The Windsor Hideout
The hunting lodge sat two miles deep in Windsor Great Park, a squat structure of gray stone and weathered oak that had once housed royal gamekeepers. Now it housed ghosts and the smell of damp ash.
Dante circled the perimeter twice before he was satisfied. The tree line offered cover. The single road in was visible from the upstairs window. No neighbors for a half-mile in any direction. Owen had already swept the interior for listening devices and found nothing—a small mercy in a week that had offered none.
“It’s not the Ritz,” Dante said, pushing open the front door. “But it’s defensible.”
Isabella stood in the center of the main room, Jace pressed against her side. Her eyes moved over the threadbare curtains, the iron stove, the single oil lamp on the mantel. She did not complain. That, more than anything, told Dante how deeply the fear had sunk its hooks.
“There’s a root cellar beneath the kitchen,” Owen said, dropping a canvas bag by the hearth. “Earthen floor, but dry. If they come with dogs, you’ll want to be below ground before they hit the front step.”
Jace pulled free of his mother’s grip and walked to the window. He stood on his toes, peering through the grime-streaked glass at the darkening forest. “Is there a war out there?”
Dante crouched beside him. “Not a war. Just men with too much money and not enough sense.”
“That sounds like war to me.” The boy’s voice was flat, too old for its years. “At the orphanage, the older boys said wars are always about money. They said soldiers die so rich men can get richer.”
Isabella made a small sound, a caught breath. Dante kept his eyes on Jace.
“They’re not wrong,” he said. “But there’s more to it. Sometimes you fight for the people who can’t fight for themselves. Sometimes you fight because the alternative is letting the wrong men win.”
Jace considered this. His small hands pressed flat against the glass. “Did you kill people in the war?”
The question hung in the room like smoke. Isabella stepped forward, but Dante raised a hand.
“Yes,” he said. “I did.”
“Bad people?”
“I thought so at the time. I still think so. But here’s what I learned, Jace—the men who are certain they’re killing bad people are usually the most dangerous ones. You want to be the soldier who hates what he has to do. That’s the only way you stay human.”
Jace turned from the window. His eyes, the same gray as Dante’s own, searched his face for a long moment. Then he nodded, a small decisive motion, and walked to the hearth to examine the rusted poker.
Owen caught Dante’s eye and jerked his head toward the kitchen. Dante followed.
“The note,” Owen said, keeping his voice low. “Reid Langley knows you have the boy. He’s using the coloring book as bait. That means he knows where Isabella was staying. It means he has eyes everywhere.”
“He’s testing me. Seeing if I’ll come running like a trained dog.”
“Will you?”
Dante looked through the kitchen doorway. Jace had picked up a fallen branch from the woodpile beside the hearth and was swinging it like a sword, cutting arcs through the dusty air. The boy had no training, no form, but there was something in the way he moved—a natural economy of motion that could not be taught.
“No,” Dante said. “I’ll make him come to me.”
He spent the next hour with a clasp knife and that fallen branch, carving away bark and whittling the wood into a child’s sword. The blade was blunt, the crossguard uneven, but when he handed it to Jace, the boy’s face transformed. For the first time since Dante had laid eyes on him, Jace looked exactly like what he was: a seven-year-old boy holding something precious.
“It’s not a real sword,” Jace said, but his fingers wrapped around the grip like he’d been born holding it.
“No. But it’s real enough to teach you the basics. Balance, footwork, how to read an opponent’s weight shift. You learn those, and when you’re old enough for steel, you’ll be ready.”
Isabella watched from the settle by the fire. Her hands were wrapped around a chipped cup of tea that had long gone cold. “You’re teaching him to fight.”
“I’m teaching him to survive. There’s a difference.”
“Is there?” She set the cup aside. “I’ve spent seven years doing whatever was necessary to keep him alive. Bending my spine to people I despised. Smiling at men who looked at me like meat. Taking positions that left me with no dignity and less pay. That’s how I survived. Not with a sword.”
Dante set down his knife. The fire popped and settled. Jace was in the corner, practicing his footwork, too absorbed to hear.
“I’m not judging you,” Dante said. “I’m not the man who gets to judge anyone. I walked away. I told myself it was the right thing, that you’d be safer without the Crane name dragging you down. I believed it because believing it was easier than facing what I’d done.”
“You left me with nothing. No word. No explanation. I waited—God, I waited for months. I thought you’d died. I thought you’d been captured. I thought anything except the truth: that you’d decided I wasn’t worth coming back to.”
The words hit like a blade between the ribs. Dante took them. He owed her that much.
“I was wrong,” he said. “I was wrong about everything. I thought I was protecting you from the mess my family had made. But all I did was leave you to face it alone.”
Isabella’s laugh was hollow. “Your family didn’t make this mess, Dante. Mine did. Or have you forgotten who my father was?”
He hadn’t forgotten. James Prescott had been a viscount with a gambling habit and a talent for borrowing money from the wrong people. When he died—conveniently, just before his debts could be called in—he’d left Isabella with nothing but a title that couldn’t be sold and a reputation that couldn’t be scrubbed clean.
“I married a man I didn’t love,” she said, her voice barely above a whisper. “I married him because he promised to keep Jace safe. I let him touch me. I let him—I did what I had to do. And I told myself it was worth it because Jace had a roof and a meal and a future. I told myself I didn’t deserve more.”
Dante’s hands were steady, but the wood in his grip had splintered. He hadn’t realized he was squeezing.
“Who?”
“It doesn’t matter. He’s dead now. Consumption. I shed the only tears I could afford—two, exactly, and both were for Jace, who had to watch another man leave.” She pressed her palms to her eyes. “I’ve never told anyone that. Not even Selene.”
