This Duke is Mine

by Eloisa James

  She shifted off the hard thing—it was not merely a knot of straw. It was too hard for straw. And she saw that the sun had moved all the way across the room and was now striking the opposite wall.

  Just then Petit pushed open the door. “Hello,” she called down softly.

  “Good afternoon, Mademoiselle.” He held a tray. “I have brought you something to eat. Madame takes a sleep in the afternoon, though unfortunately she does not leave her kitchen.”

  He climbed up a step and handed over the tray. “That’s her bread,” he said, nodding at it. “Even though Madame is completely mad, there are bakers in Paris who would love to know what she puts in her putain.”

  “Goodness,” Olivia said, adding anxiously, “Do you know if the duke has asked for me?”

  Petit nodded. His eyes were twinkling. “Mon capitaine was forced out of bed by him, and he never rises before evening. Your duke fairly tore the place apart. Unfortunately, Le Capitaine had no idea you were here.”

  Olivia groaned. “Did the duke leave?”

  “Yes, but he will return in an hour or so. Le Capitaine promised to send out the patrol to try to find you before he went back to bed. Bessette plans to demand fifty guineas of your duke, but Madame says you might be worth a hundred.”

  “In that case, I’ll be out by nightfall.”

  “How is your mattress?” Petit asked, a quizzical look on his face.

  “While I wouldn’t wish to seem ungrateful, I’m a bit afraid of falling off. May I ask why you put quite so many on top of each other?”

  He turned red, and suddenly looked even younger. “We thought that it looked too much like a bed with just one or two mattresses.”

  “It is a bed.”

  “Yes, but if it looked like a bed, there was the chance that Bessette might decide to . . .” He waved his hand, embarrassed. “You’d be there, you see, on a bed. But this way it is difficult to reach you.”

  “You are brilliant,” Olivia said, sincerely. “If there are any coins to be given out, I shall make sure that they come in your direction.”

  He grinned. “It was my idea, but we did it, all of us. So, is it comfortable up there, my lady? The mattress is . . . smooth?”

  “Of course,” Olivia said, rather less than truthfully. She hesitated and then asked, “Aren’t you rather young to be a soldier?”

  “I’m almost sixteen,” he said stoutly. But then he added, with a little droop to his lips, “Nothing ever happens in this garrison, because Le Capitaine is interested only in brandy. My mother forced me to be here rather than join a proper regiment.” He looked disgusted.

  Olivia smiled at him. “I think your mother is very wise.”

  “Petit! Time for review!” The words echoed down the long stone corridor.

  “What is needed is a distraction that might cause Madame to leave her kitchen,” he said, his brown eyes now sparkling. “Something that will disrupt the garrison before your duke hands Bessette those guineas he is demanding.” He grinned. “I shall think on it.”

  He disappeared, slamming the door behind him. Olivia heard the lock slide into place.

  A distraction? What good would that do, unless she could escape from this cell? She ran her hand over the uneven mattress, thinking about the light in Petit’s eyes. One could almost think that he had tried to drop a hint about her mattresses.

  Carefully, she slid her legs over the side and stood on the stepladder. She slipped her hand between the first two mattresses, but she could still feel the lump beneath her fingers. She tried the next two, and the two before that . . .

  It was a key.

  A key tucked between the mattresses, a big iron key that looked exactly like the one the young soldier had used to enter her cell. A smile spread across her face. She would wait for Petit to create the distraction he had promised, and then walk straight out of the building and into Quin’s arms. And if Madame Fantomas tried to stop her on the way through the kitchen, she’d thump her on the head with a rolling pin.

  A bellow sounded down the corridor. “Spy, what do you think of my bread?”

  Olivia grinned. “I’ve had better,” she shouted back.

  “Putain!”

  Thirty-one

  The Bark of Cerberus

  Quin was murderous, exhausted, and on the verge of sheer panic by the time he reached the village of Wissant. Lucy was as tired as he was, so he was carrying her tucked inside his jacket, which wasn’t comfortable for either of them. And then it transpired that no one had heard anything of une anglaise, though they knew that some English soldiers, one of them gravely wounded, had been living in Père Blanchard’s hut.

