The Duke's Undoing

The Approach.

The second attack came just before dawn.

Sophie had not slept. She had dozed in restless fragments on the settle, every creak of the old lodge pulling her back to full alertness. Adrian had returned only once in the night, briefly, to tell her the perimeter remained quiet. The look he had given her then, hungry, conflicted, tightly leashed, had kept her pulse elevated long after he left again.

Now the light beyond the shutters was turning from black to a dilute gray. The rain had softened to a drizzle. Sophie sat upright at the first sound of raised voices outside.

Then the shot.

It was closer than the ones on the road. Wood splintered somewhere near the rear of the lodge. Adrian’s voice barked an order. Another shot answered, then the heavier report of a rifle.

Sophie was on her feet before she could think. She had no weapon. The only things of use were the poker by the hearth and the heavy iron bolt on the door. She seized the poker, heart slamming, and pressed herself against the wall beside the window, listening.

Boots pounded through mud. A man shouted in pain. Something heavy struck the side of the lodge hard enough to rattle the shutters. Sophie’s grip on the poker whitened.

The door’s bolt slid back from the outside.

She raised the poker, then lowered it when Adrian stepped through, one arm locked around a struggling man whose face was half-obscured by blood and mud. Carter followed, pistol trained on the captive. The second outrider remained outside.

Adrian forced the man to his knees in the center of the room. In the firelight Sophie saw that the prisoner was young, no older than twenty-five, with the lean look of someone who had been paid rather than ideologically driven.

Who sent you? Adrian’s voice was ice.

The man spat blood and said nothing.

Adrian’s expression did not change. He nodded once to Carter. The outrider left and returned a moment later with a length of rope. They bound the prisoner’s hands and feet with efficient speed. Only then did Adrian look at Sophie.

Are you hurt?

“No.” Her voice was steadier than she felt. You?

Grazed. He glanced down at his left arm. The dark coat was torn; blood darkened the sleeve. It’s shallow.

Sophie set the poker aside and crossed to him without asking leave. This time he did not protest when she eased the coat off his shoulder and examined the wound. A bullet had cut a shallow furrow across the outer muscle of his upper arm. It would need cleaning and binding, but it was not dangerous.

“Sit,” she said.

He sat. She worked in silence, tearing a strip from the cleanest of the dry cloths and binding the wound with careful tension. The intimacy of the act felt different now, charged with the memory of his mouth on hers and the knowledge that men had again tried to end his life only minutes earlier.

When she finished, Adrian caught her wrist before she could step away.

You should not have to do this, he said quietly.

Someone has to.

His thumb moved across the inside of her wrist, finding her pulse. You’re still trembling.

“So much for training.”

A ghost of something almost soft moved through his eyes. Then it vanished as he looked toward the bound man on the floor.

“He will talk," Adrian said. Men like him always do once they understand the alternative.

Sophie followed his gaze. The prisoner stared at the floor, jaw tight. Fear rolled off him in waves.

“What happens now?” she asked.

At first light we move. There is a larger estate six miles west, mine, as it happens. We can reach it across country if we avoid the roads. Carter will take this one ahead under guard. You will ride with me.

The words landed with quiet finality. Sophie looked at him. In the gray dawn light his face was all hard planes and controlled exhaustion. The cut on his cheek, the bandage on his arm, the residual darkness in his eyes, all of it should have made her want distance. Instead she felt the same reckless pull as before, stronger now that death had brushed them twice in less than a day.

“All right,” she said.

Adrian’s hand tightened briefly around her wrist, then released her.

Outside, the first true light of morning began to strengthen. Inside the lodge, the prisoner shifted against his bonds, and Sophie had the sudden, cold certainty that whatever name he eventually spoke would change everything.