Читать книгу Regency Scoundrels And Scandals - Louise Allen - Страница 23

‘Fleeing the Duchy with your lover, my dear sister-in-law?’ Antoine enquired. The pistol did not move. Behind her she could hear Jack’s horse, stamping in impatience as he reined it in. The rest of the men got to their feet, staring.

‘I am the Grand Duchess Eva de Maubourg,’ she said, ignoring Antoine and raising her voice to reach the troopers. ‘Prince Antoine has no right to lead you to war, no right to break our neutrality.’

‘This woman is a whore, a traitor who has fled with her lover,’ Antoine countered, drawing their attention back to him. ‘Seize their horses, bring them here to me.’

Some of the men started forward. ‘No! Remember who I am! I am the mother of your Grand Duke and I am on my way to him now.’ But their faces showed nothing but exhaustion and dull shock. Would they even recognise this woman in man’s clothing from the images that they would have seen of her, or the glimpses caught from a distance at parades?

What was Jack doing? Nothing, probably; seeing the aim that Antoine was taking, there was little he could do without risking her being shot. Then she heard him, his voice pitched just for her ears, in English. ‘Faint. Now, to the left.’

With a little gasp she slumped sideways, keeping a grip of the pommel just sufficient to break her fall. As she hit the ground, her horse between her body and the men, she saw the led horse gallop riderless through the gap, sending the troopers scattering. There was a sharp report—the pistol—she thought hazily, and then Jack was there, the big black gelding a wall between Antoine and herself.

Had he a pistol? Eva ducked down, peering under the belly of the two horses. Antoine was scrabbling in a holster for a loaded weapon, his horse backing away, frightened by the firing; three hefty troopers were hurling themselves towards Jack.

Eva swung back on to her horse, groping in the saddlebags in the hope that Jack had stashed a weapon there, but all her frantic hand met was the neck of the champagne bottle. She dragged it out, hefted it in her hand and kicked the animal into an explosive canter. They rounded the knot of troopers Jack was holding at bay with a long knife and bore down on Antoine. His second pistol was in his hand now, aimed at Jack. Eva dragged on the reins and swung the bottle. As her horse crashed into the prince’s, the champagne cracked over his head and he slumped, unconscious, beneath her hooves.

‘Jack!’ She pulled up the bay on his haunches as the big black horse erupted towards her through the group of troopers.

‘Ride!’ His hand came down on the bay’s rump and both animals flew along the track at a gallop. ‘Keep down!’ Eva flattened herself over the withers, expecting the crack of musket fire behind at any moment, but nothing came. Jack kept up the pace, zigzagging through the trees until they reached the far edge of the wood. Even there, he only slowed to a canter, twisting in the saddle to check behind them for pursuit.

‘Jack,’ Eva called across to him. ‘I must go back—those are my troops, my men, I cannot leave them.’

‘You can and you will.’ The face he turned towards her was implacable. ‘Philippe may be dead. If that is so, who will rule Maubourg for Fréderic? You. I cannot risk Antoine being in a fit state to rally them, and I cannot risk your life for the sake of a handful of men who made the wrong choice.’

‘No,’ she protested, but even as she said it, she knew he was right. It was her duty. The very fact that Antoine had dared bring the men north to the Emperor made her fear that Philippe was indeed dead, that the moral influence of his position, even in sickness, had gone, leaving his brother free to do his worst. If anything happened to her, then who would be there for Freddie, alone in a foreign country, however benevolent?

‘Are you hurt?’ Jack slowed the pace.

‘No. Just shaken.’

‘We’ll ride on, then, but steadily—we have only the two horses now, we cannot keep this pace up.’

It was then that her bay put his foot in the rabbit hole. Eva was flat on her back on the grass before she knew what had happened, the breath knocked out of her. She sat up, whooping painfully, to find Jack kneeling beside her. ‘I’ll try that question again.’ He smiled reassuringly. ‘Are you hurt?’

‘No.’ She shook her head as he helped her to her feet. The bay gelding was standing, head down, his offside fore dangling.

‘Hell and damnation.’ Jack strode across to his mount, pulled the long-muzzled pistol from the holster and began to reload. ‘Don’t look.’

‘This really is not our day,’ Eva said shakily as she wrapped her arms round Jack’s waist and tried to get a comfortable seat behind him as the black horse walked stolidly north under its double burden. The track was uneven, which made keeping her balance even harder.

‘You could say that.’ She could hear the rueful smile in his voice. ‘I could try buying a horse, although I doubt we’ll find one. This is going to be a long day.’

