My Dangerous Duke

by Gaelen Foley

  Once more, she had left him and her father stymied, not sure what to say.

  “She’s very determined,” Rohan finally muttered.

  “Wish I could say she takes after her mother, but I’m afraid she’s a bit too much like me.”

  “You think?” Rohan drawled, eyeing him askance.

  Gerald turned to him and stared sternly into his eyes. “Warrington, you keep her alive.”

  “I will,” he vowed.

  “Be careful.” Gerald offered him his hand.

  Rohan shook it, then took leave of him with a grave nod, heading for the boat. This, he thought, was a bad idea. But there was no denying the fact that his heart secretly rejoiced. He could not believe she had opted to come with him into the jaws of death rather than sailing off with her father.

  Gerald followed him over to the chain-suspended rowboat where she already waited. The captain leaned toward her, gave his daughter a quick hug and a kiss on the forehead. “God keep you, darlin’.”

  “Don’t worry, Papa. The Beast and I will do just fine as long as we stick together. Now go fire up those cannons,” she added, flashing a pirate grin while Rohan settled himself across from her in the little vessel.

  Seeing that they were securely seated, Gerald signaled to his crew to begin lowering the boat.

  “Hold on, stay still,” Rohan warned her, as they waited for the chains to start lowering them into the cold and treacherous North Sea. He looked into her eyes. “I know why you’re doing this.”

  She merely raised an eyebrow. “Did you think I would desert you?”

  Then the boat was dropping, dropping, the cranks turning, the chains grinding, the winches lowering them to the waves. He already had the oars in his hands and was instantly fighting the swirling waters.

  The waves jostled them up and down, side to side. Kate held on tightly while he got the rowboat under control. He put his back into it and immediately began rowing toward the cave.

  Seals watched them pass, but were more interested in barking at each other and enjoying the spray of the white-caps that broke against the boulders where they lounged.

  The boat tilted as a taller wave passed under them.

  Kate blanched and kept her balance, while Rohan glanced over his shoulder to keep them on course.

  “Did you see that?” she cried suddenly, pointing to the water. He glanced over just in time to see a tall fin slicing through the brine before it disappeared, passing beneath the boat—and rather dwarfing it.

  “Bloody hell,” he whispered. Even a seasoned assassin had to bow to the killing expertise of the average shark.

  Kate’s eyes were saucerlike. “Oh God, don’t let us capsize, Rohan.”

  “Don’t worry, they’re more interested in the seals than in us,” he assured her with a bit more conviction than he felt. No doubt the Tomb’s builders had selected this remote spot knowing the sharks, silent guardians gliding through the waves, would serve as another deterrent for keeping intruders away.

  The stone arch was fast approaching, but getting into position took considerable finesse on the oars. Maneuvering the boat closer, he brought them about ten feet from the archway, but it was impossible to hold the boat still with the water bucking under them. The complex arrangement of boulders outside the cave’s mouth divided the waves and brought in currents from many directions. The frigid air stung his lungs, and the morning twilight made it even trickier to gauge the timing.

  “Duck down into the boat when I tell you!” he shouted to her over the loud surf and the barking of the seals and the shrill cacophony of the water birds. “As soon as we’re in, be ready to open the lantern!”

  “I will!”

  “Hold on!”

  Kate looked into his eyes and nodded with a look of faith in him that gave him the final jolt of strength he needed to time the trough of the wave and throw all he had into the oars.

  “Get down!”

  They both ducked low as the boat glided under the sandstone arch, already beginning to rise as another wave followed ceaselessly.

  It was pitch-dark inside the echoing cave. Rohan’s heart was still pounding from his exertions as Kate opened the little metal shutters on the oil lamp.

  Like her father had said, the waves were tamed inside the shelter of the cave. The interior of the cavern was extremely tall and tapered toward the top. As the boat drifted over to a smooth, man-made landing, they looked at each other in wary relief.

  “Well,” Kate said with forced cheer, “so far, so good.”

