her up. We’re married. She’s still mine.”
An amber brow conveyed skepticism, but Argent wisely kept his own counsel.
“A letter for you, Blackwell.” His butler brought in a flat envelope on a silver tray. Dorian took it, his stomach taking a dive at the sight of the Northwalk seal.
Why wasn’t she using his seal? he wondered as he broke the wax and unfolded the letter.
Why would she?
“I’ll take my leave, then.” Argent pulled the bell and requested his coat from a footman as Dorian read the words that drove rail spikes of rage through his temples.
Dorian,
I have given our situation a great deal of consideration, and have decided to subsequently release you from your promise. My intention to raise a family still remains. As such, I will be accepting another candidate to fulfill the required vocation until my objective has been attained.
It is my sincere hope that this letter finds you well and that you are able to find peace.
Yours,
Lady Farah Leigh Blackwell, Countess Northwalk
Crushing the paper in his hand, Dorian stood and hurled it into the fireplace. A fury the likes of which he’d never before felt bolted through him with such violence he physically jerked. Beneath the cold logic and cruel calculation of every villain lay slumbering a mindless beast of wrath, greed, and lust. This beast was cultivated in a more barbaric time, one where a man had to fight with his hands to keep what he claimed. He had to use rocks and weapons to crush his enemies. This beast surged through him now.
He would rip the limbs off any man who dared touch his wife.
Mine. His blood sang with the words. His breath flowed with them. His heart, the one he’d not thought to possess, beat the staccato of what he’d known since the moment he’d seen her on the Scottish moors all those years ago.
Only mine.
Argent’s words were nothing but the buzzing of an insect as he hurled himself past the man, reached for his coat, and bellowed for his horse.
He should have known she wouldn’t accept his terms, should have guessed she’d be obstinate. But he hadn’t considered that she’d dare to fill her bed with another man for the sake of a child.