The Duke's Covert Mission

Ellie sank down onto the stool and hugged herself, refusing to surrender to futile tears.

“You’ll think of a way out of this, Ellie.” She tried another pep talk, but the echo of her voice did little to encourage her. She’d made it all the way from her mountain home to the capital city of Korosol la Vella. She’d made it across the ocean to America. She’d made the harrowing journey through crosstown traffic into the heart of New York City.

“I’ll make it out of here, too.”

The question was—how?

Her jewelry was gone, along with her purse and her stole.

And her shoes.

Anything that might be used as a weapon had been taken from her. The tiny canister of pepper spray in her bag. The house key attached to it. The heels of her shoes.

Ellie sat up a little straighter as she latched on to one hopeful thought.

If they’d disarmed her, that meant her kidnappers were coming back. They hadn’t abandoned her. Yet. They’d prepped her for their return.

As if the thought of her abductors had the power to summon, she heard a key turn in the lock at the top of the stairs. Ellie shot to her feet and moved behind the stool, putting the one available obstacle between her and her visitor.

The door opened and a single, bare lightbulb switched on over the bottom of the stairs, bathing her in an austere circle of light and creating a translucent wall of dust motes in the heavy air. The tread of footsteps on the stairs told her it was a man, one who was balanced and sure on his feet, despite his bulky silhouette.

Ellie squinted to see who had come to visit her in her prison cell, but the lightbulb created shadows that hid the man’s face. He moved through the curtain of dust and she could see that better illumination wouldn’t help her identify him. He wore a black knit stocking cap that covered everything but his eyes.

Just like the men last night.

Ellie shivered as he walked toward her. He seemed to grow larger and suck up more of the breathable air with each step. She jumped back, needing space, needing room to run. “Don’t come any closer.”

He stopped. Though she couldn’t see his eyes in the play of light and shadow, she felt his stare. Her skin crawled as if his hands and not his assessing gaze were touching her.

“What do you want with me?” Her voice sounded as shaky as her backbone.

No answer.

His hefty shape had been deceptive, as well. She curled her toes into the cold concrete as he set a blanket, a canteen and a handful of silvery foil envelopes on the floor in front of her.

“What are those?” she asked, looking at the items that had been piled like an altar offering before her.

In answer, he picked up one of the silver packages, straightened and tossed it to her. Ellie caught it out of pure reflex. “That wasn’t a difficult question, was it?”

The man said nothing.

Like one of the questionable souvenirs from her brother Nicky’s mercenary days, she recognized the markings on the bag as a military field ration. Applesauce.

“I suppose you want me to eat this?”

He nodded.

Damn, the man’s silence was unnerving. It distracted her from thinking. She could only react.

“Is this how you killed Paulo?” The man’s head jerked up. “Did you poison him?”

The only sound she could hear was her heart pounding.

Just when she thought she might scream from the tension in the air pulling at her, the man took the packet from her hands and tore it open. He stuck his finger inside, scooped out a dollop of beige paste and lifted his mask high enough so she could see him eat it.

She caught a flash of inky black beard stubble, but nothing more. Even before the image registered, he’d covered his chin and handed her the packet.

She’d barely touched her dinner the night before because of nervous anticipation of the ball and had slept through any other meal since. Food might help her headache. And she’d need sustenance of some kind to keep up her strength and keep herself mentally sharp.

Her companion’s watchful stillness made her think she’d need every ounce of strength and intelligence she could muster in order to survive this…this…

“Why have I been kidnapped?” she demanded, tilting her chin up with an authority she didn’t really feel.

His shoulders lifted with a cocky bit of “don’t care,” but he gave no answer.

“Why won’t you say anything?”

She dipped her finger into the packet and scooped out a bit of the dry paste. Tentatively she carried it to her mouth and tested it with her tongue. If she used her imagination, she could taste something that reminded her of apples and sawdust. But it was hard to imagine anything with her keeper standing so utterly still just a few feet away.

The goose bumps that had assailed her earlier pricked her skin again at his eerie silence. “You know, it’s very rude not to talk.”

And nerve-racking and frightening and out-and-out intimidating.

