Page 1 of Duke in Darkness

PROLOGUE

K ent, England, September 1814

“SIR! Wake up. Please, sir, you need to get up at once.”

Colonel Gabriel Jordan-Ives turned his head and buried it deeper into his pillow as raw despair cut him to the core. Hearing the anxious tone of his batman-turned-valet Hobbs at the door of his bedchamber meant only one thing: he’d failed, yet again, to drink himself to death.

And he’d tried so bloody hard last night.

The evenings were the worst. As soon as the sun went down and shadows stalked him as relentlessly as any French regiment, his mind would turn back to Bayonne, and the battle that should never have been. The frantic confusion in the pre-dawn darkness of charging horse hooves pounding barren land, of men shouting, of weapons firing and swords clashing. The wail of trumpets blasting in the cold April air, made suffocating with the cloying scents of sweat and blood and desperate fear as hardened soldiers begged for respite. So close to victory, and then…his capture by the French. Freedom had come in the space of three days, but much could be achieved in short timeframes by men with no souls, who cared nothing for treaties or laws or news of Napoleon’s abdication, and took infinite pleasure in vengeance masquerading as interrogation.

Christ, how he wanted to die.

That would be the only escape from the memories of chains and icy water, of flaming torches and splintered wood. The daily humiliation as he hobbled along on a foot ruined beyond repair, all his scars itching and pulling, and wrestled with conversation as the sentences formed so easily in his mind struggled to leave a mouth compromised by a maimed cheek.

But Hobbs had confiscated anything that could be used as a weapon, so the only method at his disposal to end his cycle of guilt in the light, and torment in the dark, was cheap gin. Which despite his best efforts, continued to achieve nothing more than anvils dancing a flamenco on his skull, and a roiling gut.

“Go away, Hobbs,” Gabriel croaked. “Sure I’ve dismissed you.”

“At last count, two hundred and seventy-five times,” came the too-loud, too-hearty reply, close, but not too close, for he well knew Gabriel’s abhorrence for touch or proximity.

“Then why are you still here?”

“Glutton for punishment,” said Hobbs. “But you must get up, sir. You have visitors.”

Visitors? Impossible. No one came to this ramshackle cottage in the backwaters of Kent. Exactly why he’d chosen the place, it was a sanctuary from the rest of the world.

Gabriel swallowed hard as his stomach threatened to unleash its contents. “Turn them away. Now.”

“I can’t do that, sir.”

“Excuse me? Just gave you…a goddamned order.”

“Indeed, but the two men waiting downstairs are not the kind to be diverted.”

“Why not? Is it the king and Prinny?”

Hobbs picked up a pair of comfortably worn buckskins from a pile resting on a rickety chaise and shook them out. “Close, sir. They are Exton’s men. Lawyers.”

Unease prickled the back of Gabriel’s neck. Why would his cousin Quentin Jordan-Ives, the Duke of Exton, send lawyers? The milksop with a giant stick lodged firmly up his ass might be the head of the family, but he’d sensibly refrained from ever trying to dictate terms to Gabriel after his honorable medical discharge from the British army. The duke had no reason. Gabriel hadn’t asked for lodging or funds, nor did he want any part of the haut ton life that his cousin so loved. And it wasn’t like he stood to inherit anything; until Quentin sired a son of his own, his younger brother Simon was the heir.

Unless…the matter concerned the wedding? Quentin was betrothed to some equally priggish individual, an earl’s daughter named Lady Lilian Nash—hell, even her name sounded hewn in the frigid stone of disapproval—and after an unusually long engagement, the couple finally planned to marry before parliament sat again in November. Surely they didn’t think for a moment that he would attend? With his ruined countenance, he couldn’t even face himself in the mirror, let alone be seen by strangers. Nor did he want to witness an occasion he would now never enjoy. On campaign and on furlough he’d been popular with the ladies, and had greatly anticipated meeting and marrying the woman of his dreams: a lushly curved beauty eager in the bedchamber, well-spoken and well-read out of it. Someone he could talk to about anything, who would support his service to king and country, and be a loving mother to their children.

That dream had died at Bayonne. No lady willingly chose a broken and disfigured shell of a man who rarely slept, a man who preferred a near-constant state of drunkenness to dull the pain from his injuries and the nightmares lodged in his brain.

“Did they bring…a wedding invitation, Hobbs?” Gabriel asked eventually.

His valet sniffed. “I’m not sure, sir. They were rather, er, somber when they arrived. And surprisingly respectful, I might add.”

“Horseshit. The only time a lawyer is respectful…is when they want money. And I have none. So tell them to go to hell.”

“It would sound so much better coming from you, Colonel. Men like these don’t tend to listen to servants.”

And how exactly was he supposed to do that? Gabriel the Great, leader of men, parliamentary orator, many times decorated hero of the British Army, now struggled to string a sentence together without sounding like a Bedlamite. “No. They can send a letter.”

“They wish an audience, sir. Requested most insistently.”

A snarl escaped his mouth, but Gabriel sat up and awkwardly shifted his huge six foot-two inch frame around to the side of the bed. If he didn’t see the legal vermin, they would probably set up camp in the kitchen. If he granted five minutes, they could then be thrown out on their pompous backsides. “Goddamnit, fine. I need hot water.”