Action, Adventure and All Consuming Passion Await In "The Duke With The Dragon Tattoo"

Title:  The Duke With The Dragon Tattoo
Series:  (Victorian Rebels #6)
Author:  Kerrigan Byrne
Date of Publication:  August 28th, 2018
Review Format:  Kindle ARC
Publisher:  St. Martin's Paperbacks
Rating:  5 Stars

The bravest of heroes. The brashest of rebels. The boldest of lovers. These are the men who risk their hearts and their souls—for the passionate women who dare to love them…

He is known only as The Rook. A man with no name, no past, no memories. He awakens in a mass grave, a magnificent dragon tattoo on his muscled forearm the sole clue to his mysterious origins. His only hope for survival—and salvation—lies in the deep, fiery eyes of the beautiful stranger who finds him. Who nurses him back to health. And who calms the restless demons in his soul…

A LEGENDARY LOVE

Lorelei will never forget the night she rescued the broken dark angel in the woods, a devilishly handsome man who haunts her dreams to this day. Crippled as a child, she devoted herself to healing the poor tortured man. And when he left, he took a piece of her heart with him. Now, after all these years, The Rook has returned. Like a phantom, he sweeps back into her life and avenges those who wronged her. But can she trust a man who’s been branded a rebel, a thief, and a killer? And can she trust herself to resist him when he takes her in his arms?

Lorelai’s lantern trembled, turning midnight shadows into sinister wraiths as she crept through the hall, as best her foot would allow. Her heartbeats echoed off the walls of Southbourne Grove’s east wing. Her breaths like rapid-­fire pistol shots in the consuming silence. Loud enough for the ghosts to hear, surely.

When the horrible sounds had first roused her, she’d thought maybe Cyrus and Joan d’Arc were at it again. Howling and scuffling. The two hounds boasted only seven legs, three eyes, and one tail between them, but still they played like puppies. And sometimes their play turned serious.

They were not, however, nocturnal animals.

The raw, animalistic cries beckoned her to his room. She paused at the door, pressing her ear against the cool wood.

No animal she knew made a sound like that.

No man, either.

The torment expelled upon such a cry was almost otherworldly in its macabre timbre. A whimper. A plea. And then a long lament, too hoarse to be a call, but lower than a scream.

Something about the noise caused her to hesitate with her fingertips on the door handle. What if he wasn’t alone in there? Could someone be hurting him? It certainly sounded that way. Should she go for help?

What if Mortimer was disturbing him?

Urgently, she pressed the door open, hurling herself into his room.

Lorelai didn’t know whether to be more relieved or distressed that his great body battled naught but the darkness.

And whatever demons haunted his dreams.

Dr. Holcomb had relieved him of his sling some two days past, and his long, powerful arms fought off invisible assailants with alarming desperation.

“You’ll not have me,” he growled. “Not tonight.”

Who would not have him? Have him what?

She abandoned her lantern on a sideboard by the door, convinced it wasn’t safe anywhere close to his flailing limbs. Venturing closer, she noted the damp sheets tangled about his lean, restless hips. His nightshirt lay crumpled on the floor, as though he’d rent it from his body for some imagined offense.

His face remained in the shadows, surging side to side on a neck corded with strain.

“Touch me with that and you’ll regret it,” he warned.

“Me?” she squeaked, lacing her hands together.

“I’ll gut you with a dull blade… see if I don’t!”

“Pardon?” she gasped.

His voice sounded younger than it did when he was awake. A note of terror thrummed beneath the bravado.

“Let me go,” he threatened.

“Let me … go.” This time, he begged.

Begged. And thrashed. Fighting a battle that became more and more evident he was about to lose in some horrific way.

Dear God. Let this be a nightmare and not … a memory.

She had to stop this. Somehow.

Fists as large as his became hammers. This she knew. But what other choice did she have but to approach?

She wasted precious seconds strategizing. Where did one touch a man in the throes of a violent nightmare to avoid injury? A skittish horse, you touched his withers. A snake, you held behind his skull. A rabbit, you turned upside down by both feet until the blood rushing to his head calmed him. A dog, you dug your fingers against his throat, like an alpha would with his teeth.

Then you stroked them, comforted them. Let them come to trust you.

But first, the animal must be subdued for the safety of all involved.

A good rule, with creatures great and small, was to avoid the face at all costs.

But a man? What sort of animal was he, really? She’d learned no tricks to calm such a violent soul but avoidance.

And that wouldn’t do in this case.

A low groan decided it for her as she neared the bedside. His cheeks were wet with tears. His ebony hair matted with sweat.

