Lord of Fire

Gaelen Foley




CHAPTER
ONE

London, 1814

Shadows sculpted his sharp profile as he watched the crowded ballroom from the dim, high balcony; in the oscillating glow of the draft-buffeted wall candle, he seemed to flicker in and out of materiality like some tall, elegant phantom. Its shifting radiance glimmered over his raven-black hair and caught the Machiavellian glint of cunning in his quicksilver-colored eyes.Patience. Everything was in order.

Preparation was all, and he had been meticulous. With a musing expression, Lord Lucien Knight lifted his crystal goblet of burgundy to his lips, pausing to inhale its mellow bouquet before he drank. He did not yet know his enemies' names or faces, but he could feel them inching closer like so many jackals.No matter. He was ready. He had laid his trap and baited it well, with all manner of sin and sex and the siren's whisper of subversive political activity that no spy could resist.

There was nothing left to do now but watch and wait.

Twenty years of war had ceased this past spring with Napoleon's defeat, abdication, and exile to the MediterraneanislandofElba . It was autumn now, and the leaders ofEurope had gathered inVienna to draw up the peace accord;but any man with half a brain could see that until Bonaparte was moved to a more secure location farther out in the Atlantic, Lucien thought dryly,the war was not necessarily over.Elba was but a stone's throw from the Italian mainland, and there were those who opposed the peace-who saw no profit for themselves in the Bourbon King Louis XVIII's return to the throne of France and who wanted Napoleon back. As one of the British Crown's most skilled secret agents, Lucien had orders from the foreign secretary, Viscount Castlereagh, to stand as the watcher at the gate, as it were, until the peace had been ratified-his mission, to stop these shadowy powers from stirring up trouble on English soil.

He took another sip of his wine, his silvery eyes gleaming with mayhem.Let them come. When they did, he would find them, snare them, catch and destroy them, just as he had so many others. Indeed, he would make them come to him.

Suddenly, a round of cheers broke out in the ballroom below and rippled through the crowd.Well, well, the conquering hero. Lucien leaned forward and rested his elbows on the railing of the balcony, watching with a cynical smirk as his identical twin brother, Colonel Lord Damien Knight, marched into the assembly rooms, resplendent in his scarlet uniform with the stern, high dignity of the Archangel Michael just back from slaying the dragon. The glitter of his dress sword and gold epaulets seemed to throw off a shining halo around him, but the famed colonel's unsmiling demeanor did not discourage the swarm of smitten women, eager aides-de-camp, junior officers, and assorted hero-worshiping toadies who instantly surrounded him. Damien had always been the favorite of the gods.

Lucien shook his head to himself. Though his lips curved in wry amusement, pain flickered behind his haughty stare. If it weren't enough that the colonel had captured the popular imagination with his gallant exploits in battle, as the elder twin, Damien would soon be made an earl by a rather convoluted accident of lineage. It was not jealousy that stung Lucien, however, but an almost childlike sense of having been abandoned by his staunchest ally. Damien was the only person who had ever really understood him. For most of their thirty-one years, the Knight twins had been inseparable. In their rakish youth, their friends had dubbed them Lucifer and Demon, while the alarmed mothers of Society debutantes had warned their daughters about "that pair of devils." But those carefree days of laughter and camaraderie were gone, for Lucien had transgressed his brother's soldierly code.

Damien had never quite accepted Lucien's decision to leave the army a little over two years ago for the secret service branch of the Diplomatic Corps. Officers of the line, as a rule, deemed espionage dishonorable, ungentlemanly. To Damien and his ilk, spies were no better than snakes. Damien was a born warrior, to be sure. Anyone who had ever seen him in battle, his face streaked with black powder and blood, knew there was no question of that. But there would not have been quite so many victories without the constant stream of intelligence that Lucien had sent him-against regulation, at the risk of his life-on the enemy's position, strength, numbers, and likeliest plan of attack. How it surely chafed the great commander's pride to know that the fullness of his glory would not have been possible without his spy brother's help.