Kiss Me Deadly: Tales of a Paranormal Romance

Dungeons of Langeais A Hush, Hush Story BY BECCA FITZPATRICK

Loire Valley, France

1769

It was a vividly black night, the late October moon suffocated by cloud cover, but the road leading up to the Château de Langeais was anything but sleepy. Gravel popped under the spindly wheels of the post chaise, and over the shriek of wind, the sound of the coachman’s whip cracked all four horses into a desperate race. A sharp turn rattled the coach up on two wheels, only to jar it back on all four at the next moment.

Inside, Chauncey Langeais’s hands flew to the walls. He would have slid the window open and barked at his driver, but he’d ordered the man to drive as fast as possible—faster, even. Chauncey’s eyes roved to his lap, and from there to his long legs. He snorted with disgust at the picture he presented: his clothes were soiled and torn. A white linen shirt, strapped around his thigh for a bandage, was soaked through with blood. Every muscle in his body cried out in protest. He was trembling with pain and, alone in the carriage, had given up trying to hide it.

Pressing his elbows into the tops of his knees, he bent his head and clasped his hands behind his neck. He sat that way until the pain returned, proving once again that no manner of shifting or stretching would bring relief. Tugging at his neck cloth, he estimated the minutes until he would be home and able to shut his doors on a long night. Of course, there was no way to shut out the fiery dread in the pit of his stomach telling him nothing could prevent time from marching forward.

Cheshvan.

The Jewish month began tomorrow at midnight and with it, the brutal ritual Chauncey underwent every year of giving up control of his body for an entire fortnight. He braced himself for the great clench of anger that always followed any thought of Cheshvan or the dark angel who would come to possess him. He’d spent a huge portion of the past two hundred years hunting for a way to undo what had been done. The task had consumed him. He’d pushed large sums of money into the pockets of Paris mystics and gypsy fortune-tellers, looking for hope, then for a loophole, and in the end, finding he was nothing but a swindled fool. They’d all nodded sagely, swearing the day would come when Chauncey would find peace. If he hadn’t already outlived them all, he’d have stretched their necks one by one.

But the disappointment had taught Chauncey a valuable lesson. The angel had stripped him to nothing. There was no hope, no loophole. He only had revenge, and it had grown inside him like one lone seed in a forest burned to ash. He breathed softly through his teeth, letting cold, savage anger swell inside him. It was time the angel learned a lesson. And Chauncey would go to any lengths to teach it to him.

One gaudy tiered fountain streaked past the coach window, then another. Chauncey drew himself up to see his château, candles guttering in the diamond-paned windows. The coachman slowed the horses with a jolt that ordinarily would have escaped Chauncey’s attention. Tonight, he gritted his teeth in pain.

Without waiting for the coachman, Chauncey opened the door with the heel of his boot and swung out awkwardly, unfolding himself to full height. The coachman, who barely came to the top of Chauncey’s rib cage, yanked off his threadbare hat and alternately bowed and scuttled backward, tripping over his feet as if he were facing a monster, not a man. Chauncey watched him, frowning a little. He tried to remember how long the coachman had been in his service, and if he’d reached the point where it was becoming painfully obvious that, with each passing year, Chauncey didn’t seem to age. He’d sworn fealty to the angel at eighteen, freezing him at that age for eternity, and while his manner, speech, and dress made him appear a few years older, it could only go so far. He might be mistaken for twenty-five, but that was the limit.

He made a distracted mental note to dismiss the coachman at the new year. Then, swatting away the plumes of dust stirred up by the horses, he limped along the flagstones trailing up to the château.

Chauncey gave the massive fortress an appreciative once-over. No earthly temptation could look as inviting as it did at that moment. But he couldn’t relax just yet. He had no desire to spend the night haunted by the knowledge that in just over twenty-four hours, it would all begin again. The horrible, maddening sensation—the control of his body peeling away and falling into the hands of the angel. No, before sleep, he needed to think carefully through all the information he’d gathered on this latest trip to Angers.

Washed, bandaged, and freshly clothed, Chauncey eased into the chair stationed behind his desk in the library, and tipped his head back, closing his eyes, drinking in the sensation of stillness. He motioned blindly for Boswell, who stood at the door, to bring him up a bottle from the cellar.

“A particular year, Your Grace?”

“1565.” For irony’s sake. Chauncey kneaded both fists into his eyes. He had spent two hundred years wishing he could walk backward through time to that year and alter the final hours of that night. He could recall the finest details. The drill of rain, cold and relentless. The smell of mildew, pine, and ice. The wet slate headstones protruding like crooked teeth from the ground. The angel. The frightening loss he’d felt as he’d realized he couldn’t command his own feet to run. The invisible hot poker jabbing every corner of his body. Even his own rational mind had turned on him, letting him believe the pain was real, never guessing it was simply one of the angel’s mind tricks.

