Son of a Duke (38 page)

"Have you ever been to the country, Samuel?" Richard asked.
 

Samuel shook his head negatively.
 

"Now is as good a time as any," Jane said.

"Where will you be honeymooning?" Samuel asked.
 

Richard looked at Jane.
 
"The first stop is Chesterfield Manor."

Jane's eyes widened again.
 
"So blatant, Richard.
 
I'm surprised."
 

"I'm done playing games."
 

~

This mattress was very, very uncomfortable.
 

Nathan opened both of his eyes at once.
 

The mattress was a stone floor.
 

And it was near pitch black around him.
 
Water trickled somewhere in the void.
 
A rat scurried and squeaked.
 

Nora.

Nathan sat up too quickly, and the world spun.
 
He grabbed for something to hold him up, and his hand collided with cold, slimy metal.
 
He held onto it as his senses balanced the world around him.
 

"Easy there, Mr. Black."
 

Nathan turned his head in the direction of the nasally voice.
 
The gloom was stifling; his eyes strained to dilate and take in more light.
 
Finally, a fuzzy image of iron bars and a face came into focus.

"Who's there?" he asked, but his voice was scratchy and faint.
 
He cleared his voice and repeated it, louder.
 

"Your good friend," the voice said.
 
"Franklin Archer."
 

Nathan's eyes stopped trying to dilate.
 
Archer remained a fuzzy shape in the distance.
 

"What have you done with Nora?"
 

Archer laughed.
 
"What have I done with her?
 
I haven't done anything.
 
It's hard to do much in this dungeon."
 

Nathan looked around him again.
 
Heard the water trickling and the rats scurrying.
 

"Dungeon?
 
I'm in a dungeon?"
 

Who used dungeons any more?
 
Nathan thought.
 

"We are in a dungeon, Mr. Black," Archer corrected him.
 

Nathan looked back at Archer.
 
There were two sets of iron bars.
 
The one Nathan was gripping and the other shadowing the shape that was Archer.
 

"What's going on, Archer?"
 

"Now, before I answer your question, I need to ask myself one of my own.
 
Should I answer the questions of the bloke who tried to kill me?" Archer said.

Nathan thought it telling that Archer cared more for his attempted assassination than for the fact that Nathan had killed his brother.
 
Nathan's head was pounding, and he did not need this right now.
 
He wanted to know where his damn wife was and who he was going to have to kill to get to her.
 

Archer tsked tsked in the dark.
 
"I am thinking I shouldn't."
 

"I am thinking you should."
 

"Why?" Archer asked.
 

Nathan felt his pocket for his pistol.
 
Obviously, it was not there.
 

"The enemy of my enemy is my enemy.
 
Or the enemy of my enemy is my friend."

Archer shuffled in the distance.
 
"Good point."
 

Nathan nodded, and the world tilted again.
 
He had been unconscious way too much in the past few days.
 

"He probably has your wife upstairs somewhere.
 
He figures females will talk," Archer said.
 

"Who is 'he'?"
 
Nathan's blood boiled, and he started listing in his head all the ways he was going to torture him.
 

Archer's shape had grown longer, and Nathan figured he had stood up.
 

"Chesterfield.
 
He likes to play mind games with females.
 
He's a few cards short of a full deck."
 
Archer's head turned right and left as if he was checking to see if anyone was listening.
 
"I should have seen it right off, but well, there was Liza."
 

Nathan's heart stopped abruptly in his chest.
 
It simply froze and hung suspended by the tissue that surrounded it.
 
The Duke of Chesterfield had Nora.
 
The Duke of Chesterfield.
 
The man who had raped her.
 
Nathan stood up, a roar of frustration and anger surging from his throat as he swung a fist at the blackness.
 
It collided with a solid wall of brick, and Nathan welcomed the pain.
 
He just wished he had swung harder.
 

"Easy there, mate, easy there," Archer cooed from the darkness.
 

Nathan concentrated on breathing.
 
He had to be alive in order to kill Chesterfield, which meant he had to breathe.
 
He also had to concentrate on something else before the frustration swamped him into a blubbering mess that was not going to be any help at all to Nora.
 

So he turned around and sank against the wall, determined to have a conversation with the man he was supposed to have shot a week ago.
 

"Liza?" Nathan asked, forcing his mind to focus.
   

"The Duchess of Chesterfield.
 
God, what a woman.
 
I should have known better.
 
A woman like her."
 
Archer was shaking his head.
 

"You betrayed your country for a woman?"
 
Nathan thought of Nora again, which caused the anger to surge briefly, but he squashed it down and rethought the validity of his question.
 
"Never mind," he said.
 

"Oh yes, what a woman.
 
But now it doesn't really matter, does it?
 
I'm titled and all."
 

Nathan knew he had been whacked pretty hard and his mind was wandering to another subject quite a bit, but he also knew this conversation should be going more smoothly for him.
 

"What does your title have to do with this?"
 

Archer did not say anything for a while as if he were studying Nathan.
 
