by Gaelen Foley
“What is going on here?”
“There there, my dear. Soon you will be safely at home again.”
“Home? I want to see the Duke of Westland!”
Before the butler could reply, she looked up, hearing someone rushing down the stairs. Her blood curdled in pure disbelief as she recognized those iron footfalls.
Mikhail.
She did not wait for visual confirmation. I’ve got to get out of here. With a mighty shove, she pushed the butler violently into one of the big footmen and ducked under the swiping arms of the other, who lunged forward and tried to grab her. The returning maid shrieked as Becky bolted for the door.
“Rebecca!” Mikhail bellowed, running down the stairs. “Get back here!”
She did not look back, banging the front door open on its hinges and leaping off the stoop.
Once more, she ran.
Alec pressed away from the corner of the building as Becky came racing back outside mere seconds after having gone into Westland’s town house. To his astonishment, she took off at a full-out run, her long hair flying, her skirts hitched up to avoid tripping over them. He almost called out to her when a man rushed out of the house after her.
He was tall and lean, with dun-brown hair and a short, narrow beard that encircled his hard mouth. He looked familiar.
“Rebecca!” he clipped out in sharp, foreign tones.
Who is that? I know him. He looked about forty and was dressed in military uniform, with white breeches, high black boots, and a coat of midnight-blue with brass buttons and gold epaulets. He marched after Becky with a few long, aggressive paces.
“That is enough foolishness, Rebecca. Get back here—now! You’re coming home with me!”
Alec bristled.
She ignored him, flying out of the square.
The uniformed man barked an order in some foreign tongue, and instantly, from around the side of the building, streamed four towering Cossacks.
Of course—Prince Kurkov.
Countess Lieven, the wife of the Russian ambassador and a leading hostess of London society, had been singing her countryman’s praises all through the Season, and making sure the steely-eyed war hero was welcomed into the first circles of the ton.
Not a difficult task, for with the wild popularity of Czar Alexander, there was nothing more fashionable than a Russian nobleman these days. Indeed, the creatures were all the rage—except for the matter of their serfs, of course, which made them, for the broad-minded English, as problematical as the Americans with their slaves.
Personally, Alec had no opinion of the foreign prince except a faint, cynical amusement at the way he paraded around Town with his Cossack retinue as if he were the Czar himself. But what on earth did the fierce Prince Mikhail Kurkov have to do with Becky Ward?
Staring in confusion, Alec remembered the two soldiers he had passed in the carriage last night, the ones he thought were lost. Those hats, yes. He recognized them now. Cossacks.
And here they were again.
Kurkov clipped out an order and the Cossacks snapped into motion, four of them pursuing Becky at a rapid clip. He remembered her sleeping on Draxinger’s doorstep—not far from where he had seen the soldiers. Had they been trolling the streets last night searching for her even then? But why?
Virgin.
“What the hell is going on?” he whispered under his breath. Is that why she came home with me? Merely to escape them? He feared he knew the answer, and his heart sank. Oh, Becky, you didn’t have to sleep with me to have my help. I’m not that bad.
Just then the trim, patrician Duke of Westland himself appeared in the doorway. “Good heavens, Kurkov. What’s all this about?”
Alec was already moving in the direction that Becky had fled as the prince left the chase to his men and returned to the front steps, but he overheard the prince. “I am very sorry for this disturbance, Your Grace. My young cousin is very ill. . . .”
Cousin?
“Her mother was unstable, you may recall. Rebecca has inherited an unfortunate distemper of the mind.”
Alec did not hear the rest of Kurkov’s dubious explanation. He might not have all the facts about her, but Becky Ward was one of the sanest people he had ever met. The girl wasn’t mad and she certainly wasn’t ill.
What she was, he thought grimly, was in trouble.
Trailing her pursuers, he moved through the park under the cover of the trees while the perplexed Westland invited Kurkov to wait inside until his men retrieved her.
