They sat side-by-side in the darkness, West’s jacket spread out beneath them, shivering on the cold stone floor.

It was a terrifying predicament. They were trapped in the vaults below Southgate Bridge with a room full of explosives. If they survived the rumored ghosts, they would be stuck in here until morning, when Southingham would return, almost certainly armed and none too happy to deal with them.

And worse—if there could be a worse—now they would never be able to alert the authorities in time to stop the plot.

Shivering against the direction of her thoughts as much as the chilled air, Mary stared out at an invisible black landscape she knew contained eleven barrels of gunpowder and one tipped-over barrel of whisky bottles. Just an ordinary Wednesday night, she tried to tell herself.

That is, an ordinary night if one were the heroine of a tragic novel, literally facing one’s darkest hour.

The blackness began to seep into her very pores until she felt as dark as their surroundings. All around her, she could hear the faint drips of water, the sounds telling her that the storm outside—the storm she still couldn’t hear, in spite of straining her ears to catch some vital sound beyond her own breathing—was intensifying. She listened in vain for a rumble of thunder, tried to imagine she could see a flash of lightning. There was nothing beyond the relentless drip of water and her own labored breathing.

Clearly, screaming for help would be a waste of time.

“Do you think Southingham locked us down here on purpose?” she whispered, finally giving voice to the fear that had plagued her from the moment she realized they were trapped. “That he heard us, and knows we are down here?”

“No. I think he must have simply checked the door one last time and realized it was unlocked,” came West’s firm reply. “No one from the street could have heard us so far down here. And if he had a suspicion we were here, I doubt he would have left us here, mucking about in his barrels. He would have just shot us, don’t you think?”

Mary wanted to believe West’s matter-of-fact cataloging of their predicament, his simple explanation for the reason they were likely still alive. But fear had hold of her now. “How can you be so calm?” she choked out. The thought that they were trapped here, like animals in a cage, ghosts and bodies and barrels lurking in the darkness, made her want to claw her way to freedom, even if it meant tunneling ever deeper beneath the earth, or scratching through three feet of stone.

Through the darkness, she felt West’s hand bump into hers. “Here,” he said gruffly. “I can feel you shaking. Have a bit of this. It will warm you up, if nothing else.”

She felt the cool press of glass against her palm. Realized he was passing her one of the unbroken bottles of whisky. She hesitated a moment, then bolted down her first swig of something more interesting than punch.

The burn of it caught her off guard. It tasted like a smoky peat fire—not the sort of thing one willingly swallowed. She choked a moment, then found her words swimming drunkenly somewhere near the bottom of her throat. “This is what you and Grant are so fond of drinking? How on earth do you stand it? It is the most vile thing I’ve ever tasted!”

He chuckled, and she felt the warm press of his shoulder, leaning into hers. “In truth, it’s generally regarded as an acquired taste.”

“And just how does one ‘acquire’ this horrid taste?” she sputtered, still trying to clear her head from the unexpected burn of the stuff.

“By taking another sip, and then another, until oblivion and pleasure take over and you no longer care what it tastes like.” He hesitated, then added wickedly, “Just like me, Mouse.”

Well. He had a point there. So she lifted the bottle again. Sniffed at it, then sipped, more gingerly this time, handling it far better now that she knew what to expect. The third and fourth gulps were even better, but then she felt West’s fingers reaching through the blackness to lift the bottle from her hands, spilling a bit down her chin in the process.

“That’s a bit more than a sip.” She heard him chuckle.

“Well, given that we are locked down in here in a room about to explode, oblivion sounds like a good alternative.” She wiped her sleeve across her mouth. “I feel helpless, with no way to fix this.” She felt the moisture from the spilled drink soak through the thin wool of her sleeve, giving her a small shadow of an idea. “Although . . . could we dampen the gunpowder with the whisky?”

“I don’t think so. This particular variety tastes like the sort Grant likes to smuggle down from the north, strong enough to take paint off a wall. A much more potent brew than the sort they sell at White’s. If we dampen the gunpowder with this, it’s liable to make the place go up even brighter.”

“Oh.” She looked down in the area where her lap would be, if only she could see anything in the blackness. “Well then, bugger me blue.”

He burst out laughing. “Clearly, your vocabulary has taken a turn for the worse since marrying me.”

“Well.” Her lips twitched. “I’ve been taking notes.” She wanted to dive into the sound of his laughter. Sighed heavily instead. “Isn’t there anything we can do besides drink the rest of the bottles and wait for morning?”