Nathan felt the urge to smooth his hair, which was ridiculous.
 
Maybe he should punch the wall again.
 

"You really don't know anything at all, do you?"
 

Nathan's eyeballs were going to fall out of his head.
 
He leaned his head back against a cold, hard surface.
 
The cold seeped into his head, and he thought it would make it feel better, but laying one's head against a brick wall was never very comfortable for long.
 

"No, I don't know anything," Nathan mumbled.
 

Archer rustled in the dark, and his voice came back at Nathan, somehow closer.
 
"What would I get in return for what I know?"
 

Nathan rolled his head in Archer's direction.
 
"I won't kill you."
 

Archer laughed.
 
"That's not a very good return considering you're in a dungeon."
 

"Fine, tell me what you know and then I will kill you."
 

Archer laughed again.
 
"Did you not hear what I just said?
 
You can't kill me."
 

"Not right now.
 
But when Chesterfield comes around, I can keep you from getting killed or I can let you be killed."
 

Archer stopped laughing.
 
"What are you talking about?"
 

"I'm talking about eight months of letters to, what was the name, Liza, or should I call her Lady Lover?"
 

Nathan let out the breath he had been holding when he heard the outstandingly loud gulp.
 
Nobody in the War Office had actually known who Lady Lover had been, and he had taken a very large gamble in assuming that Lady Lover was indeed this Liza Archer for whom he had committed treason.
 

"What do you want to know?" Archer asked.

Nathan would have smiled if it had not hurt so much and if he had not been grinding his teeth quite so hard.
   

"Everything."
   

"He's kidnapping titled men.
 
Figures he'll pawn them off for the highest price."
 

Nathan held up a hand.
 

"Wait.
 
Who is kidnapping titled men and why?"
 

"Chesterfield.
 
He has desperate orders from above.
 
Kidnap titled men and auction them off.
 
Ransom them if he has to.
 
Napoleon needs liquid assets."
 

"And he thinks selling noblemen is a good idea?"
 

"I said desperate.
 
Not good," Archer was speaking quickly.
 
Too quickly.
 

"What else?" Nathan prompted.
 

Archer's shape shrugged its shoulders.
 

Nathan forced himself not to hurt his hands by gripping the iron bars too tightly.
 

"What else, Archer?
 
Or am going to call your mate Chesterfield down here and tell him all about the milky white skin of Lady Lover's-"
 

"All right, all right."
 
Archer's head was swinging madly in the gloom, looking for eavesdroppers.
 

"Archer."

Archer's head stopped pivoting on his neck.
 
"Well, Chesterfield was supposed to snatch the good ones, you know, the spy ones."
 

"The spies?"
 
Nathan stood up, using the bars as leverage.
 
"What spies?"
 

"English spies that are noblemen."
 

Nathan felt the blood rush out of his head, and it was not because he was standing up.
 

"My father and brother."
 

Archer's shape shook its head.
 
"No, just your brother.
 
The powers that be specifically want your brother.
 
I don't know why.
 
They just want him.
 
Want him brought to France."
 

"Napoleon wants my brother brought to France?
 
Why?"
 

Archer made another one of those really loud gulps.
 

"Why, Archer?" Nathan pressed and was pleased to hear Archer crack.
 

"Bait.
 
They're going to use your brother as bait."
 

Nathan's hands did clench around the iron bars then, and he was amazed the iron simply did not shatter in his grip.
   

"Napoleon thinks my father and I will follow."
 

"And then they'll capture you and more will come.
 
Rescue mission, you know."
 
Archer was pacing, one hand trailing back and forth across the bars.
 

"No.
 
The War Office won't send more after my father and I."
 

Archer laughed.
 
"I know that.
 
You know that.
 
But again, desperate, not good."
 

"This isn't even a desperate plan.
 
It's just stupid."

"Fabulous.
 
You can tell good old Nappie when you see him."
 

The sound of clinking metal stopped their conversation.
 
Keys were being inserted in a door somewhere.
 

Archer swallowed harshly again.
 
"Uh, oh.
 
They're coming for you."
 
He looked through the bars at Nathan.
 
"I'd play dead again, if I were you."
 
He laughed at his own joke.
 

Nathan straightened his greatcoat so he looked presentable when they came instead.
 
After all, he did not want to kill a duke without looking at least presentable.
   

A door opened and light flooded the small passageway between the cells.
 
Nathan squinted in the intense light.
 
Someone with a heavy trod started down steps, stone steps from the sound of the clinking metal.
 
Another trod interrupted the pattern of the first.
 
This one lighter, more elegant.
 

Nathan looked away from the light to let his eyes adjust naturally.
 
When he looked back, two men were standing in front of him.
 
One that smelled bad and another that would never be caught smelling in his life.
 

"Your grace," Nathan nodded at the non-smelling one.
 

Nathan thought he would feel rage, unstoppable, uncontrollable rage upon seeing the man who had raped the woman he loved.
 
But he did not feel anything like that at all.
 
What he felt was simple.
 
Basic.
 
And, now, he was completely in control of it.