Prologue
January 1838
St. Kilda, Scotland
The Asylum of St. Raguel
The powerful punch to Callum Fergussoune’s face didn’t knock him down. It took two men seizing the Marquess of Kilgore by the arms to even allow the third man—the one Callum now knew was called the Enforcer—to deliver the blows. But after three more hits in quick succession, he wasn’t sure if he was still standing by his own will or if he was upright because of the men holding him.
Before his sluggish mind could work through the dilemma, another jab from the bare-knuckled bastard in front of him hit Callum’s nose. Bone crunched and bright specks of light danced in his vision, inviting him to close his eyes and drift. He knew he shouldn’t give in to the desire, but he’d been beaten enough in the days since he’d been kidnapped, drugged, and deposited here at this filthy sham of an asylum that he was now well aware that Constantine’s image awaited him when he floated in the darkness.
One moment.
All he needed was one moment to see her, even if it was just in his mind. His eyelids fell heavily, blotting out the hell in front of him and surrounding him. Immediately, he was rewarded. Flashes of her laughing, honey-colored eyes filled his head and made his chest ache, but a fist meeting his right eye sent excruciating pain radiating from the socket and across his face. He forced his eyes open once more, the blindingly beautiful picture of her smiling disappearing before it had even fully formed. In its place was a meaty fist that made contact square on his mouth and rocked him back on his heels, rattling his teeth.
The hit had the unintended consequences of jolting him back to full awareness and reminding him that he could not allow himself to drift—however much he wanted to. He had to stay aware and fight back with whatever resistance he still had in him, which at the moment wasn’t a great deal. He needed sleep and food and a day without being beaten. Heaviness pressed down on him and seemed to compress his bones. Taunts and snickers brushed his ear, indicating his captors’ sadistic enjoyment of what had become the morning and nightly ritual since he’d arrived at the Asylum of St. Raguel three nights prior. The room swayed, and nausea roiled in his stomach as the metallic taste of blood filled his mouth and a pulsing began in his now cracked-open lip.
Callum wasn’t a stranger to physical pain. Years of beatings from his cousin Ross and the following years in the boxing ring at the Rogue’s Pugilist Club, where he learned to defend himself and conquer any opponent, had taught him physical pain could be endured with the right thinking. You had to lean into it and hold at your core that it was fleeting. But he’d never been tested to this extent, and he had the vague realization, in his increasingly cloudy thoughts, that there was only so far a man could lean before he fell flat on his face.
“Who are ye?” the Enforcer demanded, his face twisted in rage and anger, veins straining to break free of the man’s forehead.
Same question. Same question. How many bloody times would the man ask that question?
“The Marquess of Kilgore,” Callum slurred.
Damnation. His tongue no longer worked properly. Had he bitten it?
“Ye are either a slow learner or a fool.”
Certainly, he was a fool. Only a fool would have left the woman he loved the very night he had wed her to travel to Scotland at the behest of his cousin, whom he didn’t even like. Only a fool would have let the woman he loved believe he’d wed her for her money because he’d thought there would be time to truly win her heart once more and mend the emotional wounds he’d inadvertently inflicted on her with his half-wit attempt to protect her for the last five years. He was a coward for waiting to tell her the truth, and he was most definitely an idiot, but he’d not reveal that to this man.
Callum forced his throbbing mouth to form what he hoped was a smug smile. The Enforcer wanted to break Callum. Perhaps the man was fearful that if he didn’t manage to crush Callum’s will, his own would look weak to the other inmates here. Callum damn sure was not going to be under this man’s heel this day. “Come closer and I’ll tell you the truth.”
The man’s eyes, shockingly blue against his freckled face, narrowed, but he leaned in, close enough for Callum to rear his head back and then smash their foreheads together. An enormous wave of pain swept through his skull, but it was worth it. A cacophony erupted around him, the two men holding him shouting, and then the Enforcer bellowed as he launched his next attack.
The jabs landed like a torrent of rain on Callum’s face, and soon all he felt was the cold wetness of his blood. The smell of it made him laugh like a loon just as he felt himself falling. They’d let him go. His head smacked against the hard floor of his new home—a tiny square cell.
He turned his head to press a cheek against the freezing floor, and a rat scampered by his face. His body recoiled and disgust curdled in his stomach, but he didn’t actually make the slightest attempt to move. He was too damn tired. Still, he kept his gaze trained on the detested vermin. He hated rats. He couldn’t immediately bring to mind why in his current muddled state, but it slowly seeped into his memory. He hated rats because Ross used to lock him in the oubliette at Castle Stratmore, which had been infested with the bastards.
Above him, the three men talked, their conversation muted by the ringing in Callum’s ears. No matter. Callum was still thinking on Ross. His cousin was a louse, but Callum couldn’t seem to locate the exact reason why when his brain felt like such sludge.
“Louse. Mouse. Ross is a lousy mouse,” Callum said, an odd wheezing chuckle rumbling from his chest.
A sharp kick to Callum’s head brought the stark room of the asylum into blurry focus for one moment, but the blackness descended once more. This time, his father’s image danced before him. Callum frowned. His father was dead.Not here. Dead. But, here he was, pointing to Ross.Think with your head like Ross, not with your fists.
Callum blinked again, and his father and Ross were gone. Yet the memory of how it had felt to try to make his father proud and continually fail was sharp. His gut knotted as it had on the day of the furious final fight with his father so many years ago, the one that had driven them completely apart and sent Callum spiraling over the edge of self-indulgence, foolishness, and self-pity. Meeting Constantine and loving her secretly for five years had saved him, and she didn’t even know it. Might never know it.
His fingers twitched to touch her thick chestnut hair, which was streaked with golden strands that hung in loose waves about her shoulders, the rounded slopes of which had been beautifully revealed by the blue gown she’d worn the day they had wed. The unexpected, miraculous second chance to have her in his life could not be gone.
His throat constricted as a foot shoved into his chest and then a boot pressed into his shoulder, causing pain to slice through him. With great effort, he dragged his gaze up to the three men standing over him.
The Enforcer’s fat cheeks swayed forward on his bones as he leaned over Callum. “Do ye still want to claim ye are the Marquess of Kilgore?” he snarled. He flashed yellowed, chipped teeth as his thin, crusty lips formed more words. “I suppose that piece of trash over there”—the Enforcer pointed to the boy Callum had quite forgotten was in the cell—“is the Duke of Edinburgh.”
“No,” Callum said slowly, drawing the ragged edges of his wits about him. “The Duke of Edinburgh—” he paused to spit out blood “—is a rotund, disgusting pig of a man. You actually remind me of him.”
The Enforcer shot out his fist to hit Callum again, but with one last heave of effort, Callum bucked the booted foot off his shoulder and rolled. The Enforcer’s fist met the ground, and the fellow howled in rage. Escape wasn’t meant to be, though. Hands grabbed Callum’s shoulder, the one that felt as if it had been jerked clean out of its socket, and a wave of sickness rolled over him. He was on his back before he knew it, and the Enforcer punched him until Callum’s head filled with a deafening sound that made his ears ring and his nose throb.
The Enforcer crouched beside him, knees creaking, and said, “Let’s try this again, Mr. Selkirk.” That was the name the doctor—or the man who had claimed he was a doctor—had called Callum when he’d arrived at the asylum. “Ye are not a marquess.”
