My Dangerous Duke (30 page)

She could barely speak, and did not know what she could possibly say, in any case. Her head was reeling.

And yet there was more. She lifted the letter again and rushed on through to reach the end, only praying there were no further mind-boggling revelations.

Her grandfather had been right about that.

The letter was dated 1792, and nearly twenty-five years of bloody battles had followed. Napoleon’s ambitions had spread the upheaval across the Continent, from the French seaside, across the fertile Rhine Valley of the German principalities, over the Alps, blasting past the Habsburg stronghold of Vienna, into the cold reaches of Russia itself, and south, too, to the Spanish plains and the boot of Italy. Even the Ottomans, she understood, had not remained untouched.

The only place that had been safe was England, though, to be sure, up until the great Admiral Lord Nelson had crushed Napoleon’s navy at Trafalgar, the sentries had watched every night from their coastal towers for a possible invasion from the sea.

Rohan was watching her intently, waiting with an almost predatory patience. It sank in then that he was somehow involved in all this. What had he said that night at their celebratory dinner?

“I work for the government in certain … covert capacities.”
She swallowed hard and read on, rushing to reach the end. She was beginning to get the feeling she had stumbled into something far beyond her ken.

Kate sat for a long moment in utterly stunned silence.

When she finally looked at Rohan through a sea of confusion, he returned her bewildered glance with a calm, steady gaze.

“So—my grandfather,” she said haltingly, “was some kind of—informant?”

“Correct. And my father was the agent put in charge of his case.”

“What is this Council he mentions, and the other thing—the Order?”

“Kate … what I’m about to tell you, you must never repeat. To anyone. I am only prepared to discuss it with you because it concerns you directly, especially now that you have been targeted. But also because you deserve to know the truth about your bloodlines. I must have your word that you will never share the following information with anyone. Many lives are at stake, including yours and mine. Can you make me this promise? If not, I’ve already said too much.”

“Of course I promise,” she murmured, wide-eyed.

“Good.” Still sitting on the edge of the bed, Rohan leaned forward and rested his elbows on his knees, loosely clasping his hands. He was quiet for a moment, considering how to begin. Then he looked askance at her. “Remember that dragon book you found?”

She nodded quickly.

“You were right,” he said. “It wasn’t really about dragons. It’s about a struggle between good and evil that’s been going on for hundreds of years. A secret war played out in the shadows.” He rose and began to pace. “My ancestors have been in it from the start, all the way back to the Middle Ages.

“Likewise, your French kin, the DuMarin family, had a part in it for many generations, from Valerian the Alchemist, all the way down until your grandfather had his change of heart.”

“Had a part in what?” she murmured, paling.

He studied her for a second. “A very dark, very dangerous organization of conspirators known as the Promethean Council. We estimate there are fewer than a thousand of them, all told—”

“We?” she interrupted.

He sent her a sharp glance that bade her to be patient. “The leaders of the Prometheans are highborn, very wealthy, and strategically situated in high places in every court in Europe. Some wear crowns, but most of our royal houses are merely their lapdogs, puppets.” He shrugged. “These men give an outward appearance of serving their various rulers, but in actuality, they are secretly following their own well-coordinated agenda.”

“What agenda?”

“They insinuate themselves into the halls of power. It can be in any capacity, from generals to advisors, treasurers, high court judges, royal physicians, priests, trusted members of the aristocracy—even favorite artists. But behind their masks, their loyalties lie elsewhere. That sketch you saw in the dragon book. The dragon’s egg. Remember?”

She nodded, mute with shock.

“It’s called the Initiate’s Brand. Every convert to the Promethean cult receives the mark of the
Non Serviam
on his or her body. For you see, more than mere political ambition drives these devils. Their roots are in the occult. That is why they have such a reverence for the likes of Valerian and his black magic.”

“My ancestors were on the evil side?” she cried, stricken. “But you will never convince me that Mama was evil!”

“No, no, Lady Gabrielle had nothing to do with it. She was an innocent, as far as I know.” He hesitated. “Would you prefer that I stop? After all you’ve been through, perhaps this is too much—”

“No, I want to hear it! You’ve told me more about my own origins within the past few minutes than I have known about myself my entire life. I need this information, Rohan. I need to know who I am. Please, go on.”

He nodded, giving her a tender look. “The Prometheans do not consider themselves evil, which honestly makes them all the more deadly. In their own view, they are beneficent, only employing darker powers to bring about the ‘universal good’ of their own supposedly enlightened rule. Yet the proof of who they are is there, in all that they believe. To them, the ends justify any sort of brutal means.”

“What do they believe?” she asked in a hushed tone.

“They do not acknowledge the worth of any human life, no human dignity. Anyone is expendable, anybody can be sacrificed for what they like to call the greater good. Of course, the real motive behind all their high-minded philosophy is nothing more than the naked lust for power.” He studied her for a second through narrowed eyes, then paced back across the room in the other direction.

“Mankind, to them, consists of no more than pawns on their chessboard, about equal in value to a herd of sheep, or a plague to be eradicated over time. No matter how pretty their speeches, they are driven by an arrogant conviction of their own superiority. Fortunately, however, they do not stand unopposed.”

He paused and drifted over to the mullioned windows.

