The Sins of Lord Lockwood (Rules for the Reckless #6)

The Sins of Lord Lockwood (Rules for the Reckless #6)

Meredith Duran



PROLOGUE




August 1857

He had never lost a fight before. He was built like his forefathers, long and lean and quick of foot, but with fists like hams and an insensitivity to pain. Childhood brawls with his cousin, scraps on the playing fields at Eton, one moonlit assault by ruffians on the road to Oxford—he had always emerged the victor. He had become a legend among his friends. He had the instinct, they joked, of an assassin.

But he had never fought while in chains.

The chains choked him. They closed around his feet. He stumbled to his knees, blood thick in his mouth. A foot struck his temple. He fell hard on his belly, the wind knocked out. He could not see his assailants in the darkness. His eyes were still blinded by the noonday glare above deck.

Not three hours ago, he had been dragged topside, flogged in the harsh sunlight for causing trouble below. Then the captain had ordered him strung out over the bow, so the salt spray from the churning waves had spattered his wounds, a venom that even now burned.

His assailants surrounded him and aimed again.

A heel drove into his skull. Howls and hoots rose from the darkness. “Teach ’im!” someone cried. “Teach ’is bloody lordship!”

Raucous laughter. A fist slammed into his back. Then another foot struck his chin.

Deep in his brain, something seemed to pop free. He floated into a deeper darkness, and a strange peace diffused through him, softening the world into mist.

When his eyes opened again, a dim light pervaded the thick, dark stench of the holding cell. Hellfire trembled over the mass of packed bodies, the single barrel dedicated to the prisoners’ waste. It had long since overflowed. The sludge glittered.

He made some movement and pain lanced through him. The floorboards sucked at his wet clothing.

“Shh. Lie back now.” The voice came from nearby—coarse, thick with mucus. “Best give what broke time to knit.”

Something itched inside his throat. It took him a moment to register that it was laughter, black and curdled, stillborn in his mouth.

He was the fifth Earl of Lockwood. He had been abducted onto a prison hulk. He was chained and bound for the Australian colonies.

What was not broken? The world had gone mad.

He gingerly turned his head, looking for the advice giver. A hundred men packed the room; he saw hunched shoulders, heads, limned by lamplight. Lamps were forbidden. But he understood, seeing eyes glitter from darkness, that the risk was worth it. The sight, at last, of a face twisted with compassion—of hooded eyes meeting his squarely, from a face lined with age—returned him to himself abruptly.

He sat up, damned be to the pain and broken parts. “Listen,” he said hoarsely. “You must believe me—”

The old man’s face changed. Flattened into indifference.

Liam felt the withdrawal like a knife in his belly. He fell silent, waiting with breath suspended, battling with the last shred of pride not to beg the man to look upon him kindly again.

He, the Earl of Lockwood. Desperate for a convict’s kind look.

“Doesn’t matter what I believe,” the old man said at last. “What matters is, you want to live or not.”

Did he want to live? Above deck, strung over the waves, he had been wrapped in rage, throttled by it, his single aim to loosen the bonds and hurl himself into the water below.

Five days ago, the urge would have seemed nonsensical. Five days ago, arrayed in silk with his new bride on his arm, Liam had seen nothing but her face, and the future.

But both were gone.

His breath caught. He held himself still beneath the cascading weight of that thought.

Both were gone.

This was not a nightmare. This stinking pen, the jailers, the cruel blue shoreless sea he had glimpsed above—this was real.

Some last childish piece of him still balked. It took hold of his tongue. “There was a mistake—”

“Aye, we all heard it,” the old man said. “Again and again. Kidnapped and traded for a real criminal. You see what it’s got you, this tale. They don’t like lunatics here.” The old man smirked. “And they like lords even less. So either way, lad, you’d best change your story.”

Either way. The truth did not matter: that was what the old man meant.

Astonishment leached through him. The old man was right.

There was no hope.

“The Crown’s a fine instrument,” said the old man. “There’s a lad over in the corner, no older than fifteen, sentenced for stealing handkerchiefs. I ain’t going to defend the law, you see. It’s the hand of the powerful, no justice in it. But one thing I will say—that hand does the bidding of those what can pay it. Ain’t no rich man ever sentenced by accident, or transported by mistake.”

Somewhere across the room, the lamp guttered out.

Hisses and curses filled the darkness. Liam stared into nothing.

It had not happened by accident. Those men had been waiting for him on the wharf.

As for the other possibility . . . “It was no mistake,” he said softly.

Of course it had not been a mistake.

How had he not realized this already? Peers of the realm did not get abducted by mistake, traded for true prisoners by mistake, transported by mistake.

“Aye, well, then you’ve got enemies.” The old man sounded reassured. “Better than being a lunatic, to be sure.”

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