  “Kate?” He locked the oars into place and gave her a rueful smile. “I am glad you are with me,” he admitted.

  She grinned. “I know. So, was that the ordeal my father meant by the Shark’s Mouth?”

  “No, that is.” He lifted up his lantern, showing her the giant head of a shark statue carved into the rock.

  “Ohhh...”

  They climbed out of the boat. While Kate stood marveling at the sculpture, Rohan went over to a large wooden handle that angled up out of the floor.

  “Your father told me a little about how this thing works. You’d better stand back. Farther,” he warned. He waited until she had backed away before he pushed the handle forward into the opposite position.

  Instantly, the cavern was filled with a low rumbling sound of stone grinding against stone. The solid wall inside the shark’s mouth rolled aside, revealing a dark tunnel about twenty feet long, with a second stone portal on the far end, which had also opened.

  But while throwing the handle opened the doors, it also activated the swordlike rows of blades that began slamming out of their housings, grinding up and down in the Shark’s Mouth like giant teeth.

  Kate stared while Rohan edged closer, holding up his lantern to examine the task before him. Gerald had sworn there was just enough room to catch one’s balance after getting past each row of blades.

  The first row of “teeth” had an up-and-down chomping motion, while the second row thrust in horizontally from both sides. Beyond that, the third and final layer, certainly the least appealing, was made up of two large circular blades, which were fitted too neatly into the width of the passage to allow a would-be intruder to slip past on either side.

  He was going to have to dive between them.

  “Please tell me this isn’t what killed my mother.”

  “No. They made it into the chamber beyond this, but no farther.” He had to speak loudly over the metallic churning clamor of the wickedly ingenious mechanism.

  Its unseen gears and weights still worked as efficiently as a fine Swiss watch or one of those gilded dining-table automata that the Regent so adored.

  Virgil, with his fancy for all sorts of mechanical tinkering, would have loved it, Rohan thought. His Scots mind was very keen on all sorts of engineering.

  “I’ll go through first and turn it off. There’s a second handle on the other end of the tunnel that shuts off the blades. Then you’ll be able to follow. But you’re going to have to move quickly,” he warned. “The doors close in thirty seconds after the blades are stopped. Got that?”

  She nodded with a wary frown.

  He put down his knapsack, slipped off his coat, then discarded his scarf, as well. He turned again, watching the timing of the noisy, rhythmic blades.

  “Quite a welcome, isn’t it?” Kate took his hand—a touch he would never forget. “Be careful, all right?”

  “Don’t worry.” He lifted hers and kissed her knuckles in spite of her heavy gloves, then gave her a reassuring smile. He had no intention of getting killed today.

  Especially when he knew that if anything happened to him, she would not be strong enough to handle the rowboat in those wild waters in order to get herself out of here and back to her father’s ship.

  “Don’t touch anything. Just hold up the light so I can see what I’m doing.”

  She nodded and quickly lifted both their lanterns high. Rohan moved closer and studied the obstacle course of gleaming blades a moment
longer. As with getting into the cave, it was a question of timing.

  Most of the length of the chomping blades withdrew into the ceiling and floor between every “bite” of the shark. He took a deep breath, rubbed his hands together, gathered himself, then leaped through the first row of blades; he landed and froze, avoiding any pitch forward into the next set of teeth. They were less than a foot ahead of him, stabbing in from the right and the left simultaneously.

  This one was easier. Once more, he chose his instant, dodging past the thrusting blades. They clanged behind him.

  “Are you all right?” Kate called frantically.

  “Fine!” Though this last one could take my leg off. Or worse. Pausing to catch his breath, he eyed the rotary blades whirling before him like serrated wheels laid flat on their sides. They were set at about the level of his chest and knees. It would every ounce of his physical prowess to dive through the space between them without being chopped into a fricassee.

  “How does it look?” Kate called.