Kate watched him, wide-eyed.

Rohan looked out for a long moment, then he turned to her. “I belong to a secret hereditary Order sworn to rooting out the Prometheans and destroying them before they can become entrenched in power. It is called the Order of St. Michael the Archangel.”

“The statue in the chapel.”

“Yes.” He nodded with a gleam of hardened family pride in his eyes. “My line has been a part of it going back to when it all started during the Third Crusade under Richard the Lionheart. My father was one of the Order’s greatest warriors. As for me, from the moment of my birth, I’ve been trained and shaped and molded to follow in his footsteps.”

She thought of the Hall of Arms and his ferocious practice with his unusual, lancelike weapon.

At last, it was all beginning to make sense.

“I was a boy at the time of the French Revolution. The whole world was shocked by the storming of the Bastille and the arrest of the French royal family. But soon, the leaders of the Order began seeing signs of the Promethean puppetmasters’ hands behind the growing chaos.

“My father’s team tracked down a few Promethean agents provocateurs that had been dispatched to spur on the guillotine mobs. You see, the more blood and chaos they could cause in the streets, the more desperately the people would begin to cast about for some seemingly benign authority to restore order. Their plan was that the people themselves would clamor for a new form of rule that would soon grow into inescapable oppression.

“The Prometheans did not care in the least about liberty, equality, fraternity—the ideals of the Revolution. I can assure you, the liberty of the people is the farthest thing from their minds. But they are very skilled at turning the political passions and philosophies of the moment to their use. It doesn’t matter to them.

“Religious fervor, prejudice. Persecution of the Jews or other races—whatever comes along will suit, as long as they can sink their claws into a group of biddable zealots with some fury they can point in a useful direction.”

“Vile.”

“Yes. They’ve been using this same old strategy for hundreds of years. In this case, the result was the wholesale slaughter of the upper classes in France and anyone close to them. Not that corrections weren’t needed, but surely the women and children didn’t also have to be snuffed out in public executions.”

She shook her head with a shudder.

“When your grandfather saw the excesses of the Red Terror, he knew things had got completely out of hand. That was when he reached out to the Order.”

“To your father.”

“Yes. You see, the Dukes of Warrington have had this long association with the local smugglers’ ring. They’re very useful to us. Count DuMarin needed a ship to take his daughter to America. My father offered to get him the smartest, boldest captain he knew who could get her into New Orleans without anyone taking note of her arrival. He selected Gerald Fox.”

Her jaw dropped. “My father … was one of Caleb Doyle’s smugglers?”

“I wouldn’t put it quite that strongly, but, yes, they were acquainted in the early days. That was why Caleb was so keen to get rid of you. If Captain Fox is alive, as we now believe, Caleb did not want to cross him. He gave you to me because he was afraid to send you home or to keep you. He didn’t know what else to do.”

“But I was always told my father’s name was Madsen … How are you so sure this Gerald Fox was the one who took my mother off to sea?”

“I was there the night your parents were introduced.”

“What?”

“Count DuMarin remained in London, protected at the Order’s headquarters, but your mother was brought here to Kilburn Castle, for her departure to America. I was about ten years old, spying from the minstrels’ gallery on my father’s affairs in the great hall when I saw her.”

“You saw my mother?
” The room was spinning as she stared at him in stunned disbelief. “She was here? Right here—in Kilburn Castle?
”

He nodded, leaning against the bedpost, arms folded across his chest. “She was veiled and dressed in black mourning—I suppose, since nearly everyone she knew had gone to the guillotine, poor thing. So, I didn’t really get to see her face. But she had that book in her arms.” He nodded at the tome they had collected from the loft above Charley’s work shed. “That was the night my father introduced her to Captain Gerald Fox. Her future husband, and your sire.”

“Papa …”

“Yes. They were only here a short while. Fox escorted Lady Gabrielle off to his ship, and that, I’m afraid, was the last the Order ever saw of them. Their fate remained a mystery to us. Shortly after that, I was carted off to school to begin my training. You see, when the Order realized it was all starting again with the Prometheans, they saw that future warriors would be needed. So, the Seeker went out seeking, and I was one of the boys selected. Meanwhile, my sire went tearing off with his team to wreak havoc on the Prometheans based on the information your
grandpère
had provided.”

Kate stared at him in awe, while his expression turned somber, lost in thought.

“My father died on that mission,” he said. “It only doubled my desire to be the best hunter the Order had ever seen.”

“Hunter? What do you mean?” she pursued. “What is your specific role in all this, Rohan?”

He stared at her for a long moment. “I hunt down Prometheans and kill them.”

“Kill them?” she whispered.

He nodded calmly, without a trace of remorse in his eyes.

Kate looked away, chilled by his silence and unable to bear the intensity of his gaze. “So, that’s where you got the scars.” A moment later, she let out a shaky exhalation. “I have Promethean blood. Does that make me your enemy?”

“No. I know now you are innocent. Like your mother was.”

She narrowed her eyes, observing him. “You weren’t sure for a while there, were you?”

He held her in a stormy stare. “I could never hurt you, Kate. Curse or no.”

“I see.” She pondered his revelations a moment longer, then looked askance at him. “How do you kill them? Your enemies, I mean.”

He flinched. “You don’t want to know that.”