They had ridden, then walked, then ridden again, for perhaps three miles, before Jack was confident they had bypassed Nivelles to the west. ‘Another seven miles or so to Mont St Jean, then, surely, we will be close enough to Brussels to risk the main road.’

The journey seemed to take for ever on the tired horse. Gradually Eva felt herself flagging, leaning against Jack’s straight back, her cheek pressed between his shoulder blades. It should have been uncomfortable and flashes of memory of Antoine’s face, the muzzle of his pistol, the sound as she had hit him, kept jolting her with fear, but the solid warmth gradually filled her with a sense of safety and she slipped into sleep.

‘Eva, wake up.’ It was Jack, twisting in the saddle. ‘It’s started to rain—we need to get under cover.’

Sleepily she shook herself awake and looked round, surprised to find how dark it had become. The sky was black and heavy drops of rain were hitting the dusty track. ‘Where are we?’

Jack threw his leg over the pommel and slid down, holding up his arms for her. Eva almost fell into them. ‘Nearly at Mont St Jean, just over that rise, but I don’t want to go blundering into a village in the middle of a rainstorm when I can’t see what’s going on. It could be full of French troops. There’s a barn over there.’

Barn was a somewhat optimistic description—leaky hovel was closer to it—but Eva was not about to start complaining, not when the rain started hitting the thatch like lead shot. Jack brought the gelding in and unsaddled it, tethering the animal near a pile of hay. It lipped at it suspiciously, but when he lugged in a bucket of water from the well outside it drank deeply.

‘Eva, come and lie down and get some sleep.’ She stumbled obediently to where Jack had laid his coat on some straw, then stopped, the memory flashes coming back to almost blind her.

‘Have I killed him?’ she blurted out, suddenly realising what was causing that cold lump in her stomach.

‘I don’t know,’ Jack said with the honesty he had always shown her. She certainly would never feel patronised with him, she thought with a glimmer of rueful humour. He put down the saddle bag he was sorting through and came to take her in his arms. She leaned in to him with a sigh that seemed to come up from her boots: Jack will make it all right. But he couldn’t, not if she had killed her own brother-in-law. ‘He was trying to kill us, Eva. Whatever has happened to him, it was self-defence. If you had not ridden into him, one of us would probably be dead. You saved my life, as well as your own.’

‘He’s Freddie’s uncle,’ she whispered. ‘What do I tell him?’

‘That his uncle was misguided, that he took some troops to join the Emperor and that he was killed on the battlefield. If Antoine survives, he’ll be on the losing side and in no position to make accusations about two people he tried to kill.’ Jack was rubbing his hand gently up and down her back; it filled her with peace and a sense of his strength.

Comforted, she tipped her head back to look up into his face and caught her breath at the unguarded expression of tenderness she caught there. Then it was gone and he was back to normal: calm, practical, austere. But the wicked glint she had learned to look for was missing from the grey eyes and in its place was something akin to sadness.

‘Jack?’

‘We’re both tired.’ His lids came down, hiding his expression from her. ‘We’ll sleep while this rain lasts; it is so heavy that no one is going to be moving troops around in it.’

‘All right.’ Eva nodded. She was too tired and bemused to try to read what had changed in Jack. He was here, with her, and for the moment that was all that mattered.

Jack woke cold, and lay still with his eyes closed, trying to work out what had roused him. It was safer, he had found from experience, to check out his surroundings before revealing that he was awake. There was a slanting scar over his ribs to remind him of that on a daily basis.

His internal clock told him it was early, not long after dawn perhaps. His ears could detect nothing amiss. The rain had stopped, birds were singing, the horse was mouthing hay. Against his chest he could hear the soft, regular breathing of the woman who slept in his arms. His mouth curved in an involuntary smile. Nothing alarming there to have awakened him. He inhaled deeply. Eva: gardenias and warm, sleepy female. Horse. Damp thatch and dusty hay. The comfortingly domestic smell of bacon.

Bacon? The very faintest hint of frying ham was threading its way through the chill, damp air. Jack shook Eva gently. ‘Wake up, sweet.’

‘What is it?’ She sat up, pushing back the stray hair that had escaped her plait in the night. Her eyes were wide and soft with sleep and his heart lurched painfully. My love.

‘Someone is frying bacon.’

‘Oh, good. Breakfast.’ She rubbed her eyes, then, suddenly completely awake, stared at him. ‘What?’

‘Stay here.’ He got to his feet, checking the knife was still in his boot top and picking up the pistol that had lain by the makeshift pillow all night.