Ellie had never been one to complain. She’d been raised to make the best of things. To solve her own problems. To endure.

But the words came tumbling out now. “I don’t know what you want from me. I don’t have much money. The jewels you took don’t even belong to me.” The man was made of stone. “I can’t help you if I don’t know why I’m here!”

Her little outburst left her feeling flushed and useless. And, damn it all, she had always found a way to make herself feel useful. She so desperately hated feeling helpless and unnecessary.

Expendable.

“Are you going to kill me, too?”

For a moment she thought he might actually speak. She heard a sound from behind his mask, a quick intake of breath. Ellie caught her own breath and held it, waiting for his answer. But…

Nothing.

Her breath whooshed out, along with her defiance.

Like the good, dutiful girl she’d been raised to be for the twenty-six years of her life, Ellie opened the bag and squeezed out another bite. She allowed the dry applesauce to sit on her tongue a moment, letting her saliva add enough moisture to make it palatable.

Now that she had done what he asked, the man began to circle her. While she ate, Ellie followed him with her eyes, noting any details that a man dressed in black from head to toe might reveal.

He wore black cargo pants, with a shadowy camo print and lots of pockets. They were tucked into a pair of calf-high military boots. A knife handle protruded from the top of a nylon sheath attached to the right boot. Ellie turned her head, quietly chewing, keeping him in her sight.

She recognized him as the driver of the second car last night. The one with the dead body in the trunk. She didn’t know much about the ways to kill a man, but she’d seen Paulo’s bulging eyes and protruding tongue and knew the young man’s death hadn’t been an easy one.

This man could have killed Paulo. Just by looking at him, Ellie had no doubt that this man had killed before.

His black knit shirt hugged broad shoulders and expanded over the swell of his chest. Then it clung farther down, revealing a flat stomach and narrow waist. He stood as tall as her brother—an inch or two over six feet—and was all sinew and muscle, as lethal-looking as the sleek steel sidearm riding in a black leather holster at his hip.

When he disappeared from the corner of her vision, Ellie spun to her right and watched him walk around the other side. She’d never studied a man so boldly before. And while his silence unnerved her, there was something oddly mesmerizing about the pantherlike precision of his movements. Ellie’s heart stuttered, then beat again. Her breasts expanded against the stiff confines of her gown. Her perusal of the mysterious visitor bordered on fascination.

And she was ashamed that survival might not be the only reason she kept staring at him.

“Who are you?” Her fingers slipped to her temple, nervously searching for her absent glasses. She curled the flailing fingers into a fist and pulled it down to her chest. “Why won’t you talk to me?”

Fascination or no, this man was her captor, she his prisoner. His chained, secluded prisoner, who’d been left in the dark in both the literal and figurative sense.

“What do you want with me?” She breathed in deeply, but her cool bravado was quickly failing her. “Who are you?”

He ended his circle where he’d begun, standing in front of her, barely an arm’s length away.

Was he toying with her? Mocking her? Trying to scare the very heartbeat out of her?

He was succeeding more than he could possibly imagine.

“Talk to me.” Her demand sounded dangerously close to begging. “Show your face, you coward!”

She had finally pushed him too far.

He closed the distance between them, swooping in like a hawk, moving so swiftly that she shielded herself with her arms and backed away. The chain at her ankle rattled. A frightened sob shook her, but she caught the gasp between clenched teeth.

Ellie was transfixed. Caught in a deadly snare of unknown intent. He never touched her, but she trembled all the same. She could smell him now. He was heat and soap and exotic spice.

And from the middle of that black mask he marked her with eyes of such an intense dark blue they seemed unreal. He held her in place with those eyes. Beautiful eyes. Demon eyes.

“I’m sorry.” Ellie dropped her gaze, unable to withstand the power of his. She struggled to breathe. “Don’t hurt me. Please.”

And then the man tormented her in the most unexpected way. With her chin tucked to her chest, her gaze firmly fixed on the floor, he lifted his hand. She could see now, in her peripheral vision, that his hands were the only visible part of his body. Five fingers of streamlined power, scarred and callused, reached for her. Ellie curled into herself, bracing for a grab or slap or… The hand closed in on her face, and she could see a fine dusting of black hair along the dark tan of his skin. She squeezed her eyes shut, blocking out the moment when his fingers would touch her. But she couldn’t block out the heat from his skin. It seemed to scorch her cheek.