  “The soldiers were not hurting anyone,” the smith told Quin, arms folded over his formidable chest. “Yes, they were English.” He shrugged. “So are you. I would guess that Bessette scooped up your woman.”

  Quin’s eyes narrowed. “Bessette?”

  “A warthog of a schemer. He’ll have handed her over to Madame Fantomas, and he’ll want a reward.”

  “Where will I find this Madame Fantomas?”

  He snorted. “Where else? The garrison, right under the nose of that drunken sot.”

  “Don’t you speak against Le Capitaine,” the smith’s wife said, suddenly appearing in the door behind him. “He’s keeping our boys safe.” She eyed the shock of white hair falling over Quin’s brow. “Touched by an angel, were you?”

  “By the devil, more like,” he answered.

  He headed back to the garrison, a few furlongs up the road from the village. He didn’t think he’d ever been so fatigued, or so filthy, in his life. His hair ribbon was long lost. Every inch of his clothing was caked with dust or worse.

  But when questioning the villagers, all that dirt had worked to his advantage: he’d had the distinct impression that while they might not have been eager to help a member of the aristocracy—no matter the nationality—the look and dress of a madman had fit right in.

  When he reached the garrison, the sentry had woken up.

  “I want my fiancée,” Quin said, dispensing with the preliminaries.

  “I can tell you who has her, but I should have something for my pains.” He pulled nervously at his mustache.

  Quin leaned toward the man and spoke in a voice that was calm, but lethal. “I’ve had a long day. Your pains? I would be happy to rip your head from your shoulders, and then you will forget your pains.”

  “Bessette is waiting for you around the building,” the sentry blurted out, jerking back.

  Transaction concluded, Quin walked around the side of the garrison, one pistol at the ready and the other stuck in his waistband.

  “Here!” A low voice called to him from the trees.

  Lucy was sniffing at one of the windows, set close to the ground. “Come!” he called to her, walking toward the woods.

  She ignored him, barking at some invisible quarry. A rat, no doubt. He started toward her, but a burly man stepped from the shade of the wood. The smith was right: warthog suited him.

  “You have my fiancée,” Quin growled, leaving Lucy to her rat and striding over to him.

  Something about the look in Quin’s eye must have unnerved him, because he stopped grinning and rubbed his hands together. “You’ll need to pay me fifty guineas for my protection,” he said briskly. “She was waiting around Père Blanchard’s hut. We always receive a share when we pick a woman up wandering about where she doesn’t belong. Between men. That’s not even to mention the fact that no English are allowed on these shores, as I hope you know.”

  Quin let his hand draft back to the butt of his pistol. “I don’t have it.”

  Bessette shifted his stance, just enough to show that he too was armed. His little warthog eyes glinted. “I’ll ask you to fetch the sum before I hand over your woman.”

  “If I return to England to raise that sum, there’s no guarantee that I’ll be able to come back immediately,” Quin pointed out. “Nations at war tend not to have regular ferry service
.”

  Bessette spat out his soggy cigar at Quin’s feet, narrowly missing. “Boats go back and forth every day, so you’ll be back by morning. If you give something toward her keep, we won’t introduce her to the pleasures that only French—”

  Quin’s left hand shot out and he twisted Bessette’s scarf around his throat, so quickly that the man didn’t have a chance to gasp. He watched dispassionately as Bessette’s bulbous face reddened to a beet color; there was some sort of hubbub going on behind him, but he didn’t want to risk turning his head. Instead he watched Bessette’s face for a slackness that would indicate he was near expiration for lack of air.

  When it came, he eased his grip. “My fiancée. Now.”

  Bessette gargled. Quin couldn’t make out what he was saying. For one thing, strangled French was none too easy to understand, and for another Lucy was barking furiously somewhere behind him. Likely the soldiers had returned from their useless patrol.