Outside the day was sodden and chill. The ground was soaked, the heavy clay turned to mud by the torrential downpours of the night before. Jack scanned the field in front of him, but it was empty, the wisps of misty steam already rising as the faint early sun, struggling through the grey clouds, struck the moisture.

He slid round the corner of the barn and made his way up the slope. Beyond the hedge that formed the northern boundary the land rose for perhaps fifty yards, then dropped away. What lay beyond was invisible, but smoke rose in a myriad of thin trickles. Camp fires. The breeze shifted, bringing with it the smell of cooking again and, faintly, the sound of many voices and of barked orders. Troops.

‘What is it? The French?’ Eva, was at his elbow.

‘I don’t know, I can’t see. And I told you to stay put.’

‘I needed to find a bush, so I had to come out,’ she said with dignity. ‘Are we going to find out who it is, then?’

Ordering her to remain behind was probably futile. How he had ever imagined he could compel any obedience from this woman he had no idea. ‘Watch my back from here.’ Jack put the pistol into her hand. ‘Don’t use that unless it is absolutely necessary or we will have two armies down on our heads.’

‘I can do that better if I follow you,’ she said stubbornly, taking the pistol.

‘You will be safer here. Will you do as I tell you? Please!’ He felt his voice rising and lowered it hurriedly.

‘I know it is your job to keep me in cotton wool, but, Jack, don’t you see—’

Something snapped. He yanked her into his arms without conscious thought, heedless of the pistol that ended up pressed against his ribs. ‘I see that I almost lost you in that damn river,’ he snarled, heedless of her white-faced shock. ‘I see that I almost lost you yesterday. Can’t you see, you pig-headed, independent, bloody-minded woman, that I—’ Some sense returned, from somewhere, God knew where. ‘Can you not see,’ he finished more moderately, ‘that you are more than a job to me? And if I get you killed or captured, I will punish myself for it for the rest of my life?’

Those soft, red lips parted in a little gasp, but the colour was coming back into her face. Jack tightened his grip on her upper arms and lifted her bodily against him, his mouth taking hers in an uncompromising kiss. His tongue plunged into the warm sweet moistness: mastery, ownership, desperation. Then he set her down roughly on her feet again. ‘Now, damn well stay here.’

‘Yes, Jack.’ Her shocked whisper just reached him as he ducked through a gap in the hedge and, crouching, made his way up the slope. Training and discipline kept him focused on what he was doing and not on who he had left behind, or what he had almost told her. Heedless of the mud, he dropped to the ground and squirmed forward on elbows and knees until he could see down the slope in front of him.

Dark blue uniforms covered the ground below and to the right of the continuation of the road they had left the night before. In the bottom of the valley he could see a crossroads and beyond it a small farm-like château with red coats around it. Beyond that, on the crest that he knew hid the hamlet of Mont St Jean, he could see more red coats.

So, the French were between them and the Allied army and the road to Brussels. Jack slid further forward. There was artillery below and to his left, the guns trained out over the Allied flank, but most of the troops were to the right. It was a scene of an anthill from this distance: hundreds of tiny figures, some grouped around campfires, some with horses, others moving guns or clustering around officers.

The light was good, despite the cloud. Why then, he wondered, had the fighting not begun? He realised why not as he watched a horse team struggling to move a gun limber stuck in the mud. Bonaparte needed to manoeuvre his artillery and he couldn’t do it in these conditions. How long would it take for the ground to drain?

Long enough, if they started now, for them to get to the Allied lines before the firing began. Jack studied the slope to the left, then eased back from the edge and ran back down to the barn.

Eva had found a spot where she could watch both the field and the road. ‘I’ve seen no one,’ she reported. He saw her take in his mud-soaked clothes, but she did not comment, nor did she make any reference to how they had just parted. He should apologise, he knew, but not now.

‘The French are drawn up below us, all along this scarp. The Allies are on the opposite ridge, and they are also holding a farm, half a mile below in the valley. If we can get down there, we can make our way up through the lines to the Brussels road.’

‘Right.’ He saw her throat move convulsively as she swallowed, but Eva showed no fear, only determination. ‘What do we do?’

Fifteen minutes later they were trotting steadily to the west, away from the French, the Allied flank still visible on the ridge to their right. Eva clung on grimly, determined not to complain at the jolting.

‘Ah!’ At Jack’s sigh of satisfaction she leaned round the side of him and saw what he had been looking for. Ahead was a small farm and a track led down from it into the valley. ‘See—’ Jack pointed ‘—we can cross the road down there and take the track into that farm in the valley with the Allied troops around it.’

‘More of a small château,’ Eva said, squinting in an effort to make out detail. ‘I can see why the Allies want to hold it, it gives a good command of the valley floor.’