Becky’s hopes were crushed, panic and sheer despair threatening to overwhelm her as she pitched around another corner and sprinted through the quiet, pleasant neighborhood. What in God’s name was she going to do now? How could the cursed brute have gotten to Westland’s ahead of her? But she already knew the answer to that. Mikhail must have driven straight from Yorkshire while she had been forced to take a winding course in order to stay ahead of his men.
Determined to do just that again, she glanced back and saw the quartet of Cossacks separating into pairs behind her again. They split up to head her off, following their usual protocol.
She gulped for air and raced on. Pounding down the clean cobblestoned street, she scanned her surroundings frantically for a place to hide, but all she saw were rows of tall, tidy houses and a few spindly young trees here and there.
Nothing.
She fled on, ignoring her body’s soreness from the momentous event of the night before. If Alec with all his gentleness had done this to her, then Mikhail meting it out as a punishment would have surely left her bruised and torn and curled up in a ball for a week. She shoved the horrible image out of her mind.
Her cousin could go to hell as far as she was concerned, the killer.
A shout from behind her alerted Becky that the Cossacks were closing in. By pure will, she surged ahead with a burst of speed. Perdition, these brutes were determined, she thought grimly, fighting back her terror. As the Cossacks gained on her, she darted into the mews behind the row of houses she had just passed.
The alley was narrow, but she discovered a warren of small stables and carriage houses that could provide any number of hiding places. She slipped into the first open stable door that she came to and crouched down in the shadows inside an empty stall.
She heard a stable-hand whistling to himself as he swept the aisle at the other end of the barn, then the ominous footsteps of the Cossacks approaching, their boot heels ringing harshly in the narrow space of the mews.
While she waited out of sight, holding her breath, she could hear them coming closer, hear their guttural exchange.
The sound of rustling straw from the next stall startled her; she turned her head sharply, but then a friendly equine snuffling revealed her only possible means of escape. Dare she . . . ?
Horse-stealing was a hanging crime.
Mikhail’s men accosted the stable-hand down the way, doing their best to find the English words to ask if the man had seen a dark-haired girl run by. I’ve got to get out of here. Now.
“What’s that you’re saying? What, a girl? No, sir, ain’t seen no girl,” he answered jovially. “What are you fellows—Germans, then? Hail to old Blücher, what-hey?”
She crept out of the stall, emboldened to see that the horse had wandered outside into its own small corral. The tall bay was already wearing a leather halter. Becky commandeered the lead rope draped over one of the fence posts to use as reins. Nervously, she climbed over the fence and approached the animal.
Glancing to her left, she saw a pair of Cossacks continuing their search for her down the row of stables. They had gone past her hiding spot and now their backs were to her. All they had to do was turn around, however, and they might have seen her climbing up onto the post and rail fence, using it as a mounting block as she slid onto the horse’s back.
The bay took exception, sidestepping and tossing its head. Becky clung on tenaciously, trying to bring the animal under control without letting the Cossacks hear her. U
nfortunately, she had more pluck than experience. She had never ridden astride before, let alone bareback; she soon realized the bay would throw her before it allowed her to lean down and open the gate.
“Damn you,” she whispered. “Whoa! Halt, boy. There’s a good boy.”
“ ‘Hoy!” the stable-hand suddenly yelled. “Get down from there! What do ye think you’re doin’ with that ’orse?”
She glanced over recklessly and saw the stable-hand in the doorway. He dropped his broom and ran toward her, his shout alerting the Cossacks.
“Jump, you worthless blackguard!” She squeezed the horse’s sides with her knees and gripped its mane, holding on for dear life.
The bay reared. Becky felt herself sliding down toward its haunches, but hung on harder. “Go!” She gave it another angry kick the second its front legs slammed back down to earth. It didn’t like that at all—and then they were off.
The horse took three fast, bouncy steps then went airborne, tucking its forelegs up high as it sailed over the fence. She gasped, her eyes widening as they soared; the earth fell away far below her.