  With his free hand, he pulled the pistol from Bessette’s breeches and threw it to the ground, shoving his own into the soft folds of the man’s stomach. “You’re a petty blackmailer, if not worse, and I’m convinced the village would be better off without you.” He tightened the scarf again. He waited for a bit and then relaxed his grip just enough so that Bessette could make pleading noises. “Where is she?”

  “Madame Fantomas,” Bessette said, his voice a whisper. But his eyes shifted. Quin noted the twitch, calculated the probabilities, and moved to the side just as Bessette attempted to knee him in the groin.

  “Where will I find Madame?” Behind him, Lucy was barking again.

  “Catacombs,” Bessette gasped. Then he crumpled. Quin let go of the scarf, allowing him to fall to his knees, but he kept his weapon trained on the man’s head.

  “Madame Fantomas put her in the catacombs.” Bessette’s shoulder moved, just a twitch. The fool was planning another attack. One swift and well-aimed kick with Quin’s boot and the man rolled on the ground instead, hands between his legs, sobbing with a high-pitched squeal.

  “Where are the catacombs?” Quin demanded. He scooped up Bessette’s pistol to empty the chamber. Then he froze, realizing he smelled smoke.

  He spun around to find that thick smoke was billowing out of the small windows flush with the ground. No wonder Lucy had been barking—something was on fire.

  Damn it, he didn’t have time for this; he had to find the catacombs. But Bessette had scurried into the woods the moment he’d turned his back. Quin briefly considered giving chase, but he was likely needed to help with the fire. The drunken captain certainly didn’t seem capable, if indeed he had made it out of bed.

  He ran around the side of the building, ducking to avoid the cloud of black smoke pouring from the windows. It had an acrid, deeply unpleasant odor, as if putrid water had caught on fire.

  Lucy raced ahead of him, and the sight of her brought an idea to mind so terrible that he almost stumbled. It couldn’t be that Lucy had been barking at Olivia—which would mean that the catacombs were below the garrison?

  He burst into the courtyard to find it full of soldiers darting here and there chaotically. No one seemed to be making a concerted effort to put out the fire. The captain was standing at the top of the steps, bellowing and waving his arms. His men were trotting out the front door carrying out crates that clinked gently. It seemed the brandy took first priority.

  A hand caught Quin’s arm. “Sir, sir!”

  He turned. A young and very frightened soldier stood before him, face blackened with soot.

  “She’s in there,” the boy panted. “Past the kitchens. She was supposed to come out when I got Madame to leave her kitchen—she had the key!—but she hasn’t come, and I couldn’t get through the smoke.”

  The boy was pointing, hand shaking, to a doorway from which smoke billowed like a sheet in the wind. “The catacombs,” he gasped. “She’s in the catacombs and there’s no other exit!”

  Quin looked in time to see Lucy race under the smoke and disappear through the door.

  A curse ripped from his lips as he pulled off his coat and jerked sharply on his linen shirtsleeve, tearing it off. “Ignore that bloody captain and his brandy,” he shouted at the boy. “You must put out the fire! Organize the men.”

  Without waiting for a response, he tied the sleeve around his nose and mouth and lunged down the steps, bent double to avoid the thickest smoke. Olivia. Olivia, Olivia, Olivia. It felt as if the very beat of his heart was sending her name coursing through his body.

  At the bottom of the stairs he squinted, able to see just enough to realize that he was in a kitchen. Past the kitchen, the boy had said. He saw smoke pouring from a chimney on fire, likely feeding on years of grease. He couldn’t see a door, but he heard Lucy bark somewhere to his right. He moved in that direction, half-blind and choking, toward the bark.

  If anything, the smoke was worse in the passage he found. He shouted Olivia’s name, took in a lungful of smoke, reeled, and nearly fell. He flattened himself on the pavement, turning his head so his cheek was against the cool stone, and was rewarded with a gulp of relatively clean air. Holding his breath, he thrust up and forward, flattened himself again, took another breath. By now, he’d inhaled enough smoke that it felt as if the fire was in his lungs, not the chimney.

  But Olivia was here, somewhere. Five years before, he had not entered the Channel’s frigid, treacherous waters to save Alfie. He could not have saved Alfie. But he could make it down this bloody passage. He would not allow another person he loved to die gasping for air.

