Free At the Duke’s Pleasure by Tracy Anne Warren Page B

instantly slipped his mind?
    What a simpleton I am .
    Forcing a smile, she gazed at Mallory. “Shall we sing and play another?”
    Grinning, Mallory agreed.
    Choking down the rest of the wine in her glass, Claire prepared to make merry—even if it killed her.

Chapter 5

    “W here is he?” Edward demanded nearly two hours later, as he stepped out of the frosty March night into a room that was scarcely warmer than the outdoors in spite of the coals burning in the grate.
    The senior officer on duty snapped to attention, having clearly been expecting his visit. “This way, Your Grace,” he said in a moderate tone. “If you’ll follow me, I’ll take you to the cell.”
    With a nod, Edward let the other man lead the way. Their booted footsteps rang loudly against the rough stones that paved the interior of the military prison located nearly twenty miles southeast of London. Dark and drafty, the edifice was foreboding to say the least, light from the lantern the officer carried casting eerie shadows against the heavy granite walls. Despite the prison’s bleak atmosphere and lack of amenities, Edward knew that it was luxurious compared to the overcrowded squalor and depravity of places like Newgate, where the gaolers preyed upon prisoners and the prisoners on each other.
    They walked down a long hallway, past cells housing soldiers incarcerated for a variety of crimes. With a rattling of keys, the officer opened a heavy iron door that led into a separate section of the gaol.
    “This is where we keep the special ones,” the man said. “Those interned for high crimes and activities against the state. He’s just down here.” A few yards later, the officer stopped, then used his key again to unlock a thick wooden door.
    Swinging it wide, he pointed toward the figure lying on a narrow bed in one corner of the room, a woolen blanket pulled high over the man’s form. There wasn’t much else in the six-by-eight cell except for a slop bucket and another that held a couple inches of water. An odor of despair and old sweat permeated the space, overlain by a more pungent, almost sweetly metallic scent that signaled something of a far more sinister nature.
    Approaching the bed, Edward reached for the blanket and pulled it back. There, lying on his back with his blond hair tangled around his classically featured face, was Lord Everett. Were it not for the knife sticking out of his slender chest and the huge congealing bloodstain that accompanied it, one might have imagined him to be sleeping.
    “How long ago did you find him?” Edward asked, studying the body of the man who had been known in espionage circles as Le Renard.
    “Just after dinner rounds. When he didn’t take his meal, we came in to check and discovered him like this.”
    “And you presume he was murdered? He couldn’t have come into possession of a knife and done this on his own?”
    The officer shook his head. “No, Your Grace. We search the cells every few days for contraband and such. Besides, Everett wasn’t the sort who would have taken his own life. Too much of a coward, if you ask me. He may have been called a hero once, but he was nothing but a filthy traitor.”
    A filthy traitor indeed , Edward thought. A liar and a spy for the French, who had once tortured Cade nearly to death. Because of Everett, his brother would endure a limp and other physical scars for the rest of his days. If not for the fierce devotion of Cade’s beloved wife, Edward feared Cade might never have been able to get past the emotional scars he’d carried as well. Thank God for Meg .
    The officer was right, though. Everett had been too much of a coward to have killed himself. So who had done the deed in his stead?
    As for why, that much was obvious. Everett had information, secrets the British government had been working hard to pry out of him for over a year now. Only recently had he begun to talk. Apparently whoever had done this hadn’t cared for Everett’s newly loosened