The landing on cobblestone was so hard that it rattled her teeth.
Disaster struck. She dropped the lead line in her automatic lunge to hold on more tightly to the horse’s mane. Now she had no means whatsoever of controlling the animal.
Worse, her mount’s stubborn delay had given the Cossacks the moment they needed to rush ahead in time to block the only exit from the mews, the same way she had come in.
Waving their arms, they spooked the horse. Becky nearly fell as the animal careened to the side, but the stable-hand caught the lead-rope, and the next thing she knew, the Cossacks were pulling her down off the animal’s back.
She fought the one who had her more securely, while the other silenced the stable-hand’s protests with a threatening glower.
“I guess that’s the chit you was lookin’ for!” the groom muttered.
“Help me!” she cried, thrashing as one Cossack wrenched her arm behind her back. “They’re trying to—”
“Help you?” the sturdy old stable-hand retorted. “You bloody little horse thief. Hangin’s too good for the likes o’ you! Whoa, boy!” he yelled as the angry bay tossed its head, jerking the lead-rope out of his hands.
The horse bolted, galloping out of the mews.
“Look what you done now!” the groom shouted at Becky, his face turning red. “You’ll pay for this, my girl! You’ll pay dear!” With that, he ran out of the mews after the animal, leaving Becky caught between the Cossacks, fighting to no avail.
“Let go of me!” she shouted.
Each of them took one of her arms, turning her around roughly to return her to Mikhail, but as all three turned to face the entrance of the mews, Becky’s eyes widened.
The Cossacks paused, too, obviously taken aback to find a bristling, broad-shouldered archangel blocking the only exit with a sword in his hands, the morning sun shining on his golden hair, and blue eyes blazing like the wrath of heaven.
CHAPTER
FIVE
“Alec,” Becky breathed, paling. “What are you doing here?”
“What does it look like, my dear?” he growled, his stare pinned on his captors. “Rescuing you, of course.”
“No!” she wrenched out. “Stand aside. Leave, Alec! They’ll kill you. I don’t want you involved in this! You shouldn’t have followed me.”
His cool, hard gaze flicked to hers; Becky flinched, for he looked at her as though she had betrayed him. Those eloquent blue eyes needed no words to reproach her for keeping secrets and sneaking away without even saying good-bye.
And yet here he stood. Ready to fight for her.
Little did he know it would be suicide.
She struggled against her captors with renewed fury and rising hysteria at the thought of them leaving him dead in this alley the way they had killed that other man in Yorkshire—his beautiful body lifeless, his fiery spirit quenched—all because of her.
The soldier on her left wrenched her arm up hard behind her back. She grimaced and nearly spat on the man in her fury.
Alec swore when they hurt her, moving closer.
“What are you doing?” she cried.
“They shall not take you.”
“It’s too late. Just go! Please, Alec. These are Cossack warriors.” She swallowed hard. “They’ll kill you, and if they don’t, there are a dozen more at my kinsman’s command who will track you down and finish the job. Just—walk away, I beg you.”
His shrug was barely perceptible. “We Knight brothers don’t abandon our friends,” he said, his tone barbed with withering irony. “Your little secret’s out, my love. We need to talk.”
“Get out of here!” she fairly screamed at him, but he was unmoved.
“If you think I would leave you after what happened last night,” he said to her with his stare pinned on the Cossacks, “then you have completely misjudged me.”
She closed her eyes for a second in frustration and searing embarrassment now that her ruse had been found out. This was not supposed to be happening. She could not believe he had followed her! “Please, Alec. This is my fight.”
“Well, it rather looks like you’re losing, cherie. I’m here to even the odds.”
“Oh, God.” Blast his male pride! He’s going to die right in front of me.
When she forced her eyes open again to face the nightmare, Alec had fixed his spear-tipped stare on the larger of the two Cossacks. “Let her go and I’ll spare your life.”
The two big warriors laughed at his warning snarl.