Your oath of fealty, the angel had said. Swear it.

Chauncey did not want to remember what happened next. He let out a groan. He’d been a fool. He hadn’t understood the significance of what he’d been ordered to give. The angel had deceived him, tortured him, blinded him, taken away his will to speak for himself. Chauncey had given his oath to end a phantom pain. A few spoken words that had proved to be his undoing. Lord, I become your man.

He flung his arm across the desktop, sending ink bottles and a glass paperweight crashing to the floor. “Damn him!”

There was a disturbance in the shadows along the far wall.

Chauncey’s body went taut. “Who’s there?” he demanded, hoarse with rage.

He expected a sputtered apology from one of the servants, but instead a polished and feminine voice spoke.

“Back in town, Chauncey? And you hadn’t thought to pay me a visit?”

Chauncey breathed deeply through his nose and squared his shoulders. He tried to place the voice, thinking he should know it, but at present it escaped him. “You should have spoken up,” he said more composedly. “I would have had Boswell bring an extra glass with the wine.”

“I didn’t come here for a drink.”

Then what? he thought. “How did you get inside? Boswell?” But he couldn’t believe the butler would leave a strange woman inside Chauncey’s personal library unaccompanied. Not if he valued his employment.

“My key.”

Well, hell.

He dragged his hands down his face and attempted to sit again, but a sharp pain in his leg cut the movement short. “I never got that back, did I?” he said at last, finding it unfortunate that of all the things his memory could have failed him on tonight, Elyce wasn’t one of them.

They’d met in a hotel de passe; she was a dancer, the most exotic and venomous creature he’d ever seen. She couldn’t have been more than seventeen, which led him to believe she was a runaway. He’d wrapped his cloak around her and escorted her back to his home with less than a dozen words of introduction between them. She’d stayed at the château ... what? Eight weeks? Their affair had ended abruptly.

Elyce had revisited him often in the weeks following their breakup, demanding payment for something (a gown she insisted she’d left that he’d never returned, reimbursement for the carriages that had moved her belongings from the château, and eventually, just because), and he’d indulged her, secretly finding pleasure in her titillating company. Finally she’d disappeared altogether, and he’d seen nothing of her in two years.

Until now.

She picked up the glass paperweight off the floor and studied it with a bored expression. “I need money.”

He snorted in amusement. Always right to the point—particularly that point.

She slid him a look. “I want twice as much as last time.”

Now he laughed outright. “Twice? By God, what do you do with it all?”

“When should I expect it?”

Chauncey cringed as he stepped around the desk to blow out one of the lamps, which was inflicting a headache. “If you’d been this demanding when we were together, I might have respected you more.” She’d always been demanding; he was saying it now to take the upper hand in their banter. In a certain twisted way that he didn’t care to analyze, he enjoyed sparring with her. She was pushy, self-serving, and manipulative, but above all, entertaining.

She was a mirror of himself.

“Give me the money, and I’ll be on my way,” she said, running her finger along the top of a gilded frame and inspecting the dust. She was the picture of ease, all right, but she couldn’t look him in the eye.

Chauncey walked to the fireplace mantle and leaned into it; a favorite position of his for deep contemplation, though now he was propped against it for support. He tried to hide that fact. The last thing he needed was to fuel the curiosity burning in her eyes. He didn’t care to be reminded of the humiliating circumstances that had put his body in its present shape.

An image of chasing a carriage down the boulevards of Angers flashed up from his memory. He’d bounded onto the back of the carriage in an effort not to lose Jolie Abrams, the young woman he’d been following all night, but had lost his footing when his cloak became tangled in the wheels. He’d been dragged behind the carriage a good distance, and when he’d finally rolled free, he’d been half trampled by an oncoming horse.

Elyce cleared her voice. “Chauncey?” It sounded more like an impatient order than a polite reminder that she was waiting.

But Chauncey hadn’t fully shaken the memory. He’d spent a full week in Angers, searching out the seedier parts of the city where the angel was known to play cards in gambling houses or box in the streets—a modern alternative to dueling that was spreading across the whole of Europe. There was good money in it—if you could win. Chauncey had no doubt that the angel, with his arsenal of mind tricks, could.

It was while spying on the angel at one of these matches that Chauncey first laid eyes on Jolie Abrams. She might have been disguised in peasants’ clothes, her dark brown hair unpinned and loose, her pouty mouth laughing and downing cheap ale, but Chauncey wasn’t fooled. This woman had attended the ballet, the opera. Underneath the shabby clothes, her skin was clean and perfumed. She was a nobleman’s daughter. In the middle of his amused inspection of her, he saw it. A secret glance between her and the angel. The look of lovers.

