Page 31 of The Big Bad Duke (The Shadows #9)

Perhaps she’d been more than that. Perhaps she’d been the Cardinal’s kept woman, his secret weapon, trained to seduce and kill.

“Last night. The fire. Was that you?” His voice was laced with a low growl.

She faltered. He could see the internal struggle on her face—the war between truth and self-preservation.

“Gideon—”

“Was. That. You? ” He spoke each word slowly, menacingly, leaving her no room for denial.

“Yes.”

The admission was calm, direct. Her voice didn’t even tremble. And somehow, that composure was worse than tears would have been.

And he had saved her. From the very fire meant to eliminate him.

He’d carried her for hours through the forest, feeling her heartbeat against his chest and whispering reassurances in her ear.

And to think, he’d been happy this morning.

What word had he used in his mind? Joyous.

He’d compared her to Sarah. His loyal, loving, gentle Sarah.

He’d thought himself capable of loving again.

Fool. Fool. Fool.

“You could have slit my throat while I slept,” he said, his voice dripping with contempt. “What stopped you? Couldn’t find my dagger in the dark? Or did your little seduction not go according to plan? Did you not anticipate my stamina to put you to sleep?”

The look that crossed her face was one of such devastating hurt that, for a moment, he almost wavered.

She swallowed hard before speaking. “After everything we shared last night, if you think that was all an act, then I don’t know how to convince you otherwise.”

“After everything we shared,” he shot back, “you failed to mention that you had the bloody mark of my enemies carved into your skin!”

“What does this mark even mean?” she cried.

Her question was so genuine, so confused, that for a split second, he wondered if he could be wrong.

She was a convincing actress. He had fallen for her lies one too many times.

“As if you don’t know,” he spat. “It’s the same mark that was left on the doorstep of my burnt-down house, where the corpses of my wife and children still lay! It’s the mark I swore to eradicate from this world, along with everyone who bears it.”

“And now I wear it,” she said, her voice barely above a whisper, “so that means you must eradicate me too?”

Yes.

No.

He didn’t know.

And it didn’t matter at the moment. If she had indeed tricked him once more, it meant people were going to come for them.

Soon.

Perhaps now.

The hairs on the back of his neck stood on end, and every instinct he’d honed over the years screamed danger. He could feel someone watching them, hunting them.

His voice dropped to an urgent whisper. “We have to go. Now.”

He scooped his cloak off the ground and draped it over her shoulders. Then he grabbed her arm, probably too tightly, and dragged her with him.

To her credit, she didn’t protest or struggle. She simply followed, matching his pace as they moved swiftly through the trees.

“Where are we going?” she asked.

He didn’t answer, as he didn’t know.

There was that tower. A safehouse used by the man Gideon had framed for his murders. It stood empty since that man—William—fled England. Gideon had been watching it from time to time to see if it was guarded by the Crown’s men or by the Brotherhood.

But it wasn’t.

It stood empty. Untouched.

Not too far from this place, but still far enough to reach on foot in one day.

Except Gideon feared they didn’t have a full day.

No matter where they went, he felt movement coming from every conceivable side of the forest.

They had been walking at a rapid pace for over an hour when he realized that they weren’t going to make it. He had miscalculated gravely.

The pursuit wasn’t coming from behind. It was coming from all sides.

He changed direction abruptly, circling wide through the forest, but the feeling only intensified.

Leila stumbled over a root and nearly fell.

He paused, senses straining. He could feel the eyes on them. Watching.

They were surrounded.

Trapped.

He could feel people closing in on them. The circle around them tightening.

He shook his head and turned to face her, grasping her by her upper arms.

“Was this your trap all along?” he asked in a furious whisper, but with each sentence, his voice grew louder. “Did you get what you wanted from me last night? Or was this all just emotional torture? Make me feel something for you, then betray me?”

“Gideon—” she began, but he cut her off.

“Or was the whole thing just a game? A distraction? Stall me long enough for your friends to get into position?”

“She be right proper at it, ain’t she?” a voice drawled from behind them, smooth and mocking.

Gideon immediately let go of her arms and spun around to see a man stepping out from behind a large oak, the barrel of a pistol aimed squarely at his heart.

The man was a thug, his beard thick, his appearance unkempt.

Gideon wasn’t surprised to see him. His heightened senses had been screaming for minutes now. He’d felt them closing in.

They were in the middle of an ambush.

There was no way to run. Nowhere to go.

He should never have lingered so long in one place.

But Leila had seemed so weak, so worn down from the fire. He’d let her rest.

He had wanted her to rest.

She’d made him stop. Made him care more about her comfort than their safety.

He’d been too lost in her to think clearly. Too consumed by desire and growing feelings to remember that survival always came first.

This morning, they should’ve been on the move.

Instead, they had lingered in bed, made love, and played in the stream like carefree lovers.

He wanted to blame everything on Leila—everything that led to this disaster—but he couldn’t.

Maybe she had meant to distract him.

But he was the one who’d allowed it.

He should have kept moving, no matter her condition, no matter his heart.

Because if she weren’t a part of the Brotherhood, he was damning her too.

More men emerged from their hiding places among the trees, stepping out of the shadows like phantoms materializing from the forest itself. They closed in from all sides, forming a perfect circle around the two of them.

Gideon reached down and smoothly drew his dagger from his boot.

The shot rang out before he could fully straighten, and he instinctively threw himself sideways, shielding Leila’s body with his own. But the bullet went wide, and suddenly they were engulfed in thick, choking gunpowder smoke that reduced visibility to mere inches.

In the chaos that followed, three or four men—he couldn’t tell exactly how many through the haze—rushed him from different sides. Boots slammed into his ribs, his back, his shoulders. Fists crashed into his jaw, his stomach, anywhere they could reach.

They didn’t want to kill him, he realized suddenly. If they did, he’d already be dead.

No. What awaited him was something far worse than a quick death.

As if to confirm his dread, someone threw a rough burlap sack over his head, plunging him into darkness. The kicking intensified, becoming more vicious, more systematic.

And finally, as consciousness began to slip away, a different kind of darkness wrapped around him entirely.

But just before everything went quiet—before the void claimed him—he heard a scream. A blood-curdling scream that seemed to tear the very air apart.

Leila was calling his name.