Someone was hurting him. She couldn’t bear it.

His knuckles narrowly missed her throat as she ducked around them, and tentatively splayed the fingers of one hand over his chest above his bandaged ribs. “Wake up,” she admonished him, jostling him a little. “Come back.”

Two monstrous hands shackled her arms like iron cuffs as he gasped awake, his entire body seizing, convulsing. He wrenched her hands away from his skin.

Fearing he might snap her bones in two, she couldn’t contain her own sob of pain as it cut through her.

To her astonishment, he didn’t let go.

He stared up at her, his eyes two volcanic voids of unfocused wrath. His teeth were bared, sharp and menacing. His breaths sawed in and out of him, as though he’d run a league at full tilt.

This was not the man to whom she’d fed soup only two days prior.

This man … might just be a monster.

“It’s me,” she whimpered. “It’s Lorelai.”

As quickly as she’d been seized, she was released.

A low groan tore from him as he regarded his hands like they’d betrayed him. Like he would rip them from their wrists.

Ignoring her smarting arms, she ran tentative fingers over his fevered brow. It twitched with little shocks where they connected.

“It was just a dream,” she crooned. “You’re safe.”

Though he said nothing, tears leaked from the corners of his eyes in an endless river, running down his temple and joining the beads of sweat glistening at his hairline.

His breath hitched and gasped. Deep grooves appeared between his brows, and his entire visage tightened.

“You are in pain,” she realized aloud. Had he reinjured something? The bandages about his ribs were secure, as were the ones over his shoulder, neck, and right torso covering his rapidly healing burns. Oh no. Should she call the doctor? Did she dare check beneath the blanket twisted around his lean hips and tangled about his legs?

“What can I do?” she asked frantically.

He’d not wept the entire, agonizing time they’d treated him. Not once.

If he did so now, he must be in absolute anguish.

“Where does it hurt the most?”

Black eyes rimmed in red searched her face, as though he might find answers to a question he didn’t know how to ask. The air shifted as threads of trust weaved through the space between them, adding a soft color to their tapestry.

Silently, cautiously, he took her hand, and placed it over his heart.

His skin was warmer than she’d expected. Harder. His pulse kicked beneath her palm, the rhythm unsteady and frenzied, still waging the battle he’d carefully schooled out of his expression.

He was as stoic as ever, except for the moisture still gathering his sooty lashes into wet spikes.

She understood then.

His body, strong, young, and virile, healed with incredible alacrity. But what remedy was there for a lonely and broken heart?

She could think of none.

His eyes fluttered closed, forcing more tears from between the lids. She had the sense that he hid whatever … whoever would stare out from the darkness at her. His hands were clenched tightly, burrowing into the sheets. Shadows played across his jaw as he worked it to the side, battling to regain control of himself.

Instinct whispered that she must walk the line between compassion and pity most carefully here.

Struck by impulsive sentiment, she lifted her hand, bent over him, and pressed her lips to his chest, just above his heart.

He tensed. Froze. Not so much as drawing a breath until she pulled away.

“I’ll heal that too,” she promised. If it was the last thing she did, she’d figure out how to stitch his broken heart back together.

His eyes snapped open, regarding her as if she’d taken his soul just then, or maybe returned it to him.

Nervously, she licked her lips. They tasted of soap and salt and … him.

The air shifted again, dangerously this time, becoming heavy with the promise of something she couldn’t identify and didn’t understand.

Lorelai did her best to ignore it. “Someone was hurting you … in your dream … did you recognize who it was?”

He shook his head. “Men … they were …” His breath sped again, his features twisting with revulsion.

“They were what?”

He shuddered. “Never mind what.”

“Is there anything I can do?” Driven to touch him again, she bent to place a hand back on his chest. The cold night air prickled dangerously through her thin nightshift, reminding her of the untied ribbons hanging loose at the collar.

His tears had dried quite suddenly. His sweat had turned to salt. And the way he looked at her now …

Lorelai swallowed, thinking how she had always considered black a cold color, until this very moment.

Banked obsidian fire danced in the meager light of her lantern.

“Go.” The word seemed to strangle him as he plucked her hands away from him by her wrists, giving them back to her roughly.

“Pardon?” She hugged her hands to her body.

“Never visit me at night. Never again.”

She didn’t understand. Wasn’t she helping him? Hadn’t she saved him from the assailants who hurt him in his sleep?’

“What if you have another nightmare?” she contended. “I can’t just let you—”

“Leave me to it. Let it take me.” A feral, primitive warning lurked beneath the bleakness in his eyes.