His first impulse had been to kill her directly. Anything the angel valued, Chauncey longed to dash to pieces. But for reasons he wasn’t altogether sure of, he’d followed her. Watched her. He hadn’t headed back to the château until he’d lost her in the carriage. The entire trip home, he’d reshaped this startling revelation. The angel valued something physical. Something Chauncey could get his hands on.

How could he use this to his advantage?

“Do you mean to keep me waiting all night?” Elyce folded her arms and drew herself up a little taller. She lifted an eyebrow, or maybe both; half her face was turned away from the light and hidden in shadow.

Chauncey merely looked at her, willing her to shut up so he could think. What if ... what if he locked Jolie Abrams away in the château? The idea took him by surprise. He was a duc, the Lord of Langeais, a gentleman. He’d as soon plow his own fields than take a lady hostage. And yet there the idea was, rolling forward. The château had a myriad of towers, convoluted corridors, and ... dungeons. Let the angel try and find her. Chauncey sneered.

As a child, his stepfather had warned him of the fate of those who wandered beneath the château without a guide, and Chauncey had thought the tales the scare tactic of a man who relied on fear to discipline. Then, during one secret exploration of the musky tunnels beneath the kitchen, Chauncey stumbled across skeletal remains. The rats had scattered from under the bones at the sight of his torch, leaving Chauncey standing alone with the dead. He’d made it a point from that day on to keep to the above-ground parts of the château.

“You’ll get your money,” he told Elyce at long last. He looked over his shoulder at her. “Once you do something for me,” he said slowly.

Elyce tossed her hair back and jutted her chin. “Pardon?”

He nearly smiled. She was indignant. Heaven forbid she had to earn her keep. “Jolie Abrams,” he said, the idea of kidnapping flexing inside him.

Elyce narrowed her eyes. “Who?”

He turned, giving her his full attention. “The lover of an enemy,” he murmured, eying Elyce with newfound interest. If the angel caught scent of him, all would be lost. Which meant he needed a proxy. Someone capable of moving unnoticed under the watchful eye of the angel. Someone capable of securing Jolie Abrams’s trust. A woman.

“Then I feel sorry for her. You’re hardly one to treat your enemies kindly. I’ll expect my money by the end of tomorrow. Good night, Chauncey.” She turned, bustling away in a dress that was too lavish to be anything but a Coste original, and had, no doubt, been funded by his pockets.

Chauncey clenched the silver candlestick he’d been absently stroking and hurled it through the air at her.

She must have heard the candlestick scrape against the mantle; she half turned and ducked under the hurled object, tripping backward into the sofa. Her whole expression blanched. She was scarcely breathing, and Chauncey smiled at the fine tremble vibrating through her.

He cocked his eyebrows in silent inquiry.

Shall we start again? he spoke to her mind, using one of the great and terrible powers that came with being the bastard son of a dark angel. He’d never met his real father, but his opinion of him was fixed in contempt. However, the powers he’d inherited from him were not altogether loathsome.

He watched a flick of confusion seize Elyce’s face as she grappled with the idea that he’d spoken to her thoughts. It was quickly replaced by denial. Surely he couldn’t have. It was impossible. She’d imagined it. It was a typical boring response that only irritated him further.

“Don’t be such a bully, Chauncey,” she said at last. “I’m not afraid of getting my hands a little dirty. What did you have in mind?”

She was trying hard to sound inconvenienced, but Chauncey could tell that underneath the well-practiced layers of her expression, she was more than a little worried of his answer. Of him. Her boldness had always been a cover for her fear.

“I want Jolie Abrams brought here. Before tomorrow night. You’ll have to hurry; she lives in Angers.”

“You want me to bring her here?” She blinked at him. “Why not just send a carriage for her?”

Send a carriage. Oh, certainly. With the family crest of Langeais blazed across the door. If that didn’t alert the angel, he didn’t know what would. “Tell her lies, make her promises, I don’t care. Just make sure she’s here before midnight.”

“And her lover?”

Chauncey made a disgusted gesture.

“Does he have a name?” Elyce pressed.

Chauncey nearly snorted. She wanted to know if the man was of stature and wealth. She’d turn on Chauncey for a generous sum. Elyce’s loyalties always went to the highest bidder.

“No,” was all Chauncey said, an image of the angel’s face darkening his mind.

“Surely he has a name, Chauncey.” She took a bold step toward him, laying her hand on his sleeve.

Chauncey retracted, locking his hands behind his back. “Meddling doesn’t become you, love.”

“I’m not your love.” She covered the frustration in her voice by injecting a new level of spite into it. “Do you have your eye on her, then? This Jolie. Do you wish her to be...” She trailed off, but Chauncey was perceptive enough to finish her sentence.

