Page 1 of Honor Requires

Prologue

Pain returned before memory did.

It pulsed through Darcy’s ribs with every breath, sharp enough that he remained still for several moments after waking, uncertain where he was or why the air smelled of wet stone and old salt. His cheek rested against something rough. Straw perhaps. Or rotted rushes. The distinction hardly mattered.

Water dripped somewhere nearby.

He opened his eyes.

Darkness pressed close around him, broken only by pale light shining through the bars on a heavy wooden door several feet away. The faint glow revealed little beyond uneven walls slick with damp and the vague outline of iron bars farther down the corridor beyond his cell.

Darcy shifted carefully onto one elbow.

A mistake.

Pain tore through his side so violently he nearly collapsed back onto the floor. His hand flew instinctively toward the injury and came away damp. Blood. Not fresh, but enough to stiffen the torn fabric beneath his coat.

The beating.

Memory struck in fragments afterward.

Hands dragging him from the carriage.

Questions shouted over one another.

His refusal to sign anything he had not read.

Then fists. Boots. The crack of something hard against the side of his head.

Darcy pressed his fingers briefly against his temple. Tender swelling met his touch.

He drew a slow breath through his teeth and forced himself upright against the wall behind him. The chamber tilted alarmingly before settling again. Cold seeped through the stone at his back. His mouth was dry enough to ache.

For a time he listened.

The prison possessed its own language. Water dripping through cracks overhead. Distant footsteps. A cough somewhere far beyond the corridor. Metal scraping stone. Then silence again.

Not true silence. Never true silence.

Even the sea announced itself here.

He could hear it now beneath everything else, low and restless beyond the walls.

An island then.

Or near enough to the coast that the waves reached this place.

Darcy closed his eyes briefly.

His last clear memory before the attack rose with painful clarity. Ramsgate. Elizabeth standing near the terrace wall while the wind tugged strands of hair loose around her face. She had been laughing at something Mrs. Gardiner said, though he no longer remembered the remark itself.

Only her expression remained.

The memory struck with such sudden force that his throat tightened unexpectedly.

Elizabeth.

He bent forward, forearms braced against his knees while he gathered control of himself again. She would know nothing yet. Perhaps she still expected him in London within days. Perhaps she had already received some excuse manufactured on his behalf.