“I love you.”
She glanced up at him, startled. The adoration in his eyes made her heart race. She traced his jaw and he kissed her palm.
“Do you know how many women would be having hysterics at this moment?”
“Silly fools.” She sniffed. “But maybe it’s something I can learn to do later, say, after we reach Switzerland.”
“How far is it?”
“After the crest.”
Brian followed her gaze and whistled softly. “Then we definitely need to move out.”
Especially if they wanted to arrive before the coming storm or Sazonov did.
Brian glanced back at his darling, who was trudging steadily along the rocky trail. By all the saints, he didn’t know how she’d kept up so long but she had, without a whimper. Perhaps it was the legendary Scots stubbornness.
Regardless, he needed to take her to safety soon. She was the only one who could re-create the cannon’s plans—and that made her key to defeating Sazonov’s plans to conquer Alaska.
In the shade, ice slicked the narrow path, reminding him how close they were to the crest. It filled the crevices between the boulders and glared from between fissures. But in the sun, it poured itself into waterfalls, diving out of the mountain.
“Miss Duncan?” Sazonov called through his omnipresent bullhorn.
Meredith made a very rude gesture.
Brian smothered a laugh. His darling must indeed be exhausted if she was displaying any vocabulary learned in the foundry, not the drawing room.
“Go ahead,” she whispered. “I’ll stay here and distract him while you two scout.”
“Are you sure?”
“Of course. I can have a drink from that waterfall, while I wait.”
He frowned. The jagged chunks of rock surrounding the fountaining stream seemed more artistic than stable.
“Miss Duncan, let’s discuss children’s education.”
“Go, go!” She mimed shooing Brian away.
Still, he’d only be gone for a few minutes and Sazonov was a noticeable distance behind, despite all his noise. He dropped a kiss on her cheek.
The black dog gazed into her eyes seriously.
“Keep Brian safe for me, Morro,” she ordered in Gaelic. She kissed his forehead and he licked her nose, making her giggle.
The dog followed Brian calmly enough, although not eagerly. He wouldn’t have wanted to leave her either.
“What children, Herr Sazonov?” Meredith called.
Judging by her relaxed tone, he’d wager she had her back to the rock wall, away from the gorge. She’d probably also drawn her feet up to keep her heels from slipping on the trail’s slippery edge. Jesus, Mary, and Joseph, how she loathed looking at any sort of drop.
The path beyond was particularly steep and narrow, doubling back on itself like the devil’s idea of a ladder to hell. A pile of boulders channeled water from the mountain. But beyond them…
He sprang onto the rocks, straining his eyes for a glimpse of the green meadows rolling down the mountainside beyond.
The chunks shifted under him and he adjusted easily. Dammit, he’d grown up around mines and talus piles, where waste rock was thrown away. This stack was a small hurdle compared to those.
Surely those were Swiss meadows. And maybe, just maybe, there were men riding toward him, leading other horses.
Gravel skittered underneath and a boulder grumbled. The rocks rolled, and rolled again, bringing one tumbling down upon another.
Brian leaped for solid ground before he thought, warned by old instinct.
“Meredith, duck!”
WOOF! WOOF! Morro raced for the path downward. Brian dove for his collar, barely grabbing it before the faithful dog disappeared.
More rocks moved, tumbling forward. A bigger rock hurtled into motion, loosening a boulder, and suddenly the entire pile raced toward the edge.
Brian’s stomach plummeted into his boots. How could he have been so arrogant as to stand on that unsteady rock pile? Sweet singing Jesus, if anything happened to his lady…
Dust ripped into the sky, blocking out any sight of her.
He rolled himself over onto her violently squirming friend. It was the only gift he could still give her, while the mountain stormed around him and his heart shredded itself.
It seemed forever before he could lift his head.
“Did you finally kill her, Donovan?” Sazonov asked conversationally.
Pity the bastard was still alive. Still, it did allow time to provide a suitably painful death.
Brian didn’t bother to answer him. Instead, he released Morro and crawled forward to the edge, praying harder than he could remember. If she was alive, he’d donate a stained glass window to a convent or endow a college chair. And kiss her a dozen times every morning.
Her dusty, scratched face looked up at him from below. She unfolded one arm from around her knees and waggled her fingers at him. She was definitely the most beautiful woman in the world.
“Hello,” she croaked. Her universe had shrunk to a narrow section of rocky ledge, barely ten feet long and no more than a yard wide at any point.
“Thank God you’re alive.” He blew her a kiss, causing a smile to break like sunshine across her face. “Can you stand up?”
“I think so.” She suited action to words, rising tentatively to her feet.
His heart surged into a more normal rhythm.
“I’m glad you are still with us, Miss Duncan,” Sazonov remarked. “Have you considered taking up residence in St. Petersburg?”
Meredith closed her eyes and sighed, looking exhausted for the first time.
Damn Russian bastard.
She composed herself and started trying to soothe Morro, pragmatic as ever.
He couldn’t leave her to Sazonov’s few mercies. What hadn’t the Russians done in their dungeons to those who disagreed with them? Beatings, starvation, torture…
He growled, baring his teeth.
