To Desire a Wicked Duke (Courtship Wars 6)

—Diary Entry of Miss Tess Blanchard

Ian continued her lessons in passion that afternoon, although making allowances for the unaccustomed tenderness of Tess’s body. Her overheated senses were still throbbing when she returned to her own bedchamber later to dress for dinner, and it required significant effort to focus on such mundane tasks as ringing for her maid and choosing what gown to wear.

Alice was arranging Tess’s hair when Fanny knocked and wandered into the room. Giving a big yawn, Fanny said she had just risen from a nap after being up a good part of the night guarding the cave—which had all been for naught.

“It is disheartening that our efforts yielded no results,” the courtesan complained. “We saw nothing of any smugglers last night, or anyone else for that matter.”

Tess started to reply that it was too early to deem their plan to catch the smugglers a failure, but a sudden muffled cry interrupted her.

All three women started at the strange sound, although only Alice vocalized her fear.

“Was that the ghost?” the maid breathed in a hoarse whisper.

When the eerie cry came again from near the hearth—something between a groan and a tormented scream—the hair on the back of Tess’s neck stood up.

Alice exclaimed, “Heaven save us,” while Tess rose from her dressing table and moved cautiously toward the hearth.

“Your grace … please, take care,” Alice pleaded.

“I will,” Tess murmured in return. “But I believe that was a human sound and not one made by a ghost.”

She picked up a fire iron to use as a weapon and approached the secret panel they’d discovered the previous day. With a glance behind her, she saw that Fanny had also armed herself with a large china figurine.

Inhaling slowly to calm her pounding heartbeat, Tess pressed on the catch point and slid the panel aside. The passageway was fairly dark, but she could hear the rough rasp of labored breathing to her left.

Gripping the iron harder, Tess peered inside. To her astonishment she saw a form lying there, a man from the looks of it. Since he was shifting restlessly on his back, he clearly wasn’t dead, but appeared to be asleep. Just then he cried out again, likely in the throes of a nightmare.

Repressing a wince, Tess called softly over her shoulder, “Alice, there is a man slumbering in the passageway. Go and fetch the duke—quickly. And send whatever footmen you can find. I think we have solved the mystery of our castle ghost.”

After a moment’s hesitation, Alice hurried to do her bidding. Tess sank down on her knees and inched a bit further inside the passage, although keeping the iron in front of her.

The sleeping man was dressed in a ragged coat and trousers and emitted the foul odor she recognized from her bad dream. She was debating whether to wake him when he abruptly opened his eyes and struggled

to sit up. Upon seeing Tess, he shrank back in alarm.

The left sleeve of his coat was half empty, she noted. He was missing much of one arm, and his features were gaunt and grimy as well as being flushed with fever.

Tess’s fear suddenly diminished a measure, to be replaced by a powerful rush of pity. She had seen too many such men over the past two years. Forlorn relics of humanity lying in hospital beds—if they were fortunate enough to even have beds. Former soldiers and seamen dressed in rags and missing limbs, their grimy, unwashed bodies mere skin and bones, their tormenting memories making them cry out in their sleep.

When her bedchamber door swung back with a bang to admit a footman, the one-armed man shrieked and cowered in fear. That, too, was indicative of soldiers who had seen the horrors of battle.

Tess quickly held up a hand behind her to stay the servant, and said in a low soothing voice to the frightened man, “It is all right, I won’t let anyone hurt you.”

He blinked in the dim light. “Sal, is that you?”

Tess hesitated, wondering if she should pretend to be someone else to ease his apprehension. “Won’t you come out, please?” she coaxed instead. “You must be chilled sleeping in there on the hard floor.”

“Eh?” He turned one side of his face toward her. “I canna hear too well in one ear.”

Raising her voice, she repeated her request. When he nodded, Tess backed out but remained on her knees, trying to appear unthreatening.

The man eventually crawled out from the passageway, but stayed hunched down, like a wary animal, his eyes darting around the room until finally coming to rest on Tess. “You are not Sal.”

“No, my name is Tess,” she said gently.

“I thought ye were Sal … my daughter.”

“What is your name, sir?”