“Please.” Her body convulsed on a frightened sob.

“Sinjun!”

The heat at her cheek evaporated at the shout from above. Ellie’s eyes popped open, and she saw the man in black tuck his hands into his pockets and cross to the base of the stairs.

“Is she awake?” The short, stocky creep who had given the orders and injected her with a knockout drug last night tromped down the stairs, commanding the room with his blustery voice.

Then the walls themselves seemed to shake as the giant from last night followed a few paces behind. Like the silent man, they were both dressed in black—from ski mask to military boots to the guns strapped at their sides.

Ellie’s chest expanded with the first deep breath she’d taken since the man who’d brought her food and water had first begun to circle her. Recognition of her three kidnappers brought with it a healthy amount of fear and caution, but she seized on the anger that their reappearance triggered in her. She threw her shoulders back and tipped up her chin. “I demand to know why you’ve done this to me.”

The small man laughed. “She demands.”

The big man responded with a hitch and lift of his shoulders, in what she supposed passed for a laugh at her expense. Her gaze flitted beyond them to the silent man. No movement. No laughter. Nothing.

And then Ellie realized she couldn’t let her attention wander. The short man had walked right up to her, close enough that she could smell the cigarette smoke that permeated his clothes. She knew that smell.

Her silly fantasies about Prince Charming had been destroyed by the man who smelled like that. “You’re the substitute chauffeur from last night.”

“Bingo.” He sounded almost pleased that he’d made an impression on her. “How’s our princess doing this afternoon?”

Princess?

He plopped a plastic pail down on the stool and sniffled loudly beneath his mask. “How do you like the fancy accommodations, Your Highness?”

Highness.

A light of understanding flashed on in Ellie’s head.

Oh, my God. Of course! They thought… “I’m not—”

Fortunately he interrupted her protest, giving Ellie time to see the wisdom in keeping her identity a secret. “We furnished all the comforts of home, sugar. Even a bucket for you to do your necessary business.”

Shock sailed through Ellie, clearing the path for the helpless fear that followed. These men thought they’d kidnapped a princess. The short man’s taunting sarcasm aside, they wouldn’t be pleased to learn that they’d nabbed a lowly secretary by mistake.

If they found out they’d abducted the hired help… Paulo’s dead staring eyes leaped to mind.

Think, Ellie, she coached herself. A jumble of ideas vied for consideration. How did she play this game? It had taken every bit of her nerve to try just to look like a princess last night. How could she act a part she was so unsuited for? And more importantly, how did she get out of this mess? Alive and safe?

What would a real princess do?

“How did you…find me?”

“Pick up the princess at the Carradigne penthouse. Red dress. Inferno Ball. That’s all my contact said I needed to know.” The short man sidled right up to her and fingered the broken strap that had fallen down her back. He draped the frayed silk across her shoulder and pulled the length of it between his index and middle finger. Ellie sucked in her breath and flinched away from the purposeful caress. “Sorry about the dress.”

He paused with the back of his knuckles resting atop her breast where it pillowed above the neckline of the gown. She held his lustful gaze, imagined him smiling or slobbering or some other foul thing beneath his mask. Knowing she watched him, he pressed his palm to her bare skin and squeezed.

Ellie smacked him away. “Don’t touch me!”

She jerked back and slammed into the wall of the big man’s chest. Her instinctive struggle was quickly subdued by the large hands that pinned her arms—and the long knife pressed against her throat.

For his burly size, the short man had moved with surprising speed. “Now let’s review the facts, Princess.” He stroked the blade along her collarbone and slipped it beneath the remaining strap of her gown. “I have all the power, and you—” with a flick of his wrist, he severed the strap and the bodice dropped to an indecent level “—have none.”

Ellie withered in the big man’s hands.

I am Princess Lucia Carradigne of Korosol. The chant she’d used to build her self-confidence the night before now played like a death knell inside her head.

