The Ashworth Assault
The travel from The Royal Council chamber, St. James’s Palace to Winslow Manor and the family crypt consumed the next hour. Headlights cut cold through the gathering dusk.
The wedding breakfast was a muted affair. Silver platters of poached salmon and glazed ham sat beneath chafing dishes, their aromas mingling with the rich scent of hothouse flowers arranged in crystal vases along the long oak table. Twenty guests had been invited—a handful of trusted allies, the Lord Chancellor, and two clerks to witness the formalities.
Xavier sat at the head of the table, his posture rigid, his gray eyes fixed on the door through which the Pembertons had exited an hour prior. Evangeline sat to his right, Max between her and June. The boy had eaten three fingers of toast and was now drawing ships on a napkin with a nub of charcoal he’d found in his pocket.
“They’re not coming back,” Evangeline said quietly.
Xavier’s gaze did not waver. “No. But they’ll try again. The question is when.”
The clock on the mantel struck eleven. A footman entered, carrying a fresh pot of tea. He poured for June, then for Evangeline. As he reached Max, the boy looked up and smiled.
“Thank you, Mr.—”
The footman’s hand twitched.
It was the smallest motion—a tightening of the fingers around the porcelain handle. But Xavier saw it. He saw the man’s eyes flick toward the tall windows that lined the eastern wall, saw his jaw work as if counting seconds.
Xavier’s chair scraped back. “Owen.”
The security chief was already moving. He crossed the room in three strides, grabbed the footman by the collar, and shoved him toward the door. “Who hired you?”
The footman’s face went pale. “I don’t—I don’t know what you—”
The first window shattered.
Glass sprayed across the table. June screamed, her body curving over Max’s as she swept her from his chair. Evangeline’s hand found Xavier’s arm, her nails digging into his coat sleeve. Through the broken casement, a figure in black climbed over the sill, a cudgel in his gloved hand.
Then another figure. And another.
Owen drew a pistol from beneath his coat and fired. The first masked man crumpled, his shoulder blooming red. But there were six more pouring through the eastern windows, and a crash from the western corridor told Xavier this was no isolated assault.
“The crypt,” he said, his voice low and hard. “Evangeline, the old passages behind the library. Take Max and June. Now.”
She did not argue. She grabbed Max’s hand, pulled June by the wrist, and ran.
The manor had been built in stages over three centuries, and its oldest sections were a labyrinth of forgotten staircases and hidden doors. Evangeline had explored them as a child, when her father had been the Winslow estate manager. She knew every cramped turn, every narrow crawl space.
She led them through the kitchen’s cold pantry, past the moldering sacks of flour, to a false wall behind the wine racks. Her fingers found the catch, and a panel slid open, revealing a staircase that spiraled downward into darkness.
“In,” she said. “Quickly.”
June went first, her hand clamped around Max’s. Evangeline slid the panel shut behind them, plunging them into total blackness. The air grew cold and damp. The stairs were stone, worn smooth by centuries of feet.
“Where does this go?” June whispered.
“The family crypt. It connects to the old chapel. There’s a door that leads to the woods.”
Max’s small hand found hers in the dark. “Mama, I’m scared.”
She squeezed his fingers. “I know, sweetheart. But we’re going to be fine. Your father is going to make everything all right.”
She hoped the words were true.
Above, Xavier was counting.
Seven men in the breakfast room. Two more in the corridor. The estate had a staff of forty, but most were domestic servants, not fighters. Owen had three men on rotation at the gatehouse. It would take them four minutes to reach the main building.
Xavier did not have four minutes.
He grabbed the fire poker from the hearth. It was iron, heavy, and cold. He had not held a weapon in anger since the war, but the muscle memory lived in his bones. A masked man lunged at him from the left. Xavier sidestepped, swung the poker in a flat arc, and caught the man across the temple. He dropped like a sack of grain.
Another came from behind. Xavier felt the rush of air, ducked, and drove the butt of the poker into the man’s stomach. The assailant doubled over, and Xavier brought his knee up into his face. Blood sprayed across the white tablecloth.
Owen had dispatched two more with his pistol, but the weapon clicked empty. He tossed it aside and drew a knife from his boot. “There are more coming from the stables,” he said, breathing hard. “I counted a dozen horses.”
“The Pembertons are thorough,” Xavier said. “They want the boy.”
“They want you dead.”
“Same calculation.”
A third wave of attackers crashed through the main doors. These were better armed—short swords and clubs, one man carrying a crossbow. Xavier saw the bolt fly, heard it thud into the plaster behind him. He grabbed a platter from the table, hurled it like a discus. It caught the crossbowman across the throat.
Owen moved through the chaos like a man born to it, his knife finding ribs and throats. He took a slash across the forearm, barely flinched, and kept cutting. But there were too many. For every man they put down, two more seemed to fill the gap.
“We need to fall back,” Owen said, his voice tight.
“Not yet,” Xavier replied. “They need to believe I’m still here.”
He was buying time. Time for Evangeline to reach the crypt. Time for Max to be safe.
In the darkness of the stairs, Evangeline counted steps. Forty-three. Forty-four. Forty-five. She knew the crypt had a false floor, a hollow space beneath the oldest sarcophagus where a person could hide. Her father had shown her when she was eight, whispering that the Winslows had always been a paranoid family.
She understood that paranoia now.
“We’re almost there,” she said.
The stairs ended at a heavy oak door, banded with rusted iron. She shoved it open, and the smell of dust and old stone washed over them. The crypt was a low, vaulted chamber lined with marble tombs. Candle stubs guttered in iron sconces, their light casting long shadows across the effigies of dead dukes.
