Can’t Get Enough of the Duke (The Thunderbolt Club #2)

Prologue

Deckard Payne, Duke of Warburton, knelt on the cold ground beside the fallen cavalryman.

“I’m not going to survive, am I?” Lieutenant John Crewe’s eyes were the wild, dark green of a forest so thick it lived in perpetual night.

“You’ll survive,” Dex said grimly, ripping a length of cloth from his shirt and pressing it into his friend’s chest wound.

Dark crimson quickly saturated white linen, the lifeblood of yet another young man feeding the Belgian soil. Dex had a sudden, wrenching vision of this field in the future. A thicket of tortured vines springing up from the blood, bearing sorrowful red roses. An accursed place, fed by death.

Dex’s heavy cavalry regiment were armed with longswords and two holster pistols each, but it wasn’t enough against the French lancers. Help had arrived and the enemy was in retreat, but not before more than half of his regiment had been mowed down by the long oak weapon with the cruel iron blade.

Sending men into battle with mismatched weaponry. His fault.

Crewe’s blood soaking his hands. His fault.

“I’ll carry you to the field hospital.” He attempted to slide his arms under Crewe’s shoulders.

“No,” Crewe gasped. “There’s no use carrying me anywhere. I’m dying.”

“I won’t let you die.”

“Warburton.” Crewe’s breathing was shallow and erratic.

Dex gripped his hand. “I’m here.”

“My daughter . . .”

“Yes?”

Crewe had often spoken of his young daughter during the long nights of the military campaign. She was the light of his life. He’d shown Dex a miniature portrait in a gold frame. Pale red curls framing an oval face with a sharply pointed chin. Prominent freckles. Lively, dancing green eyes.

“She’ll be all alone in the world when I die,” he whispered hoarsely. Fierce love lit his face. “I have her letters.” He placed a trembling hand over his breast coat pocket. “Promise me . . .” His voice faded. He was losing too much blood.

“Anything.”

“Promise me you’ll find Analise. Become her guardian . . . protect her . . . see her future secured.”

Dex removed the bloodied packet of letters from Crewe’s coat and slipped it into an inner pocket. “You have my word.”

“Thank you.” Crewe’s eyes drifted shut. It wouldn’t be long now.

“Warburton,” a voice shouted from behind them. “On guard!”

Dex lifted his head in time to see a lone French lancer galloping toward them.

Swearing, he jumped and swiftly dove as far away from Crewe as the long lines of his body would allow, drawing the lancer from the prone figure, then rolled to his feet in an instant.

The lancer flew by, thrown off by his feint.

For a brief moment, dizziness descended as his blood pounded in his ears.

The world seemed to go hazy, then completely still, and the sights and smells and sounds of battle faded to a faint buzz.

Watch yourself, Dex. Don’t let them down.

His eyes snapped open, bright daylight flooding his vision, illuminating the clouds of dirt thrown up by the Frenchman’s horse as it wheeled around to find him again.

Quickly, Dex’s arm shot up and his fingers, obeying an automatic authority that came from somewhere beyond conscious thought, pulled his pistol’s trigger.

The man jerked backward, a ribbon of scarlet arcing from his shoulder.

The lance clattered to the ground, but still the man advanced, drawing his saber and raising it above his plumed helmet.

His face was wild. He was upon Dex before he could unsheathe his sword, the useless pistol falling to the ground as the saber point caught his ear and drew a horrible line to his chin, then another one, and another.

The white heat of pain. The sickening sensation of air hitting opened flesh. The man yelling French oaths as he continued to slash at Dex’s face, managing a hideous delicacy with the heavy blade.

Dex wrestled his sword out and blindly brought it upward at an awkward angle, feeling the hilt slam into something solid. The horse reared high above him, and the injured lancer flew backward, still screaming.

Through the blood streaming into his eyes, a pair of massive iron-shod hooves above him . . . a sudden all-encompassing pain, harder and more explosive than the pain before. Then nothing.

Nothing at all.

