The Duchess War (Brothers Sinister #1)

The evening was dark and windy, but not quite cold. Sebastian’s telegram had told him where Oliver was held—in the Guildhall itself, just beneath the library where he’d first met his wife, mere steps from the hearing room where they’d first been introduced.

And indeed, when he came up on the building in the dark of night, it seemed as if it might have been the evening that they met. Some sort of event was going on in the Great Hall. He knocked on the side door instead, waited, and then knocked louder still, until the man who passed for gaoler came.

“No visiting.” He frowned at Robert. “Not at this hour.”

Robert slipped the man a heavy coin. “I’m not a visitor.”

The man didn’t even blink. “Right this way, sir,” he said.

Paris and the croissants seemed very far away. The memory belonged to some other man, someone happily married, shyly delighted with the future that was slowly unveiling itself. All that happiness was taken over by a hollow feeling in his gut as he was led to the holding room. The gaoler unearthed a hooded lantern that showed grimy walls and wooden doors. He unlocked the main doors and then went up to one of the cells. Wood scraped against wood.

Robert aimed the light forward. The man hadn’t opened the door to the cell. Instead, he’d moved a panel, one that covered a fixed slot at eye level, a few inches high and maybe half a foot long.

The gaoler took a few steps back and motioned Robert forward.

Robert stepped close, lifting the lantern as he did. The rays didn’t reach into the pitch-black interior of the cell behind that slot.

“Oliver?” His voice was low.

“Robert?” He heard a rustle. “God, that’s bright. I can’t see a thing.”

The light from the lantern was anemic at best, not even enough to show the dimensions of the cell his brother was in. For Oliver to think it bright… he must have been sitting in darkness for hours. All the time Robert had spent in his first-class compartment, his brother had been in here. He shivered.

“Do you have blankets?” Robert demanded. “Food?”

“What are you doing here?” Oliver replied in an unnaturally cheerful voice. “You’re on your honeymoon now. You’re supposed to be in Paris.”

“This is my fault.” Robert set the lantern down and stepped forward, dropping his voice. “I wrote those goddamned handbills. I never wanted you involved at all. It’s my fault you’re in that stinking cell.” Not a figure of speech, that. He’d come close enough to scent the air wafting from that little slot. Stinking was putting it mildly.

“Well, I surmised you were the author,” Oliver said after a short pause. “They sound like you, if you know what I mean. It was fascinating reading. Why didn’t you tell me?”

“I knew someone was obtaining false convictions for criminal sedition,” Robert huffed; his breath was white in the cold of the room. “I wanted to find out who it was. I’m the one person they couldn’t charge. If I’d told you, you might be considered an accomplice.”

“Ah. Clever.”

“Not clever enough, obviously. I’m shocked that I arrived in town in time. I imagined they would have rushed you through to conviction.”

“Apparently not.” Oliver sighed. “They’re waiting for a witness to arrive. Do you remember Lord Green, from our Cambridge days?”

“Lord Green? Yes, I remember him—but what the devil is he going to say? Have you seen him more recently than I have?”

“No, not since the time we had that last wager over the chess game, three years back. But they’ve called him to testify, and I have no idea what the devil he’s going to say.”

Chess again. It couldn’t be a coincidence. What it all meant, though… Robert shook his head.

“Well, you’ve a witness, too. I’d like to see a jury vote to convict you when the Duke of Clermont attests that he did it himself. That you knew nothing of it.”

He brought his hand up to the slot. But instead of being able to grasp his brother’s hand, or clap him on the shoulder, his fingers met a cold metal grate, the bars spaced too closely to allow more than his smallest finger through. He could only brush his brother’s fingertips.

“Here now,” the gaoler called. “None of that—passing of knives and the like where I can’t see it.”

Robert dropped his hand in frustration.

“I’ll be back in the morning,” Robert promised. “We’ll work everything out then. I’ll order a bottle of champagne in anticipation of your release.”

“Better make it a gallon of carbon oil.”

“Carbon oil?”

“This cell has lice.”

Robert winced. Dark, smelly, louse-ridden—he’d done this to his brother. The self-recrimination boiled up inside him. But if Oliver could manage good cheer…

“Good thing, then, that I couldn’t slap your shoulder,” he said.

“Ha.”

He turned to go. “I give you my word. I won’t let them convict you.”

But as he turned, he realized that a second figure had joined them in the dark—someone shorter than Robert and wider. In the darkness, he caught only a suggestion of hard muscle and imposing strength.