  “Charming!” With a mental prayer, he crouched down and stared past the two lower blades into the small stone chamber on the other side. He could see that the passage continued beyond it, but Gerald had told him this was the last of the blades.

  His heart pounded faster, the seconds slowing down: With a sudden blast of power that started in his legs, he stretched his arms out ahead of him and arrowed his body in between the blades. He felt the breeze of them flutter against his face as he sailed through, landing on his hands in the far chamber, curling into a smooth roll.

  “Rohan?” Kate shouted.

  “I’m through!” he called back.

  “Yes!” she cheered, as he got to his feet, his chest heaving. He glanced around, spotted the second handle, and pulled it; immediately, the blades stopped and withdrew back into their housings.

  “Hurry, Kate! Thirty seconds!”

  She ran through, scrambling to bring along his coat and the other items he had left behind. To his relief, she was safely through the tunnel when the great stone doors began grinding closed again.

  Handing him his knapsack of supplies, Kate glanced toward the passage ahead. “Ready?”

  He nodded and put his coat back on. They exchanged a look of relief, then pressed on. The tunnel continued for a few more yards, but Kate stopped, glancing to the right.

  “There’s light coming in over there. It must be daybreak.” She pointed. “And a mirror?”

  “Hm. Shutter your lamp for a second.”

  They both turned down their lanterns, allowing them to better see the single, delicate beam of dawn sunlight glowing down a narrow shaft in the rock overhead.

  The feeble ray of sunlight was captured on a large, round, concave mirror on a stand, and the angle of it bounced the light toward a little waterfall ahead.

  “Hold on . . . this reminds me of one of the clues in the Journal. I think we’re meant to go through there.”

  He glanced at her uncertainly, then they followed the beam of light to the shimmering cascade’s edge. They lifted the hoods of their sealskin coats and stepped through the fine sheen of icy water spilling through the rock.

  The small stone chamber behind the waterfall had nothing remarkable in it except a brass plaque set into the wall with a dial in the center. Peering at it, Rohan turned up his lantern again and saw that the dial was surrounded by Greek letters. “It’s some sort of combination lock.”

  “Am I off-kilter, or does the floor slope in here?” Kate murmured, then she glanced at the pile of rocks at the bottom of the incline.

  “It slopes,” he said, but she had suddenly gone very quiet.

  “This is where my mother died. Those rocks . . .”

  “I’m sorry,” he offered, then he pointed to the stone ceiling above the plaque. “Your father said if you enter the wrong answer on this dial, a chute opens briefly and rains down rocks on your head. Enough to kill you.”

  Kate stared at the pile of rocks that had taken her mother’s life. Her face hardened with anger as she lowered her head. “Then I’d better not make a mistake.” She took The Alchemist’s Journal out of her knapsack and opened it.

  Rohan held the lantern so she could find the page she was looking for. He searched her face in concern while he waited, but her grief for her mother had hardened into resolve.

  She still did not look at him, searching the book, as she murmured, “How did my father and his men get out of here, especially if they had to carry my mother’s body?”

  “He told me they used some ropes and pulleys from the ship and got out through that shaft where we saw the beam of light coming in. But he said the gap is extremely narrow and the approach is even more difficult than the cave.”

  “I see.” She swallowed hard. “Ah, here it is.” She read the clue aloud to him: “ ‘Once through the silver veil you pass, speak your vows into the looking glass.’ ”

  “Hm.” Rohan pushed back his coat to rest his hand loosely on the butt of a pistol at his hip. “We’ve already passed the mirror. The silver veil must be the waterfall. So, now what?”

  “Speak your vow . . . the vow of the Prometheans, surely,” she said. “ ‘I will not serve.’ Non serviam. But we’ve only got Greek letters on this dial, so, translated to Greek, that would be . . .”

  “Wait! ‘Into the looking glass,’ ” he repeated. “You have to do it—”

  “Backwards,” she finished with him in a thoughtful tone. “Right.” Kate took off her right glove and lifted her hand to the dial.

