Page 3 of The Captive Duke
Girard did not approve of brute maneuvers that produced no results, and one had to respect Girard’s sense of efficiency.
“You don’t care that Girard might have given me orders to kill you, do you?”
The jailer sounded Irish or, on rare occasions when nobody else was about, Scottish, and Christian admitted—in the endless privacy of his thoughts—to being grateful to hear English in any accent other than French.
And typical of Girard’s cunning, the jailer was also a frequent source of small kindnesses intended to torment the prisoner with that most cruel weapon: hope.
“Girard said I’m not to allow you to suffer, on accountof what’s gone before. Said you’d earned your battle honors, so to speak, though it would be a mercy to allow you to join your duchess and your son. He said you’re a man who can trust no one, and the life that awaits you won’t be worth living for long, assuming your enemies don’t ambush you from the hedges of Surrey.”
Ah. The old lie, for Christian had no enemies in Surrey, and his wife and son yet thrived at home in England. Severn was a veritable fortress, staffed by retainers whose loyalty went back generations. Girard was simply a petty evil allowed to flourish in the bowels of the Grande Armée’s outpost on the slopes of the Pyrenees, and this claim that Helene and Evan were dead was merely a blunt weapon in Girard’s arsenal.
Which Girard would pay for using.
Christian focused on ignoring the man speaking to him, a big blond fellow with watchful green eyes and a wary devotion to Girard. Girard referred to him asMichel; the other guards quietly referred to him in less affectionate terms.
The jailer held a gleaming bone-handled knife, its presence a matter of complete indifference to Christian—almost. The knife had become something of a friend to Christian—for a time—until Anduvoir had found a use for it no man could contemplate sanely.
“Orthez fell in February,” the jailer said, still lingering near the open door of the cell—a taunt, that, leaving the cell door unlatched when Christian was powerless to escape. “That was weeks ago, not that you’d know,poor sod. Bordeaux was last month. Toulouse has been taken, and we’ve heard rumors Napoleon has abdicated. Girard’s gone.”
None of it was true. These fairy tales were a variation on the stories the jailer told from time to time in an effort to raise hopes. Christian knew better: hopes that refused to rise couldn’t be dashed.
The jailer came no closer.
“I’ve seen what went on here, and I’m sorry for it,” he said, sounding Scottish indeed, and damnably sincere. “Girard is sorry for it, too. This was war, true enough, but when Anduvoir came around…”
But nothing. Christian was tied to the cot, a periodic nuisance he’d long since become inured to. Girard’s greatest cruelty had been to show his prisoner only enough care to ensure Christian wouldn’t die. The mattress was thin but clean, and Christian probably had more blankets than the infantry quartered elsewhere in the old château.
He was fed.
If he refused to eat, he was fed by force. If he refused to bathe, he was bathed by force as well. If he refused his occasional sortie into the Château’s courtyard, where fresh air and sunshine assaulted his senses every bit as brutally as the guards assaulted his body, he was escorted there by force.
Eventually, the force had been unnecessary, for a man strong enough to escape was a man who preserved the hope of revenge, and Christian wanted to remainthat strong. He endured the fresh air and sunlight, he ate the food given him by his captors, nourishing not himself, but his dreams of revenge.
Girard had understood that too, and had understood how to manipulate even that last, best hope.
Christian was required to heal between sessions with Girard or the various corporals, and he was given medical care when the corporals—or more often Anduvoir—got out of hand. Now he’d earned a simple, relatively painless death.
He tried to muster gratitude, fear, relief, something.
Anythingbesides a towering regret that revenge would be denied him.
“I’m sorry,” the jailer said again. “I’m so bloody sorry.”
Girard had said the same things, always softly, alwayssincerely, as he’d lowered Christian carefully to the cot where the mandatory healing would commence.
Christian felt the knife slicing at the bindings around his wrists and ankles, felt the agony of blood surging into his hands, then his feet.
“I’m sorry,” the jailer said again.
And then Christian felt…nothing.
Two
“ORDERS FLY IN ALL DIRECTIONS ONCE THE GUNS GOsilent.”
Devlin St. Just—Colonel St. Just, thank you very much—was complaining about peace, one of the career soldier’s dubious privileges. “During wartime, the paperwork was limited to one side of a line,” he went on. “Now we’re galloping the length and breadth of Europe because pigeons simply won’t do.”
“If you brought Baldy orders, they must be important,” Marcus Easterbrook observed—though he was finallyLord Greendalenow. He would not bruit the title about until he’d received word of the final outcome of the inquest, bad form being an offense among Wellington’s officers tantamount to treason.