Jack turned the gelding’s head downhill and, screened by a thick hedge, they made their way to the valley bottom. ‘Get down, Eva.’ He helped her slide down, then, to her surprise, stayed where he was, reaching down for her. ‘Come on, up in front of me.’

Puzzled, she let herself be pulled up, swung a leg over the horse’s neck and found herself settled on Jack’s lap. Then, as he urged the gelding forwards again, pulling her back tight against himself, she realised what he was doing. If there was a sniper with them in his sights, it was now Jack’s broad back that would take the bullet.

‘Have you got anything white we can wave as we approach?’ Jack wrapped his arms round her waist and sorted the reins out.

‘Only my shirt,’ she retorted tartly, ‘And if you imagine I am going to go cantering up to companies of soldiers half-naked, you have another think coming, Mr Ryder.’ They were cantering, and she was still fuming before she realised what they were doing and then it was too late to be scared. ‘You wretch,’ she shouted, above the sound of the hooves. ‘You are trying to distract me.’

‘True.’ He sounded smug. ‘It worked, too.’

‘Can we gallop now, please?’ she demanded, trying to keep the shake out of her voice.

‘No, I want to give the troops ahead a chance to see who we are.’

‘Jack, I do not want you to get shot.’ Of all the daft things to say, she chided herself. As if he can help it if some sniper is sighting down his rifle barrel even now. He doesn’t need me wittering nervously at him.

‘Neither do I.’ Now he sounded amused, almost as though he was enjoying himself. Men were very strange creatures and being married to one, giving birth to one and having another as a lover did nothing to make them any more comprehensible. ‘Look, the piquet have seen us.’

They were closing with the white, buttressed walls of what looked like a large barn forming the western boundary of the château. Jack did not slacken their pace as they closed with the line of soldiers who were training their weapons on them.

‘Wave!’

Eva waved, then shouted, ‘English! English!’ as the black gelding finally skidded to a halt in front of the troops.

‘Who the devil are you?’ The Guards officer who strode forward stared up at them. ‘Good God! Raven—’

‘Jack Ryder, Captain Evelyn. We met in London last year at Brook’s, if you recall.’

‘Ryder? Yes, of course, forgot. What are you doing here of all places?’ The other man seemed ready to settle down to a thoroughgoing gossip. Eva stirred restlessly. She could almost feel the imaginary sniper’s hot breath as he sighted at the middle of Jack’s back.

‘Can we go inside? I am escorting a lady and I doubt she wishes to sit under the eye of our friends up on the ridge much longer.’

‘Yes, of course.’ The captain recollected himself. ‘There, through that gate. Swann, escort them. Oh, and Ryder, the Duke’s here.’

‘What did he call you?’ Eva demanded, trying to twist round as they rode through the narrow gate and into the barn. ‘Raven? Is that a nickname?’

‘A mistake, he has a poor memory. Do you want to meet the Duke?’

‘You know him, I suppose?’ Eva gave up for the moment; now was not the time to try to probe Jack’s reticence.

‘We have spoken.’ Jack sounded amused. ‘At least, I should say, he has barked at me on occasion.’

Their escort led them out of the other side of the barn into a courtyard. It was indeed a château they had arrived at, but a small one, more of a glorified farm than anything. Through another gate and they saw a group of horsemen. The figure in the cocked hat and black cloak could only, if the nose was anything to go by, be the great man himself. He was surrounded by a group of officers, all in earnest talk. Jack rode across and four faces turned to view them.

Eva saw eyebrows rising as they took in the fact that she was a woman, then the Duke doffed his hat. ‘Madam. From the fact that you are with this gentleman, I assume you are not sightseeing on the battlefield?’

‘Ma’am,’ Jack said, without a quiver in his voice, ‘may I introduce his Grace the Duke of Wellington, Commander of Allied forces?’ Eva bowed, as best she could given her position. ‘Your Grace, I am escorting this lady to England. I regret that at the moment I am unable to effect a proper introduction.’

The Duke doffed his hat and the others followed suit. ‘I presume that Rav…Ryder is taking you to Brussels?’

‘Yes, your Grace. I must not distract you from the task in hand, forgive me.’ Another mistake with Jack’s name. What was going on?

‘We will ride back together, ma’am, and find you a mount. Allow me to present General Baron von Muffling, Prussian liaison, and Major the Viscount Dereham.’ He rose slightly in his stirrups and the other officers who had been standing further out moved forward attentively. ‘Lieutenant Colonel McDonnell, gentlemen—you have your orders, this place is to be held to the last extremity, I have every confidence.’