these graves,” he said slowly. “Because someone had disturbed this one.”
Ashland was frowning. “So? Fools like the ones we just dispatched are not uncommon.”
“True. But even those fools, looking for jewelry and gold, would not ignore the grand graves of barons and baronesses and dig up the resting place of a lowly child.” King’s shovel blade hit the hard earth. It was packed but not frozen.
“What the hell are you doing?”
“Digging up my grave.”
“Because you think someone robbed it?” The duke sounded incredulous.
“No. I think someone put something in it.” He turned over another shovelful of earth.
“I beg your pardon?”
“Are you going to help or watch, Ashland?”
The duke made an exasperated sound but bent and retrieved the second shovel and set to work beside King.
The box, when they found it, was buried not far below the surface. It was made of wood and smaller than the child-size coffin that presumably lay somewhere below, but larger than a case that might hold a fine pair of long dueling pistols. King dropped his shovel and awkwardly wrested the heavy box from the cold earth.
Wordlessly Ashland passed him his knife, and King pried open the latch. He set the knife aside and lifted the lid, already knowing what he was going to find.
“Bloody hell,” Ashland breathed beside him as the moonlight illuminated the contents.
“Indeed,” King agreed. He closed the lid and rested his hands on the surface.
The duke pushed himself to his feet. “Well, then. I won’t ask what you’re going to do with them because I know you won’t tell me.” He sighed. “Credible deniability and all that.”
“No,” King said quietly, looking back at his brother’s headstone. “I will tell you. I will tell you everything because the whole truth is what you deserve.” He straightened and met the Duke of Ashland’s gaze.
“You don’t have to.”
“I do. Because I trust you. And because you’ve never run either.”
“Not even when you asked me to dig up your grave,” Ashland said wryly. He retrieved King’s walking stick and handed it to him, his expression becoming serious again. “And what about your assassin?”
King gripped the familiar silver handle.
“It would seem I owe her a truth as well.”
Chapter 16
The sun was hot on her skin.
Adeline tipped her face up to that warmth, the rich scents of sun-baked earth and flourishing vegetation mingling on the breeze. She lifted her heavy braid off her neck, gazing at what months of hard work had wrought. While the grand old château hadn’t survived the fiery destruction of the revolutionary mobs, the cellars and equipment sheds had been spared, along with the handful of workers’ cottages that sat on the edge of the property. The important things that were making Falaise d’Argent whole again had survived. Including her.
Before winter had ended, Adeline had hired a foreman and a dozen workers, men and women who had toiled in vineyards like this one their entire lives. They’d been willing to teach Adeline everything they knew and share what information they could. Including the assurance that, two summers from now, they would be able to harvest their first grapes from the rows of new, tender vines that were now growing under a warm French sun. Adeline’s days became a cycle of hard work, ending only when she collapsed into a satisfied, exhausted slumber at the end of each day.
Which was what she wanted—no, needed—because there were still too many moments when her hands and her mind were idle that she thought of King. She dropped her head, the loss that she had thought would get better with time still cutting deep. She might have found a home here, a place where she belonged, surrounded by honest, simple work, but she hadn’t been able to forget the man she had left behind. The man to whom she belonged.
She hefted her basket from the ground over her arm.
“I hope there’s not a head in there,” a voice said from behind her.
Adeline set her basket back down, the disorienting surge of emotion that raced through her followed quickly by the irrational fear that she was hearing things.
“Not today,” she replied. “And that’s a rather macabre way to greet a woman.”
“Yes, but you’re not just a woman. You are the goddess of retribution, the inescapable, and an avenging angel who wields her weapons as well as she wields her wits.”
“Then I’m afraid you’ll be disappointed. Because today I’m just Miss Archambault. Pulling weeds in a hot field.”
“I will never be disappointed, Adeline.”
Slowly she turned around. King stood before