Soldier of Fortune: The King's Courtesan (Rakes and Rogues of the Retoration Book 2) (3 page)

Cressly Manor, Nottinghamshire, 1662

He darted around a corner, his pursuers snarling at his heels.
It was dark, the sky an impenetrable blanket smothering a ruined town blackened and seared by fire. Pockets of angry flames licked the sky and bodies littered the street. Those who’d survived the inferno and escaped the sword huddled in cellars, wells, and ditches, hushed and trembling, waiting for the storming of booted feet to pass them by.

He sprinted toward the town center and ducked down a secluded street that was little more than an alley. There was no moon and no illumination other than the reddish glow of torchlight. The path he’d chosen led nowhere but a wall too high to climb. He’d reached a dead end.

Straightening, he turned to face his pursuers. They slowed and stopped, suddenly wary—something in his face, his stance, turning anticipation into confusion and fear. His growl was triumphant. This was the moment he’d been waiting for, living
for—the culmination of the hunt. They stumbled over each other, slowly backing away—all but their leader, who seemed oddly bemused. They’d understood too late
. They
were the prey.

He might have got off two shots with his pistols in those first moments of stunned surprise, but this wasn’t an act of war. This required intimacy.
This
was personal. His eyes flashed and metal sparked as he drew a gleaming sword, attacking with a lightning-quick savagery fueled by hatred, fanned by a lust for vengeance and nursed over the course of several years. One man took the blade to the throat before he could ready his own weapon. Another fumbled with a pistol only to stagger backward, ashen-faced with shock as cold steel pierced his heart.

Their leader hadn’t moved. A handsome man with graying hair, he stood waiting, sword at the ready, curiosity, rather than fear in his eyes. “We have met before. How do I know you?”

“Cressly.” It was almost a hiss. Leaping forward, he slammed the gray-haired man hard against the wall, pinioning him by the throat with one arm as the longsword drove under his guard between breast and back plate and thick buff coat to cut through leather, skin and bone. The man’s eyes showed shock and bewilderment but it wasn’t that his killer sought. He leaned into his victim, twisting the hilt of his sword with savage force, not bothering to stifle the man’s shrill scream of agony.

“’Twas Cressly in Nottinghamshire we met, Lord Stanley. My name is Robert Nichols... and this is all you need to know. Her name was Caroline. She was a child. You killed her…and this,” he said as he twisted again
,
“is for her.”

He saw it then—the startled flash of recognition. He gave one final thrust, jerking the earl’s body up and nearly off the ground before pulling out his sword and stepping back, letting the lifeless corpse slide down the wall to join the refuse that littered the blood-slick ground. He felt strangely empty. There was no satisfaction. No thrill of righteous retribution or sense of justice done. But Stanley was just the first. There were three more yet to go. Perhaps then she’d let him be.

He regarded his handiwork, face impassive, before turning to look at a huddled form, mewling in the corner. Off in the distance, Prince Rupert’s forces were still hard at work, fanning through the town, routing out those who had run too late, stayed too long, or hadn’t found a place deep enough to hide.

The night echoed with sporadic musket fire, shrill screams, drunken laughter and desperate cries of
“
sauve qui peut
.”
The rumble of cannon fire reverberated through the city. Strange that—now that the walls were breeched and the battle done but for the looting. He cocked his head to one side, assessing, and then he spoke. “Run!” Somewhere, impossibly far away, a young girl cried…
.

~

Robert Nichols jerked awake, heart pounding, his body bathed in a cold sweat. Thunder growled in the distance. A steady rain tapped on the windows and pattered against the roof. He groaned. Another damned storm. They’d been rolling across the county for weeks. Soon the river would flood its banks.

Vestiges of his dream still lingered. No surprise there. He’d had the same one over and over through the years. It clung to him like a burr. Bolton. The first massacre of the civil war and he all of seventeen years old. Over three quarters of the town murdered, perpetrated by Price Rupert and the Earl of Derby in the Royalist cause. He’d witnessed atrocities aplenty on both sides since then. The Lord Protector had been a pitiless man, too.

