Page 122

New York City

He made his way to the living room and smiled hearing his mother singing softly in the kitchen.

She had a beautiful voice. The Darlings were blessed with talented genes.

His mother could sing. His sister was the top dancer at her school, and he played the guitar, acoustic and electric.

But that didn’t mean he wanted to be in a band.

Conn had other aspirations. He hadn’t postponed college for nothing.

He didn’t want to be bogged down in books and confined to a desk—or even a stage.

So he worked two jobs to put himself through college for the academy’s required two years and attended self-defense classes at night.

His plans for life were joining the police force and living life like each day might be his last—because it could be.

He spotted his keys on the small table against the windowed wall, where his mother kept the mail. He’d been checking it when he came in last night and left his keys there.

He reached out, ready to grab them and bid his mother farewell until Sunday night, when the table with the keys on it disappeared, taking the entire wall with it.

His breath stopped, caught somewhere on a startled shout and an exclamation of stunned disbelief.

For, where the wall had been a moment ago, there was now a cavernous room, bathed in the flickering light of a hundred candles.

There was much to see where there should have only been sunshine coming through the window.

But Connall saw nothing else but the view directly in front of him.

The view of his sister caught in the clutches of two men who appeared to be fighting over her.

Without thinking of what he was doing or where he was about to go, he stepped through the giant hole in the wall to rush to his sister’s defense.

It was a problem in Conn’s life, always rushing in first and looking around later, not that anything would have stopped him from protecting his sister.

The moment he stepped through everything went blurry.

Someone raced past him and blurred his vision just long enough for whoever it was to disappear into his living room. A gunshot rang out. Connall instinctively dove behind a table. A woman screamed a sorrowful wail.

Aria? Fearing it was his sister, he straightened and looked around. But his sister was nowhere to be seen…and neither was his parent’s living room.

“Mom?” he called out, but no one heard him over the swooshing metal blades cutting the air, another body thumping to the floor, and the continued screaming of a girl he had never seen before about to reach the shooter. Her hands were outstretched, fingers ready to close around the man’s neck.

Connall didn’t spare an instant to ponder that the gun had a long barrel like the flintlocks of the eighteenth century or that another man had just been cut down before his eyes.

The group of men standing over the second fallen man turned to raise their weapons at the girl next.

Connall took one more long stride and landed in front of her. Immediately he took hold of the shooter’s wrist, snatching the pistol from his hand and pointing it at the other men.

The girl hurried away from him to kneel beside the fallen men. With a hard look of resolve taking over his expression, Conn faced the group as if his flesh and bone body could stop over a dozen shiny metal blades.

He knew one way it could.

When he held the pistol up, pointing the barrel at the killer’s temple, most of the guards lowered their weapons.

“It is not loaded,” the culprit said with a smirk and a thick British accent.

Connall knew he was right and dropped the pistol. Then, with a flick of his wrist, he snatched the killer’s sword out of its sheath and pointed that at him instead. “Who needs bullets?”

“Who are you?” Another man’s deep voice rang out, shaking the walls and raising Connall’s hackles.

“Who are you?” Connall challenged, turning to him without moving his blade away from the killer.

Were they all insane to treat him like the villain? Where the hell was he? Who were these lunatics? Where was his sister?

The loudmouth sputtered almost comically, giving Connall a moment to glance at the girl he’d saved. She was still crouched beside the two men the killer had shot. She was crying and shaking one of them, crying his name. “Will! Will!”

Connall’s blood boiled.

“Why are you threatening me when this lowlife scum just shot two men?” he shouted. “Is this a play? Is that what this is?” He glanced down at the girl. She hadn’t stopped crying. Was that real blood pooling out around them?

“How did you get inside the castle?” The loudmouth demanded. He, like his friend, also spoke with an accent.

“Castle?” Connall questioned. He gave his surroundings a quick look over. It did, in fact, look like a castle.

“Where am I? Where’s my sister?” He demanded, pushing the blade closer against the killer’s flesh.

His gaze met the girl’s. Her’s seemed to tell him to do it. Kill the man who shot her friends…brothers.

The blood around her was real. Connall was beginning to smell it. “What is this place?”

The loudmouth, who was dressed like a pompous clown in layers of lace and elaborate knots at his long neck, stepped around his table to move closer.

Connall saw that his chubby calves were encased like two sausages in tight hose.

His feet were squeezed into heeled shoes, and to top off the look, he wore a high wig on his head.

Conn gave him a look his appearance deserved.

“You are not from here, eh?” The wigged man asked with a curious arch of his brow and a movement of his fingers that relaxed the guards. “Take him away,” he ordered, pointing to the shooter.

“Father!”

Father. Connall scoffed. Now it made sense—or none at all. Where was his parent’s living room? What had just happened to him? Where was Aria? His head felt full of cobwebs.

“What do you think you are doing, Thomas?” A woman dressed in volumes of gold lace and satin stormed toward the killer’s father.