Do you wish her to replace me?

He smiled to himself. Ten seconds ago Elyce had despised him, but now that she feared he’d found someone to fill her void, she was suffocating in her own jealousy. She hadn’t completely hardened her heart to him, then.

“I could find him, you know,” Elyce said. “I could, and then what would you do? Kidnapping? They’d send you to prison!”

“I never said anything of kidnapping,” Chauncey said quietly.

“Oh but I know you, Chauncey.”

He grabbed her chin, wrenching her face up to meet his eyes. He was about to say something, but realized the rough gesture was more threatening than words. Let her fill the silence by imagining the worst.

She tossed her head to the side and stumbled back a step. Then she hurried toward the door, stopping at the threshold.

“After this, I’m through with you.”

“Delivering the girl will earn you half the money.”

She stared, momentarily dumbfounded. “ Half? ” she echoed, eyes flashing.

“Keeping an eye on her here at the château and making sure she doesn’t die under my roof will earn you the other half.” He didn’t want to bring down the full wrath of the angel—he merely wanted a bargaining chip. “I’ll pay in full when the job is finished.”

He saw her balk at the idea of a dozen consecutive days of labor. As if she had no concept of what he went through for the same period of time every year. And would again, unless he brought the angel to his knees.

“No,” she said.

Chauncey took a seat on the sofa’s armrest. He meant to speak pleasantly, but an undercurrent of warning slipped into his voice. “I doubt I need to remind you how I’ve come to your aid in the past. What do you think, love, will become of your future without me?”

“This is the last time,” she snapped.

He folded his hands loosely in his lap. “Always slinking back, begging for money. Always swearing this time it’s the last.”

“This time it is!”

He made a face of mock belief, which he could tell only infuriated her further. She might let him have the final word tonight, but it wouldn’t last. She’d come around sooner rather than later to trump him. He was already looking forward to it. She was a fiery nymph, standing before him in cream velvet that melted seamlessly into her translucent skin and pale hair. Only her icy blue eyes stood out. He found himself on the verge of being spellbound by her all over again. “Do we have an agreement?”

“Beware, Chauncey. I’m not a woman to be toyed with.” At that, she whirled back around, marching past Boswell, who jumped to life from his station just outside the door and jogged after her to try and reach the château’s doors first. He lost. The doors slammed, reverberating through the halls.

Chauncey smiled, despite the headache splitting his skull. He hated surprises, but Elyce’s unexpected visit tonight, well, he couldn’t have planned it better himself.

He’d be very surprised if Jolie Abrams wasn’t sitting prettily in this very room tomorrow evening.

The following evening, Chauncey was in his bed chamber, his valet dressing him in green velvet breeches and a matching waistcoat, when Boswell entered.

“Miss Cunningham and Miss Abrams are waiting in the library, Your Grace.”

“I’ll be down in a minute.”

Boswell coughed uneasily into his fist. “Miss Abrams is in a state of sleep.” He put a funny intonation on the word.

Chauncey turned to face his butler. “She’s sleeping in my library?”

“Heavily drugged, My Lord.”

Chauncey broke into a grin. Elyce drugged her? The nymph was even more imaginative than he remembered.

“Miss Cunningham said Miss Abrams offered resistance. Myself and two other servants carried her in. She’s dead to the world, pardon the expression.”

Chauncey thought on this a moment. He hadn’t expected her to arrive drugged, but it was of little consequence. She was here. His eyes swept to the window. The moon was high, the stars taunting in their brightness; midnight sneaked closer with every passing second. He’d planned on relishing the deep, lurid satisfaction that came from hearing Jolie scream as he dragged her deeper into the labyrinthine tunnels, damp with standing water, musty from the catacombs, but there wasn’t time to let the sedative wear off. He needed to get her into the bowels of the château before he left to meet the angel in the cemetery. There was much still to do: he had to map the way. He had to prepare provisions to last her a fortnight, just in case. He had to instruct Boswell and the other servants to stay away from the château. He wanted no one around to unwillingly help the angel—

Suddenly his impatience faded away. Knowing he was not the only one unable to control his own destiny tonight caused him a sudden wave of satisfaction.

In the kitchen, Chauncey lit a torch and opened the heavy door leading down to the cellar. The tunnels were still very much a mystery to him, despite all the years he’d lived in the château. He’d gone down once or twice since his last excursion as a child, and only to prove to himself he could—he was a grown man now, and not afraid of the invented monsters of his childhood.

He thrust the torch into the darkness of the stairwell, light gleaming on the gray walls. His boots rang out against each stone step. At the bottom, he fixed the torch into a wall bracket. There was one other bracket on the far side of the cellar, but as far as he knew, it was the last. There had been no need for brackets in the tunnels beyond, as nobody but prisoners and their guides had ventured there.

