Authors: Gaelen Foley
Though he had later found out that Bardou had been under orders from Fouché not to leave any visible scars on Lucien’s body, the brute had succeeded all too well in engraving the pain upon the deepest layers of his mind. Lucien had thought he had put it behind him, especially after the news of Bardou’s death, but it was there in an instant, just beneath the surface, a nightmare rising up for him to face again. In seconds it brought him back to the instinctual, almost feral state in which he had lived those last days before his escape, like an animal at bay. A surge of hatred-soaked memories poured through his veins like acid, like poison.
By God, Patrick,
he thought grimly, trying to keep hold of his control,
if that Frog bastard is indeed alive, I will avenge you yet.
It was not implausible that the Frenchman could be working for the Americans,
he thought, rubbing the back of his neck as he paced in jittery agitation. War had raged since 1812 on the shores of the former Colonies. Diplomats from both sides had been arguing for nearly two years in the
was probably the only place where Napoleon’s scattered spies could find asylum, or for true fanatics like Bardou, the place where they could go if they hungered to fight on against the British. President Madison’s besieged administration in Washington—or what was left of America’s new capital city, after British occupation forces had burned it nearly to the ground two months ago—would surely welcome men of Bardou’s formidable skills.
Lucien turned back to his men, his face a hard, marble mask. When he began firing out orders, his voice was little more than a low snarl. “First we must verify it. Kyle, go to the guest wing and get me Rollo Greene. If something is afoot among the Americans, he’ll know what it is. He’ll talk, for a price.”
“Rollo Greene is already gone—left hours ago. I looked at the exit list,” Robert Jenkins of the south quadrant spoke up.
Lucien let out an oath. Wise agents were like skittish alley cats that had to be lured out of their hiding places. They could vanish into thin air if they did not wish to be found. This was especially true of double agents like Rollo Greene, who lived in constant fear of reprisal from someone they had sold out.
“Do you want us to ride out and try to catch up with him? I’d wager he’s on the
Lucien brooded on it for a long moment. “Do it. Talbert, you’ll stay behind and question Leonidovich with me. You four, ride up out of the valley, but if you don’t find him by the time you reach the
“A trick?” Marc echoed in bafflement.
“You may think yourselves invincible, but if Bardou is somewhere on hand, you must not attempt to engage him. In any case, we’ll move the next party up to one week from now. If you don’t find Greene, I’m sure he’ll be back. Till then, we’ll press our other sources for information about Bardou’s alleged resurrection. Now, go.”
Dismissing the girls as well, he sent Talbert to fetch Leonidovich, then waited in the observation room, alone with his demons.
Bloody goddamned Claude Bardou.
With a lost look, he expelled a heavy sigh and sat down to wait for Talbert to bring Leonidovich. Resting his elbow on the crude wooden table, he pressed his eyes with his fingertips. God, how he wanted to forget it had happened, but when he closed his eyes, he could still see the cell where he had been kept in darkness and solitude for so many weeks, starved and beaten. He could still taste the blood in his mouth from Bardou’s most imaginative torture—strapping him down and extracting a couple of his molars to punish him for refusing to talk. But the physical pain had been nothing compared the shame of knowing that Bardou had succeeded at last in getting a name out of him: Patrick Kelley.
Lucien shuddered with agonized guilt that felt as though it had been carved in a deep harrow down the center of his soul. Though his father, the marquess, had inducted Lucien into the nuances of diplomacy, it was Kelley, the stout-hearted Irishman, who had taught him his field skills as a spy. Tortured to the point of mindless, semiconscious blathering, Lucien had finally gasped out Kelley’s whereabouts. By the time he had managed to escape his prison hole, he had been too late to warn the Irishman that the French were coming after him. Kelley had already disappeared. He was never seen or heard from again.
“My lord?”
He flicked his eyes open with a fractured gaze, which he tried to hide as he glanced inquiringly over his shoulder. Lily, the most beautiful of his hired courtesans, was leaning against the wall in an inviting pose.
“Is there something you require?” he forced out coolly.
“You seem troubled. I thought you might do with some company.” She held him in a siren’s stare, running her fingertips along the frilled neckline of her gown. Pressing away from the wall, she moved toward him languidly.
His gaze traveled over her with a hunger that was fathoms deeper than her kind could ever satisfy. “Lily, you little temptress,” he said in studied idleness, “you know I do not mix business and pleasure.”
He tensed when she laid her hand on his shoulder and came around to the front of his chair. He scanned her face, in a dangerous mood.
She draped her arms around his neck. “Like you always say, my lord, rules were made to be broken.”
“Not when they’re
my
rules, pet.”
“Whatever is wrong, I can make you feel better. All you need do is lie back and let me please you. Take me to your bed when you are through here.” She kissed his cheek and whispered, “It would be for free.”
He sat there in stony unresponsiveness as she began kissing his neck, caressing him. Wavering, he closed his eyes. A shudder of need ran through him, but it was Alice Montague who filled his mind.
