Chapter 5 #2
Elizabeth exhaled slowly. “Even so, the press has vilified him. Half the city believes he did it. The other half just wants him to go away. What if we can't change their minds?”
Charles gave a small smile. “You forget the promise we made, years ago. When you asked to join the firm.”
She looked up at him.
“We swore,” he said, voice quiet but resolute, “never to let an innocent soul be condemned without a fight. No matter their status. No matter the odds.”
Elizabeth swallowed hard. She remembered.
It was the night after they won their first wrongful conviction appeal together.
They had toasted with cheap wine and whispered a promise over law books and scattered case files.
That no one—not the poorest pauper nor the most scandal-plagued noble—would be discarded without justice.
“I remember,” she said.
Charles reached across the carriage and gently tapped her folded hands.
“We are not here to win a popularity contest, Lizzie. We are here to find the truth. Even if it is buried under lies, envy, or noble scandals.”
She nodded slowly. “Then I will do it. Whatever it takes.”
“I know you will,” he said with a proud smile. “You are already better than I ever was.”
Elizabeth looked back out the window as the carriage turned toward their neighborhood, the weight of the case finally starting to feel like something she could carry.
The Duke of Ravenshire was a complicated man.
But if there was even the slightest chance he was innocent—
They would find it.
◆◆◆
The night offered no relief.
The heat that had pressed down on London all day had not broken with the sun — it simply thickened, settling into the air like something that had decided to stay.
Damon stood in the doorway of the safe house, his collar loosened, glass of brandy in hand, and looked out at the two guards posted in the yard.
They were sweating. They were bored. One was standing, one was pacing a slow, mechanical circuit of the perimeter, and both had the expressions of men who had been doing this long enough to have stopped expecting anything interesting to happen.
Damon watched them for a moment.
Then he picked up the bottle and another glass and walked out.
The pacing guard stopped. The standing one straightened.
"Your Grace."
"At ease." He held up the bottle. "I am not escaping. I simply cannot sleep in this heat and the books inside are terrible company."
The older guard — broad, weathered, with the permanent squint of a man who had spent years watching things — looked at the bottle, then at Damon, with an expression of comprehensive suspicion.
"We cannot drink on duty, Your Grace."
"Of course not." Damon set the extra glass down on the step, unhurried.
"Though I will say — if my intention were to get you both drunk and slip into the night, I would have chosen significantly better brandy.
" He tilted the bottle so they could read the label.
"This is adequate at best. A serious escape attempt deserves a Margaux, minimum. "
The younger guard's mouth moved. He suppressed it.
The older one did not. "Your Grace. The glass."
"Is staying exactly where it is," Damon said pleasantly.
"No obligation. I was in the mood for conversation, not a scheme.
" He leaned against the doorframe, glass in hand, entirely comfortable in the thick summer dark.
"You can guard the house and be human beings simultaneously. I have checked. It is permitted."
A silence stretched between them. Somewhere beyond the treeline, something moved in the undergrowth. The heat pressed down.
The younger guard — square-jawed, probably not yet thirty — looked at him with the particular expression of someone deciding whether to be suspicious or simply curious.
Damon took a sip. "Tell me about yourselves. Do you have families?"
The younger guard blinked, caught off guard by the directness of it. "Two children, Your Grace. Both young."
"How young?"
"Three and five."
Damon nodded once, as though filing it carefully. He turned to the older guard.
"And you?"
The older man was quiet for a moment, as though deciding whether the question deserved an answer. Then: "A boy. Twenty years old."
Damon studied him. Not intrusively — the way a man reads a room, quiet and complete. The set of the older guard's jaw. The way he had mentioned the boy's age without being asked for it, which meant it was the number he carried.
"And I presume," Damon said, carefully, "that you do not want him standing outside houses in the August heat."
The older guard looked at him. Something shifted behind the eyes — the particular expression of a man who has been read accurately by someone he expected nothing from.
"I am away too many hours," he said, after a moment. "I do not want that for him."
"No," Damon said. "You would not." He was quiet for a beat.
"You are standing in the heat outside a house in August so there is food on their table and a roof over their heads.
They may not know that is what you are doing.
But that is what you are doing." A pause.
"I respect that more than most things I have encountered in a great many drawing rooms."
The older guard said nothing. But he did not look away.
"Now," Damon said, his tone shifting just enough — the gravity lifting, the dry edge returning — "I would tell you to bring him to work for me when this is all resolved.
I have positions that suit an ambitious young man.
" He paused. "But you would accuse me of bribery, and frankly I have enough charges outstanding.
" He considered for a moment. "Tell him to become an artist instead.
They keep extraordinary hours, answer to no one, and the ones who are any good live better than most people expect.
" A pause. "And unlike guarding convicted Dukes in the August heat, the work is at least interesting. "
The older guard looked at him for a long moment.
Then, very quietly, the corner of his mouth moved.
It was not quite a smile. But it was the architecture of one.
A silence stretched between them. Somewhere beyond the treeline, something moved in the undergrowth.
"You seem in high spirits, Your Grace," he said. "Despite the circumstances."
"Do I?" Damon considered this genuinely. "Well. A few days ago my company was rats. Tonight I have two slightly defensive men and a passable brandy." He lifted his glass. "That is, by any reasonable measure, a tremendous upgrade."
The younger guard laughed — a short, surprised sound, as though it had escaped before he could stop it.
The older one remained unmoved, but something around his eyes shifted. "Your charm is not working on us, Your Grace. We are not starstruck women."
"No," Damon agreed, without missing a beat. "You are considerably more threatening." He took a sip. "Starstruck women do not tell me when I am about to do something inadvisable. You, I suspect, would."
The older guard looked at him for a moment. "We would."
"Exactly. Invaluable."
Another silence — easier than the first.
"In all seriousness," Damon said, and his tone shifted just enough that both men registered it, "I also have hope. Which I did not have a week ago." He paused. "And the person responsible for that has green eyes."
He said it simply, as though reporting a meteorological fact.
The younger guard glanced at the older one. The older one looked at Damon with something that might, in better lighting, have been amusement.
"Green eyes, Your Grace?"
"Remarkable ones, as it happens."
"I see." The younger guard's mouth was doing the thing again. "Wasted no time, then."
"In my defense," Damon said, "I have been in a cell for months. My standards for human contact have been recalibrated by necessity."
"So any beautiful woman would have done," the older guard said. Flat. Almost a challenge.
Damon opened his mouth.
"I have a reputation to mainta—"
He stopped.
The word hung there, unfinished, in the thick summer air.
He looked at his glass. Something had crossed his face — not quite an expression, more the absence of one, the look of a man who has just noticed something he did not expect to find.
Then he straightened.