She had no idea where she was. No idea who these men were or what they wanted. Did they have a grudge against Lucia or her new husband, Harrison Montcalm, a retired general and outgoing royal advisor to King Easton? Did these men or their contact want something from King Easton himself? Power? Money? Korosol was a small, but wealthy country. The king had his own fortune at his disposal. He had the power to sway Parliament. Was their motivation political? Economical? Vengeful?

Or did they simply enjoy torturing her with her own inadequacies?

“What do you want from me?” Her docile voice and downcast eyes seemed to have a calming effect on the short man.

He laughed again as he propped his foot up on the stool and put his knife away in his boot. “We just want you to be a good girl and mind your manners. Sinjun here has fixed the place up real nice for you. And we’ll be right upstairs if you need anything.”

What sort of name was Sinjun? She glanced across the room to the silent man. She wasn’t foolish enough to believe he’d be her ally, yet he had been kind enough to bring her food. To insist she eat.

“It’s almost time for the call, Jerome.” The big man’s deep voice resonated in the air behind her, though he was surprisingly soft-spoken.

He finally released her, and Ellie turned her attention back to what little she could do to protect herself. She tugged up the bodice of her dress to better cover her exposed skin, then crossed her arms in front of her.

Jerome seemed amused by her attempts at modesty. “Sugar, you do exactly what we tell you and you won’t get hurt.”

“How do I know that? How do I know I won’t end up dead in your trunk?”

A dangerous glint replaced the amusement in his dark eyes. “You don’t. You might be used to calling the shots back home at the castle…” The notion registered that he didn’t know Lucia had never lived in a castle. But then, these men didn’t know Lucia at all, or they wouldn’t have mistaken the plain brown mouse that she was for the vibrant, blond Lucia. “…but around here, I’m in charge.”

“The call?” the big man prompted, already striding toward the stairs.

“I’m on it, Lenny.”

Lenny. The big man was named Lenny. Jerome was the short and smelly jerk with the all-too-friendly hands. The silent one was Sinjun. She didn’t know how the information could help her, but she filed it away, anyhow.

“Don’t worry, sugar. I’ll be back to keep you company. I have a phone call to make. I’ll bet there’s somebody wondering where you are.”

Jerome and Lenny climbed the stairs and disappeared without another word. Sinjun spared her one final look, then headed up after them.

“Wait.”

At the last moment Ellie acted on the desperate need to escape. Dragging her chain behind her, she scuttled to the bottom of the stairs in time to see the door close and hear the dead bolt slide into place.

Exhausted, confused and more frightened than she had ever been in her life, Ellie sank to the floor and let the tears she’d fought finally overtake her.

Jerome was a mean little man. Lenny was an immovable force. Both were dangerous. Of that she had no doubt. She’d had firsthand experience with their easy violence. And yet neither one of them spooked her the way Sinjun, the silent panther of a man, and his intense blue eyes had.

I’ll bet there’s somebody wondering where you are.

True. Several people would wonder where Princess Lucia had disappeared to if she’d vanished. Her new husband. Her sisters. Her mother. King Easton himself, Lucia’s grandfather.

But Eleanor Standish?

She’d been easy to overlook her entire life.

Would anyone be missing her?

Chapter Two

Cade St. John locked the basement door behind him and pulled off his ski mask. He wiped his sleeve across his sweaty brow and combed his fingers through his hair, settling it into neat waves across his crown. Whenever it got beyond the crewcut stage, it had a tendency to curl and fan above his forehead, giving him a deceptively youthful look that belied his thirty-three years—and masked a life experience that on some days qualified him for retirement.

Days like this one.

Are you going to kill me, too?

The woman’s voice and those sad, accusing eyes had struck a nerve.

Dammit, that wasn’t supposed to have happened—taking out the chauffeur like that. No one was supposed to get hurt. This job was already unraveling from the original plan. Cade wasn’t naive. That meant he’d been too damn arrogant to think he could control this gig with a loose cannon like Jerome Smython calling the shots.