That’s what love is, Lucien. That’s what it does.
Who the hell ever talked about love these days, or even believed in it? he thought, while the smell of the harlot filled his nostrils, her musky odor of sweat covered up with sickening sweet perfume. He understood all too well the willingness to cheapen oneself merely to be held in someone’s arms through the night, but he refused to hunger for what did not exist. Love was for poets, and hope was for fools. When Lily grasped him through his breeches with an expert caress, his body responded instantly, but his mind despaired.
God, help me,
he thought, drowning in the sheer emptiness of this meaningless ritual. He could not do it anymore. Suddenly, this was no longer enough.
Clutching her forearms, he pushed her hands away and set her aside. He rose from the chair and walked away from her to the red-glassed windows, turning his back on her. “I brought my mistress from
Lily did not reply, though he could feel her angry dismay. A moment later, he heard her rise and leave the room—the rustle of her skirts, the pattering of her silk slippers—and then he was alone again. He gazed sorrowfully through the red-glass window at the graceful pillars and the trickling pool. The waters were said to have healing powers, but they had never done anything for him. He folded his arms over his chest, dropped his chin, and mentally scraped himself back into order, for the night’s work was not yet done. But if he could have shared a bed with any woman tonight, it would have been Alice Montague, the only one with the imminent good sense to turn him down.
Who loves you, Lucien?
she had asked. What a dismal question.
Nobody, Alice.
His heavy sigh hung upon the silence.
No one even knows me.
When Talbert returned, they questioned Leonidovich and learned nothing. As they were finishing their interrogation, Marc and the other lads returned empty-handed. Rollo Greene had evaded their search. Their duties done, they parted ways near dawn, the lads returning to their military-style bunker by the stable complex, while Lucien, exhausted, left the Grotto at last and went back up to the silent, sleeping house.
A short while later, he walked into his large, elegant bedchamber and crossed before the bank of eastern windows, lifting his shirt off over his head. Undressing in the pearl-gray half-light, he crawled onto his bed, too tired to bother with the covers. He was determined to get at least a couple hours’ sleep before the day began, but the moment he closed his eyes, Claude Bardou’s ugly face was there, or sometimes Patrick Kelley’s laughing one. He drove both torturous images away by losing himself in thoughts of young, delicious Alice Montague. Her shy, skeptical smile, so reluctantly given and therefore so much more precious, charmed him even now. There was a wholeness, a simplicity in her that eased him. He began to relax at last as he savored the memory of touching her, the silken tenderness of her thighs under his hands, the delectable softness of her breasts. The wonder in her response as he had tasted her warm, virginal mouth.
So innocent,
he thought. It pleased him deeply to know that he had touched her where no one ever had, that he had been the first to kiss her.
As he lay in bed, a diabolical inspiration took shape in his mind, emerging more clearly by the second. His eyes widened as he stared up at the ceiling; then he sat up abruptly, his heart pounding at the notion.
No.
It was wrong. A bad, outrageous scheme—but hardly his first. Could a starving man walk away from a feast?
He would never get another chance with Alice Montague. This much he knew, as surely as he knew that a woman like her could change everything for him. If he ever saw her in Town, she would cut him dead like any proper young miss. For God’s sake, she knew him only as “Draco,” the leader of a pagan cult. Even if he tried calling on her, respectable-fashion, Caro, her jealous chaperon, would never let him near the girl. Not after tonight. Worse, he realized, in
Rather dazed by the force with which his outrageous notion had struck him, he sank back down onto the mattress and folded his arms behind his head, searching the darkness for answers. Dared he try it?
She would be angry. She wouldn’t like it, but it was her own fault, his wicked side reasoned. She was the one who had willfully trespassed where she didn’t belong. She had barged into his house, into his life, and now she was not getting out of it until he was satisfied. He knew she was planning on leaving first thing in the morning, but there was no way he was letting her go. Maybe the mysterious thread of connection he felt toward her was nothing, but maybe it was the answer to everything.
Turning his face pensively on his pillow, he gazed through his bedroom window at the distant glimmer of dawn along the horizon. He fancied the flame-gold sunrise the very color of her hair.
slept like a woman drugged—long, deep, and dreamlessly. Even when she awoke a dozen hours later, she lay peacefully in the bed that smelled of lavender, letting awareness drift back to her by degrees, the gentle morning light filtering through her lashes. When she opened her eyes, her gaze fell upon an unfamiliar room. It startled her up onto her elbows. For a second, she forgot where she was—then it all came back to her. With a groan, she lay back down and buried her face in her pillow.
Lucien.
He was the first thing on her mind, but she shoved the thought of the silver-eyed devil away with a vengeance. She did not wish to think of him, or last night, or the depravity of the Grotto
ever
again. Today she would flee home to
Hearing a loud clattering outside her chamber window, she sat up, slid down from the high bed, and went to investigate. Peeking through the curtains, she saw a few of the guests’ carriages storming away from