The Making of a Gentleman

by Shana Galen

  Armand selected a key, clanged it against the rusted, metal gate—a sound which made her close her eyes and pray fervently—then inserted it into the lock. Please, please, please.

  But the key did not fit, and he had to reach for another. Time seemed to drag on forever, and she knew the longer they stood there in full view, the more risk they took. There were only five keys on the ring, but it seemed none of them opened the gate.

  Finally, Armand lifted the last key. “Please,” she whispered.

  He glanced back at her, smiled. “This is it.” And the key slid home. He turned it, and she heard the loudest screech she could possibly imagine, then the gate creaked open, Armand pulled out the key, extracted his knife from his boot, and they stepped inside.

  Twenty

  The prison smelled the same. Armand did not know how it was possible. He recognized little else about the corridor they traversed, but he knew the smell of this place. He would never forget the smell.

  It was the scent of death and despair.

  If he had more time, if he had an army, he would have freed every man locked in here. He did not know if any really deserved to be imprisoned, and he did not care. He could not stand to think of anyone caged. Freedom was precious, and he had risked it all to return.

  Felicity had risked hers, too. He hoped they had not made a mistake. He hoped they would get out alive and with their freedom intact, but he was not at all sure of that possibility.

  Moving on instinct, he turned left and deeper into the prison. He was searching for a set of stairs that would lead him to the attic, to his former cell. He passed numerous cells, but none of the inhabitants even raised their eyes at him. They were bony heaps under their thin blankets, and the sound of snores, of coughing, and of weeping punctuated the steady drip of water coming from a leak somewhere within the darkness.

  The stairs loomed ahead of him, rising like a dark cliff out of the hole of the prison. He paused, knowing where they would lead and trying to gather himself before he took that old path. He did not want to return to his cell.

  Armand had no fear it would be occupied. Even the soldiers at Le Grenier were not so cruel as to throw another man in the grave at the top of the prison. They had left him there only out of fear of moving him, fear of violating a directive none of them probably even remembered being issued. Armand doubted his cell had been touched since his escape with Julien months before. What kinds of memories would seeing that cell again evoke? Could he stand, even for a few moments, to have his anguished past before him once again?

  He looked back at Felicity. She had paused behind him and was nervously watching him, nervously looking about them. Fearful one of the soldiers would see them.

  She should be afraid.

  “Are you all right?” she whispered.

  He shook his head. Even in the midst of this danger, she was thinking of him. He felt his heart tighten and constrict, wondered if that was what love felt like. “I’m fine. It’s up those stairs.”

  She nodded, whispered as she followed him, “I don’t see many soldiers.”

  “There was a garrison of about fifty here,” he whispered back. “But Bonaparte has probably called many to the front lines. The few still stationed here have done their duty for the day.”

  He grabbed a low-burning torch anchored in a wall sconce and used that to light their way. As they started up the steep stairs, she grasped his hand to keep from slipping.

  “Be careful,” he said, catching her arm and helping her to the landing. “And be watchful. The guards will make cursory rounds. Marius said he had a way in. Probably bribed one of the soldiers.”

  “They must have realized we escaped by now.” Together they climbed higher, passing the floors of cells and traveling deeper into the maw of the prison itself.

  “They will come here,” he said as they reached the final landing. “They know we won’t leave without coming here first. Coming for the secret in the attic.”

  “What secret?” she hissed. “What’s hiding there?”

  “I’ll show you.”

  He stepped forward onto the gloomy top level of the prison. There was only one cell up here, the garret cell that had been his home for twelve long years. He could see the outside door ahead. It was closed. A single wooden door aged by time and neglect, but sturdy enough to withstand his beatings and pleas for release.

  At least it had been when he had first been imprisoned. By the end, the prison was in his mind, and the door hardly mattered.

  “Is that it?” Felicity whispered.

  He stepped forward and put his hand out. It trembled, and he clenched it in disgust. He would get through this. He would not break. Not now.

  He pushed the door hard, and it creaked open.

  The room was dark. At one time there had been a torch outside the cell. He turned back and saw its burnt husk in the wall sconce. He lifted it, waited until it lit, and handed it to Felicity. Still, the cell was dark, and he stood patiently, waiting for his eyes to adjust.

  It did not take long, for he knew the cell and its contents well. The straw on the floor. The gray stone walls. The cold hearth.

  The hearth. That was what he wanted.

  He crossed to it quickly, bent, and felt inside. The chimney had long since been bricked in, so even if he had wanted to light a fire, there would have been nowhere for the smoke to travel. Was that just another way to keep him cold and miserable, or had the hearth been closed deliberately?

  He felt the smooth brick at the top of the hearth and lay down on his back to peer up at it.

  “What are you doing?” Felicity asked.

  “I’ve explored every inch of this cell,” he answered, scooting into the cold, dirty rectangular opening. “This chimney is bricked in.”

  “And?”

  He reached up, felt the gray stone. It was newer than that on the wall. Or perhaps he had just not touched it enough to wear it down. “Give me some light,” he instructed her, and she knelt, angling the torch so flickering light fell on his face. It did not illuminate the brick under the hearth much, but it was enough so his suspicions were confirmed. This brick was newer and of a different color than the rest of the cell.