But how could he quickly rescue his darling? The landslide had carried away the trail he’d ascended by, leaving him lying on a rocky ledge nearly three storeys above her. Dust still bubbled into the air from the rubble pile below, making it even more unstable than when he’d set it rolling, even if he could reach it.
The great shift had also knocked a boulder onto the trail beyond Meredith. She couldn’t go around it. But a professional climber, with time and proper gear, definitely could.
And Brian absolutely lacked ropes. Mayer and Brecht hadn’t provided them and he hadn’t taken any from the horse farm.
Morro was howling in frustration and he would have liked to do the same. Instead he let out a vicious string of teamster’s curses and sprang back onto his feet. He spun around, looking for any other option. Perhaps if he could persuade the Swiss border guards to leave their posts…
The riders were now galloping toward him, looking oddly familiar. The big man leading the way, the two more slender men, and the very slight one were sights he’d seen all his life.
By all the saints, his family had come to save them.
“Meredith, dearest, my family is coming.” He leaned back over the ledge to speak as quietly as possible to her.
She frowned slightly before composing her face.
“Love, you don’t need to stretch the truth to improve my morale. I know your family wouldn’t expect us to take this route.”
“No, it’s true, they’re on the way.”
“So is Sazonov,” she pointed out, clearly too exhausted to guard her tongue.
Shit. Dammit, he knew she didn’t trust his father.
How could he quickly convince her?
“My mother will be here, plus my two brothers,” Brian added, hoping that more family members to dilute the patriarch’s influence would help her relax.
She hesitated a moment before her damn logical mind kicked in again. “But you can’t reach me from up there.”
“We’ll manage. I swear to you on my grandparents’
graves, we’ll rescue you in time.”
A single tear glittered on her eyelashes and he would have torn his heart out to spare her the agony.
“Morro! Morro, hush!” she ordered in Gaelic.
The dog immediately stopped his erratic barking and watched her closely.
“Keep Brian’s mother safe, Morro! Do you hear me?” She emphasized the order’s importance by using only Gaelic.
The dog whined unhappily, his ears flat against his head.
“Keep Brian’s mother safe,” she repeated.
He barked once, his ears still lying back.
“I swear I’ll be back, Meredith.” Brian put all the conviction he could into the simple words.
“I believe you, love.” She smiled at him.
Meredith closed her eyes and listened to Brian’s footsteps die out across the rock. She believed he would return; she simply wasn’t sure he’d survive.
At least ordering Morro to guard Brian’s mother should keep him away from harm. She couldn’t believe any autocrat would let his wife go into battle.
“How are you this afternoon, Miss Duncan?” Sazonov asked.
“Quite well. And you?” She might as well amuse herself by talking to him. It might keep him from thinking up new plots against Brian.
“Excellent. Far better than the poor serfs in Russia.”
Huh? Her brows snapped together and she stared at the unmoving rock between them, as if it could announce her enemy’s intentions. She’d be greatly surprised to learn Sazonov had ever had a thought which didn’t focus on himself or his country’s glory.
“Russian serfs?” she queried, too startled to think of a more probing question.
“Yes, our poor peasants. So hungry, so uneducated, so lacking in medical care. Tied to the land and at the mercy of their masters…” He clucked his tongue.
Her eyes widened. He actually sounded as if he cared.
“Why do you mention them?”
“Doesn’t every wise man want everyone else to be happy?”
“No,” she retorted bluntly. If he honestly believed she thought he was wise, he needed to find a new line of argument.
He chuckled. His voice’s echoes changed subtly, sounding as if he was coming a little closer.
Brian, please hurry…
“You might find Russia’s serfs more worthy of your concern than Eisengau’s workers, Miss Duncan. After all, Eisengau’s people are already well-fed and housed, a situation that’s not true in Russia.”
“But I can’t do anything for Russian serfs,” she retorted. She hoped Liesel’s seduction had been more delightful than these veiled hints.
“You could if you agreed to work for us willingly.”
“What?!”
“You can recreate the Eisengau 155mm cannons and all of Zorndorf’s other designs.”
This display of logic allowed her to close her mouth. She could redraw all the designs for the cannons since she’d gone to work for Zorndorf. But if she did that, she’d be a prisoner of the Russians for the rest of her life. She’d never see Brian or her brothers again, unless the Russians let them visit her in St. Petersburg—an event which would come with a very high price.
“Do that for us and you can name your price. You would make Russia the mightiest military power in Asia and Europe. Do you think the Tsar wouldn’t let you remake a few laws, especially when the liberal half of his cabinet already clamors for him to do so?”
Meredith’s knees gave out and she sank down against the stone. Sazonov had come up with the one bribe that could tempt her.
Chapter Seventeen
The trail opened onto a gravel slope only a dozen yards past the rocky ledge where Brian had last seen Meredith. He raced down it, waving frantically at the riders galloping across the grassy meadow beyond. “Father!”
“Brian!” His sire sawed on the reins, swinging himself down almost before his horse could completely stop. He enveloped his son in a hug so enormous it swept Brian off his feet.