She felt his hand fumble through the darkness to land on her arm, where it settled softly, a whisper of promise. “I have a few ideas.”

She sucked in a breath. Already, the whisky was doing strange things to her head. Or perhaps that was owed to the touch of her husband’s hand. She leaned toward him, the whisky stripping away the last of her doubts, the promise of a different kind of oblivion urging her on. But before her lips could find his, she stopped as she caught the sound of something new.

Tiny nails on stone, skittering through the darkness.

He apparently heard it, too. “Good Christ, what was that?”

She reached out a hand, seeking his. “West . . . are . . . you afraid of ghosts?”

“Hardly.” She could hear him panting in the darkness. “Ghosts don’t bite.”

She smothered a laugh. It hardly made sense. This was her large, strapping husband, the man who plunged after criminals brandishing a gun, the man who kept a Victoria Cross lying about the top of his dresser bureau. The skittering came again, this time to their right, and he jerked beneath her palm, kicking at imaginary things.

“Are you . . . afraid of mice?” she asked, understanding dawning. “But you call me Mouse!”

“I know.” She heard him gasp through the darkness. “And that’s because you’ve been terrifying me since the very first moment I saw you.”

She burst out laughing, and he supposed he couldn’t really blame her.

He felt a bit like laughing himself.

Oh, but the universe had a terrible sense of whimsy, to trap him down here—at Southingham’s hand, no less—with a room full of what he could only imagine were a horde of beady-eyed, sharp-toothed creatures. Even if he could only hear the one.

He supposed he could just tell her. Explain all of this. His instincts always pushed him toward tight-lipped silence when it came to managing his demons, but it was clear that silence was not going to be useful around his new wife.

And truly, what else did they have to do here to pass the time, sitting in the darkness, vermin closing in on every side?

“And it isn’t mice as much as rats,” he admitted, staring up into the cavernous darkness. “Do you remember the corpse?”

“Please don’t call her that,” he heard Mary say tightly, her laughter dying.

“Very well, the barmaid, then. Southingham wanted her, too, and he wouldn’t let it go. The barmaid preferred me, you see, and his ego was quite smashed over it. So he took every opportunity to harass me afterward.” West winced as he said it. A euphemism, that. He could still remember the day Southingham had cornered him, the broken ribs, the week he’d spent in Harrow’s infirmary. He recalled how difficult it had been not to unleash his fury, knowing that he—not his bully—would risk expulsion if he struck out in defense.

“But there’s a code amongst gentleman, you see. Future viscounts don’t go about pummeling future dukes, even if those dukes deserve a thrashing. Retaliation was a bit tricky. So one night, I filled his room with rats. Only, they didn’t stay in his room. Some of them found their way back to mine, chewing their way through the walls.” He shuddered, even as his ears strained for more unwelcome skitters. “Southingham told everyone who would listen the rats had chewed my prick to a nubbin. And of course, a proper gentleman could not go around showing everyone the part in question, just to prove a rumor wrong. So for a time there, half of London imagined I was . . . lacking.”

“You? Lacking?” This time, her laugh was welcome. “Good heavens, West. Judging by my sister’s utter horror when I married you, there’s not a woman in London who believes such a thing anymore.”

“Well, I may have worked hard to disprove it.” His lips twitched. “And that prank with Southingham’s duchess last year . . . it was intended to ensure the one woman who mattered would know my prick was intact, thank you very much.” He leaned his head back against the wall, feeling better to have told her this piece of his life. He wouldn’t have imagined that unburdening himself would feel right, but with her, somehow, it did. “Your turn now,” he said softly into the darkness. “I’ve told you one of my truths. I’d ask a question of you. Why are you so afraid of guns, Mary?”

He could hear her exhale, the rattle of her nerves. “I . . . don’t know what you mean.”

He shook his head, recognizing with a skill borne of experience that she was trying to evade some pertinent truth. “It may not be obvious to everyone, but I watch you. I know you, Mary. You refused to learn how to fire the derringer I offered you, even though it is far safer for you to handle than a knife, and you grow pale and quiet every time you see a gun in my hands. Why?”

“It . . . that is, it isn’t precisely a secret,” she stuttered. “Just memories.” There was a moment of silence, and he could feel her tremble through the darkness. “When I was nine years old, my oldest brother was killed by a hunting rifle, and most people believed my brother Patrick killed him, in order to inherit the title.”