They said he’d drifted in and out of consciousness for more than two months, the pain of his injuries rendering him incapable of coherent response. Dex remembered floating above himself, looking down at his ungainly body splayed across the small hospital cot, head swathed in bandages.

They’d moved him at some point to a hospital in England.

He remembered a kindly old nurse who held his hand and sang songs about summer and daffodils.

He remembered his promise to Crewe. Find Analise.

Become her guardian. Protect her. See her future secured.

Poor Crewe. Anger and sadness choked him.

His friend was dead, leaving behind an orphaned daughter.

It was the weight of this promise that had finally forced his spirit back into his body.

He couldn’t die here. He must fulfill his promise.

“How are we feeling today, Your Grace?” the kindly nurse asked, bustling into the room with her arms full of fresh bed linens and a smile on her age-lined face.

He grunted. How did she think he was feeling? His limbs wouldn’t yet fully obey his commands. One side of his face was a nightmarish crisscrossing of scars. It hurt too much to talk. But he was one of the lucky ones. He was alive when so many had died.

A physician had embroidered his face with a sharp needle and thick thread, stitching his wounds together. Now that they were healing into scars, his face throbbed, stung, and itched.

Whenever he attempted to speak, all that emerged was a harsh croaking sound. This time he was determined to force words from his lips. “Nurse,” he began in a guttural whisper. “There were . . . letters in my coat.”

“Got your voice back? How wonderful. Don’t fret. We have your letters safe and sound. I’m glad you’re feeling well enough to read them. I’ll fetch them for you.” She placed the folded linens on a chair and bustled from the room.

Dex struggled to a seated position and painstakingly slid his legs off the bed, cursing his weakened state. Bracing his hands on the bed frame, he attempted to stand, only to thud back down, his entire body screaming in protest.

“Damn!” He gritted his teeth and tried again.

“Your Grace!” The nurse rushed into the room. “Where do you think you’re going?”

“To the gardens. I want air.”

“At least let me help you.” She lifted one of his arms and draped it over her sturdy shoulders. “One . . . two . . .”

“I don’t require help—” Dex’s knees buckled and he stopped talking, leaning on the nurse.

“Slowly now, Your Grace. One step at a time. We can always go back to the bed.”

“Not . . . going . . . back to bed.” Too much time had already been wasted. Months. He must find Crewe’s daughter.

The nurse helped him outside and down a pathway to a small, walled garden. She settled him on a stone bench beneath an oak tree. Removing the packet of letters from her apron pocket, she handed it to him. “I’ll bring you some tea, Your Grace.”

She left him alone. The sunlight on his face was like a language he’d known in childhood but no longer spoke. A robin hopped over the grass, its shrill voice mocking him. The flowers planted along the garden walk were like splotches of mold, the bright colors assaulting his eyes.

He unknotted the green silk ribbon tied around the letters. Bloodstained silk for his bloodstained mind.

The address on the letters was from Miss Pincheon’s Finishing School for Young Ladies in London. He’d dispatch a representative to the school immediately to relay her father’s last wishes to Miss Crewe and pay her tuition fees.

He lifted the topmost letter.

Dearest Papa,

I do wish that horrid despot Bonaparte would decide to take up goat farming instead of running around attempting to conquer the world.

I search the papers every day for news of your company.

I want to understand your trials, the dark and dangerous times, even though your letters are full of bravery and good humor.

Miss Pincheon doesn’t much care for me. She says I put on Airs and Graces and fears that I have been dreadfully spoiled, being a motherless child with a doting father.

She says I am a right impudent spitfire of a hellion.

Perhaps it is so but, oh, Papa! I try so hard to be good, to do you credit, but I find lessons in etiquette and decorum to be tedious in the extreme.

I long for the day when you are returned to me and I might leave this dreary institution.

We shall set up house in London, with an elegant equipage, and you shall take me riding on Rotten Row and I shall be shown to advantage in my riding habit.

We shall attend balls and drink champagne and dance until our feet ache.

You will glare most forbiddingly at my suitors, making them tremble in their polished boots.

And when I find my true love, we shall live merrily ever after, we three .

. . and the large, happy family that comes along.