“Why are you telling me?”
“Because you’re Jace’s father. Because if I die tomorrow, someone needs to know that I did try. That I didn’t give up. That I loved that boy enough to become someone I didn’t recognize.”
The fire crackled. Jace’s wooden sword whispered through the air. Outside, the wind moved through the trees like a living thing.
“You won’t die tomorrow,” Dante said. “I won’t allow it.”
Isabella looked at him, and for a moment, the years between them seemed to collapse. She was twenty again, standing in her father’s garden, her hand in his, believing that love could be simple.
Then the moment passed.
“You can’t promise that,” she said.
“I can promise I’ll die trying.”
She shook her head. “That’s not a comfort. Jace needs you alive. I need you—alive. I don’t need a martyr. I need a man who stays.”
The word hit him harder than it should have. *Stays.* It was the one thing he had never done for anyone.
“I’m here,” he said. “I’m staying.”
Owen appeared in the kitchen doorway. His face was unreadable, but his hand rested on the pistol at his hip. “We have company. Carriage, coming up the road. Moving slow.”
Dante was on his feet in an instant. “How many?”
“Four in the carriage. Two outriders. And one man on horseback ahead of them—rides like he owns the ground beneath him.”
Reid Langley.
Dante crossed to the window and pulled the curtain aside a quarter inch. The light was fading, the sky a bruised purple, but he recognized the silhouette. Reid rode tall in the saddle, a posture of absolute entitlement. He didn’t need the coloring book. He didn’t need proof. He had come because he could, and because he wanted to see Dante’s face when he delivered the final blow.
“Jace,” Dante said, keeping his voice even. “I need you to go with Owen. He’s going to show you that root cellar. You’re going to sit there and be very quiet until I come for you.”
“I want to stay.”
“I know. But I need you to be brave somewhere else. Can you do that?”
Jace looked at his mother. Isabella nodded, her face pale, her hands gripping the settle’s armrest. He turned back to Dante and gave a single sharp nod—a soldier’s acknowledgment.
Owen took him by the shoulder and guided him toward the kitchen. “I’ll be right behind you, boy. Keep that sword close.”
The front door rattled with a knock. Three sharp raps, spaced precisely. A man who knew his arrival would be heard and wanted to savor it.
Dante checked his pistol. Fully loaded. He slid it into his coat pocket and crossed to the door. Isabella stood, moving to stand behind him, her hand finding his sleeve.
“Don’t let him take us,” she whispered.
“He won’t.”
Dante opened the door.
Reid Langley stood on the threshold, resplendent in a charcoal coat and polished boots. He was smiling, a thin expression that didn’t reach his eyes. Behind him, two men in magistrate’s uniforms waited by the carriage, papers in hand.
“Crane,” Reid said, as if greeting an old friend. “I thought I might find you here. Hiding in the woods like a common poacher. It suits you.”
“I have nothing to say to you.”
“That’s fortunate, because I’m not here for conversation.” Reid reached into his coat and produced a folded document. “I have a warrant for the arrest of Isabella Prescott, on charges of theft of a family heirloom. A locket, gold, containing a miniature portrait. Valued at five hundred pounds. She stole it from my father’s study three nights ago.”
Isabella’s breath caught. “That’s a lie. I was never in your father’s study.”
Reid’s smile widened. “My father’s housekeeper will testify otherwise. My father’s footman saw you leaving. You have the look of a thief, Mrs. Prescott. Everyone will believe it.”
Dante stepped forward, placing himself between Reid and the doorway. “You have no case. No evidence.”
“I have a warrant signed by a magistrate. I have witnesses. And I have this.” Reid pulled a gold locket from his waistcoat pocket. It swung on its chain, catching the last light. “Found in your room at the boarding house. Hidden beneath a loose floorboard. Careless of you.”
Isabella’s hand flew to her throat. “You planted it.”
“Prove it.”
The magistrate’s men were moving forward now, boots crunching on gravel. One of them carried shackles.
Dante’s mind ran through the options. He could fight. He could kill Reid where he stood and take his chances with the magistrate’s men. But Jace was in the cellar. Isabella was behind him. Any violence would put them in the line of fire.
He needed time. He needed confusion.
“Owen,” he said, loud enough to carry. “Now.”
The flash-powder went off like a thunderclap, a blinding white bloom that filled the clearing. Reid screamed, clawing at his eyes. The magistrate’s men stumbled backward, hands covering their faces. Horses reared and bolted, dragging the carriage sideways.
Dante grabbed Isabella’s wrist and pulled her toward the kitchen. “Cellar. Now.”
They reached the trapdoor just as Owen swung it open from below, a lantern in his hand. Jace was crouched against the earthen wall, wooden sword clutched to his chest, eyes wide.
“Down,” Dante said, pushing Isabella ahead of him. He followed, pulling the trapdoor shut above them. The latch fell into place with a solid thunk.
They waited in the darkness. Above them, boots hammered across the floorboards. Reid’s voice, ragged with rage, shouting orders. Something crashed—a chair, thrown against a wall. The search went on for what felt like an hour but could not have been more than ten minutes.
Then, silence.
Owen held a finger to his lips. They listened. Footsteps, slow now, approaching the kitchen. A pause at the trapdoor.
A single creak as someone tested their weight on the boards above.
Then the footsteps retreated.
They waited another five minutes before Dante allowed himself to breathe. He turned to Isabella. Her face was streaked with dust and tears. Jace had pressed himself against her side, his small body trembling.
“He has the locket,” Isabella whispered. “The one with your mother’s portrait. He’ll use it to prove I’m a thief. Dante, I cannot go to prison. Jace cannot lose me now.”