Page 343 of From Rakes to Riches

“Are you hurt?” The Duchesse pulled at her elbow, lifting her to her feet.

Mercy stared at her dumbly. Was she hurt? The opposite, it seemed. She felt no pain whatsoever. She couldn’t feel her fingers or her lips. Perhaps she gestured in the negative, but she couldn’t tell.

“That man was hired by Armand to kill Mathilde,” Mercy said in a rather matter-of-fact way.

The woman’s kind eyes hardened. “That is exactly Armand’s way. He often turns to the corrupt officials to do his bidding.” She ripped off her mask, whirled, and spat on him, stepping on his neck with the sharp heel of her bejeweled boot.

“You break her neck, I break yours.”

And she did.

Dimly, Mercy was aware of Raphael’s strong arms sweeping her away, of following a burgundy gown back into a burning building.

“Felicity!” She dug in her heels, searching the increasingly smoke-clogged room for her sister.

In all the chaos, she hadn’t witnessed her sister’s escape, and considering who was carrying Felicity, it wasn’t likely she’d have missed it. He was head and shoulders taller than most men.

“Many of us took pleasure barges and gondolas to get here,” the Duchesse said over her shoulder. “I directed your sister and Gabriel to the tunnel beneath the keep that will take us to the canal where my boat is waiting.”

That roused Mercy from her stupor better than anything else she could imagine might do.Felicity.Her guileless sister was a stranger to violence. So sweet-natured and timid was she, no one ever even entertained the notion of striking her.

They hurried by torchlight through the thousand-year-old tunnel toward the sound of water lapping at the stone docks. Voices ahead of them advertised that others had come this wayin search of their boats, and what that meant for her sister, Mercy couldn’t imagine.

A strange birdlike whistle from the dark caused Raphael to tense and freeze beside her.

Veering to the left, Raphael went toward an alcove that branched off the main causeway; Mercy and the Duchesse followed quickly on his heels.

They found Gabriel sitting with his back against the stones, hood pulled low over his face, those startling, abysmal shadows swallowing the horror of his features from view.

Cradled in his massive arms, Felicity looked like a child rather than a woman of twenty.

His fingers hovered over the place above her cheekbone where a raw mark formed.

Pale lashes cast shadows over her cheeks, and Mercy made a raw sound of relief to see them tremble.

She rushed to her sister, sinking down next to the giant of a man to take her cold, limp hand. “Felicity, can you hear me?”

“She woke.” The graveled voice came from the void behind the hood. “She opened her eyes, said your name, and...and looked at me...”

A bleak note underscored his words with abject desolation.

“She faints when she’s...” Mercy cut off, realizing the man had spoken in perfect English.

“When she’s terrified,” he finished.

Raphael had mentioned before that Gabriel did not speak English. No doubt, it was a truth they hid from the world.

“I don’t have her smelling salts.” She tapped Felicity on the uninjured cheek. “Darling, can you come around? Do you hear me?”

“Some cold water from the canal, maybe?” the Duchesse suggested, tearing the hem of her dress. “I’ll soak this and put it against her neck, that might do the trick.”

A resourceful woman, the Duchesse.

Raphael loomed over them, both a comforting presence and a frightening specter of wrath splattered by the blood of his enemy.

He glared daggers down at his brother. “Why are you not being carved into by Dr. Conleith right now?”

The face in the shadow of the hood didn’t lift, but shifted away from her, answering in French. “Because,mon frere, I went to the surgeon’s table thinking of what you said when we parted. The precise words you used when you spoke of the future. Never once did you refer to us. Only to me. Then I realized, you were making the biggest mistake of your life. Sacrificing yourself for a monster like me.”

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