The Dangerous Mr. Ryder

‘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 l

ove.

‘Someone is frying bacon.’