Chauncey had four large spools of thread in a leather satchel slung over his shoulder, and he pulled out the first. He tied one end to the banister, tugging on it several times to confirm it was secure. The hairs on his neck prickled at the thought of losing his way in the tunnels. His stepfather had joked that there was only one direction to the tunnels—in. Reminded of this, Chauncey gave one last jerk on the thread. Satisfied it would hold, he picked up the torch and set off into the devil’s mouth, unraveling the spool as he went, mapping his way with a web of thread.

Even in the smoky near-black cell, lying awkwardly on the dirt floor, Jolie Abrams was pretty. She was unconventionally tall for a woman, but Chauncey was hardly one to be critical of height. Her peasant clothes were gone, replaced by peacock green silk, and her wavy brown hair was pinned up, giving him an unobstructed view of her cheekbones and oval face. She had obscenely long eyelashes and a splattering of freckles that he somehow intuitively knew caused her to throw her hands up every time she faced the looking glass. A gold locket adorned her neck.

Chauncey growled at the locket, using his thumb to push it open. To his surprise, it wasn’t the angel’s face painted inside, but another woman. She resembled Jolie too much to be anything other than a sister. He closed the locket, feeling suddenly foolish at prying into her most intimate belongings.

He inspected the cell. A cot in the corner and a silver tray of food on a table, out of reach of the rodents. He suddenly wished he’d brought something to make her more comfortable. Extra blankets at the very least. She was a lady, and proper treatment of the opposite sex had been ingrained in him by tutors as far back as he could remember. Which probably explained why he chose farm maidens or dancers, like Elyce, who sought a wealthy patron, not a husband—when he wanted a woman at all.

He eyed the manacles hanging from the walls, but saw no need for them. The cell door was as thick as the tree it had been cut from; Jolie would have to scratch at it with her fingernails for a thousand years to carve a way out. A pair of mice scurried along the wall as he waved the torch into the deeper shadows. He chased them under the door and scraped their droppings off the heels of his boots.

Jolie stirred at his feet, letting go of a sleepy troubled sigh. She was on her side, lying on dirt made colder by late October. Frosty puffs of air smoked from her lips.

“Who are you?” she said between her teeth, her voice a hiss of anger. Her upturned shoulder rose and fell with every breath. “What do you want from me?”

He felt the need to tell her this was the angel’s fault, but the truth was, he could have let her go. He could let her walk out right now. He could order one of his coachmen to drive her home. She would return to her safe comfortable life, while he spent the next fortnight in agony.

“You’re going to be staying here for a while,” he said. “I’ll see that you’re comfortable, with enough food and water—”

“Comfortable? Comfortable? ” She sat up and flung a fist of dirt at him.

Chauncey was slow to brush the dirt off his shirt. He was a brute, was he? A mindless savage? What did she think of the angel? That he was better?

If Chauncey was a tyrant, the angel was ten times more the devil. He held Chauncey’s body hostage every year! And it wasn’t like Chauncey could run away during those dozen days and nights, or block out what he saw. No. For a whole fortnight he was trapped in a body that didn’t feel like his own, forced to watch every despicable act the angel put him through. The angel gambled his money. Drank his wine. Commanded his servants. Romanced his women.

Two years ago, he’d suffered in raging silence as the angel seduced Elyce, treating her to what she pronounced were “the most magical fourteen days” of her life. Chauncey had ordered her out of his presence the moment Cheshvan ended. He still remembered the confusion and fury in her eyes. He didn’t tell her he wasn’t responsible for her fortnight of blissful magic.

“You don’t have the decency to tell me what this is about?” Jolie’s cheeks were fully flushed, every word that came from her mouth stabbing Chauncey like a needle. Her eyes raked his tailored clothing, and Chauncey read her thoughts.

A gentleman in dress, but not in action.

What gentleman would kidnap a lady and hold her prisoner? He swelled with humiliation, but he also had the angel to think about. Chauncey wasn’t going to let the angel possess him again. The thought goaded him past reason.

Jolie cocked her head to one side, the light of recognition filling her eyes. “You ... you were at the fight. In Angers. The other night. I saw you.” He could practically hear her thoughts trying to pull sense from her words.

“I have business with the angel.” He smiled faintly, in spite of himself.

“Who?”

Chauncey’s smile deepened. “He didn’t tell you?”

“Tell me what?” she said testily.

“Your lover isn’t a man. More like an animal, I’d say.”

The first glimpse of wariness shadowed her face.

“He’s one of the banished angels. That’s right, love. An angel. Don’t believe me? Get a good look at his back. Wing scars.” Oh, he was enjoying this.

“He—told me he was flogged.”