Jerome was just a middleman with delusions of grandeur. Whoever had hired the three of them had been stupid enough or callous enough to give Jerome free rein with his temper. Maybe if Cade knew who the boss really was, he could argue his case.

Problem was, Cade didn’t know who had hired him.

Big problem.

He tossed the mask onto the countertop extension that served as a kitchen table and headed straight for the half-size refrigerator. If he was in charge of this operation, he’d be wearing a ball cap and dark glasses. But then, he wasn’t in charge. He did have a few useful connections, though. He knew his way around guns and explosives, and could drive an untraceable getaway car from Manhattan to the Connecticut countryside in record time.

“Sinjun. Hand me a beer.”

Cade shrugged off his instinctive response to a man like Jerome Smython telling him what to do.

Two weeks ago Jerome had come into Cade’s office at the Korosolan Embassy in New York with one very interesting proposition.

Let’s kidnap a princess.

Cade might possess a royal title himself, but it was no secret that his family was bankrupt. That his late father had gambled away his inheritance. That the lands they had once owned had been auctioned off to make an inroad into Bretford St. John’s accumulated debt. That Cade’s mother had found herself a wealthy Texas oilman to keep her in jewels and furs, and written off Korosol—and her son—in the process.

So Cadence St. John, Duke of Raleigh, former army officer, acting Korosolan ambassador to the United States, accepted the lure of a one-million-dollar payoff for services rendered and signed on to Jerome’s “proposition.”

Cade pulled out three beers, twisted off the caps and carried them into the living room, where Smython and Lenny Gratfield had made themselves comfortable on two mismatched couches. He crossed to the scarred window that overlooked the woods surrounding the abandoned house where they were hiding, and pretended an interest in the gray-green surface of the lake beyond the trees.

But with just a shift of his eyes, he could keep an eye on the other two men by watching their reflections in the window. He took a long swig of beer to cool his throat and quietly studied them. He’d already run a background check on his two compatriots—a basic rule of survival meant knowing who you were dealing with. They were mercenaries who’d received some of the best training on the planet as former members of the Korosolan Army. He’d gone through the same training himself when he was twenty-one. But it was an old habit of his—always watching. He’d gotten himself out of sticky situations, kept himself alive more times than he could count, by simply keeping an eye on everything going on around him.

Jerome lit one of his imported European cigarettes and kicked his feet up on the frayed ottoman that doubled as a coffee table.

Lenny peeled the stocking cap from his shaved head and pulled out a thin black notepad. He jotted something down. Was the big guy keeping a journal? Writing a friend? Recording expenses? Cade had noticed a zenlike calm about him, a quiet sense of purpose that bore up well under Jerome’s hot-tempered actions. Fire and ice, Cade had dubbed them.

But while Jerome’s interest in kidnapping Princess Lucia seemed to be rooted in nothing more complicated than old-fashioned greed, he couldn’t say the same for Lenny. The big guy didn’t share Jerome’s interest in fast cars and big yachts and the women they attracted. He hadn’t figured Lenny out yet. And until he did, Cade would keep an especially close eye on the man.

Cade checked his watch. As the big hand hit the twelve, Jerome’s cell phone rang. Right on cue. He swallowed another drink of the cold, bitter brew and turned, showing a mild interest in the expected call, but wishing he had an extension to eavesdrop on.

Mr. Fire of the hot temper and smoky stench waited for the second ring before picking up. “Three o’clock,” he said. “I like punctuality.” His thick chest shook as he laughed at his own clever greeting, and Cade wondered if the caller found Jerome as amusing as Jerome did. “Yes, sir. The package is safe and secure. Not too much trouble. I’ll make the call as soon as we’re finished here.” He pulled a long drag on his cigarette and sat up straight. As he exhaled the sweetly pungent smoke, his puttylike features mirrored his displeasure with whatever was being said. “I don’t like being left out of the loop.”

Jerome hopped to his feet and paced the length of the room. “Three days?” He eyed Lenny and Cade over his shoulder, his expression changing back to its good-ol’-boy facade as the caller placated him. He nodded. “We can manage three days. As long as we get paid what we’re due.”

Another moment passed and then he pulled the phone from his ear and punched the off button.