Prologue
Spain, 1812
Crispin faced themost dangerous and feared Spaniard on the Peninsula, and despite the unease roiling through his gut, he did not flinch. A dark, embittered figure flanked by two large, armed guards, the man always dressed in simple peasant garb. But his speech, commanding presence, and almost flawless English marked him as something more than the picture he presented.
He was known as El Corazón Oscuro.
The Dark Heart.
To some, he was a fabled hero. Like an avenging knight of old, he fought against French tyranny and oppression, striking back against rampaging armies that decimated towns, pilfering and ravaging homes and families. He avenged innocent civilians who were left to bleed to death in the courtyards of their small towns.
To the French army, there were far more appropriate appellations for the man.Le Diable, they called him, orLe Sans Couer. Anything less would be a misnomer for a man responsible for killing over a thousand French troops in guerilla attacks all across the Peninsula. But he did not stop at enemy soldiers. Anyone suspected of harboring the enemy was fair game for death and violence. Even the innocent.
Unlike most meetings called by El Corazón Oscuro, this one was being conducted beneath the cover of an early spring moon in a home that had been commandeered and subsequently destroyed by the French. Window panes and frames had been removed, and neither a stick of furniture, nor a jagged shard of crockery remained within. The place had been eviscerated as surely as if a howitzer had blasted it to hell.
The air was crisp and cool, the scent of impending rain looming as surely as the siege that would soon unfold upon Badajoz. The time to strike had imbued Crispin and his men, as it always did, with a reckless, pent-up energy that could not be settled upon one task. He felt it now as he and his best friend and fellow intelligence officer Morgan, Marquess of Searle, stood shoulder to shoulder and stared down El Corazón Oscuro.
Part of him wanted to charge the fortifications of the city now. Part of him wanted to withdraw his sidearm and aim it upon the Spaniard. He did not trust the man. Never had, never would, and something about the evening meeting, with its unusual stipulations and obscure location, chilled him to his marrow. He could not shake the feeling that he would either return to his post in the morning victorious, or he would die this night and rot into the earth the same way so many other soldiers before him had.
“More cannon,” El Corazón Oscuro charged into the uneasy silence.
They had navigated this delicate dance many times before. Wellington supplied El Corazón Oscuro and his band of cutthroats and mercenaries with as many supplies, armaments, and funds as could be reasonably diverted. In return, the bloodthirsty men attacked vulnerabilities in the French line with a complete disregard for those they slaughtered. Last month, El Corazón Oscuro had attacked a French field hospital, the already wounded soldiers sheltering there nailed to trees to bleed to death.
Crispin and Morgan, who had been friends well before their days as war comrades, exchanged a communicative glance. The Spaniard always asked for more at each meeting. But his campaigns against the French—limited, lightning-fast attacks—were too successful to resist. Inevitably, they would reach a compromise. Their commanding general had given them their utmost limits prior to their departure.
“How many more cannon?” Crispin asked.
“We have seven to spare,” Morgan added.
El Corazón Oscuro’s lip curled. “Seven? Do you jest,Coroneles? We require at least fifteen for the French blockhouses in this region alone.”
The defensive blockhouses of the enemy dotted major arteries, providing garrisons for infantry that protected intelligence and supplies. Attacking the bastions led to disruption in communication and provisions the French could ill afford. Already, their messengers traveled with cavalry numbering in the hundreds. Crispin and Morgan had been sent on countless missions to ensure the loyalty and success of local guerilla bands in the last two years alone. El Corazón Oscuro and his men were no different.
Except for the stark evil of the man. War was hell, but murdering innocent women… Crispin’s gut clenched at the recollection of the aftermath of El Corazón Oscuro’s bitter campaigns of vengeance. Battle had a way of expunging all empathy from a man—he must either become impervious or succumb to death. But there remained some parts of his inner sensibility as a gentleman that he could not entirely dismiss.
“We have seven,” Crispin repeated. Rumors regarding El Corazón Oscuro had begun to swirl, and Wellington had determined not to provide the leader and his forces more funds and armaments than any other band, in spite of his brutal successes. No one trusted the bastard.
It was said El Corazón Oscuro had a French mother, which clouded his intentions beneath a shroud of suspicion, and that the chief motivator in all his actions was greed. It was also said that he could be easily bought. Even so, they had never denied El Corazón Oscuro any of his wishes before, having been givencarte blancheto appease his bloodthirstiness.
“Seven is insufficient,” growled the ruffian.
“We feel confident that seven is adequate,” Morgan offered smoothly in his bland, drawing-room accent.
Morgan’s cool, unflappable air was the stuff of legend amongst their ranks. After taking a bullet to the tip of his pinkie at Talavera, he had lopped off what remained with his sword and continued to fight.
“Adequate, you say.” El Corazón Oscuro grinned without mirth, the effect more like a snarl.
The man’s barely leashed savagery, coupled with his rampant ire, sent a chill down Crispin’s spine. He pitied those who had seen this vagabond’s angry visage as their last sight before oblivion. Men buried alive to their shoulders so they could die a slow and painful death, unable to free themselves. And then there was the French captain who had met his end over the hearth of this very home, hung by his feet over the fire so that his head roasted.
“Adequate,” Crispin affirmed, tamping down the bile that rose in his throat when he thought of the still smoking body of the captain. The vile scent of charred human flesh would never leave a man.
“Who are you to decide what is adequate,bonito Inglés?” he thundered, his gaze slicing to Morgan with dark, undeniable rage. “You with your fancy uniforms and your undying love from sweet-scented, pioushermanasandmadresat home? You who have never had to watch your people be raped and killed. How the hell could you know what isadequate? We are tired of this cursed war, and we want it to end. It can only end with more cannon, more Frenchcerdoblood. Give us the cannon, and the heavens will open to rainescarlata.”
“Frenchcerdoblood is it now?” Morgan raised a brow, challenging their reluctant ally for the first time. “How odd for you to react thus when I am given to understand you are half French yourself. With the rumors surrounding your… heritage, one cannot help but wonder at your true loyalty.”
“Myheritage,” El Corazón Oscuro repeated, his tone taking on a deadly quality. A quiet, violent rage. “Elaborate,bonito.”
Bloody hell.Both the Spaniard cutthroat and Morgan vibrated with aggression as they squared off, looking like two wild dogs about to fight to the death.