He rolled out of bed and pulled on his boots and a robe, his nerves frayed. The girl’s sobbing still resonated, wrapped within the wail and sigh of the wind.
Caroline
.
She wouldn’t leave him alone. And why should she? Wasn’t this her home, too? Didn’t she have the right to demand retribution? And who to avenge her but him? Bolton had given him the opportunity to dispatch James Stanley, the first of her murderers. George Stanhope followed soon after, cut down in another bloody engagement, though he’d almost lost him to a Yorkshire pikeman during the melee.

Chisholm had been harder. He was a superior officer, an ex-cavalier who’d switched allegiance with the bloody-minded zeal of the newly converted. He’d fallen, begging for mercy, trapped in a barn after the young king’s retreat from Worchester.
I showed him the same mercy he showed the camp followers fighting back with pots and pans at Naseby.
Now only one remained.

He poured himself a tumbler of whiskey, something he’d developed a taste for while on campaign in Ireland. Sleep had deserted him and he was as wound and ready as if he’d only just stepped from the field of battle. He supposed in a way he had.

In his youth, life had been simple. He’d believed in family, king and country. He’d believed in himself. A thing was right, or it was wrong. A man honored his word, protected the weak and defended his homeland, but Caro’s death changed everything. When politics and religion tore his homeland in two it gave him an outlet for the grief and fury he had no other way to express. The civil war became his private one, and he’d used the field of battle to exact his vengeance and focus his rage.

General Walters, his commander and mentor in matters of politics and war, replaced the father who blamed him for his sister’s death, and the idea of an English Republic, with no man above the law allowed him to pretend he fought for a greater good, easing his guilt and pain. In a strange way, the war, at first at least, had brought him peace. But ten years of fierce fighting had taught him the horrors men justified in the name of some greater good. He had witnessed unspeakable cruelties and been powerless to stop them. He had done things he had once thought unthinkable. Surrounded by cold-blooded men and ideologues, he’d realized he was neither, and the only things he could control were his own actions and his own small company of men.

When he’d walked in on some of his own soldiers assaulting Elizabeth Walters he’d begun to doubt if even that were true. They’d been hot on the trail of William de Veres, a Royalist cavalier who played at highwayman and spy for the exiled Stuart king. Elizabeth had been up to something. He’d spent far too long reading men and situations not to know, but the Irish campaigns had left his honor so sullied that all that mattered was protecting an old friend’s daughter. He made it his duty to help her, and for a while he’d felt clean again. The deception went unnoticed. Those who knew him thought him cold, capable and as unbending as steel. He’d learned long ago to guard his secrets and keep his true thoughts to himself.

Now the wars were over and the king restored they were all proud Englishmen again. Men no longer declared themselves for crown or Parliament and all was forgiven it seemed. He’d made a career out of war, but he was sick of fighting and killing. It was time to try settling down to the quiet life of a country gentleman again. Maybe this time he’d build some semblance of a normal life and find a little peace.

But there is still one left.
To find and kill a man on the field of battle or during a campaign was one thing. To find and kill a man who’d fled the country and spent the past ten years in exile was another. He wasn’t even sure he had the stomach for it anymore.

He paced the halls, his footsteps echoing behind him like some damned ghost.
Cressly
.
Once it rang with children’s laughter. He had raced her through these halls. At times he imagined he could hear her still. Her merry laughter and the patter of running feet as she chased after him. That was before a group of drunken cavaliers had come and woken something savage. All that chased him now were the hollow remnants of troubling dreams—distant sounds of hoarse shouting, artillery fire, and the stomping of booted feet. Cressly was all he had left to hold on to.
Even if it is as bare and haunted as me
.
I haven’t forgotten, Caroline. I promise you he’ll pay
.

