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During the Napoleonic Wars, France, Spain, and the United Kingdom signed the Treaty of Amiens in 1802, promising to cease all hostilities. Thousands of upper-class British civilians flocked to France, eager to see the wonders of Paris for the first time since the war began in 1792. But the uneasy peace didn't last. On May 18, 1803, shortly after capturing several French and Dutch ships sailing near the British Isles, Great Britain declared war on France once more. Napoleon retaliated by capturing all British civilian males between the ages of eighteen and sixty who were still in France, sometimes with their wives and families. These thousands of civilian prisoners were called détenus. Except for those who successfully escaped or negotiated their way out, Napoleon kept them prisoners until the end of that phase of the war in 1814.

This fictional series is about three such détenus.

PROLOGUE

Lord Jonathan Leighton's mentor was at death's door.

Jon didn't need the naval surgeon attending Dr. Isaac Morris to tell him so. Even by dimmest candlelight, Jon could see Morris's swollen, discolored leg and the feverish flush of his skin, could hear his tortured moans as he lay on the thin straw mattress.

Guilt stabbed Jon through the heart. How he ached to flee this dungeon and take his tutor with him. But attempting to escape their civilian detainee camp had been what had consigned him and his friends to Bitche Prison in the first place. And Morris wasn't well enough to manage it, anyway.

The surgeon approached Jon. "I fear it won't be long now."

A shudder swept Jon. "Can't you amputate?"

The doctor, a fellow prisoner, shook his head. "The gangrene has progressed too far for that, and in his weak state, the surgery would probably kill him. Perhaps if they had let me see him a month ago, but even then—"

Even then, the flesh surrounding the untreated bone fracture had begun to fester because Morris kept trying to walk on it.

"I gave him water with a bit of wine mixed in," the surgeon said, "but that's all I can do."

"At least make him more comfortable. Give him something to help his pain, for God's sake." Perhaps then Morris could hold on long enough to make it home if they were finally freed.

Rumor had it that the war might be ending. But those rumors had surfaced before, only to come to nothing. After eleven years of captivity, three of those in Bitche, the now thirty-year-old Jon had seen his hopes battered so often that they could no longer rally.

"Dr. Morris has refused even the small amount of laudanum I have," the surgeon said.

Schooling his features to calmness, Jon approached the man he'd spent years with, awaiting the war's end. "Won't you take a swallow for your pain, sir?"

Morris shook his head. "It will...make me sleep. I have things...to tell you before...I die."

A chill ran through Jon that had nothing to do with the dank air in the cell hewn from rock. "You're not dying," he lied.

"Let us...be as honest with...one another as we...as we've always been," Morris rasped.

Not always. Morris had secrets, but Jon couldn't ask the man about them on his death bed. It didn't seem right to press him, given his present condition.

Jon dropped onto the stool beside Morris's farce of a bed. "Tell me whatever you wish—I'll always keep your confidences." I owe you that much and more.

Morris managed a smile. "It's nothing...like that. First, I want you...to know...I consider you...the son...I never had."

Then fight, damn you! Jon dismissed the words as soon as they came to his lips. Morris had fought the entire time they'd been in Bitche, but the wounded thigh he'd suffered in their escape attempt had pained him from the moment of his injury. Morris had a right to seek an end to his agony.