Falling for the Enemy

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 just helped the man who’d shot him to escape.

“Halston...” The world grew still around them, and even the lapping of the water seemed to cease, as though the air itself held its breath in anticipation of what Kessler might say.

Kessler stayed in the water, which had to be frigid given the cold January temperatures, and for a moment it seemed he decided to keep quiet. Then Kessler hefted himself onto the bank, the tendons in his emaciated hands and forearms stark even in the blackness. “I’m sorry.”

The breath exploded from Gregory’s lungs. His wound had become so infected he’d almost died. What was he supposed to do with an apology?

A small splash rippled the water, and he tore his gaze away from Kessler to the dark head full of shaggy hair surfacing at his feet.

“Westerfield.” The name felt odd on his tongue. His brother had been a mere heir to the Marquess of Westerfield when he’d entered France during a short-lived period of peace all those months ago. Now he was the marquess himself, and their father—the man the world had once called Westerfield—was dead.

Gregory held out a hand to pull Westerfield from the water.

The palm that reached up to wrap around him was naught but bones, with a grip so weak a child could break it. What had these despicable Frenchmen done to his once-strong brother?

Gregory hauled Westerfield out of the moat and wrapped his arms around him. Never mind that the embrace soaked his cloak and shirt. Never mind that they hadn’t time for such things until they were at least shrouded in the shelter of the trees.

A horrid stench rose up around him, sour and reeking of urine and vermin. He nearly broke his hold, would have, except Westerfield’s gaunt hand had only been the beginning of the horrid discovery. The man was so thin he might well be more corpse than human.

“Did they feed you?”

“On occasion.” The rasp in his brother’s words made the once-familiar voice barely recognizable. Westerfield sagged into him, as though too weak to stand on his own. Then a cough racked his chest, ringing out over the water and up the castle walls.

“Get him to the trees,” Kessler murmured. “You can greet each other there.”

Gregory wrapped his arms tighter around Westerfield, bracing him more than hugging him. Was his brother ill? That hadn’t been reported. The guard had claimed Westerfield and Kessler were both in excellent health.

Gregory looked at Kessler. Though the man stood covered in a sopping black cloak, ’twas plain from his pronounced cheekbones and the drawn way his skin sank into his face that he’d fared little better than Westerfield. “There’s only the two of you?”

Kessler frowned. “Yes. Were there supposed to be more?”

“I arranged for three escapes, the last was supposed to be the...”

A lantern appeared in one of the lower castle windows, voices carrying across the moat.

“Could there have been an escape?”

Despite Gregory’s rather basic understanding of French, the meaning of the words was clear enough.

“Non. No escape, not here!”

“One of the cells below is empty.”

“I know nothing of it.”

“Wake the guards, and search the castle. The men couldn’t have gotten outside these walls.”

“What if they did?”

“We must hasten,” Kessler growled quietly, then wrapped an arm beneath one of Westerfield’s shoulders.

They scrambled toward the trees together, stopping only when they met Farnsworth. But the tree line could offer only momentary respite. They needed to get away, yet the guard hadn’t made the escape, and their French guide was still missing.

Westerfield coughed again, the bone-deep sound jarring against the otherwise still night. “Slower next time.”

A call rang out from somewhere inside the towering stone walls of the castle, followed by an echo in response. Gregory didn’t look back to see whether more lanterns had appeared in the windows, but he could well guess the next cry before it left the mouth of a distant guard.

“Escape!”

The shout reverberated across the field and bounced against the trees.

A cold dread filled his chest. They’d been betrayed.

And stranded.

In the middle of France.

At the center of a war.

He glanced briefly around his group. Four men, all unmistakably English. Their clothing and coin might be French, but their tongues were English. They could manage to speak some French between them, yes, but not without accents.

By this time tomorrow night, they’d all be rotting inside a dark French dungeon, and something told him their new home was going to make the horrors his brother and Kessler had endured look trivial in comparison.

* * *

Danielle Belanger crouched beside the campfire and laid another stick on the licking flames, then sighed.

Another task failed.

Oh, she’d been sent to Reims to visit with her aunt, true. And the visit had gone rather well. Her mother’s sister was kind, generous, well respected...

And had tried introducing her to every decent, unmarried man in the city.

Those meetings had turned out about as well as all her introductions to men in her hometown of Abbeville.

Two and twenty years of age, and no one wanted to marry her.