The Dangerous Mr. Ryder

‘Are you armed?’

‘To the teeth,’ he assured her, the smile belying his solemn tone.

‘Don’t be flippant.’ The tone of crisp reproof was still there when she needed it, she found. ‘I cannot see any weapons.’

‘I should hope not.’ She narrowed her eyes at him in exasperation and he relented. ‘Knives in my boots and in a chest harness. Pistols in my pockets. Hence,’ he added as she glanced sideways at him, ‘the dreadful cut of my coats.’

There was nothing wrong with his coats at all. This one fitted admirably over broad shoulders and snug at his waist. It was, if what he was telling her was true, exceptionally well tailored, and probably very expensive, for all its lack of fashionable flourish.

‘Stop fishing for compliments,’ she chided. ‘You know perfectly well that coat is very smart. Why wouldn’t you let me wear my cloak and hood?’

‘Because that was what you were last seen in. If those officers who interrupted us in the lane have worked out who you were by now, they ought to be able to describe your clothing. ‘That hat…’ he flipped the brim irreverently ‘…is not the sort of thing a grand duchess wears. When you skim a crowd, searching, your eye stops when it sees something familiar. It is like hunting—you look for the shadowy outline of deer and ignore foxes. They search for a great lady and might miss a lovely young girl in her pert new hat.’

‘Young!’ Eva tried not to think about the rest of that description, but she couldn’t repress a blush.

‘Now who is fishing?’

‘I am not, but really, Jack, I am twenty-six years old—’

‘So ancient! Quite on your last prayers, obviously. I almost fell off your damnable window ledge with the shock I had when I first saw you. They did not tell me, you see, that you were both young and beautiful.’

‘Are you flirting with me, Monsieur Ridère?’ she enquired suspiciously as he steered her through the door of a respectable seeming eating house.

‘Of course, Madame Ridère. A friend may, may he not? This place looks acceptable.’ Eva forgot the compliments and the teasing as she watched him assessing the bistrôt, trying to work out what he was looking for.

‘A back door, plenty of people, a table over there with a good view of who is coming in?’ she suggested.

‘Yes. Precisely, you are learning to get the eye. Let’s hope the food is good, too.’

It was. And so was the atmosphere. Eva had never been anywhere like this. She found her elbows were on the table, that she was singing along with the group near the door who had struck up an impromptu sing-song while they waited for their order, and the simple casserole of chicken and herbs, washed down with a robust red wine, seemed perfect.

‘I am enjoying this,’ she confessed, as the waitress set down a platter of cheese.

‘So am I.’ Jack caught the hand she was gesturing with and held it. ‘I enjoy seeing you relax.’

‘This is so different for me,’ Eva admitted. ‘No one is staring. I don’t have to pretend.’

‘Don’t you?’ Jack murmured, almost as though he were asking a rhetorical question. Eva tugged her hand free, finding his warm grasp rather more disturbing than was safe and Jack let go at once, taking her by surprise. Her arm flicked back, caught the little vase of flowers set on the table and knocked it off.

‘Oh, bother!’ Eva jumped to her feet to retrieve it just as the door opened and a group of men walked in. She straightened up, the flowers in her hand and found herself staring, across the width of the bistrôt, straight into the eyes of a tall blond man with sharp blue eyes and a sensual mouth set over a strong chin.

Good-looking, arrogant, unmistakable. It was Colonel de Presteigne.

Chapter Ten

The colonel had seen her, recognised her. There was no way to avoid him. The way the hunter’s smile of sheer triumph slid across his face sickened her. Eva clenched her hand around the slender vase, as she counted the men standing at his back. Three of them, all ordinary soldiers out of uniform by the look of them—there were no impressionable young officers to appeal to here.

Behind her she felt Jack slide out from behind the table, then stand, almost as if to hide behind her. But Jack was not a man to hide behind a woman—he had a plan, she knew it. He moved smoothly, so she was not surprised that the men kept their attention on her. His hand closed round her left wrist. ‘When I tug, throw that vase and run with me.’ The words were a breath in her ear and she nodded fractionally in response as he released her.

‘Bonsoir, madame.’ De Presteigne, feigning deference. ‘Dining in style with your gallant lover, I see.’ His lip curled in a sneer at the sight of Jack apparently hiding behind the shelter of her skirts. How had she ever thought the colonel charming?

Eva sensed Jack shifting his balance, her whole body attuned to him as though they touched. Out of the corner of her eye she watched the waitress come out of the kitchen door with a steaming tureen and walk across to a table. Their escape route was clear. She shifted her balance slightly.

‘Better a humble bistrôt than a formal dining room in the company of traitors,’ she retorted, seeing the smile congeal into dark anger on his face.

‘You call supporters of the Emperor traitors?’ he demanded, raising his voice. People shifted in their chairs to stare, the amiable faces of the diners changing to suspicion. Lyon, she remembered, supported Bonaparte.

‘You betray your Grand Duke,’ she flashed back as the colonel took a stride towards her. She felt Jack’s hard tug on her wrist and she threw the vase full in de Presteigne’s face. Water and flowers went everywhere as the man roared in shock and clawed at his eyes.