The Duke's Covert Mission. Julie Miller

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      ELLIE’S EYES WERE on fire. She’d been wearing her contact lenses for more than twenty-four hours, and her eyelids felt dry and gritty. The bout of crying hadn’t helped. Her sinuses were plugged, and the salty tears had only aggravated her condition.

      Her condition. Ha!

      She was chained to the floor of a damp, dusty basement, wearing dirty, uncomfortable clothes, eating unappetizing food, and having little else to do besides imagine the potentially gruesome outcome of her kidnapping.

      And the indignity of doing her business in a bucket made an outhouse seem like a luxury!

      If she was a woman who cursed, she’d have damned her captors over and over. But Ellie was a woman of thought, not reaction. Her quiet personality gave her plenty of time to consider her choices before making a decision. There was a security in that planning, a sense of control over her own destiny.

      She’d already considered the option of popping out the lenses and easing the irritation in her eyes. But that would put her at an even greater disadvantage.

      She’d been a bookworm by the age of five, worn glasses since the end of second grade. Before she was twelve, she’d devoured the entire Nancy Drew mystery series. As she got older, her tastes turned to the classics—Jane Eyre, Eight Cousins and Rose in Bloom. As an adult, travelogues and romantic-suspense novels gave her a vicarious thrill of adventure.

      All those books might in some small way have prepared her for dealing with criminals and difficult men, but they had also taken their toll on her eyesight. Combined with all the years she did the accounting for her parents’ ranch and the computer work she did for King Easton, Ellie’s vision was a myopic disaster. Even in good light, without her glasses or contacts, her vision was limited to mere inches. In dim light she was virtually blind.

      Physical discomfort and tearing eyes were a small price to pay for at least having the opportunity to see danger when it headed her way.

      The click of a key in the lock at the top of the stairs put her on instant alert. She rose from the stool and pulled the blanket more firmly around her naked shoulders. The tread on the stairs was too light to be Lenny’s, too deliberate to be Jerome’s. That meant…

      “Sinjun.”

      She had hoped to catch him off guard by calling him by his name. But he acted as if she hadn’t even spoken. Her masked visitor dropped two bundles at her feet and glanced back over his shoulder at the stairs.

      He knelt beside her, made quick work of a few knots, then flung open a sleeping bag. He picked up what she could now see was a knapsack. Ellie shuffled to the right to avoid being pushed aside when he stood.

      She took a deep breath and steeled her nerves to try again. “Excuse me. I—”

      “Act like you’re asleep.”

      “What?” The sound of his voice startled her as much as the odd request.

      “Move it now, lady.” The crisp command in the hushed velvet voice fluttered along her skin.

      Ellie hugged the blanket more tightly around her, conquering the urge to bolt to the end of her chain. She rolled her neck, pulled up her chin and remembered she was supposed to be a princess. “So. He deigns to speak to me.”

      He ignored her attempt at sarcasm and pulled out a battery-powered lantern. He set it on the stool and turned it on, flooding the basement with a warm glow that softened the harsh glare from the bare bulb over the stairs. He dug into the knapsack for something else, sending another darting look behind him, apparently oblivious to her presence only a foot away.

      She tried to scoot around his shoulder and at least talk to the eye holes in his stocking cap. “I want my glasses. Keep whatever else is in my purse, but I need to remove my contacts.”

      He turned on her then, nailed her with that dark-blue gaze that at once frightened and compelled. “Is that what’s wrong with your eyes?”

      He’d noticed her eyes?

      Her fingers flew to her temple self-consciously. Now that she had his full attention, an attack of shyness squeezed her throat, and she was unable to push any words past it.

      Men didn’t notice details about her. Men didn’t notice her, period.

      Precious seconds swept by in silence as their gazes locked. His, questioning, searching. Hers, hoping for understanding, wishing she hadn’t been cursed with an inordinate self-awareness that made her analyze every look, every word, before responding.

      “I—”

      But the opportunity to plead her case had been lost.

      “Lie down,” he ordered.

      The words were like shock therapy to her frozen systems. “I beg your pardon?”

      “Lie down.” He climbed halfway up the steps, lifted the knapsack above his head and wrapped it around the lightbulb where it dangled at the end of its wire. The perimeter of the basement was plunged into darkness, and the circle of lantern light, now the only source of illumination, seemed to shrink.

      Sinjun swung the bag against the wall. The bulb shattered inside. Ellie sank to her knees, seeing his actions as a demonstration of what those strong hands could do to her if she didn’t cooperate. He rolled up the bag with the broken glass and tossed it beneath the stairs. “If you want to stay alive, you’ll do exactly as I tell you.”

      In a perverse trick of psychology, fear sent fire through her veins and unlocked her ability to talk. “You have no right to speak to a princess that way.”

      Suddenly he was on his knees in front of her. He snatched her by the upper arms when she tried to scramble away, lifted her inches off the floor. He held her like that, suspended by his incredible strength, and dragged her right up to his chest.

      Ellie put her hands out to protect herself. The heat of him seared her palms through his shirt. But it was like shoving against a brick wall. He pulled her so close she could feel his hot breath through the knit mask. “I don’t know who the hell you are, but you’re not Lucia Carradigne.”

      Time froze for an instant. Ellie just hung there, supported by Sinjun’s hands and the link to those hypnotic blue eyes.

      The shock wore off a heartbeat later and Ellie pounded her fists against him. “No! Let go of me.”

      They wanted a princess. If they knew the truth—no one paid ransom for royal impostors—she was as good as dead.

      He shook her once, pulled her impossibly closer. Now the heat of the man singed her from chest to thigh. He dipped his mouth to her ear and stilled her struggles with words, instead of strength. “Right now, that’s just our little secret. But if you don’t do exactly what I tell you, when I tell you…”

      His voice trailed off with a brush of wool against the shell of her ear. A chill rippled down her spine, leaving a path of goose bumps in its wake.

      “How did you know?” She could barely hear her own whisper. “I suppose you want something from me now. I don’t have much money. The gown and jewelry were borrowed.”

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