  He had never had enough light to see that before. He had explored this area of the chimney with his fingers and his mind. As a prisoner, he had never dared to do what he planned now. But he had done it in his dreams, both here and back in London.

  After the brick with Marius’s warning had come crashing through the town house window, he had dreamed about the hearth in his cell. He had felt that smooth brick with his fingers, thought again, after all those years, about the treasure.

  “I never dared break through,” he said, taking his knife and digging it into the stone. It was soft with age and dampness, and a shower of tiny stones fell on his head. “But one thing I always wondered about was the size of the garret. There’s only one cell up here.”

  “And?” She was leaning over him, peering into the chimney at the stone he chiseled away.

  “If you look at this section of the prison from the outside—something I didn’t do very often, but they had to let even a dog like me into the exercise yard once a year or so—it’s big enough to accommodate two cells.”

  The light faded, and he glanced up to see her peering out of the cell door. “This is the only door. There’s just brick and stone at the end of the stairway.”

  “I know. That means this is the only entrance.”

  She knelt again, gave him more light. “The only entrance to the cell?”

  “The only entrance to whatever is hidden up here. The cell is just the beginning. I was in the cell. A watchdog, or maybe a—what is it called—false front?”

  “Are you saying that the Treasure of the Sixteen is hidden up here?”

  “Yes.” His knife dug deeper, and he coughed as dust and
stones fell on his face.

  “Are you certain?”

  “No. But I know this. After I heard the Jacques discussing the treasure, after they realized I was not the mute they assumed, I was imprisoned here. The last conversation I heard centered on where to hide the treasure. I always thought they were discussing where to hide it once they acquired it.”

  “But now you think they had already found it and were looking for a place to stash it.” Her voice held a note of wonder. “The prison is brilliant. And with you in this cell, who would think a treasure was hidden here?”

  “Exactly.” The knife went deeper, and he almost had the large stone loose. He scooted back in case it gave way suddenly.

  “The problem is that someone got to them first. Probably Marius. He killed them before they could reveal where the treasure was hidden. Either that or he killed them because they refused to say. And I was left here, forgotten.”

  “And if the Jacques had come for you?”

  “I would be dead now. There!” The stone rumbled down with a thud, and he saw Felicity glance toward the door nervously.

  “That was loud.”

  Armand pushed the stone out of the way and wedged his large body into the hearth again. Looking up, he could see the long tunnel of the chimney. But he thought he saw something else, as well. “More light.”

  “Armand.”

  “I think I see something, but I need more light.”

  “Armand, I don’t think…”

  Impatient, he reached up and felt into the darkness. There! Something protruding out of the chimney. Something that definitely should not be there. A lever?

  “I think the lady is trying to warn you of something, monsieur.”

  At the sound of Marius’s voice, Armand jerked and hit his head on the low brick above him. He looked out to see Marius, Claude, and one angry soldier standing in the doorway of his cell.

  His blood turned to ice, and he steeled himself for what was to come. “It didn’t take you as long as I thought.” He sat.

  Marius nodded at the hearth. “So it is here. The key to the treasure.”

  He shrugged. “You tell me.”

  “I do not think so, monsieur. I think you will tell me. Claude.” The big man reached out and grabbed Felicity by the arm. She looked surprised but unhurt as he wrapped one of his log-sized forearms about her neck. “Find us the key to the treasure, or we kill the girl.”

  Armand stared at them, feeling his blood boil. His grip tightened on the knife, but he knew he was at a disadvantage for the moment. “And when I give you the key to the treasure, you’ll kill us both.”

  “No, monsieur. I give you my word.”

  Armand almost laughed. The word of a murdering criminal. “You don’t think I know what you did,” he said, his eyes never leaving Marius’s. “You don’t think I know it was you who sent my father to the guillotine.”

  “Your father would have gone to the guillotine with or without my help, comte.” He sneered the title. “We had a mission—to exterminate the parasites, the aristos.”

  “My father was no parasite.”

  “Justice said otherwise.”

  “Justice? You had him sent to trial—if those ridiculous stage shows could be called a court—brought in peasants from our lands to testify against him. Paid them to lie.”

  “If the duc de Valère had treated his peasants well, they would not have said otherwise.”

  “They would have said anything for the price of a loaf of bread. They burned the château and then realized they were going to starve to death when winter came. It happened all over the countryside. The city was no better.”

  “Those were the times, monsieur.”

  “Yes, but not everyone was starving. You had money—and a taste for blood. I saw you at the executions, cheering with the rest of the mob. Blood ran in the streets, and the crowds all but bathed in it.”

  Marius gave a ghost of a smile. “Vengeance was sweet. But you, monsieur, had nothing to be ashamed of. Your father died well, as you know. You were in the crowd that day.”

  “I was, and tell me something, monsieur. Did it give you more pleasure to see an aristo have his head chopped off or to witness the tears of a little boy?”

