Duke in Darkness by Nicola Davidson

Author:Nicola Davidson
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
Publisher: 0
Published: 2019-02-26T18:30:00+00:00

IT FELT like he’d been sucker-punched from two different directions.

Castlereagh’s blow was entirely unintentional. The viscount couldn’t know that Napoleon ordering a general mobilization, that is, official preparation for war, would never be a topic that Gabriel wished to discuss. Not anymore. But that opium-eating sewer rat claiming that a long-serving British Army colonel had allowed himself to be captured and tortured, as if he had surrendered immediately and trotted meekly into that prison to be cut and burned and beaten? The words wouldn’t even settle in his mind to be weighed and measured. They were too sickening. Too shocking.

Too shameful.

Far worse, they’d been said in front of Lilian, who stood frozen, her eyes wide, her color pale, and her lips pressed tightly together. Clearly, no one around him knew what to say, either. For a large group of people, they were astonishingly quiet. Several of the ladies had begun to discreetly move away from the group as soon as Castlereagh mentioned the word fighting, but had been replaced by twice as many men. A few were muttering under their breath about upstarts in lace. Some were startled, as though an actor had spoken the wrong lines in a play. Others looked like they were trying to stifle amusement. But worst of all…some were nodding.

Bloody goddamned nodding.

Rage surged through him, twisting and clawing together with a burning humiliation and guilt, and he actually started to rock on his heels. As if to remind him of his greatest failure, all his sword and dagger-inflicted scars abruptly tightened and itched unbearably, his foot, the one the French soldiers had crushed between two bits of wood and applied a hot poker to underneath to try and make him talk of the army’s plans, throbbed to the point of agony. His throat had become so dry he couldn’t form words, but his hands were curling into fists. The dandy might not realize it, but he stood seconds away from dismemberment.

After swallowing hard, Gabriel’s tongue finally loosened and he fixed a deadly glare on the man in green and yellow. “You know nothing.”

“Damned right!” burst out Castlereagh, his red face the portrait of a man holding onto his temper by the shortest of threads. “How dare you say such a thing to Exton? The man’s a hero! Commended many times by Wellington. Decorated by His Majesty!”

“Perhaps,” said the dandy, languidly smoothing one of his lacy sleeves. “Doesn’t change what happened at Bayonne, though. Utter disaster. Major-General Hay killed. Another lackluster leader, Lieutenant-General Hope captured, how that man could be elevated to a baron, I’m sure I don’t know. And so many good British men killed or wounded under your collective watch. Over 800, wasn’t it, just in the one sortie?”

Every poisoned arrow found its mark. How could they not, when it was all true? Albeit without critical context like the French General Thouvenot of the Bayonne garrison had attacked in the dead of night, proceeding despite knowing that Napoleon had abdicated. Nor that the French had lost the battle and suffered over 900 dead or wounded.

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