Page 24 of The Big Bad Duke (The Shadows #9)

“I didn’t expect anything less,” she replied, forcing herself to sound calm and professional. “But you’ll have to move fast if you want to get clear before the smoke engulfs the entire place.”

They all rushed back toward the foyer, and Leila’s mind raced through the final details of her plan.

It has to work. There’s no other way.

She opened the gin bottles, sloshing the alcohol as she moved. The liquid soaked into the ancient wooden floorboards, dark stains spreading like blood.

Then, moving as carefully as she could manage, she pulled the hairpin from her braid and dropped it through the trapdoor opening. It tumbled into the darkness below with the faintest whisper of metal against stone.

She pulled out a match she’d managed to snag from Gideon’s house and struck it against the stone walls.

“Alhamdullah,” she whispered a prayer under her breath. For one short moment, she hesitated. Once she threw this match, there would be no going back. Once the fire started, she would have committed them both to a course that might end in their deaths.

She threw the match onto the gin-soaked floor, and it caught immediately. Flames raced along the lines of alcohol she’d poured, creating a fiery barrier between the trapdoor opening and the exit. The old, dry wood began to smolder, then burn in earnest, filling the air with acrid smoke.

Gideon’s frame appeared in the opening below, alerted by the hairpin’s fall or perhaps by the sounds of fire.

“By God, it is Wolverstone,” the more sober guard exclaimed. Then an awful grin overtook his face before he slammed the trapdoor shut.

It was Leila, however, who secured the lock. She didn’t close it tightly; if jostled enough, surely he’d be able to escape.

She prayed again.

“There’s no way out from there,” one guard said with satisfaction, wiping sweat from his brow as the heat began to build around them.

“You have to go and report to the Cardinal now,” Leila urged, desperation creeping into her voice despite her efforts to remain calm.

The fire was spreading faster than she’d anticipated, and soon the entire building would be consumed.

“He needs to know immediately that Wolverstone has been eliminated.”

The guards exchanged a strange look—one that made ice form in Leila’s stomach despite the growing heat around them.

Before she could react, something heavy struck her on the side of her head. Stars exploded across her vision, and the world tilted sideways as her consciousness fled.

When awareness returned, the first thing Leila noticed was the smell of smoke, thick and choking.

The second was that her hands were bound behind her back, rough rope cutting into her wrists.

She was tied to the banister of the first-floor staircase landing, the flames below already beginning to lick at the bottom steps.

“Sorry, bird,” one of the guards slurred. “Our instructions were clear. If Wolverstone is taken care of, you’re to be killed as well.”

Leila cursed silently. No doubt every man working for the Brotherhood was alerted to this plan. The first one who sees her kills her. She wasn’t surprised. What she was, was furious.

Being tied up twice in the same day was bad enough, but this time she had no hope of getting out, especially without her daggers or even a hairpin to work with.

At least Gideon will get out.

The thought brought her a strange sort of comfort, even as the heat from below began to make the air shimmer around her. She had dropped the hairpin to aid in his escape. Even without it, he was resourceful and experienced. If anyone could find a way out of a burning building, it would be him.

He would escape believing she had betrayed him completely, never knowing that her plan had been for them both to survive, to make the Brotherhood believe they were both dead while secretly escaping together. She had been so close to pulling it off, so close to freedom for both of them.

She couldn’t tell him the truth of her plan. He wouldn’t trust her. He didn’t trust her. He would fight her every step of the way. He would interfere. He would spoil the plan; of that she was certain.

Perhaps it was a mistake. She should have told him the truth regardless. But that look in his eyes, that watched her every move carefully, wasn’t a look of a forlorn lover. It was the look of a hunter.

He didn’t trust her.

And she would die with him thinking the worst of her.

The fire was spreading rapidly now, the ancient wood and accumulated debris providing ample fuel for the flames. She could feel the heat against her skin, could see the orange glow growing brighter as it climbed the walls toward her position.

She closed her eyes and tried to think of something other than the growing heat and thickening smoke. She thought of that night, standing in Gideon’s arms surrounded by the fresh, cool night air, as his scorching kiss inflamed her from the tips of her toes to the top of her head.

The way he had looked at her with such tenderness, such reverence…

The smoke was getting thicker now, stinging her eyes and burning her throat. The fire had reached the first floor and was beginning to lick at her feet. She could only hope that the smoke would take her consciousness before the fire reached the rest of her.

Even as the world began to fade around the edges, even as her vision blurred and her breathing became labored, Leila held onto that one perfect memory: Gideon’s lips on hers.