June pulled Max close. “What now?”
“There’s a space beneath the Winslow sarcophagus. The third one from the left. Help me move the grate.”
They found the iron grate set into the stone floor, cleverly disguised as a decorative panel. Evangeline hooked her fingers beneath it and pulled. It shifted, screeching against the stone. June added her strength, and together they lifted it aside.
A dark hole yawned beneath them, barely wide enough for a single person.
“Max, get in,” Evangeline said.
He did not argue. He crawled into the space, his small body disappearing into the shadows. June followed, then Evangeline, pulling the grate back into place above them. The darkness was absolute, the silence broken only by the sound of their breathing.
“Mama,” Max whispered. “Will Papa be all right?”
Evangeline pressed her lips to the top of his head. “He’s the strongest man I know.”
Above, the battle had reached a bloody stalemate. Xavier had taken a cut across his ribs, his white shirt stained red from shoulder to waist. Owen was down to his last knife, his left arm hanging useless at his side. They had retreated to the library, the door barricaded with a fallen bookcase.
Voices came from the other side. Muffled, but clear enough.
“The boy. Find the boy.”
“Where’s the woman?”
“Check the cellars. Check the kitchens.”
Xavier pressed a hand to his side, feeling the warmth of his own blood. “They’ll search the crypt.”
Owen shook his head. “Not if we’re still here. They want you more than they want the boy. You’re the threat. The heir is leverage.”
“Then I need to give them what they want.”
“Your grace—”
“I’m not going to die today, Owen.” Xavier’s voice was flat, cold, the voice of a man who had already made his peace with the cost. “But I need you to hold them here for five more minutes. Can you do that?”
Owen met his eyes. He did not ask for an explanation. “Yes, your grace.”
Xavier moved to the far wall, where a section of paneling concealed a narrow servant’s stair. He had not used this passage since he was twelve, sneaking down to the kitchens for stolen tarts. Now he used it to descend into the cold heart of the manor.
He found the crypt door ajar. The candles had burned low, their light flickering across the carved faces of his ancestors. He called out softly. “Evangeline. Max.”
The grate shifted. Evangeline’s face appeared in the gap, pale and drawn. “Xavier. You’re bleeding.”
“It’s superficial.” He knelt, hissing at the pull of the wound. “We need to move. They’ll find this place eventually.”
He helped them out of the hiding space, one by one. When Max’s feet touched the stone floor, the boy looked up at him with wide, serious eyes.
“Are we going to die, Papa?”
Xavier’s heart cracked. He knelt, took his son’s face in his hands. “No. We are going to live. All three of us.”
He led them to the crypt’s eastern wall, where a false stone concealed a tunnel that opened onto the hillside beyond the estate. It was narrow, barely shoulder-width, and they moved in single file, Evangeline in the middle, Max’s hand in hers.
The tunnel sloped upward. The air grew warmer. And then they emerged into the gray light of a winter afternoon, the grass wet beneath their feet, the manor a distant silhouette behind them.
They collapsed in the lee of a stone wall, breathing hard. Xavier tore a strip from his shirt, pressed it to his side. Evangeline watched him, her eyes bright with unshed tears.
“They’ll come back,” she said.
“Yes.”
“They’ll never stop.”
“No.”
She looked at Max, who was picking burrs from his coat, oblivious to the weight of the moment. Then she looked at Xavier, at the blood on his hands, at the man who had walked into a fight unarmed to buy them time.
“Why?” she asked. “Why do this for us? We were a business arrangement. A contract.”
Xavier was silent for a long moment. The wind carried the distant sound of shouting from the manor. Owen was still fighting.
“Because the contract stopped mattering,” he said. “Because I looked at you in that chapel, and I looked at him, and I realized I had been living in a world I built to protect myself from this exact feeling.”
He reached out, his fingers brushing her cheek. She did not flinch.
“Evangeline. I have spent thirty-four years constructing walls. Title. Wealth. Reputation. I thought if I built them high enough, I would never be hurt again.” His voice dropped, rough and raw. “Then you walked into my study with mud on your boots and a seven-year-old child, and you tore every one of them down.”
She stood very still. Max had stopped picking burrs and was watching them, his charcoal-stained fingers frozen.
“I cannot undo the years I missed,” Xavier said. “I cannot give him back the birthdays, the first steps, the nights he cried and I was not there. But I can give him the rest of my life. I can give you both everything I have.”
Evangeline’s breath caught. She had spent five years alone, fighting for her son, trusting no one. She had built her own walls, brick by brick. And this man—this cold, distant duke—was asking her to let them fall.
Max tugged at her sleeve. “Mama? Is Papa coming home with us?”
She looked down into those gray eyes, so like his father’s. And she knew the answer.
“Yes,” she said, her voice breaking. “Yes, sweetheart. He’s coming home.”
From the manor, a bell began to toll. The alarm. The attackers were retreating. Owen had held.
But Evangeline did not look back. She looked at Xavier, at the blood seeping through his shirt, at the fierce, desperate hope in his eyes.
“I don’t know how to do this,” she said. “I don’t know how to be a duchess. I don’t know how to trust someone who wasn’t there.”
“I know,” Xavier said. “But I will spend every day of the rest of my life teaching you.”
He took her hand, his palm warm and calloused, his grip unyielding. Max slipped his small hand into Xavier’s other palm, completing the chain.
Dust and shouting echoed above. In the crypt, Xavier took Evangeline’s hand, his voice breaking his iron composure. “I have fought kings and politicians. I will fight this family, too. But I cannot fight for you if you are already gone. Stay. Let me be a father to him. Let me be a husband to you.”