Prologue #2
Her husband, Viscount Wentworth, had been quick to name his enemy—the Duke of Ashford—as his wife’s killer.
A candlestick that had been in the Ashford family for generations had gone missing, and lo and behold, its match remained on the mantel of the Wentworth drawing room while its pair lay hidden in the Ashford rose garden.
The police might have investigated further. But they hadn’t. They’d been quick to arrest, the courts quick to condemn. Almost as if Viscount Wentworth had undue influence upon the authorities.
He did. Sebastian knew it. Papa knew it too.
During their last visit to the cold, dark prison, Papa had explained the Viscount’s hatred—an old rivalry that went back to their days at Cambridge.
“Your mother chose me, you see. Not the Viscount. He never forgave either of us for it. Emily had never wanted him, but he’d convinced himself otherwise.
When she refused his proposal, telling him she loved me, he vowed to make us pay someday.
” Papa’s voice had been hoarse from the damp cell, his usually immaculate beard grown wild and shot through with new silver.
“The candlestick, it was planted to entrap me. I’m certain of it.
He killed his wife and had the evidence placed in our gardens. ”
“Why would he kill her?” James had asked.
“He was a man with little control over his emotions,” Papa had said.
“Spoiled. Privileged. Led to believe by his parents and the sycophants around him that he was better than others and therefore could do as he pleased. When we were at school together, he was known as a cheat and a liar. A petty brat who’d never heard the word no.
I can only imagine what he would do if someone finally said it to him.
Perhaps his wife disobeyed him or challenged him?
Maybe they were fighting and he lost control of himself? ”
Sebastian’s stomach clenched so hard he thought he might be sick right there in the street.
The taste of copper filled his mouth. Lord, he’d been biting his tongue without realizing it.
But he couldn’t stop. Couldn’t falter. Papa had to see them.
Had to know that whatever lies had condemned him, his children believed in his innocence.
“Sebastian.” Sophia’s voice was barely a whisper. “I cannot… I cannot breathe properly.”
He stopped, pulling her into the shelter of a doorway while the crowd surged past them. Her face was pale as parchment, her lips tinged blue with cold and fear. He stripped off his own coat, threadbare now, but still warmer than her thin shawl and wrapped it around her trembling shoulders.
“Listen to me, Poppet,” he said, using Papa’s endearment. “We are Ashfords. We do not break. Not today.”
She nodded, though tears leaked from the corners of her eyes.
They pushed forward again, and Sebastian spotted a familiar face in the mob—Susan, who had been their housemaid until they’d had to let her go along with most of the other servants. Her face was streaked with tears, her cap askew.
“Susan!” Sebastian called out.
She turned, and her expression crumpled when she saw them. Without hesitation, she began shouldering her way through the crowd, her voice rising above the din: “They’re Lord Ashford’s children! For God’s sake, let them through!”
“Stay strong,” she whispered in Sebastian’s ear as the crowd parted. “We all know the truth. Someday everyone will too.”
The path Susan had opened led them closer to Newgate’s towering stone walls, blackened with soot and age. In the courtyard beyond the gates, a wooden scaffold stood like an altar of death. The black-draped cart waited nearby, and the hangman’s noose swayed gently in the morning wind.
Sophia made a sound—not quite a sob, not quite a whimper. Something broken and small. James cursed under his breath, words he’d learned from the stable boys, his hands shaking now as well as clenching.
Then the prison gates groaned open.
Their father emerged into the gray morning light.
He was thinner than even Sebastian had feared, his clothes hanging loose on his frame.
His skin had the pallor of a man who had not seen proper sunlight in months, his once-muscular figure now gaunt, his intelligent eyes hollow.
But even with the heavy shackles around his wrists and ankles, even surrounded by guards, he carried himself like the duke he was. His head was high, his step steady.
When his eyes found his children in the crowd, his composure almost broke. Sebastian saw it—the way Papa’s breath caught, the way his lips parted as if he might cry out. For just a moment, the Duke of Ashford was simply a father seeing his children for the last time.
“Papa!” Sebastian raised his hand, his voice carrying over the crowd’s murmur. “We are here!”
Relief flooded their father’s face, erasing years from his grizzled visage. For an instant, Sebastian could see the man who had taught him to ride, who had read him stories by the fire, who had promised that everything would always be all right.
Papa’s gaze locked on Sebastian first, and a silent question passed between them: Will you take care of James and Sophia?
Sebastian nodded. “I shall do my best, Papa,” he called out, his voice steady despite the tears streaming down his face. “I give you my word.”
Next, the duke’s gaze moved to his middle child.
James lifted his chin, his eyes flashing with love that mirrored their father’s.
Papa had often said James was like their mother—fierce, loyal, and protective of those they loved.
As the two communicated without words, it became obvious to Sebastian that his father was asking James to forgive, to live without bitterness.