  “You, er, did well in Greek, did you?”

  She sent him a wry look askance. “Trust me.”

  He stood by, watching her every move as she turned the dial back and forth between the Greek letters, talking to herself under her breath a bit. He also kept an ear cocked for any worrisome sounds from the man-made rockslide above them. If he heard any hint of an untoward rumble overhead, he was ready to throw Kate out of the way in a trice.

  “Almost . . . there,” she murmured, engrossed in her work. “Theta, nu, epsilon . . .”

  “What’s supposed to happen?”

  “Not sure, but I think we’re about to find about. Here—delta.” She turned the dial to the last Greek letter, and they both jumped out of the way as a mighty reverberation began to shake the little chamber.

  From inside the mountain came a new mechanical churning noise like that of the shark’s mouth blades, but much more forceful. He could feel the echo of it pounding in his chest.

  “Uh-oh,” Kate whispered.

  Instead of rocks falling from above, the solid stone wall of the cave split before them and began rolling apart, opening up a large, hidden doorway.

  A gust of stale air poured out of the pitch-black space beyond. The mechanical rumbling grew louder.

  “What the devil’s in there?” Kate cried.

  “I have no idea. Let’s go take a look.” Rohan braced himself, put a protective arm around her, and led her forward.

  All he could see at first were broad, shallow steps carved into the stone, but he had an impression of a vast, cavernous hall, large enough to swallow up the dim illumination from their lanterns.

  They were barely through the door and starting cautiously up the stone steps when the cave wall began closing behind them. It shut again, sealing them into the pitch-darkness of the Alchemist’s Tomb, alone with a sharp pungent odor and the loud, churning sound, the source of which he could not begin to guess. It sounded like some sort of waterwheel like those that powered riverside mills and factories.

  “It’s choking in here!” she exclaimed. “What is that acrid smell?”

  “Turpentine, maybe? Oil?” Opening up his lantern all the way, Rohan held it high and caught a tantalizing glimpse of tall statues in the darkness.

  “I wish we could see what we’re doing.”

  “Stay here for a second. I think I understand . . .”

  He found his way over to a waist-high wall with a low channel built into the top of
it, inside which sat few sluggish inches of liquid. Rohan dipped his finger into the liquid and felt the greasy texture of it. “Just as I thought. I need a piece of paper. Any pages of that book you can spare?”

  “From the book, are you mad? Here. Take a page from my notes. Why?”

  “I need it for a match.” He quickly rolled the piece of paper into a little scroll, opened his lantern, and put the end of the paper into the flame; when it caught, he brought it over to the waist-high wall and lowered it into the channel.

  At once, the oil in the channel ignited.

  Flames burst into life all along the wall, following the channel’s rectangular course around the vast room. The flames continued around the rest of the room, until the great torch over the archway burst into flames.

  The torch formed the apex of an arch where two great statues were joined. Carved from black marble, the two figures framed the hall’s entrance like great columns. On the left was a giant Prometheus, whose facial features looked suspiciously demonic. He was depicted handing the torch to a smaller, but still Herculean statue of a man.

  Both figures grasped the handle of the torch, which continued to burn overhead as Kate and Rohan advanced slowly into the great chamber.

  “I think we’ve found the Hall of Fire,” she murmured.

  “It would appear so,” he agreed with a sardonic nod.

  “This was mentioned in the Journal. Lord, look at all this loot! O’Banyon was right.”

  Treasure abounded in the now-fully-illuminated Hall of Fire. Walking deeper into the chamber, they were surrounded by dazzling riches, mounds of gold, open chests full of glittering coins from bygone eras, jewels, crowns, scepters, swords of power, gold and silver cloth, a throne, ancient vases and jeweled cups, classical statues no doubt worth a fortune. There was even a chariot that looked like it might have belonged to the likes of Alexander the Great.

  “Don’t. Touch. Anything,” Rohan warned. “I’m sure it’s all rigged in a most disagreeable way.”