Free Come the Dawn by Christina Skye

prepare some laudanum for my patient when she wakes. She’s had a nasty bump on the head, unless I’m mistaken.” The doctor frowned when Dev did not move. “Go on. And do not come back for at least twenty minutes!”
    ~ ~ ~
     
    Thornwood strode to his study, emptied a glass of brandy, then found another glass for the doctor. When that was done, he ran his hands through his hair and stared down at the fire.
    Long moments passed before he roused himself. His hands tightened and he moved to the bookshelf, where he pulled out a volume entitled Miscellaneous Tracts on Natural History. As the book left the shelf, there was a click, and the whole bookcase slid away from the wall.
    Thornwood caught up a branch of candles. Below him a passage led down to a storage room just off the kitchen. No doubt in centuries past the route had conveyed smuggled goods in and out in secrecy.
    Now it was used to conceal a different kind of mission.
    At the base of the stairs, Thorne stopped and waited. At the far wall a door eased open. A man stepped into the gloom.
    Thorne stared critically at the man in the shadows. The black hair, gray eyes and lean face could have been Thorne’s own.
    “Did you get those papers off without being seen?” he asked tightly.
    “Right as rain. There should be an answer in several hours. Shall I—”
    Thornwood shook his head. “No, this time I’ll go. It’s safer. I don’t think I could stay here anyway. Not with her beneath this roof.” He looked out the room’s single window at the now quiet streets. “It was all my fault, of course. I should have made her take that bloody hackney, instead of trying to follow her. This damnable shoulder of mine slowed me up.”
    “You’re lucky to have a shoulder after the pounding you took at Quatre Bras,” the other man said grimly. “Besides, you couldn’t have known she’d be followed and attacked.”
    “But I should have. Someone is always watching the house, after all. Why should this night be any different?” Thorne turned and slammed his fist against the wall.
    “You had your orders. We all do, Thornwood.”
    “Maybe I’m tired of the orders and the secrecy. Maybe it’s time the war was finally over for me, Herrington.”
    The man named Herrington frowned. “But it isn’t over. It won’t be done until those diamonds are found. You know what Wellington said. In the wrong hands they could reverse all the gains won at such cost at Waterloo. Meanwhile, this plan depends on utter secrecy. You know that as well as I do. Otherwise neither of us would be here, and I would not have to play at being a blasted aristocrat while you ghost about, trying to track down those lost diamonds of Napoleon’s.”
    The man by the window cursed softly. The light of the candles danced about his face, and dark frustration filled his eyes. “Wellington talked me into finishing this last mission, but I’m not going anywhere tonight. Tonight, for the first time in far too long, I’m going upstairs to stay with my wife.”
    “But that last report said—”
    “Damn the report!”
    The Earl of Thornwood caught up the branch of candles and strode back up the passage, leaving his near-double to frown and shake his head.
    ~ ~ ~
     
    He stood in silence, drinking in the sight of her.
    Her red-gold hair glinted against the pillows. Her face was creamy and soft, and the full lips made passion race as wild as ever through his blood.
    And Devlyn Carlisle stood lost in memories.
    He shouldn’t have stayed. Wellington had been all too clear about the importance of this mission. But she was his wife. She had kept the marriage secret as they had agreed, and Dev yearned to explain the dangerous masquerade that Wellington had forced him to play.
    But he could explain nothing. Any involvement brought her terrible danger and threatened Wellington’s complex plans. Devlyn thought again of the general’s face when they had last met, and of the cold despair that had filled his eyes.