Would he not take his punishment again and again for her safety?

And now he would punish Ewan. “Grace is gone.”

The lie rang through the darkness, clear and cold. And for the first time since he appeared, the duke showed himself. Ewan’s inhale was loud and harsh, as though Devil had unsheathed his cane sword and put the tip right through his heart.

And he had.

“Where?”

“Where you’ll never find her.”

“Tell me.” Ewan’s low voice shook.

Devil watched his brother carefully and threw his final blow. “Where none of us can find her.”

Let Ewan think Grace dead. She’d be furious at Devil for it, no doubt, but if it threw the fucking monster off her scent, he’d take his sister’s heat. And besides, Ewan deserved the pain. Devil would sleep well tonight.

Except he wouldn’t, because he’d be without Felicity.

He turned back to the locks, extracting his keys. Christ, he was tired of all of it. He was Janus, cursed with nothing but the broken past. The bleak future.

And, like Janus, he could not see the present.

The glint of silver from the lion’s head at the tip of his walking stick came too late for him to defend himself. The blow set him to his knees, the pain excruciating.

“You were to protect her.”

Devil bore the weight of his pain and lied perfectly, a lie that any good smuggler would be proud of. “You were to protect her first.”

Ewan roared, his fury coming without warning. “You took her from me.”

The room was spinning. “She came willingly. She came eagerly.”

“You have signed your death warrant tonight, brother. If I must live without love, you can die without it.”

The words were a harsher blow than the physical one Ewan had delivered.

Felicity. Devil was fast losing consciousness. He lifted a hand to his temple, feeling the telltale warm wetness there. Blood.

Felicity. He didn’t want to die without her.

Not without seeing her again. Not without touching her, without feeling the soft warmth of her. Not without one last kiss.

Not without telling her something true.

Felicity. Not without telling her he loved her.

He should have told her he loved her.

He would have married her . . . he did marry her.

A scrape of steel sounded harsh and somehow unfamiliar.

No. No he didn’t. He left her.

He married her. It was a wild, Covent Garden wedding with a fiddle and a pipe, and too much wine and too much song and he told her he loved her a hundred times. A thousand.

A slide. His body, dragged through the frigid mud into the hold.

He married her, and he made her a queen of the Garden, and his men swore her allegiance and she grew round with a child. With children. With little girls with heads for machines, just like their mother. And she didn’t regret it.

And neither did he.

No. Wait. He didn’t. It wasn’t past. It was future.

He rolled to his hands and knees, barely able to see the flicker of lantern light in the hallway beyond. He had to get to her. To keep her safe.

To love her.

She had to know he loved her.

That she was his light.

Light. It was going away. Ewan was in the doorway. “If I must live in the dark, you can die in it.”

Devil reached for the door, the infinite blackness of the hold already stealing his breath. No, not the blackness.

“Felicity!”

The door shut, closing out the light.

“No!”

The only response was the ominous sound of locks being thrown. One after another. Locking him into the hold.

“Felicity!” Devil screamed, fear and panic coursing through him. Forcing him to fight the haze and scramble for the door. He banged on it.

There was no answer.

“Ewan . . .” He screamed again, madness coming with the darkness. “Please.”

He threw himself at the door, pounding upon it—knowing that the hold was too far down and too well hidden for any of the watchmen outside to hear him. And still he screamed, desperate to get to Felicity. To keep her safe. He turned, darkness everywhere, feeling along the muddy ground until he found the ice, pulling himself up on the blocks to find the pick he’d left within.

The dark closed in on him, heavy and cloying in the freezing cold, and he forced himself to take deep breaths as he searched. “Where the fuck is it?”

He found it, and taking it by the handle and crawling back to the door, he roared her name again. “Felicity!”

But she wasn’t there to hear him. He’d pushed her away.

I love you, Devil.

He pulled himself to standing and swung the hook, scarring the steel. And again. And again. He had to get to her. Again. He had to keep her safe. Again.

Do you love me?