  “Oh, the tears, of course. You were such a pitiful sight. Poor little aristo boy. You should have been on the scaffold with him. I wonder”—he signaled to Claude, who tightened his grip on Felicity, making her gasp—“if you will cry again today.”

  “You want the treasure?” Armand climbed back into the hearth, grasped the lever. “It’s all yours.

  He yanked hard, and the wall behind him seemed to shake and tremble then split in two.

  “Armand!” Felicity cried, but he was already moving away from the crumbling hearth. A shower of dust rained down and filled the room, obscuring Felicity from his view for a moment. There was a smattering of coughing, and then the soldier said, “I don’t believe it!”

  But Armand could believe it. The lever had destroyed the back wall of the hearth, and where the stone had been, there was a gaping hole, leading into another room. The hole was just large enough for a man to fit through on hands and knees. Marius pushed Armand out of the way and knelt before the entrance.

  “It’s in there!” he breathed, voice filled with awe. “I can see the glint of gold!”

  “Let me see.” The soldier shoved him aside, and soon both men were climbing into what had been the hidden room.

  Claude, unsure what to do, stood holding Felicity captive. Armand’s eyes met hers and saw only worry for him.

  “Claude, come here!” Marius called. “We need you to help us carry this treasure.”

  Abruptly Felicity was released, and the big man squeezed into the hole in the hearth.

  “What’s in there?” Felicity asked. “Is it really the Treasure of the Sixteen?”

  Armand nodded. “Gold, silver, diamonds. Do you want to look?”

  “No. I want out of here. I want to go home.”

  “Then let’s go.”

  “But…” She gestured to the hidden treasure chamber. “Will they let us leave? Will they come after us?”

  Armand lay back on the dusty floor and wedged himself under the chimney once again. He reached up, felt the hidden lever, and shoved it back. Instantly, a stone door slammed closed over the opening to the treasure room. It cut off the light, and he could hear the surprised cries of the men inside. But the cries were muffled and difficult to hear.

  Armand rose, dusted off his breeches and shirt, and took Felicity’s hand. “I think we should leave them with the treasure. It’s what they wanted.”

  Felicity stared at the sealed hearth. “Will they be found?”

  Armand pulled her to the entrance to his cell, stood in the doorway, and looked back a last time. Then he pulled the door closed, flinching at the solid thud it made. He lifted the keys he had pilfered from the gate soldier and inserted one into the lock. The rusty tumblers closed into place, and he started down the dark stairway.

  They made it to the first level before he turned a winding corner and came face-to-face with a surprised soldier. “What’s this?” the man asked and drew his pistol.

  Twenty-one

  Felicity jumped back, but Armand did not hesitate. She watched in horror as he brought his knife up and slashed at the man’s face, slicing him across the cheek. At the same time, he pushed the man’s weapon against the wall of the stairwell, effectively preventing the soldier from firing.

  The two men grappled, and Felicity looked for some way she might aid Armand. The soldier regained some strength and, blood streaming from his face, pushed Armand back. Felicity heard the comte’s head crack against the stone. But Armand looked unaffected. His foot reached out, catching the soldier under his ankle and bringing him down.

  Unfortunately, the soldier took A
rmand with him. The two rolled down a half-dozen stone steps with Felicity chasing after them. Armand landed on top and, still struggling to keep the soldier’s gun inactive, he glanced up at her. “Go! Get out of here!”

  “I’m not going to leave you!” She watched as the soldier reared up and Armand fought to keep the man’s arms pinned. Armand lost his knife, and Felicity heard it clank down several steps, into the darkness.

  “I’ll meet you at the tavern,” Armand said through gritted teeth. “Go now!”

  Felicity hesitated another heartbeat and then, knowing she could help most by freeing Armand to concentrate on escape, she danced around the two men’s struggling bodies and stumbled down the stairs. She had dropped the torch at some point during Armand’s struggle, and now the prison was dark and shadowed. Behind her, she could hear the men’s grunts, but the stone was thick, and the sounds did not carry far.

  As she continued down the stairwell, the sounds of struggle behind her faded. She said a quick prayer Armand would make it out alive. She never thought of her own safety until something underfoot clinked.

  She paused and stood stone-still. And then she realized it must be Armand’s knife. She bent, felt in the darkness until her hand closed on the sharp blade. She snatched her fingers back then felt more gingerly, until she had found the handle. She lifted the knife and crept down the stairwell. What if she encountered more soldiers? How would she explain her presence?

  At the bottom of the stairwell, she paused and peeked around the corner. This section led into a long corridor flanked with cells. If she could make it down the corridor without being spotted, then she only had to get through the two gates. Unfortunately, Armand had the soldier’s keys, but presumably the gates were still open and unlocked.

  That was, if no one had discovered the missing entry guard.

  The corridor was silent, and her shoes shushed along the worn stone. The only other sound was that of dripping water. An incessant drip that must have driven prisoners to madness after years. She avoided looking in the cells, but she felt eyes on her, knew she was watched. And yet, none of the prisoners called out or came to the bars to get a closer look. Perhaps they were too beaten down to care, or perhaps they did not believe what they saw.