Chauncey tipped his head back and laughed.

She was on her knees, her hands balled into fists. “He told me it happened while he was in the army!”

“Did he now?” he said, then let himself out of the dungeon room. He’d planted the seed. The angel wouldn’t find his sweetheart quite so ignorant at their next meeting. If she agreed to meet him at all.

He pulled the door shut hard, locking it with the drop of an iron bar. He heard her on the other side, beating the door and shouting profanities. He heard the tray of food clash against the door, and growled. Now he’d have to leave the thread intact so Elyce could deliver a second tray.

He groped blindly for the thread, feeling his way out. Each step felt heavier, and each breath took more work. Cheshvan. Midnight was all too close. He felt its approach echo in every sinew. Chauncey redoubled his efforts, walking more quickly, fearing what would happen if he didn’t reach the cemetery in time.

Rain pattered down on the darkening countryside surrounding Château de Langeais, but Chauncey crossed the courtyard to the stables unaware of the mud slinging on his boots. He wore no hat; his hair clung to his face, wet and disheveled. He knew without proof his eyes reflected the blackened sky above.

He ducked under the roof of the stables, breathing irregularly. He could feel Cheshvan upon him, crushing him. He could feel control of his body peeling away. He had to meet the angel by midnight, or the pain would spike to become unbearable. Part of his oath was to turn his body over freely. The first year, Chauncey had gone to meet the angel, having no idea what was in store. The second year, wiser and hardened, he’d forced the angel to come to him. Chauncey had passed out from the pain before the angel had even arrived. There were still lines down the walls of the château where he’d raked his fingernails in agony.

The one-eyed groom limped out of the shadows, frowning.

Bracing his hand on a beam, Chauncey gave a terse nod in the direction of the stalls. He hoped the groom was smart enough to interpret his gesture. He was breathing with difficulty and had no desire for speech.

The groom blinked his good eye. “But it’s nearly midnight, Your Grace.”

“Horse.” His voice sounded rough, strained.

“It will take a minute, m’lord. I—I wasn’t expecting you. That is to say, it’s rather late—”

“I haven’t got a minute,” Chauncey snapped.

A bolt of lightning crackled through the sky. The groom lifted his eye and quickly crossed himself. Chauncey glowered at him. The insolent man was still standing in place, fearing God more than him.

Chauncey sank suddenly to one knee, panting. The ground was spinning. He felt bile surging up his throat. The pain was so bright it clawed from the inside out.

The groom cautioned a step forward. “M’lord?”

“Horse!” he choked, thinking he would have wrung the groom’s neck if it were in reach.

Minutes later, Chauncey rode from the stables, whipping a gelding to breakneck speed. He headed straight for the forest, feeling the groom’s good eye follow him to the edge of the trees. Feeling the groom’s fear lie thick on his back.

The angel was on time. He sat on an ornate headstone in the rustic cemetery sheltered deep in the forest. His hands were clasped between his knees, his dark eyes watchful but not nervous. His hair was damp with rain, and despite the chill in the air, his shirt was open at the neck. His mouth curved up on one side, a pirate’s smile, easy and ruthless at once.

“Where is she?” the angel asked.

Chauncey flinched. Did he mean Jolie? This wasn’t how he’d planned their conversation. He’d anticipated being the one to tell the angel that Jolie Abrams was locked away somewhere between here and Paris, with limited food, and unless the angel cooperated, she would inevitably die. He’d left Jolie with more than enough food, but didn’t allow himself to think on it, fearing the angel had some way of deciphering his mind. “Good luck finding her in time,” he replied, almost calm.

“I’m going to ask once more,” the angel said quietly. “Where is she?”

Chauncey sneered. “I hope ... she’s not afraid of rats?”

A muscle in the angel’s jaw jumped. “Her, for my word not to possess you?”

Adrenaline itched under Chauncey’s skin. Was he asking? Agreeing to bargain? Could it be that simple? Chauncey had anticipated some kind of struggle.

Chauncey shook his head. “I don’t trust your word. Release me from my oath. You’ll never take possession of my body during Cheshvan again. Anything less, and the girl dies. I’ve heard starvation can be quite painful.” Chauncey raised his eyebrows, as if asking the angel’s opinion on the subject.

The angel’s eyes were so black, the night seemed to pale in comparison. Chauncey held that gaze with wariness stirring in his stomach. Had he spoken too soon? Had he asked too much? But it was his body, his life!

“Your final offer?”

“Yes, it’s my final offer,” Chauncey growled impatiently. Was the angel backing out? Was he so depraved he’d let the girl die? Chauncey felt midnight squeezing down on him, the pain twisting every ounce of patience and sanity from him. He clenched his teeth, swearing he would kill the angel if he laughed at him for this humiliating twitching and jerking. Hurry up and make a decision!