I find my lessons so tiresome that I’ve taken to composing fantastical tales as a means of escape.

I intend to finish an entire novel! Writing my tale of princesses, dragons, and Destiny is ever so much more diverting than embroidering Proverbs.

I’ve enclosed the first chapter and I hope it will help you wile away some of the long, dreary nights until we are reunited.

I miss you dreadfully . . .

Your loving daughter,

Analise

The words blurred on the page. All that youthful exuberance and optimism extinguished. Miss Crewe’s father had never returned to her.

His fault.

He turned the page and found the first chapter of her novel in progress. The Dragon and the Blue Star was the fanciful title.

Amsonia’s royal luck had well and truly run out. Her father, missing. Her purse of gold, her sapphire diadem—all left behind in the haste she’d made to escape before she too was lost in the dark red mist that had settled so mysteriously over Vyranthrall.

The luck that had seen her as far by foot as the village of Fennsweald, the luck that had pointed her in the direction of their mage, who could, in turn, point her toward a certain dragon that knew all and saw all—that luck had evaporated in the face of the mage’s beady eyes and bone-dry air of skepticism.

She certainly would never have consulted him if she hadn’t been desperate. She must find her father.

The smell of the mage’s chambers filled her flaring nostrils with the reek of animal hides, spilled wine, and acrid smoke, causing her to feel queasy and ill at ease.

He peered out from under voluminous gray eyebrows, sweeping her travel-stained garments and poor, weary face with an assessing glance.

“Help you find and free your supposedly royal father, for naught but your fabulous tales of future recompense? If you can’t pay me this very day in gold, girlie,” he said, a rapacious smirtle stretching his leathery cheeks, “you are of no value to me whatsoever! The Dragon Qavox would tell you the same, then swallow you whole.”

His back was already turned and his hands busily weighing out portions of a noxious powder into small cloth parcels.

Blindly she turned from him and tripped over a low footstool, her hands clutching at a haphazard stack of parchment papers in a foolhardy attempt at staying upright.

Dazed by disappointment, her teary eyes slowly focused on the foremost parchment.

Bright green and brown shapes swam in the air and, written in blood red, the words “Here Liveth the Dread Dragon Qavox and His Most Coveted Cache of Jewyls” materialized.

A flash of insight and determination (from whence, she knew not!) bade her keep the yellowed map curled within her fist and told her to run, run, run down the narrow stairs without looking back . . .

Dex didn’t even notice when the nurse brought him tea, so engrossed was he in the princess’s plight.

The tea sat, growing cold, as he read every one of Analise’s letters and the chapters from her novel, turning the thin pages swiftly, eager to find out what happened next.

She’d only reached the halfway point of the novel when her father died.

Dex would never learn whether the evil mist could be defeated, or whether the Dread Dragon Qavox (a helpful key instructed the reader to pronounce the name Havox) was a prince who had been cursed, as he suspected.

A brave young princess. A father swallowed by an evil mist. A schoolgirl whose father was torn away from her by war. But in her story he could be rescued, the curse lifted.

Beneath the stack of letters was the miniature portrait Crewe had shown Dex.

Analise wore an emerald necklace and eardrops that Crewe had mentioned belonged to her mother, who had died giving birth to the girl.

Her hands were folded demurely, her posture correct, but her green eyes sparked with impish high spirits.

If Dex still possessed a heart, it would have ached for this innocent young lady tucked safely away in her finishing school in London, writing fantastical tales for her father on the battlefield.

Imagining that her love was strong enough to conquer any evil, lift any curse, and bring her father safely back home to her.

Dex knew how the story really ended.

The father taken by the red mist. Transmuted into memory in an instant by an inexplicable act of horror.

Analise’s life had been ruined two months ago. Her sweet hopes and dreams for her father’s return and her debut Season in London had been dashed to death. She would never see her father again.

Dex swiped the back of his hand over his eyes, his stomach lurching.

He couldn’t take away her suffering, but he could do what he’d solemnly promised to do: Become her guardian. Protect her. Pave her way in the world.

He must leave the hospital today.

He had a promise to keep.