He did. He loved her. And in that moment, as he realized the futility of his blows, he was overcome with truth—he would never have the chance to tell her just how much.

You deserve the darkness.

The final strike took the remains of his strength, and he sank to the ground and closed his eyes, letting the darkness and cold come.






Chapter Twenty-Seven

Unable to sleep, Felicity rose at the crack of dawn and went to her brother’s home, letting herself in through the kitchens and up into the family’s quarters, opening the door to his bedchamber to discover him still abed, kissing his wife.

She immediately turned her back and raised a hand to her eyes, crying out, “Ahh! Why?”

While it wasn’t the kindest response to the vision of marital bliss before her, it was certainly more kind than other things she might have thought or said, and it got the job done.

Pru gave a little surprised squeak, and Arthur said, “Dammit, Felicity—are you unable to knock?”

“I didn’t expect . . .” She waved a hand. She looked back to find her sister-in-law sitting up in the bed, counterpane pulled to her chin. Returning her attention to the door, she added, “Hello, Pru.”

“Hello, Felicity,” Pru said, a smile in her voice.

“It’s lovely to see you.”

“And you! I hear you’ve a great deal going on.”

Felicity grimaced. “Yes, I suppose you would have heard that.”

“Enough!” Arthur said. “I’m putting locks on all the doors.”

“We have locks on all the doors, Arthur.”

“I’m putting more locks on the doors. And using them. Two people bursting into our private rooms uninvited in less than a day is two people too many. You may turn around, Felicity.”

She did, to discover that both her brother and sister-in-law had donned dressing gowns. Pru, heavy with child, was crossing the room to a pretty dressing table, and Arthur was standing at the end of the bed, looking . . . not pleased.

“I was invited,” she defended herself. “I was summoned! Felicity. Come and see me immediately. One would think you were king for how superior a summons it was.”

“I didn’t expect you to think you were summoned for this hour.”

“I couldn’t sleep.” She didn’t expect to be able to sleep ever again, honestly, for the moment she began to dream, it was of Devil, the King of Covent Garden, and the way he looked at her and the way he touched her and the way he might love her, and just when it all felt so deliciously real, she woke, and it was all horribly false, and so not sleeping seemed a better alternative. “I intended to come and see you today, Arthur. I was going to come and apologize. I know it’s dreadful, and Father has disappeared, and Mother is in a constant state of vapors, but I’ve been thinking about what happened two nights ago and—wait. Someone else burst into your rooms?”

His brows rose. “I wondered when you would note that.” He sighed. “I am unconcerned about what happened at the Northumberland Ball.”

Felicity sighed. “Well, you should be concerned, Arthur. It was . . . not my best moment. I’m properly ruined.”

He barked a laugh at that. “I can imagine.”

“I rather think it might have been your best moment, honestly,” Pru said happily from her dressing table. “Marwick sounds quite unpleasant.”

“He is,” Felicity said. “Mostly. But—” She stopped herself before she could point out that her decision, however freeing for herself, was the opposite for her father and Arthur, who now had no hope for recovering their losses. If Arthur still hadn’t told Pru, it would be a terrible betrayal of her brother.

Even if he deserved it.

She looked at him, the question in her eyes.

“She knows,” he said.

Felicity looked to Pru. “You do?”

“That this idiot man was keeping the truth about his own ruin from us both? In fact, I do.”

Felicity’s jaw dropped. She never expected her sister-in-law to weep and wail in the face of financial disaster, but she also did not expect her to be so . . . well, frankly, happy. She looked to her brother. “Something has happened.”

Her brother watched her for a long moment. “Indeed, something has.”

Was it possible the duke was not allowing the engagement to end? He was just mad enough to do it—just to punish Devil. And as much as Felicity was irritated with Devil, and hurt by Devil, she was not interested in punishing him. “I’m not marrying Marwick. I made that very clear at the ball . . . and even if he came to . . .”

“I’ve no interest in you marrying Marwick, Felicity. Frankly, I despised the idea from the start. Similarly, I have little interest in discussing the ball. I should like to talk about what happened after the ball.”