Page 88 of Duke in Darkness

Locking the door. Trapping him inside.

Icy fear paralyzed his limbs. He couldn’t move. Not a bloody inch. The dark pressed closer, suffocating him, crawling down the back of his neck and coating him in sweat.

Gabriel gasped for breath, but couldn’t fill his lungs, and he staggered, seeking something—anything—to anchor him.

But the room was dark.

Cold.

Silent.

Laughter. So much laughter. It always echoed down the stone corridor of the prison, both a warning and a threat. “Wake up, colonel! We’ve come for you!”

“No,” he whispered, holding his hands over his ears. But he could still hear the words, cruel and rough and somehow more disconcerting when spoken in elegantly musical French.

“Some say because you share no secrets, we should just kill you. But you have in your family a duke, yes? A fortune for a ransom. So we’ll play instead. Warm yourself at the fire, my friend…” The hiss of a red-hot poker. Searing agony. The cloying, choking odor of flesh burning. Daggers flashing, and the itch of slow blood trickle from his shoulder, his arms, his side. But never the blessing of unconsciousness, for a blue coat always stood at the ready with a bucket of icy water to revive him.

A strangled cry tore from his throat. No. It wasn’t real.

He wasn’t in France, but England. The year 1815.

“English scum, marching across France. You’ll never march again…” His foot, trapped between two bits of wood. Boots stomping. Bones breaking. Guttural cries. A prayer for an angel to save him…

Lili.

Pressing his fist to his mouth, Gabriel brought her image to mind. Light. She was his light. Lili had come into his life and eased him from the darkness he’d been mired in. Because of her, he’d begun to live again. With her came the promise of a future. Happiness. Children. Because she loved him.

“Lili,” he said, then again, his voice gaining strength each time. “Lili.”

Suddenly the antechamber wasn’t a pitch black prison of dank stone and wrought iron gate, but one with a thin wooden door. One he could vaguely see the outline of, thanks to a tiny sliver of light where the hinges were, and another the shape of a keyhole.

Gabriel curled his shoulder and shoved hard against the door. It creaked and rattled, but stayed shut. Cold determination surged through him, and he took a few steps back, then threw himself at the door with all his might. The wood splintered and the door swung open, hanging drunkenly on one hinge as blessed daylight greeted him through the main room’s row of street-facing windows.

He took several deep breaths in an attempt to calm his pounding heart, and when at last he wasn’t panting like a landed trout, he straightened his sleeves and cravat, touched his back where the ledger remained stuffed under his trouser waistband, and limped from the room. Only to come face to face with Ormsby, the weasel who had deliberately locked a former prisoner of war into a goddamned antechamber. The older man’s eyes bulged and he turned to flee, but Gabriel grabbed his jacket lapel, turned him back, and laid him out flat with a single blow to the jaw. Even Gentleman Jackson himself might have admired that speed and technique.

Carefully stepping over the unconscious form of the lawyer, Gabriel carried on down the hallway.

“Exton?” said Lili anxiously as he walked toward her. “Are you well? We heard some sort of crash and—”

“Better than I’ve ever been. Come along, my dear. We are tardy…for another appointment. Good day to you,” he added to the first clerk, who backed away like a startled rabbit while his mouth hung open.

When they were outside again, Gabriel took a huge lungful of air, before turning to Lili and kissing her, uncaring of any eyes on them.

“Oh my,” she breathed, her cheeks pink. “What was that for?”

He lifted his hand and tucked a stray tendril of golden hair behind her ear. “I couldn’t wait…for my victory kiss.”

Lili’s face lit up. “You found it?”

“I did. Another thing I couldn’t have done…without you, angel.”

“Well then,” she said with a mischievous smile. “We must get in the carriage and celebrate.”

And they did.

CHAPTER 21

Early June, 1815