The possession happened all too fast. Chauncey was slammed up against a tree with no way to escape. He ordered his legs to run, but it was as if a great wall of ice separated his mind from his body. He tried to move his head, to see where the angel was, but his stomach sickened with the truth.

It was happening all over again. The angel was not there. The angel was inside him.

Here comes the struggle, Chauncey thought.

The angel slammed Chauncey’s body against the tree a second time, stunning him. Another time, and another, and another, until Chauncey felt blood trickling down his face. His shoulder throbbed. He felt bruises sprouting all along the battered side of his body. He wanted to scream for the angel to stop, but his voice wasn’t his to command.

Next, the angel shoved Chauncey’s fist into the tree. There was a ghastly crunch, and Chauncey saw bone protruding from his skin. He howled, but it was a silent sound, trapped inside him. He knew what was coming next and tried to brace himself for the hot torment. The angel forced Chauncey to kick the tree, over and over, until the bones in his foot snapped and Chauncey felt himself wilting in shock. He screamed and blubbered, but it was ripped from him. He was nothing but reason and feeling. He couldn’t act; he was only to be acted upon.

Just as quickly as he’d lost control, he was breathing on his own again. He lay crumpled on the ground and instantly cradled his broken hand against his chest. The angel stood over him. He gave a significant look at the tree, now painted with Chauncey’s blood.

“I’ll never tell you where she is!” Chauncey spat.

Chauncey felt the dizzying torment of the wound on his thigh being ripped open. The angel was in control again, using Chancey’s hands to whip his leg with a branch. The wound opened, and blood blossomed across his velvet breeches. Chauncey’s temples throbbed with panic, the smell of terror leaking from his skin.

Do not talk! Do not talk! he shouted at himself through the whir of terror shaking him. Do not let him win!

Chauncey collapsed, swimming in and out of consciousness; one half of him yearned for the darkness of slumber, the other half feared the loss of control. What if he revealed Jolie’s location in his sleep? He couldn’t. He couldn’t...

With his cheek cushioned by icy dirt, Chauncey’s eyes fluttered. He thought he saw the angel jogging away. Chauncey tried to smile. Going to search the countryside for Jolie, was he? His mouth formed the words good luck, but they stayed on his lips. Through his haze, Chauncey knew this was a pivotal moment. The angel had to possess him now, or never. The time frame was one hour. The angel had never missed his window in the past, but now...

But this time...

Even if the angel correctly guessed Jolie’s whereabouts, by the time he went to the château and back, it would be too late.

He’d miss this Cheshvan...

Chauncy’s eyes rolled back in his head. He had been through this kind of pain many times before. He wouldn’t die, but he’d lose a great deal of blood, and would sleep—even as long as a week or two, depending on the severity of his wounds—while his body slowly stitched itself back together and became whole once again.

Chauncey woke in the cemetery. He was slumped against a headstone, the cold slate seeping through the back of his shirt. Between the slits of his eyes, the world was black and silver. A few snowflakes drifted down, melting as they hit his breeches, his shirt, his bare hands. He turned his hands over, back and forth, staring at them, nearly weeping that they were in his power. He dragged himself upright and knew it was over. He didn’t know how long he’d slept, but the icy morning and transformed scenery made him guess several days. He’d escaped Cheshvan. He’d defied the angel. A certain stone that had hung inside him all these years cracked, turning to dust. If he could do it once, he could do it again.

He grinned at the trees, not caring that his clothes were torn and soiled with blood, or that he reeked of his own unwashed body. He dragged his hands down his face, blinking at the morning. Everything was fresh. He breathed in the intoxicating scent of the forest, held it, let it go. For the first time in his life he stood mesmerized by the harsh beauty of the world slowly freezing. He spun circles until his mind reeled, whooping and shouting with joy, and when dizziness overtook him, he fell back in the half-frozen mud, laughing.

He lay that way for quite some time, basking in the forest—which no longer felt like his enemy—feeling immeasurably happy, until his eyes flew open.

Jolie. The château. The dungeons.

His feet were already carrying him in a run.

Chauncey could not remember the way.

Gripping the torch, he splashed through the water pooling at the bottom of the tunnels, swallowing his boots.

“Jolie!”

His voice echoed like a disembodied spirit’s.

With an impatient grunt he forged ahead, letting the spool unravel in his free hand. He came to an intersection, turned left, and a length of thread caught him in the navel, bringing him up short. He’d already come this way. He was creating a web of circles. Around and around, nearer or farther from Jolie, he didn’t know. He leaned back against the wall, squeezing his eyes shut, breathing heavily. He had to think. He had to remember. If he could just push aside the darkness and remember the maze.

“Jolie!” he yelled again.

