Page 1 of Any Duke in a Storm

One

British West Indies

1868

Raphael Saint snarled through the bars of the run-down prison, slamming his abraded hands into the rusted metal pipes. Five weeks and counting since he’d been betrayed and locked in this hellhole…his own shipmates turning on him for the promise of coin. He’d expected to be quietly dispatched within the first days, but time had stretched on from one week to the next.

He knew what they were waiting for—Captain Prince’s arrival. Raphael knew without a doubt that the ratherun-princely rat bastard, also known as his loathsome uncle, was behind all of this.

Charles Dubois was a two-faced turncoat.

Raphael had to escape…before Dubois arrived to gloat and make his death a personal vendetta.

Each day that passed made escape seem a more impossible task, but Raphael wasn’t a man to stand idly by and wait for death. He bit his thumb at Death each time he sailed out of the path of a hurricane or took on the lawless cutthroats of the high seas who were intent on anarchy.Men were always ready to stab him in the back. He had the scars to show for it, but he wasn’t a man who gave up at the first sign of trouble. In fact, he welcomed it.

Though he was weak from the lack of food, Raphael kept his muscles strong with daily exercise in the cramped cell. Even when they were burning and quivering, he pushed himself more. Made himself eat the thin gruel his keepers shoved into his cell twice daily. Bided his time. The opportunity would present itself, and when it did, he would be ready.

Raphael ran through his exercises again, running in place to get his heart pumping. When he was through the repetitions and coated in sweat, he sat on the edge of his thin straw-filled pallet and peered upward. The sliver of a window near the high, bricked ceiling let in some golden and red light that told him it was nearly late evening. He had no idea what day it was as the hours had started to converge after enough time had passed, but keeping track was necessary. He slept when it was dark and kept his body and mind honed when it was daylight.

“Time for your bath, yer lordship,” a nasal voice called out.

Raphael bristled with irritation, but stood and stripped. Grime and grease were caked onto his skin and his scalp itched. He was lucky if his “baths” came once a week, but at least they kept him feeling somewhat human.

“Top of the mornin’ to ya, Monsieur le Duc,” Jimmy went on, butchering the pronunciation as he always did, the last part of that sounding likemonshoe lah dook.

Raphael exhaled a derisive snort at the address. Yes,it was his title—a disgraced title. Louis-Napoléon himself had granted it to his father as a victory title and then stripped away his lands on the words of a liar—but the men in his line of work used it like an insult. Raphael supposed it was.

Then again, he didn’t give a shit about being a duke. If it wasn’t a matter of his family’s honor, he’d stay far away from Paris. He wouldn’t think twice about returning and attempting to clear his father’s name. But vengeance boiled in his blood and his uncle had to pay.

Jimmy screwed up his ugly countenance and tutted. “All of it now,” he said, when Raphael stood in his filthy smallclothes that used to be white linen but were now dingy and gray.

“Get on with it, Jimmy,” he snarled back, irritated at being treated like a dog.

The man laughed, baring rotted teeth. “Got a treat for ya today, since you’ll have a visitor soon and he wants ya nice and sparklin’-like.”

Raphael blinked at that news as the narrowest sliver of soap was thrown through the bars. That could only mean one thing: his time was running out. If Dubois was on his way here, then his window of opportunity was closing.

Think, you big bastard!

He’d gone through every inch of his cell, but the walls were brick and the floor packed dirt. The ditch in the corner that served as a latrine was a narrow hole in the ground. His pallet was nothing but woven twill and straw. All outer layers and his boots had been taken, and all he had werethe soiled shirt and trousers in a pile. He’d even tried to use the bowls that his gruel came in to fashion a pick for the ancient lock, but the brittle clay shattered each time. Jimmy had burst into laughter when he’d seen the broken dishes.

His eyes narrowed on the old guard. Jimmy had to have something on him that Raphael could use! The trick would be to get him close enough to the bars, but the man wisely never came within reach.

“Ready?” Jimmy said. “Come to the edge,Dook.”

Obeying, Raphael shivered as the first bucket of cold water doused him from head to toe, and blinked the streams out of his eyes as the second came on the heels of the first. Knowing that he had to be quick, he made short work of running the harsh soap through his wet hair first, and wincing at the sight of the gray suds dripping down his bare chest. Forgoing his pride, he turned and stripped out of the smalls. It was a small price to pay for being clean.

He scrubbed lower when he heard Jimmy shuffle out, presumably to get more buckets of water for the rinsing. When he was done, he used the edge of his tattered shirt to scrub his teeth, grimacing at the bitter taste of the soap. Thankfully, his warden returned with refilled buckets and repeated the process of dousing him from head to toe, before shoving a thin strip of toweling and a pile of fancy clothing through the bars.

Raphael frowned at the clothes: trousers, a frilled shirt, and even a finely milled coat with pewter buttons.

“Time to look pretty,” Jimmy crowed. “I’ve a special surprise for yer last supper.”

Last supper?Well, of course it might very well be. His luck had been on borrowed time for days now. He wondered what Dubois’s game was. Did he mean to turn him over to the American Treasury Department and not kill him? Show him up in front of his crew? Spin a yarn of lies about his supposed sins and betrayal of their smugglers’ code? Commit him to an asylum as Dubois had his own brother?

Raphael had too much support from his men—ones loyal to him—for any accusations to truly stick. But many of those men weren’t here. The ones here were only loyal to deep pockets and the promise of pay. Raphael did not blame them. One had to feed one’s family, and times were thin.

In silence, he dried himself and dressed in the ill-fitting but tasteful clothes. He was a big man, and most of his apparel had to be cut to his frame, but anything was better than the filthy rags he’d worn before.

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