Countryside of Ardennes, France January 1805
Blackness pulsed around him, reaching its icy tentacles out to swirl about his feet and beneath his coat, up his torso until it nearly froze his skin. The tree branches clattered above, scrawny and bare of leaves as they scraped together like skeleton fingers. But Gregory Halston, third son of the sixth Marquess of Westerfield, remained still despite the foreboding sense that permeated the night, shrouding himself against a centuries-old oak as he stared at the fortified castle in the center of the field.
“Do you see them yet, Lord Gregory?”
“No.”
But they had to be coming. Any moment now. Too much planning had gone into this night for something to go awry. The journey across the English Channel and a hostile country at war with his own, the exorbitant funds paid for a guide to lead them through a land that had been fighting for nearly a decade, an even larger sum paid to bribe a cook and a guard to sneak messages, ropes and a sack of supplies to a certain pair of prisoners inside.
The endeavor was worth every last guinea.
Or it would be, provided the plan worked.
“Shouldn’t they have been here by now?” Farnsworth whispered. “And our guide has yet to arrive.”
Gregory clamped his teeth together. While valets had their uses in London, bringing his on a trek across war-ravaged France wasn’t one of his brightest ideas. “I realize that, thank you.”
“Do you want me to check my timepiece?”
“As that would involve lighting a lantern and likely alerting the guards to our presence, no.”
“I could always—”
“Farnsworth, stow it.”
The man grunted, and Gregory blew a breath into the silence, keeping his eyes pinned on the shadowed castle. Four rectangular walls jutted toward the sky, with looming guard towers anchoring each corner and a moat surrounding the entire structure. As a fortress, it would have been impregnable. Now that it functioned as one of Napoleon’s secret prisons, unauthorized entrance was utterly impossible.
What had his brother done to get himself jailed behind that massive stone edifice?
Gregory swallowed the lump forming in his throat. What Westerfield had done mattered little compared to getting him out. Unfortunately, Westerfield and his friend Kessler, the future Earl of Raleigh, had been imprisoned together, and rescuing one meant rescuing the other.
Gregory reached down and slid his palm slowly over the bullet scar in his thigh. He’d be happy to see his brother, yes. But as for the man who had faced him across a field at dawn nearly two years ago?
He would prefer to let him rot in prison.
“Do you think they had trouble deciphering the appointed time?” Farnsworth asked from beside him.
A trickle of apprehension started at the base of his neck and dripped down his spine. If only it was something so simple as a misread number. If only something hadn’t gone wrong inside those castle walls.
“Perhaps they mistook your two for a three.”
A dark blob, barely visible in the nighttime shadows, appeared through the opening of a second-story window, followed by a second blob.
The breath rushed from Gregory’s lungs. They were coming. Everything was according to plan, just a bit late. In another moment their guide would arrive, and they could head across the hills and fields toward the coast, and then on to England.
He ran his eyes over the shadowed forms, now inching slowly down the wall with nothing but ropes to hold them. But there were only two. Where was the third? Had something happened to the guard who was supposed to escape with them, the one who had smuggled the black cloaks and ropes into the prison? The one that was supposed to “accidentally” drop a key when delivering food this night?
No, nothing could have happened to him. Westerfield and Kessler wouldn’t be climbing down the castle wall if not for the guard, and the guard couldn’t have changed his mind about the escape. Gregory had already paid the man half a fortune, and once he reached England, the information he could provide about Napoleon’s police and secret prisons would net him another.
Perhaps the guard was one of the blobs and something had happened to Westerfield or Kessler.
Gregory tightened his hands into fists at his side. Just as long as his brother was one of the escaping forms. But with both men hidden beneath heavy cloaks as they inched down the dark castle wall, he couldn’t distinguish which was Westerfield—if his brother was even there at all.
He slanted a glance at the nearest guard tower, where lanterns cast their narrow beams through the windows and into the field beyond. No call rang out from the guards. A few more moments, a silent swim across the little moat, and two men would be free.
Please, Father God, let Westerfield be one of them.
Just then a cough ricocheted against the quiet waters and one of the men slipped, dangling precariously from the rope.
A wave of ice swept through Gregory. He turned toward the tower. Had the guards heard? Surely they must have. A cough like that couldn’t be ignored against such a silent night.
But no shout sounded from the tower, no extra lantern appeared at the window to better illuminate the out-of-doors. Nothing happened whatsoever.
Thank You, God.
The figure on the rope righted himself and climbed down the last few feet, slipping silently into the water. A moment later, the first escapee disappeared into the black depths.
“Stay here, Farnsworth.” Wrapped in his own dark cloak, Gregory broke away from the line of trees and headed toward the moat. His breath puffed hot against the cool winter air as he stood exposed.
Half a minute passed, then another. He stared at the calm surface of the water. How long did it take to swim a moat? Could something have happened underwater?
To both men, no less?
He wiped his damp palms on his thighs, though his gloves prevented the action from doing any good. This was something they hadn’t taught him at Eton and Cambridge, how to enter a country he was at war with and effect a prison break. All those useless hours sitting in lectures, studying and writing essays, and for what? The two schools hadn’t even taught him how to duel.
A head full of matted blond hair broke through the top of the water and heaved a gasp. Kessler.
Gregory’s leg wound, though healed for over a year, smarted afresh. He crossed his arms over his chest. The rat could climb out of the moat on his own.
But Kessler didn’t climb out, at least not immediately. Instead, he looked up, his face thin and drawn.
Gregory hardened his jaw. He’d known he’d see Kessler again, but it should have been in England surrounded by his family, not here on a field outside a prison in northern France. Not after he’d