This, Connall guessed, was the mother. She turned her unholy gaze on him first, and then on the guards dragging her son away.

“Unhand him or I’ll see that your heads roll. ”

Her threat was chilling enough, but ‘Thomas, the father’ motioned with a finger and the guards moved to take hold of her, as well. She practically hissed at them and Connall wasn’t sure if he should laugh or applaud all their performances.

“Take her outside,” Thomas commanded like a king. “Everyone get out!” His gaze settled on Connall. “Not you. You stay.”

Connall was about to ask him if he looked like the castle dog, when one of the guardsmen leaned over and pulled the girl to her feet, away from the two fallen victims.

“No! I will not leave my brothers!” Her blood-shot eyes met Connall’s. “Please…”

They were her brothers. Connall imagined what Aria would do if it had been him. He stepped forward. “Let her go!”

The guard looked at Thomas, who nodded, and then set his gaze on Connall again. “You know the Gables?”

“No, I don’t. Look, where’s my sister? That’s all I want, and then I’ll leave.”

“Yes, yes, you speak like them,” the father said, looking like he had just figured it all out.

Connall wished he would share. “Who? I speak like who?”

“Like my son, Grayson. Not that one,” he said, motioning to the double doors where people were leaving, and where the guards had taken the killer and his mother.

“I am speaking about my true son, the Marquess of Dartmouth, and his nurse, Harper Black, and of course, the woman you seek, Miss Aria Darling?” He smiled as if he were unable to help himself at Connall’s stunned expression.

“Where is she?” Connall ground out. He’d had just about enough of this. If he didn’t start getting answers his temper would make the shooter’s mother look like a kitten.

Thomas pointed to the wall along which tables were now lined. “She went through there with my son.”

Connall rushed to the wall and pounded his hand against it, calling her name. “Aria!”

Someone moved close to him. He turned and looked into the dark eyes of the girl he’d saved.

“Aria…Aria is your sister?” She asked him in a quiet—also British-accented voice.

“Yes. How do you people know her? This can’t be a theatrical performance because that blood is real.” At this, the girl began to cry again.

“I’m sorry, but where’s Aria?”

“My guess,” Thomas said, coming closer to where they stood, “is that they went to the same place Grayson’s mother once took him. Do not deny it, Mr. Darling, I presume?”

At this, the girl tugged on his sleeve. “Then, you are Aria’s brother, His Grace the Duke of Wishford. Aria told us you would come for her.”

What? What was she saying? Was he just supposed to go along with all this?

Was Aria hiding behind the wall laughing?

If it was all scripted, this pretty woman should win the highest award for her acting.

Her eyes were red and puffy from crying, but more, there was a dying ember in her gaze.

As if people she loved had really just died in front of her.

Whatever came next, he wanted to help her.

“Yes,” he said, finding himself nodding, “I’m the duke.” He turned to Thomas and tilted his chin with arrogance.

“Wishford?” Thomas asked. “I have not heard of it.”

“It’s north,” Connall guessed.

“Where are your men?” Thomas asked him. “Surely you did not come alone.”

Connall glanced at the girl, hoping she had the answer to that. She remained quiet.

“They’re around,” Connall told him with a smug smirk.

“I thought it safer to have them blend in or your guardsmen might feel intimidated around such elite men.” Yeah, he could play too.

He was a three-time black belt in four different styles of martial arts.

He could handle himself and keep the girl safe while they escaped, but what about her brothers?

“Of course!” Thomas let out merrily. “Now I remember! Your Grace! How is your brother, Otis?”

Connall narrowed his eyes on him, sensing the chubby-calved man was lying. “I don’t have a brother named Otis.”

Thomas’ smile curled into a grin. “You are correct about that. I made it up. But I was not aware the duke had a sister.”

“Should it be announced that she’s a fool who travels alone?”

“Of course not, but—but I saw them go through that wall,” Thomas argued. “You believed it when I told you!”

“Yes, I checked to see if there were any hidden doors. There aren’t. And to see if the wall is solid. It is. So, they went through a solid wall?” Connall gave him a pitying look. “Did they go around to the other side? Let me suggest you send for her before I lose my patience.”

Thomas’ face turned red. Seeing it, the girl stepped forward. “Your Grace,” she said to Connall, “His Grace—” she motioned to Thomas—“does not know where your sister went.”

Thomas was a duke too? Did that complicate things if any of this was impossibly real? Nah, Connall told himself. Why should it? Besides, there was a logical explanation for all this. Connall would discover it in a bit. First, he wanted to check the two men on the floor.

“Fine then,” Connall let them know, still haughty despite just learning that Thomas was a duke.

He moved toward the nearest table, picked up a silver goblet, sniffed it, and then downed its contents. The wine—was it wine?—went down like bitter medicine and caused him to grip the table as it went down. He gave his head a little shake and then walked boldly to the girl’s fallen brothers.

He checked them both for any signs of life.

One of them was still alive.