The Dangerous Mr. Ryder

‘I have no idea.’ Jack stared at him blankly. It was a useful trick. People questioning you expected you to lie, to make up an answer, to be able to catch you out. An honest admission of ignorance took the wind out of their sails and made you seem more credible. ‘I have been reading, sleeping. I take no notice of such things. Henri, what have you seen?’

Henry shrugged. ‘All sorts, monsieur, all sorts. What is the lieutenant looking for?’

‘A woman,’ the young man began, then reddened at the grin on Henry’s face and the sound of his own men choking back their laughter. He glared at his men. ‘A fugitive. A woman in her mid-twenties, brown hair, tall. With a man. Probably in a travelling carriage.’

‘No idea.’ The groom was dismissive. ‘Can’t see inside anything closed from up here. Could have passed the Emperor himself and a carriage full of Eagles for all I know.’

‘Very well. You may proceed.’ The officer handed Jack the passport and stepped back.

Jack climbed into the carriage and sat down without a glance up at Henry. Inept and badly organised was the only way to describe that road block. It must have been the first response last night, to send troops out on the main roads. He did not fool himself that this would be the extent of Antoine’s reaction to the disappearance of his sister-in-law.

The rapid tattoo on the roof told him that no one was following them. All clear, he could let Eva out. What a fuss she had made about getting in—no doubt she thought the box contained the dreaded spiders she had confessed to fearing.

Jack unlatched the seat, lifted the lid and caught his breath. For one appalled moment he thought she was dead. Her face was grey, her eyes closed, her hands, clasped at her breast, had blood on them. Then her eyes opened, unfocused on some unseen terror. ‘No,’ she whispered. ‘No! Louis—don’t let them in!’

Chapter Seven

‘Eva.’ A dark shape loomed over her. He had come, just as she knew, just as she feared. The figure reached down, took her shoulder and she gasped, a little sound of horror, and swooned.

‘Eva, wake up.’ Her nostrils were full of the smell of dust, of the tomb he had just lifted her from. She was held on a lap, yet the male body she rested on was warm, alive, pulsing with strength, not cold, dead…

He shifted her on his knees so he could hold her more easily. ‘It’s all right, we are quite safe, there is no one else here.’ Jack? She could not trust herself to respond. A hand stroked her cheek, found the sticky traces of half-dried tear tracks. Flesh-and-blood fingertips against her skin, not the touch of dry bone. She came to herself with a sharply drawn breath. ‘Eva, you are safe,’ he said urgently.

‘Oh. Oh, Jack.’ She burrowed her face into his shirtfront.

‘Are you all right now?’ He managed to get a finger under her chin and nudged it up so he could look into her face. ‘You frightened me. What was all that about?’

‘I am sorry.’ She tried to sit up, but he pulled her back. ‘It is just that that was…is…my worst nightmare. A real nightmare. I keep having it.’ I am awake, I am safe. Jack kept me safe. He did not come.

‘Tell me,’ he prompted.

She had never spoken of it to anyone. Could she do so now? Admit such fear and weakness? ‘When I first came to the castle Louis, my husband, took me down to the family vault under the chapel. At first it was exciting, fascinating, like a Gothic romance—the twisting stairs, the flickering torches. I didn’t realise where we were going.’

The smell of the air—that was what had hit her first. Cold, dry, infinitely stale. Old. Louis had held, not a lantern, but a torch, the flames painting shapes over the pillars and arches, making shadows solid. ‘Then he opened the door into the vault—it seems to go on for ever, right under the castle, with arches and a succession of rooms.’

She had been a little excited, she remembered now. These must be the dungeons. It was all rather unreal, like a Gothic novel. Until she had realised where they were.

‘We were in the burial vaults. All there is down there are these niches in the walls, like great shelves, each one with a coffin on it.’ Jack must have felt her shudder at the memory and tightened his hold.

‘The newer ones were covered in dusty velvet, there were even withered wreaths.’ How did the flowers and leaves hold their shape? she had wondered, still not quite taking in what she was seeing. They had moved on, further and deeper into the maze of passageways. ‘The older ones were shrouded in cobwebs. Some of them were cracked.’ There had been a hideous compulsion to move closer, to put her eye to those cracks and look into the sarcophagus as though into a room.

‘Then Louis started to show them to me, as though he were introducing living relatives; it was horrible, but he seemed to think it quite normal, and I tried not to show what I was thinking.’ Already, by then, she was learning that she must not show emotion, that she must show respect for Maubourg history and tradition, that weakness was unforgivable. Somehow she applied those lessons and did not run, screaming, for the stairs. Or perhaps she had known she would never find them again.

Then they had moved on. She had felt something brush against her arm and had looked down. ‘There was one—an old wooden casket where the planks had cracked and a hand had come out.’ She had tried never to think about it while she was awake, but whenever the nightmare came, this was the image that began it. ‘A skeleton hand, reaching out for me as we walked past. It touched me.’

Her voice broke. Jack made a sound as if to tell her to stop, that it was too distressing, but she was hurrying now. It must all be said. ‘And then he came to two empty shelves and said “And these are ours”. I didn’t understand at first, and then I realised he meant they were for our coffins.’

One day she would lie there, enclosed in a great stone box, sealed up away from the light and air for ever. There would not even be the natural, life-renewing embrace of the soil to take her back.

‘I don’t know how I got out without making a scene. That night I dreamt I had died and woken up in my coffin. I knew I was down there, and they were all out there, waiting, and that any moment Louis would lift the lid and he would be dead, too, and—I am sorry, such foolishness.’

Eva sat up, smoothing her hair back from her face with a determined calm. Discipline, remember who you are. There was pity and respect in Jack’s grey eyes as he looked at her. She could not let it affect her. ‘Ever since then, I have been afraid of very tight, dark, spaces.’

‘I’m not surprised, that is the most ghoulish thing I have ever heard. Did your husband not realise what an effect it was having on you?’

‘Louis was a firm believer in self-control and putting on a good face,’ Eva said with a rueful smile. ‘I soon learned what was expected of me.’

‘Did you love your husband?’