He tossed back what remained of his drink, surprised to note he’d wandered all the way to the library. Flashes of lightening illuminated the room in flickers of silvery light painting the furniture, fireplace, and rows of books in hues of bluish-grey and black. They jumped out in stark relief, transforming what was once familiar into a harsh and alien landscape. His image flickered before him, reflected in the window. His sandy hair looked white—his eyes bruised and hollow like one of the unseen things his staff believed walked Cressly late at night.
Christ I even scare myself!

Tossing a log into the fire, he kicked it with a booted foot, waiting for the coals to spark and flame before pouring another tot of whisky and settling into an overstuffed chair. The fire gave him just enough light to read by. He picked through the mail listlessly, but his gaze sharpened as he neared the bottom of the pile. There were two letters, both notable for the quality of paper and their ornate seals. One was addressed in a fine cursive script while the other bore the royal seal. His hand hovered a moment before picking one up. The letter was from Elizabeth Walters.

Elizabeth.
Hugh’s daughter. Many had been the time he’d watched her from afar when he’d been to visit her father. A solemn-faced, shy little girl, motherless and always alone. He had made it his mission to draw her out, engaging her in conversation and bringing her little gifts. Her father had not disapproved and it brought him pleasure to make her smile. She’d even laughed for him the day he’d set her on his horse. He’d offered her marriage after Cromwell took her lands. He’d owed that much to her father. But she’d refused him, choosing the company of a noted rake and libertine instead, following him when he was banished from England in disgrace.

He understood why. He was all but hollow inside. No doubt, she had sensed the flaws deep within him—the violence, the coldness, the dark. She had been right to refuse, and he had been wrong to ask. Nevertheless, he’d be lying to say her refusal hadn’t hurt. He wondered why she wrote him now. Had her lover deserted her? Did she need his aid? Would he help her if she did?
Yes. It’s what I promised.
Interest sparked, curious to see what she wanted and how she fared, he broke the seal.

She was happy, healthy and well, and she wished him the same. She wanted him to be among the first to hear the happy news. Just a few months past, she’d married William de Veres in a quiet ceremony in a small chapel in Maidstone, with only their servants present. They had thought it best to be circumspect given her new husband’s delicate situation in regards to the king. Things had improved in that regard however, and she had every reason to expect they’d be free to travel shortly. She thought of her dear friend and rescuer often, and hoped they might visit him at Cressly soon.

He was surprised de Veres had married her. She was a lovely girl to be sure, charming and well-bred, but the earl didn’t need her properties, she had no connections to speak of, and it was said he never kept a woman past a week. All of London would be in shock.

He crumpled the paper into a tight ball and then opened his hand, watching dispassionately as her message wafted to the floor to settle amongst the other discarded bits and pieces of the day. Elizabeth had been part of a foolish dream. A brief fantasy of a brighter future where he might take what was left of his life back and fashion it in to something better. He could hardly blame her for having dreams of her own.

He fingered the remaining packet, tracing his thumb back and forth across the royal seal at a loss as to what it might contain. He had removed himself completely from politics and so far as he knew, he wielded no influence and had caused no offense He had no powerful friends to lobby for appointments or position, and his enemies were secrets to everyone but him. He was a country gentleman, a minor baronet, hardly the sort to be called to court.

Life as a soldier had taught him to be wary of surprises. They seldom resulted in anything good. He broke the seal. Although he steeled himself, nothing could have prepared him for what lay within.

To Captain Sir Robert Nichols, Baronet:

Notwithstanding the general amnesty offered by his most gracious Majesty Charles II to those who took up arms against his Father and himself, it has come to our attention that the aid you provided the traitor Oliver Cromwell and other enemies of the Crown was of a more serious nature than originally known. As such, your title and properties, including, but not restricted to the estate and manor known as Cressly, are herewith forfeit to the Crown. In the spirit of reconciliation in which the amnesty was first proclaimed, you are hereby allowed to keep your commission and any monies derived thereby, as well as any personal possessions of sentimental value including horse and weapons, not to exceed in total worth the sum of two thousand pounds. You are herewith given one month to vacate, or be held in contempt of King and Crown.