The Duke Is Mine

Togs shook his head and drew back a rough curtain in the corner, revealing a slight figure lying on a thin mattress on the floor.

Olivia rushed over and fell to her knees. Lucy was already there, nosing her master’s cheek, her thin tail wagging madly.

She picked up Rupert’s hand. It was odd to realize only now that his fingers were long and delicate. They weren’t like Quin’s powerful grip, but they were beautiful in their own way.

She leaned close and said, “Rupert!” He didn’t stir.

Lucy pressed close to Olivia, trembling, and then she suddenly took a little hop and landed on Rupert’s chest. Olivia reached out to remove her, but the dog was licking his cheek, his nose, his eyelids. Instead Olivia said, low and urgent, “Rupert, I’ve brought Lucy to you. It’s Lucy.”

His eyelids trembled.

She rubbed his hand faster and glanced over her shoulder at Quin. “He’s waking!” she mouthed.

Lucy was still licking Rupert, her warm tongue bathing his cheek, his ear. He opened his mouth and rasped one word. “Lucy.”

Olivia bent even closer. “Rupert, it’s Olivia. Lucy and I have come to take you back home.”

For a second he said nothing. Then his eyes slowly focused on Lucy’s brown pointed nose and shining eyes. A smile trembled on his bloodless lips.

His eyes moved to Olivia. “Knew you’d come.”

The words were slurred. Olivia saw with a lurch of her stomach a trickle of dried blood leading from his ear.

She felt a sob rising in her throat. He didn’t . . . he didn’t look as if he had long to live.

Quin’s hand came on her shoulder and squeezed. He squatted down beside the pallet. “Lord Monts—”

She shook her head.

Quin started over, his voice calm and deep. “Rupert, we’ve come to take you home.”

Rupert’s eyes wandered from Lucy. “Who?”

“My name is Quin.”

“Ah.” His eyes were closing. “Miles to go.”

“Yes,” Quin agreed.

He saw the truth of it in Rupert’s face, before the man even spoke. “Too many miles . . .”

Olivia’s hand closed around Quin’s wrist. “We must take him now to the boat. Now. Otherwise . . . he will die here, in this hovel.”

Rupert didn’t look like someone with the indomitable will that had driven a company of one hundred men over the walls of a fortress. There was a kind of acceptance about his face that spoke for itself. Quin thought he would almost certainly die very soon.

“We cannot remain here for more than a few hours at the most,” he said.

“The Frenchies almost caught us this morning,” Togs put in. “We heard them coming . . . they was set to enter the hut, but one of the dogs startled a duck and they went after their supper instead. We didn’t have a boat because we sent Grooper over in it.”

Quin frowned, looking at the silent Paisley.

“He don’t speak,” Togs said. “Not even a word. He’s the best sailor of us. He got the boat all the way here, but he couldn’t come across to fetch you because he don’t speak. The major said as how it didn’t matter to him as long as Paisley could hold a gun the right way up.”

The silent man nodded.

“You both stayed with him,” Olivia said, her smile, warm despite her fear, lingering on each of their exhausted faces.

“He’s our commander,” Togs said. And Paisley nodded tersely.

They were good men. Quin had to get them out as well, before the French stumbled by the hut again in the morning and decided to explore.

Tension mounted in Quin’s chest. Rupert was near death, and the two soldiers were exhausted to the point of collapse. He would bet that they’d had little—if anything—to eat in the last few days.

He crouched down, close enough to catch the warm, flowery scent that was Olivia, and said quietly, “I must leave you here for a short time, dear heart.”

She turned her face and her lips brushed his, sweet and heady. “That’s exactly what I was thinking.”

“I’ll be back for you. An hour at the most.”

Quin realized that Rupert’s eyes had drifted open again, and that he was watching them.

“Happy . . . you.” The words floated on the air.

Quin had to clear his throat. “I’m going to carry you to the boat.” He slipped one hand under Rupert’s torso and discovered that he weighed almost nothing.

“Take Lucy,” he whispered to Olivia.

Olivia retrieved the little dog from Rupert’s chest, but stopped Quin before he could pick up the injured man. Rupert looked very ill and impossibly young. He didn’t seem sixteen, let alone eighteen.

“You did it, Rupert,” Olivia whispered, leaning close. “Your father is so happy, and so proud of you. You have crowned the Canterwick name with glory.”

Even in the low light, she could see a faint smile in his eyes, a tired smile.

“And you’re also a wonderful poet,” she said, cupping his cheek with her hand. “You must heal, so that you can write more poetry.”

He shook his head, just slightly.

The truth of it was in his face. Olivia’s eyes filled with tears. “Then fly, Rupert. Be free. Leave all this darkness to us.”

The smile was there again. He turned his head, just slightly, lips against her hand, and closed his eyes.

Olivia stayed still for a moment, a tear splashing onto the rough blanket. Then Quin ran a hand over her hair, and she rose.

She waited until Quin was standing with Rupert in his arms. “If he fails,” she told him, “you cannot leave him. He must not die on that boat with no one but Grooper by his bed. Do you hear me?”

Her voice was barely above the sound of a nesting bird, and yet he heard every word. “Olivia, no!” It was a plea and a protest at once.

“The French patrol in the morning,” she said. “Not until morning.” Her eyes moved back to Rupert’s face.

She was right. Rupert probably didn’t have until the morning, but if they waited in the hut . . . men had taken more than the few hours that remained until dawn to die. And if that were the case, they would all be caught.

Olivia handed Quin Lucy’s cord, and he wound it around his wrist. Outside the night air still hung heavy with no hint of dawn. He had time to row down the little inlet, out to the Day Dream, time to make Rupert comfortable. . . . He had time.

When they were settled in the rowboat, an operation that required considerable finesse, given the boat’s diminutive proportions, Rupert stopped breathing.

Lucy gave a little whimper and licked his cheek; Rupert’s chest moved again.

Quin bent to the oars, but he had to be silent, silent . . . He couldn’t row too vigorously or the oars would catch the water and splash.

When at last he reached the Day Dream, Grooper was waiting at the gunwale. With the soldier hauling from above, getting Rupert on board was quick work, but at the sight of his beloved major unconscious, Grooper’s eyes grew large. He was a man of action, the one who had crossed the Channel to alert Rupert’s family, but he was not a man who could stand to see a man suffering.

They managed to get Rupert into the bed, and Quin drew the blanket to Rupert’s chin and placed Lucy at his side. The journey from the hut, although short as the crow flies, had been punishingly arduous, and he could see that for Rupert it had been excruciating. His face was even more drawn, and his breathing, the shallow respiration of a man at the limit of his tolerance. His thin fingers clenched Lucy’s fur.