“But I—”

“You can’t control them!” he snarled. “And I can’t control my—” His hands lifted toward her, then plunged into his hair, grabbing great handfuls of it. For some reason she couldn’t look at the parts still covered by the sheets. She feared him like this, because he feared himself. But … she ached for him, too. Ached in ways she didn’t yet comprehend.

“Just get out. Please.”

The plaintive note in his plea brooked no argument. Warned her away as surely as the hiss of a cornered cat.

Perplexed, dejected, Lorelai limped to the sideboard as slowly as she could, waiting for him to call her back. To change his mind and realize he needed her company after all.

When he didn’t, she lifted her lantern and shut the door behind her. Wishing with everything she had that she could forget the bewitching taste of him lingering on her lips.

Copyright © 2018 by Ke.rrigan Byrne in The Duke with the Dragon Tattoo and reprinted by permission of St. Martin’s Paperbacks

My Thoughts
He was but a lad of 18 when she found him.  Left for dead in a pauper's grave.  His past not even a memory, and his future being measured in minutes.
But Lady Lorelei Weatherstoke knows with the innate knowledge that saviors of lost causes posses.  That someone of value is to be found amid the myriad of bruises and burns.  That a strong and courageous heart beats beneath his battered breast.  This his is a life worth saving.

For the nameless boy rescued from his certain death.  She was EVERYTHING.
His anchor to the tangible world.  His reason to be a better man. His world.
I was of no consequence to him that she walked with a limp.  That her sadistic brother, Mortimer, called her "Duck" because of it.  Or that other's thought her beneath their notice.
To him, she was perfection.
To her he became "Ash".
To each other they were home.

Until the day he left.  Until the day she lost him. She thought forever.
He however, knew different.
And no matter the hell or high water that he had to traverse.
He knew that he would return.
And return he did.
Just in time to stop her marriage to another, kill her loathsome brother, and take back what was his.
HER!

But twenty years of hard living and doing what one must to survive has taken quite the toll on the dark and menacing presence that has come to claim Lorelei for his own.
Gone is the tender boy that she knew, and in his place stands the infamous pirate known to all as The Rook.
A legend that Lorelei doesn't know.
A man that she is quite sure that she can never love.

The Duke With The Dragon Tattoo is a book filled to the brim with stories. The stories of Ash's and Lorelei's individual pasts.  The story of who they became together.  They story of who they became after they were parted. Who they were when they once again found each other.  And who they then became in their "happily...".

Kerrigan Byrne proves herself to be a most masterful weaver of stories.  Able to gather threads from several plot points and intermingle them seamlessly.  Creating not only a story worth its weight in gold.
But presenting the reader with a panoramic view of months, years, and even decades of lives lived, battles fought, lessons learned, and trials survived.

Speaking of trials...
There is no shortage of authentic pirate action here.  Both Lorelei, and her sister-in-laws interactions with both The Rook and members of his crew, are at all times "edge of your seat" authentic.
In fact, everything that the persona that is 'The Rook' touches within this tale, is nothing less than dramatic gold.

Equally as impressive is Lorelie, as a character.  Her blend of naivete and fortitude in the face of ever changing circumstances is a joy to read.

Making matters even better for the reader.  (As if that is possible!)
The fact that different elements of this plot function at different speeds.  With the action an intrigue racing ahead at a breakneck clip.  While the romantic portion of things is allowed to simmer and stew until much later in the read.
When things (for lack of a better phrase) "really heat up"!

This is s book that will make you never want to stop reading its story.  You will  literally find yourself talking to the characters.
If you have not read previous books in the series, you will.
In, short.  This is a story lover's delight.
An adventure, a drama, a romance, a story to be remembered!

Reviewer's Note:  This is the 6th book of a related series.  It may be read as a standalone or as part of its intended series.

About Kerrigan


If you're anything like me, the best night is one speIf you're anything like me, the best night is one spent with a brawny highlander, a mysterious werewolf, a conflicted vampire, or a hot-headed Irishman. My stories span the spectrum of romantic fiction from historical, to paranormal, to romantic suspense. But I can always promise my readers one thing: memorable and sexy Celtic heroes who are guaranteed to heat your blood before they steal your heart. Lose yourself in the enchanted Celtic Isles, you never know who, or what, will find you...want with a brawny highlander, a mysterious werewolf, a conflicted vampire, or a hot-headed Irishman. My stories span the spectrum of romantic fiction from historical, to paranormal, to romantic suspense. But I can always promise my readers one thing: memorable and sexy Celtic heroes who are guaranteed to heat your blood before they steal your heart. Lose yourself in the enchanted Celtic Isles, you never know who, or what, will find you...

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