He wondered if she would answer. He was the tyrant who had locked her away. She could be down this tunnel, or the next, listening, but hiding in fear.

“Don’t die on me,” he muttered.

The angel. He couldn’t stop thinking about the angel.

Hang Cheshvan! The angel would launch a full-scale war if Jolie died down here. How long had it been? Days and days, but how much beyond that? He’d sent the servants away, and there was no one to ask. And where the hell was Elyce? He was paying her to keep watch. Had the food lasted? Had Jolie stayed warm enough? He’d woken in the cemetery frozen solid, the weather far colder than he’d expected with winter still weeks away. He should have planned better. If only he’d had more time!

Chauncey turned and turned again, crashing through the tunnels. He came around a bend, and there it was. The door stood at the end of the passageway. The iron bar was still in place, locking Jolie inside. He flung off the bar and threw the door wide. Rats scuttled lazily into the shadows. Two silver trays were overturned on the floor, but the food was gone, replaced by a thick covering of rodent droppings.

Chauncey saw the body on the cot, but his brain was muddled, unable to make sense of it. He blinked as if he weren’t seeing properly. The girl was covered in a thin layer of frost. Her cynical blue eyes were open, frozen in a stare.

Elyce was dead.

Chauncey’s hand flexed on the doorframe. He saw himself as a nine-year-old boy, standing in the cellar beneath the kitchen, stumbling upon death.

“No,” he said. He blinked again. “No.”

His legs pushed him toward Elyce. He stood over her, unable to stop staring. He couldn’t seem to see her as she really was, rather as she was supposed to be.

Alive.

A flood of memories broke through his mental dam. He didn’t believe in love at first sight. He didn’t believe in love. It was the religion of fools. But the first time he saw Elyce, for one fraction in time, he’d doubted everything he knew. Dancing in a way that outshone the common girls, she stole the stage. Every coin in the room flowed her way. She took something ordinary and made it lucrative. She ruled her own destiny.

Not once in his life had Chauncey felt understood, but in the weeks Elyce had stayed with him here at the château, the deep gap that had always separated him from the rest of the world narrowed. They were the same, he and Elyce. Calculating, manipulative, and cynical, yes. But also driven, hungry, and uncompromising. He didn’t love her in the way other men loved their women; he loved her in the only way he could—for not leaving him alone in a world that understood him even less than he understood it.

The only reason he’d cast her out of the château was because of the angel. He couldn’t stand in the same room with her and not hear those words.

The most magical days of my life...

He’d hated Elyce for those words, but his anger was misdirected. All blame fell on the angel.

Lowering himself onto the cot, he pressed Elyce’s hand to his face. His emotions flapped inside him like birds dashing against a glass cage. Who did he have now? He was utterly alone. Utterly misunderstood.

Chauncey jolted to a stand, believing he sensed the angel nearby. His posture was guarded, but the walls outside the cell shimmered not with the angel’s shadow, but with the spirits of the dead. Chauncey could feel them, trapped and wandering. His body convulsed at the thought of them surrounding him, and he backed further into the cell.

“Elyce!” he hissed. Down here in the dungeons, he felt certain that death was very far away, and very near at the same time. “Can you hear me? Did the angel do this? Did he?”

The door to the cell swung shut. Chauncey heard the iron bar drop into place, locking him inside.

He crossed to the door in two strides. “Who’s there?” he demanded.

There was no answer.

“Elyce?” He didn’t believe in ghosts. On the other hand, what else could it be? “It was the angel, he killed you,” he said. “I had nothing to do with this.” He glanced back at her body on the cot to make sure it was still there. He’d heard stories of corpses rising from the grave to drink the blood of the living. In the dungeons, he ruled nothing out.

“Talking with the dead, Duke? Keep it up, and people are going to question your sanity.”

Chauncey stiffened at the voice on the far side of the door. He made a guttural sound of hatred. “ You.”

“I hope you like rats,” the angel said quietly.

“Not a wise move, angel. These are my dungeons. You’ve trespassed on my land. I could have you hanged.” Even as Chauncey said it, he realized how worthless the threat was.

“Hanged? With what? All this thread?”

Chauncey felt his nostrils flare.

“Then I’d better take it on my way out.” The angel’s voice started to fade.

Panic seized Chauncey’s throat. “Open the door you insolent fool! I am the Duc de Langeais, and this is my château !”

Silence.

Chauncey slammed a fist against the door. The angel thought he was clever, did he? Well, he’d just laid the groundwork for his own destruction!

Slicing his palm open on his riding spurs, Chauncey shook out a few drops of blood. He swore an oath to bring the angel to his knees. He would be relentless. Ruthless. Jolie would grow old and die, but there would be other women.

Chauncey would wait patiently.