And finally, he turned to his little Sophia. She broke away from Sebastian’s grip and stumbled forward. “I love you, Papa!” she sobbed. “Please do not forget us!”
“I could never forget, Poppet!” Papa’s voice carried clearly across the courtyard.
Then Sophia asked, in her sweet, high-pitched voice that somehow carried over the crowd’s murmur, “Will you tell my mother I said hello? Does she know me, do you think?”
Papa’s face softened impossibly. “She does, love. I’m sure of it. In fact, she visits me often in my dreams and tells me how proud she is of her pretty, smart daughter.”
The clergyman stepped forward then, a thin man in black robes who began to murmur the familiar words of final prayers. Papa listened with bowed head, his lips moving silently. When the time came for his last words to the crowd, his voice was calm, measured, dignified.
“I am an innocent man,” he said, his voice carrying over the hushed crowd. “Someday, God willing, the truth will be revealed. You need only look to Viscount Wentworth to see who really killed his wife.”
Then his voice softened as he turned to his children.
“Each of you has brought me more joy than a man deserves. You have blessed me beyond measure. Never forget how much I love you. And please, do not let my fate make you bitter. Live with truth and integrity. Let your hearts lead your decisions. Be happy, knowing I shall be watching you from heaven. So very proud.”
The executioner stepped forward—a massive man whose face was hidden behind a black hood.
His movements were swift and practiced, horrible in their efficiency.
Sebastian found himself thinking, with strange detachment, that this was the man’s job.
Afterward, he would go home to his wife and children and forget that his actions had torn a family apart forever.
The noose went around Papa’s neck with a sound like whispered death. The trapdoor yawned beneath his feet like the mouth of hell itself.
Sebastian’s breath stopped in his chest. The world narrowed to this moment, this terrible, final moment. Beside him, Sophia whispered the Lord’s Prayer through her tears, her small voice barely audible.
Without warning, Sophia tore away from Sebastian’s grasp and ran toward the scaffold, screaming Papa’s name. A guard caught her before she could reach the steps, his hands gentle but firm as he held her writhing, desperate form.
“My little love,” Papa called to her, his voice impossibly tender. “It is all right. I am not afraid. Go to your brothers.”
Sebastian gathered Sophia into his arms, feeling her small body shake with sobs that seemed too large for her fragile frame. James dropped to his knees on the cobblestones, his hands pressed flat against the stones as if he could somehow anchor himself to the earth.
Papa closed his eyes. His lips moved in silent communion with his God. Then he opened them once more and looked toward his children with a smile that was both heartbreaking and somehow, impossibly, peaceful.
“I love you,” he mouthed one final time.
The executioner’s hand moved to the lever.
Time stretched like spun glass, fragile and endless.
Then the lever fell.
The trapdoor beneath Papa’s feet gave way, and the rope snapped taut with a sound that would live in Sebastian’s nightmares forever. For a moment, everything stopped. The Duke’s body convulsed as the noose tightened, his final, grotesque jerk signaling the end.
Papa hung lifeless in the bitter wind.
James collapsed completely then, rocking back and forth on his knees, his shoulders heaving with silent, violent sobs. Sophia went limp in Sebastian’s arms, as if her spirit had simply fled from a pain too great to bear.
But Sebastian remained standing, watching as the executioner cut the rope and Papa’s lifeless body crumpled to the wet ground. His father—his guide, his hero—lay in the dirt like a discarded thing.
Several guards came forward with a stretcher.
When they had Papa situated, they lifted him and headed toward the heavy prison doors.
Sebastian half-expected James and Sophia to rush toward their father’s body, but they remained by his side.
Perhaps they knew, as he did, that Papa’s soul was no longer there.
Around them, the crowd began to disperse, murmuring amongst themselves about the spectacle they’d witnessed, their bloodthirsty desires satisfied.
Damn them all.
Sebastian stood among the wreckage of their childhood, his heart a gaping wound. But something else was taking root there, something colder, more deliberate than simple grief. Not just vengeance, though that burned in him like Greek fire. It was purpose, sharp and clean as a blade.
He would not simply restore their name. He would destroy the man who had orchestrated this travesty. Viscount Wentworth would pay for every lie he had told, every piece of false evidence he had planted, every moment of suffering he had inflicted upon their family.
Sebastian would learn the art of patience.
He would master the games of power and politics that had defeated his father.
He would become everything he needed to see justice done.
He would ensure his siblings lived full lives—ones that fulfilled their father’s wishes.
With opportunities and freedom. And love. That most of all.
And he would never, not for a single day of his life, forget the sound of that rope going taut, or the way his father had smiled at them even as death reached up to claim him.
The boy who had walked to Newgate Prison that morning was gone. The boy who had once read peacefully by the fire while snow fell beyond the windows was nothing but a memory.
In his place stood someone harder, colder, infinitely more dangerous.
Someone who would make the world remember the name Ashford—and tremble at it.
Someone who would make Viscount Wentworth suffer.