Alec’s chiseled jaw tautened. The angle of his sword changed, its point homing in on the level of the larger Cossack’s heart. “I said,” he repeated, “let her go.”
“Alec—”
“Do shut up, Becky. You and I will discuss this later. For now, I am mainly interested in them. What do you want with her?”
“They don’t speak English.”
“Oh, I think this ugly brute understands my meaning perfectly,” he said, his eyes narrowing at the larger man.
He was right, she saw. The Cossack knew he had been challenged. Glancing darkly at his comrade, he shoved Becky into the other man’s arms, then went toward Alec, drawing his sword.
So, his future bride not only thought him the lowest sort of cur, forsaken of all honor, but she also doubted his ability to take this ugly pair. Well, he’d show her. Damn right. It was time to prove to her, to himself, to his great brothers and all the world what rakehell Alec Knight was really made of.
“Come on, you damned Hun,” he muttered, holding his ground as he watched the Cossack advance. In the warrior’s heavy-lidded eyes he saw the fires of countless battles reflected back at him, centuries of rape and pillage dating all the way back to Attila.
His heart thundered, but he swore to himself he was ready for this. This was no practice, no orderly duel. He must fight now as he had never fought before.
For Becky’s sake.
Whoever the devil she was.
He noted with a swift glance in her direction that she was giving her remaining captor a hell of a time. Good girl. She might be a damned lying vixen, but she did not lack for courage, that one.
The other Cossack struggled to drag her away, but Becky was doing all in her power to slow his progress, fighting him every step. The man’s shins would be covered in bruises. He already had her claw marks on his leathery cheek, but he looked on the whole undeterred in his mission.
Alec knew he would have to make as short work of the first man as he could if he were still to rescue her, and by God, if he survived this, the chit had some explaining to do.
Then the first Cossack chopped at his head with a mighty arc of steel, which Alec parried. The earsplitting clang of blade on blade bounded off the high, narrow walls of the mews; Alec felt the impact of that first blow vibrating the very bones of his wrists, while his sword shuddered with tension.
The Cossack laughed
at him, his words low and garbled as they struggled inches apart: “You’ll die, English.”
“Not alone,” he replied.
They flung apart, then the battle started in earnest.
Never had Alec been put on the defensive so quickly. He swung and thrust again and again, but could not seem to make a decent hit on his opponent. He hung on with dogged determination, but grew angrier each time he had to duck one of the Cossack’s thunderous blows. The fight whirled faster, their blades flying, a hail of blows striking louder, stronger; the whole of his mind was focused intensely on his foe.
They circled, parted, clashed again.
Alec had just begun to identify a few of his opponent’s tendencies that he might exploit when his heel caught an uneven cobblestone behind him. He saw his life flash before his eyes as he fell, but his instincts must have already planned his recovery before he could give it any conscious thought, for the moment he hit the ground, he rolled and thrust in the blink of an eye, and snarled with satisfaction as his blade sank deep into the warrior’s thigh.
The Cossack roared.
Becky gasped, staring.
Alec sprang to his feet and out of arm’s reach as the Cossack clutched one hand to his injured leg. The warrior slowly lifted his gaze from his wound and gave Alec a look that promised Armageddon.
With a cocky little smile, Alec beckoned him on.
“Frankly, Your Grace, it has been the most distressing situation.” Mikhail turned away from the window and shook his head, wearing a mask of brotherly concern for his errant young cousin. “I fear the child has inherited her mother’s instability of temperament, only in the daughter, it’s even worse.”
“How so?”
Pulling himself restlessly away from the window, Mikhail went to the table and accepted a strong cup of tea with a nod of thanks. “I am sure you must have heard about the scandal that ensued years ago when Rebecca’s mother, Lady Mariah Talbot, eloped with Captain Ward against her father’s wishes.”
“Yes,” the duke conceded. “They say your grandfather never forgave her for it, even after Captain Ward had perished at sea.”