The Sherbrooke Bride (Sherbrooke Brides 1)

He stared at her and heard himself say, “Do you want more?”

“Yes, please. You are kind.”

“Damn you, I’m not kind!” He stomped out of the door, slammed it behind him, and she heard the key grate in the lock. Alexandra would swear that she heard him cursing under his breath. She’d swear she heard at least one merde. At least Douglas had evidently taught her one of the most useful of French curses.

The moment she was alone again, the fear, stark and ugly, struck her full force. Lord, what had she done? She’d spoken to him as she would to a vicar, all trusting and confiding. She was a fool. He was probably now plotting how to torture her, to make her pay for what he believed Douglas had done to this Janine woman, the wretched lying hussy. Why had Janine lied like that about Douglas to her lover? After all, he had rescued her. To make him jealous? Surely that was going too far.

Alexandra lay back, closing her eyes, wishing that Douglas had spoken frankly to her so she could use the truth now with Georges Cadoudal. It was another minute before she realized that he had left her hands unbound. She couldn’t believe it. She raised her hands and just looked at them.

New energy pounded through her. Alexandra untied the rope about her ankles. She stood and promptly fell back onto the bed. Several minutes of rubbing her ankles, of trying to stand and falling and trying yet again.

And when she could finally walk, she ran on light feet to the door. She knew it was locked but she tried it nonetheless. She turned back to the single window. It was narrow, maybe too narrow for her shoulders and her hips.

She could but try.

* * *

Douglas and Tony rode from Calais toward Etaples. The day was warm, the sun bright overhead. It was market day and the roads were filled with open wagons and drays and laden-down donkeys and farmers walking with their produce in bags slung over their shoulders. It would also be market day in Etaples. Perhaps it could be useful if they were forced to escape. Market days always were chaotic. Too, there were all the French soldiers, all the French carpenters and artisans and laborers and ship builders. Cadoudal was mad to have brought her here. It was beyond dangerous. It was foolhardy and it was precisely something that Georges would do. It was like laughing in the devil’s face; it was like twitching his forked tail.

Tony said, riding close, “Did this Cadoudal fellow give you precise instructions, Douglas? You appear to know exactly where to go.”

“Yes,” Douglas said, looking betwe

en his horse’s ears, “I know exactly where to go.”

“I really don’t understand this. What does he want from you?”

Douglas only shook his head. He couldn’t get that damned insubstantial ghostly dream out of his mind. And it had been naught but a dream. He realized now that he’d been thinking so deeply, his thoughts so concentrated, about where Cadoudal had taken her, that he himself had come up with the likely solution. For some unknown reason, his mind had insisted upon giving further credence to his own deductions by providing him with a prescient ghost.

Yes, everything fit. Everything, once he knew Cadoudal had taken her to France. Everything, except the absurd ghost, the ridiculous Virgin Bride.

Even the house where he was holding her. It was the grandmother’s farmhouse, and Douglas had seen the place. It was ideal for Cadoudal’s purposes. Yes, everything fit.

Why the devil would a ghost give a damn about what happened to Alexandra?

He dismissed it; he needed to plan, to decide upon their best strategy. He realized that Tony had asked him another question, one he couldn’t answer, one he didn’t want to attempt to answer.

It was another hour to Etaples and then another ten minutes to the farmhouse.

Alexandra managed to twist enough to get her shoulders through the dirty open window. Her hips were more of a problem but she finally popped through, falling four feet to land on her face on the muddy ground. She lay there a moment, breathing hard, then lifted her head to get her bearings.

There was a small garden just beyond, filled with weeds and a few surviving vegetables. She was at the back of the farmhouse. There was a stable, dilapidated, with very old shingles hanging off the roof at odd angles. She heard chickens squawking. There was a goat eating what looked to be an old boot not ten feet from her. He chewed and looked at her with complete indifference.

She didn’t hear any voices. There was no sign of life.

How long did she have before Georges Cadoudal returned?

That galvanized her. She kept low, skirting the vegetable patch, running toward the straggly stand of trees some thirty feet beyond. She was panting, a stitch in her side, when she slid behind one of the trees, falling to her knees, and peering back toward the farmhouse. She saw nothing except that goat, still chewing on the boot.

Now, where was she? She looked at the sun, hot now in the midday, and gathered her wits together. She wanted to go north to the English Channel. But where the devil was she? Surely not too far away from the sea because she hadn’t been unconscious for all that long. Had she?

She realized after five minutes of running that the trees were going to give out. There was nothing northward save an endless stretch of meadow, not even any low bushes, nothing to protect her, to hide her.

She couldn’t remain here. It was now or never. She rose and began to run northward.

The sun beat down. She was bareheaded and soon she was light-headed from the heat and from hunger. Her breathing was rough and getting rougher. She was so tired she couldn’t imagine being more so, but she forced herself to keep running, even walking quickly as the stitch in her side forced her to hobble like an old woman.

When she heard the horse’s hooves pounding behind her, when she felt the earth shaking from the horse’s hooves, she wanted to scream with fury, but instead, she just kept running.