Brian only laughed and pounded the senior Donovan on the back. An instant later, he hugged and kissed his mother on both cheeks then laughed with the two twins.
“Where are we going now, son?” asked William Donovan, a tear gleaming on his cheeks.
Brian blinked; he’d expected to have to convince his family he wasn’t going back to Switzerland with them. He considered their equipage a little more closely.
They had two spare horses with them, not one, and every saddle was ornamented with a rifle.
“Your mother convinced me—us!—there was somebody in Eisengau you were interested in,” the founder of Donovan & Sons commented.
“Since you and the dog are the only ones who came out, I suspect we need to find her.” Mother finished another of Father’s sentences. Morro had sat down and was eyeing her wistfully.
“Yes, we do.” Brian swallowed hard, breaking through the tightness in his throat. Surely Meredith would come to love his family as much as he did. “And I need to introduce Mother to her new friend.”
“Of course, there’d be benefits for you, too,” Sazonov added. “Fashionable yet comfortable clothing, an elegant mansion in St. Petersburg, and a beautiful dacha to relax in, since we know how you love the open air.”
She closed her eyes. Could she honorably put her own happiness ahead of so many others?
But did she believe Sazonov would keep his promises?
If she went with Brian, she’d have to trust he’d keep her from being trapped in a network of laws designed to enforce masculine authority.
She buried her face against her knees, her cairngorm brooch pressing into her chest under her suit jacket.
Somebody was tapping on that huge boulder, building a path for Sazonov around it.
Brian lay a few feet back from the ledge, his beloved Mauser rifle finally slung over his back. Marlowe and his father, draped in coils of rope, flanked him. All three of them were studying the scene below, while his mother and an unhappily resigned Spenser waited with the horses and Morro.
“Nice predicament,” Father commented just above a whisper. “That’s quite a bribe the Russian’s offering.”
And the only one she’d listen to, dammit. She was being swayed, too, judging by her silence. Brian clenched his fists. “We have to get her out of there.”
“We’ll have to lift her over the ledge,” decided the very experienced freighter.
“We didn’t bring a bosun’s chair or any other polite contraption to hold a proper lady,” Marlowe pointed out.
“One of us can go down and tie her in,” Father countered.
“Is there time?” Sazonov had been successfully driving his men damn hard and fast.
The two elder Donovans looked at the party’s youngest member.
“They’re closer than you said.” Marlowe craned his neck to get a better view. His experiments with mountain climbing and slightly larger size were why he’d come forward, instead of Spenser. “I give them maybe five minutes to finish setting ropes around that rock.”
“Then there’s no time to send somebody down there. We’ll have to ask her to do it.”
Butterflies turned into vultures and started rioting in Brian’s stomach. “I’ll talk her through it.”
“Sweetheart?” The beloved whisper sifted down.
“Brian!” She jumped up and stretched her hands up to him along the stone wall. “My dearest love, thank God you came back.”
“My family’s here, too,” he offered reassuringly. “My father, William Donovan, and my brother Marlowe.”
“Miss Duncan.” Two men, remarkably similar to Brian but very different in age to each other, poked their heads over the ledge.
She nodded, bemused. His father was going to be actively engaged in rescuing her? At least she could keep her back to the gorge while this occurred.
“Miss Duncan?” Sazonov again. She ignored him and the incessant hammering.
“We’re going to drop a rope down to you with a loop t
ied in it.”
“Why a loop?” She frowned, considering scenarios.
The men glanced at each other guiltily.
A cold chill ran down her spine.
“After you grab the rope, pull your arms through it so it rests around your chest under your armpits.”
She did not like the sound of this.
“Then lower your hands and grab your belt. My father and Marlowe will lift you very quickly up here.”
“But the rope will be cutting into me. Isn’t there anyplace else you can put it? My legs, so I can sit down?”
“We didn’t bring the equipment for a lady, miss,” Brian’s father apologized.
“Think about how your drawers are made, Meredith. Do you want us wrapping rope around you there?” Brian hissed.
She cringed, remembering all the bare, delicate skin under her skirt. Hardly.
But if she was lifted out on a rope, wouldn’t she swing like a pendulum? Over the gorge and its incredible fall of over three thousand feet?
How high had the Scottish cliff been, that she’d been trapped on when she was eight?
“But are you sure the rope is strong enough for my weight, given these breezes?” She hesitated. Or should she be blunt and call them winds? At any event, every hair on her skin was standing up, even the ones under her sleeves and on the nape of her neck.
“I’m very glad you’ve decided to return to my party, Mr. Donovan,” Sazonov purred.
Meredith spun to stare downhill, her outer foot slipping on the trail’s verge. The Russian was far too close, judging by the echoes.
Brian’s father began to rapidly tie a series of knots in the stout rope.
She looked away and pressed her fist to her mouth. A father and a rope and a crumbling cliff…
Something clicked—and Brian’s gaze turned hard and wary.
Shots rang out from the chimney behind the boulder. Sazonov must have hidden riflemen in there, where they couldn’t reach her but they could block the approaches.
Kisses Like a Devil Page 24