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The duke pulled back his arm, his hand clenched in a fist, and cuffed Cassia on the side of her head. She put up her arms, trying to protect herself.

Despite his years, the duke was still a strong and solid man. He shook Cassia, tightening his grip. “Seems I will have to resort to the same measures as your father did with you ...”

Cassia looked up, blinking. Her ears were ringing where he’d struck her. Memories, images, of her father when he had beaten her, flooded her mind, making her feel helpless. All the times, she had simply been made to suffer at his hands...

And then the duke grabbed her again, this time wrapping his hands around her throat. Slowly he tightened his fingers.

Cassia fought to draw a breath.

“Where is it?” he growled

“I said I don’t know!”

His fingers dug further into her neck, his thumb pressing into the soft flesh under her throat.

Cassia struggled against him, and when she couldn’t break his hold, she dropped her arms and reached behind her, seeking something, anything to use as a weapon against him.

She toppled a vase from its stand, heard it crash to the floor, and then her fingers closed around something. Something hard, something solid.

She began to feel the blackness closing in.

She saw her father’s face again in her mind’s eye, twisted with rage.

She took up whatever it was she felt, and in the confusion and the darkness, she lifted it high, bringing it down hard against the duke’s head. There was the sound of something cracking, then snapping. The duke’s hold on her throat loosened. A moment later, he crumpled to the floor.

Cassia gasped for breath, clinging to the ladder behind her. When she blinked, looked, she saw the duke lying on the carpet. And beside him, broken in half, lay her father’s walking stick.

There came the sound of a heavy thud and wood splintering as the door across the room suddenly burst open. And then Rolfe was there, almost as if she’d conjured him in a dream.

“Cassia ...” He took her into his arms. “Are you all right?”

She nodded against his shirtfront. “Yes. I’m fine.”

Rolfe looked at her closely, running tender fingers along the side of her head, her neck. “I will never forgive myself for not being here to protect you.”

“No, Rolfe.” Cassia said. She looked at him. “This time, I needed to save myself. And I did.”

He took her to him and buried his face against her hair. “I am so sorry...”

He held her there for several moments, until finally Cassia lifted her head, stepping away.

She looked at the duke still lying prone on the carpet. “Is he ...?”

Rolfe knelt, checked his pulse. He shook his head. “Just unconscious.”

Cassia just stared at him. “He wanted my father’s document, the one he mentioned in his letter to me. I told him I didn’t have it. He didn’t believe me when I said I didn’t know where it was.”

“Bastard.” Rolfe nudged the duke with the toe of his boot. “It seems my suspicions about Geoffrey were unfounded. It was the duke who had killed your father all along.”

Rolfe reached down then toward the carpet and picked up the half of the walking stick that was lying near his feet. He tested its weight in his hand. As he moved it, something fluttered out from inside. “What in the ...?”

Cassia bent to retrieve it and saw that it was a rolled and tied piece of parchment, yellowed with age. She knew even before opening it what it was. It was the mysterious document her father had written to her about. She thought she had looked everywhere. She had forgotten one thing.

Her father never went anywhere without his walking stick.

Cassia carefully unfolded the sheet, holding it under the light of the candle to study it.

“Rolfe, this is the document my father wrote to me about. It appears as if it is proof that the Duke of Manton was one of the Regicides who ordered the execution of King Charles I.”

Rolfe peered inside the hollowed-out stick. “Clever how he had it hidden in his walking stick all along.”

Cassia looked at him. “But why, Rolfe? Why would my father leave me something such as this?”

“He said it would protect you. I had my suspicions when you mentioned the engraving on his watch. I had Dante do a little checking. Cassia, it seems your father amassed his fortune through extortion. Your father used that document to blackmail the duke. The estate in Lancashire he left to you was formerly owned by the Duke of Manton. When I could find no record of any monetary transaction for the exchange of the property, I started to grow suspicious. Most of your father’s fortune was amassed that way.

Then he sought to force the duke into having his son marry you.

The duke is a powerful man. He could not risk being exposed to the king as one of the Regicides who had ordered the death of the king’s father.

When you refused Malcolm’s proposal, the duke most probably figured your father would then use that document in any way he could. ”

Rolfe glanced at the duke, still lying on the floor.

“I would wager the duke decided the only way to end it would be to kill your father and take the document so no one would ever know the true role he had played.”

Cassia looked up at him. “What do we do now?”

Rolfe took the document from her. He refolded it and tucked it in his coat pocket. “We will give this to the one person who has the right to the information it contains and let him decide what to do.”

He took Cassia’s hand, leading her from the room. “The king once said his one wish was to know who the men were who were responsible for executing his father. We are going to grant that wish for him. Tonight.”