  Another gulp of air and he heaved himself forward again, trying, against his body’s protests, to think. He had to find Olivia and get her to one of those windows. They were tiny, too small to push her through, but if he could hoist her up to the window on his shoulders, she would be able to breathe. Air on the ground was damnably short, even with his nose pressed against the stones. In fact, the relentlessly calculating part of his brain informed him that he would die in minutes if he did not breathe some fresh air.

  Another breath. The bleak truth of it came with tingling in his extremities. He would not survive this. He would not find Olivia, nor save her. His lungs burned, telling their own story.

  Still, at least this time he knew that he had given it his all: he hadn’t stood, powerless, on the dock. He had thrown himself into the water.

  He forced himself to crawl forward again, and then he heard a strangled woof. He reached out, thinking he’d touch fur, and felt a bare arm instead. A limp arm.

  A window. He had to get her to a window. Indeed, he had to get them both to a window. He felt up her arm, panting her name, but had to stop in order to dip his head to the stone floor once again. He sucked up what air he could, choked, tried again. Olivia was lying facedown, which might have saved her.

  He refused to think about the other possibility.

  She lay halfway across a threshold. He tried to peer into the room, but oily black smoke obscured everything. But Lucy had barked at a window . . . without further thought Quin took another breath, then he staggered up and hauled Olivia’s slack form into the room. His body overruled him in a desperate attempt to find air. Dropping Olivia, he sucked in a gulp of smoke and doubled over, coughing so hard that he felt as if his ribs would break.

  Black dots floated before his eyes, and he stumbled forward, hitting some sort of soft pallet. He leaned against it for a second, trying to gather strength. He knew the window was up there; if he could hoist Olivia onto this thing, he could put her face close to it.

  They would have to abandon the little air there was at ground level. But the logical part of his brain registered that his loss of vision wasn’t only due to the smoke. His sight was closing down along with his lungs. They would not survive unless they got to that window.

  He crouched down, took in a breath, managed to roll Olivia’s limp body over his shoulder, and staggered to his feet. It was a sign of his diminished mental power that he felt no surprise
when a ladder appeared just where he needed it. He put a foot on the lowest rung.

  Lucy. He propped Olivia against the ladder, reached down and felt fur, picked up the dog by the scruff of her neck.

  The black dots were swirling now, like a storm coming in at sea. How much time did he have before unconsciousness? A minute? Less? He snatched Olivia’s skirt, dropped Lucy into it, and stuffed the fold of cloth into his mouth, holding the dog between them.

  He forced his second foot onto the ladder. His thighs felt like steel bars, inflexible and impossibly heavy. But he pushed himself up and up again, until at last he toppled Olivia on top of the pallet. There was the window. Bless you, Lucy, he thought.

  Lucy rolled free, scrabbled to her feet, and tottered toward the fresh air. Quin sucked in one lungful and then pulled Olivia across the pallet, putting her mouth next to the bars. She had not moved. She was utterly limp.

  Dead, he thought. She was dead.

  “Come on, Olivia,” he said, his voice coming in a rasp. “Breathe, damn it, breathe!”

  But her face lolled against the bars. He could see no signs of life.

  A tearing pain seized him. His heart was cracking, breaking right there in the smoky room. “Don’t leave me!” he shouted hoarsely. He grabbed her shoulders and shook her, hard. “Don’t leave me.”

  As his vision cleared, he could see that Olivia’s face was faintly blue. He suddenly remembered to feel for a heartbeat, but when he pressed his hand to her chest he couldn’t feel anything. Then he realized he was trying to find a heartbeat on the wrong side of her body.

  “My brain’s garbled,” he mumbled. Then, fiercely: “You must breathe.” He shook her again, willing her to open her eyes, but her head fell back like a blossom on a broken stem. Her face swam in front of his eyes and he realized that he was crying, his hands moving over her chest, trying to find a heartbeat that wasn’t there.

  Lucy was there too, barking hoarsely at her mistress’s ear.