“Good God.” West tried to remember if he had heard anything of that sort. Came up blank. Then again, a decade and a half ago, he’d still been playing with toy soldiers, not focusing on mysterious murder plots. But she had borne it. And it seemed she was bearing it still. “But your brother is now the Earl of Haversham,” West said. “He was acquitted, I take it?”

“Yes, but only because”—her voice broke—“because then my father was killed, and there was no way Patrick could have done it, given that he was hiding in Scotland at the time. And so suspicions began to take root, and they finally uncovered the real killer . . .” Her voice trailed off, and he could hear the anguish in her sigh. “I nearly lost Patrick, too, even though he’d done nothing wrong. The point is, I’ve lost so many people in my life, West. It seemed safest to stay in Yorkshire all these years, my nose buried in books. And it isn’t so much guns that I’m afraid of, as the reminder of what they can do. It is losing the people I love that terrifies me the most.”

West’s heart clenched for the shy, scared girl she must have been. He remembered how she had seemed to know, to understand, the source of his nightmares. She had her own demons to fight, it seemed, though she was doing an admirable job stepping out of that shell and standing on the edge of courage now. Only . . .

He sucked in a breath, realizing, then, what lay at the heart of some of this. Damn it all . . . he’d badgered Southingham into a duel, a fight to the death.

With pistols.

A duel he might yet lose.

Good Christ. No wonder she was finding it so difficult to trust him.

The skittering came again, farther away now, and this time he didn’t jump. Perhaps it was because he could feel her hand in his, small but reassuring.

Or perhaps it was because he was more concerned about her.

“Your turn again,” she said, her fingers tightening over his. “Would you tell me what happened in Crimea?”

She was holding her breath, waiting for his answer—he could hear it. Or rather, he couldn’t hear it. But the small telltale sign told him this was important to her.

And for once, it was easier to face this confession in total darkness.

“I told you some pieces of it,” he said gruffly. “How we were sent to Viborg instead of the front lines. There wasn’t expected to be any fighting there.” He could still remember how young and naive he and Grant had been, how the adventure—not the fight—had been the point.

And how quickly it all went to shite.

“But you were wrong,” she prompted, and he remembered, then, how she had followed the accounts of the war in the newspaper.

“It started with an explosive shell,” he said, feeling the sharp edges of the various pieces of that day, the shattered remains of the memory he had tried so hard to forget. “It rolled right up to our feet on the lower deck. Most of the men were laughing over it.” He swallowed. “They assumed it was a prank, you see. But I knew it wasn’t. Or at least, I knew it wasn’t one of my pranks. I could see it was the sort of shell that had a delayed charge, and so I seized it and threw it overboard. It exploded outside the ship, where no damage was done.” He shook his head. “Hardly a brave act, it was simply a matter of survival.”

He could feel her mind working through the tightening of her hand. “Who placed a shell in such a place? I have to imagine it was a calculated act.”

“There was a saboteur on board. A traitor who was willing to sacrifice himself for such a prize as sinking the Arrogant.” He closed his eyes, though the gesture scarcely made a difference in the darkness. “There was a fight afterward. Shots were fired.”

What came next was mostly a haze of fury, flashes of memory. He couldn’t remember the feel of the bullet entering his shoulder, but he could still feel the roar of vengeance pounding in his ears, the solid crunch of his fist striking bone, the way his feet had scrabbled on the deck slick with blood. Too much blood, and not only his own.

He felt the crawl of her hand, reaching toward him, working its way up to land just above his heart. “Is . . . that how you got this?”

“Yes.” He opened his eyes, and stared hard into the darkness that swallowed her. “I was injured wrestling the gun from the traitor’s hand. But honestly, Mouse, I was the lucky one. Three of my men were killed that day, sailors whose only sins were throwing themselves into the fray, trying to help me subdue the threat.” He shook his head, remembering those slow-motion moments all too well, no matter how long and hard he’d tried to forget them. “Afterward, Grant held his shirt over my wound, even pulling out his flask to clean it out. He saved my bloody life. The others weren’t so lucky. One man died there, on deck. The others died later, when their wounds festered.”

He stopped. Swallowed. Gave his tongue permission to go on.

“William Breech. Danny O’Shea. Pete Thompson.” The men’s names came out in whispers, the first time he’d spoken them out loud since that day. “They were sailors for whom I was responsible.” he said hoarsely. “And I didn’t react in time to save them.”

There was a moment of silence, though her hand did not loosen from his, despite the damning confession. “You were credited with saving the ship,” she said softly. “And that is why you were awarded the Victoria Cross.”

“I told you, it was a joke. I didn’t know it was a live shell.”

Although, in truth, he hadn’t known it wasn’t live, either.

Her hand tightened over his chest. “I think that your instincts very likely saved the day.”

“Saved the day?” An aching part of him wanted to believe her words, but his own snarling objections were too great. “Good Christ. Can’t you see? It’s my fault, Mary. The traitor was one of my own sailors, and I should have known, should have been able to stop it before anything happened. I was the bloody officer in charge of that deck that day. And the men who deserve a Victoria Cross are the ones who never made it home.”

She could hear the anguish in his voice. Knew all too well the heartbreak that came from looking back on a tragedy and wishing you had seen something, done something differently.

Her own life had been shaped by similarly violent forces—her brother’s death, her father’s murder, those dual tragedies had consumed her spinning, chaotic adolescence. She had wished, on so many occasions, that she might have been in a position to stop it, to change things. And she knew all too well how such imaginings could eat at you, change who you were.

“I understand,” she whispered, her heart twisting in her chest.

“How can you understand?” His voice was sharp in the darkness, a rooting tip of a knife. “Grant doesn’t even understand, not entirely, and he was bloody there. No one understands why I can’t just move on from it, least of all me. There has been no one I can talk to about this, not the families of the men who died, not Wilson, not even my best friend.”

“You have me to talk to,” she told him gently. She lowered her hand to curl into his again. “And I understand more than you might imagine.” She turned her hand over in his, staring down into the darkness where they were joined, even if she couldn’t see it. Hers was not a fierce battle, perhaps. The balance of a nation’s power had not sat so heavily on her young shoulders. But the endless nightmares, the punishing memories, the questions that she could not seem to stop asking herself—those things she knew all too well.

According to her own sister, those events of her childhood had caused her to lose the vivaciousness that had once defined her, turning her into someone who panicked in crowds and hid away in Yorkshire.

And West’s past had turned him into . . .

She stopped, suddenly fitting it all into neat pieces, a puzzle she’d not previously understood. Her husband’s scandalous reputation, the terrible pranks, the drunken antics, the line of women eager for a chance in his bed—relics of a youthful exuberance, perhaps, but also something more.

He’d been traumatized, looking for an escape.

And she imagined, now that she could see it, that she could understand a bit of what had been driving him since his return from Crimea.

“I believe in you.” Her hand pulled out of his, searching through the darkness until it landed on his chest again, her fingers curling deep. “If you hadn’t reacted so quickly that day, how many more of your men might have died at the hands of that madman? And if the ship had been damaged by that shell, would the Arrogant have gone on to win that day?”

Beneath her fingers, she could feel him suck in a breath. “But—”

“I know you feel terrible about the men who died.” Her fingers pressed into a point over his heart. “I can hear it in your voice, in the tightness of your chest, just here. But they died fighting for something important, and you don’t have the right to take that honor away from them, any more than you have the right to determine who Queen Victoria chooses to bestow the honor of the Victoria Cross upon. What about those men who lived only because you’d had the wherewithal to act in their moment of indecision, those men who eventually went home to their wives and families? Do they mean nothing?”

“No,” he choked out. “They mean everything. But they didn’t realize—”

“No, you don’t realize. You’ve been trying to find a distraction to help you forget what happened. To forget the names of those men who died. But what if remembering them, talking to their families, honoring them in some way, is the real path to healing?”

“I . . . I hadn’t thought . . .”

“It sounds to me,” she said gently, her hand pressing more firmly against his body, “as though you are the only one who thinks this honor that has been bestowed upon you is a joke.” She curled against him, her head somehow finding the shelf of his chest in the darkness. “When I am reading a book, do you know who my favorite sort of hero has always been?”

He didn’t answer.

She told him anyway. “I’ve never really much liked the strutting peacock heroes. They tend to beat their chests and belittle the heroine and generally get too many people killed. No, I’d rather find myself in love with a reluctant hero.” She turned her head. Pressed her lips against the cotton of his shirt, right above his heart. “Someone who shuns the honor, but steps up when the circumstances demand it.”

His breath whooshed out of him, and she could feel his arms come up to cradle her gently. “Are you saying . . . you could love me?”

“Can’t you see?” She turned herself over to it, the truth she’d been trying to avoid, ever since he’d given her cause to doubt him. “I already do.”