The Dangerous Mr. Ryder

by Louise Allen

  ‘No,’ she whispered, coming close, reaching down and unclasping his hand. ‘No, I forbid it.’ Her heavy plait fell forward, swinging down lie a soft pendulum above his groin, the very tip touching his swollen erection. He was going to disgrace himself, lose all control in a moment. Jack gritted his teeth as Eva loosened the ribbon and slowly, still letting the hair brush him like tiny lashes of fire, unplaited it until it swung, a silken curtain between them.

  He was hanging on to his self-control by his fingertips, Eva realised, watching Jack’s set jaw muscles, the clenched fists, the magnificent, straining evidence of his desire for her. Enough teasing—she hardly thought she could bear any more herself.

  The bed was yielding as she climbed on to it, knelt up and straddled Jack’s body, keeping herself raised above him as she bent her head and let her hair fall in a cloud over his chest. His hands came up to cup her breasts, taking their weight as she hung over him. Her nipples, already sensitive, stiffened into aching nubs as his fingers found them. She put her hands on his shoulders and leaned further, giving herself up to his caresses, using her hair to caress in return.

  Between her thighs she could feel his hips lifting, straining to rise enough to take her. Aching for him, she lowered herself to meet him, gasping as the hard flesh touched her, wriggling to take him into her, sighing with the exquisite sense of fullness as their bodies interlocked, sinking down until she could go no more and he was fully lodged in the core of her.

  She had never done this before, but the feeling of power and control was intoxicating as she began to ride him, rising and falling, slowly drawing upwards, then, as he bucked beneath her, moving rapidly so that his head fell back and he grasped her hips with fingers like iron.

  Her body was aflame, she could feel her control slipping, knew her rhythm was becoming ragged even as Jack took control, reared up and turned her over so he was on top. She knew he was close, knew he was holding on to take her with him and bowed up to meet him, feeling the swirling ecstasy possess her as he freed himself, cried out, hung rigid above her for a moment, then fell down to crush her into his embrace.

  ‘What had you meant to with the champagne?’ Eva murmured later, against Jack’s shoulder. The candles were low, he had drawn the covers up over their entwined bodies and they had dozed lightly, occasionally stirring to murmur against each other’s skin or trail the lazy kisses of lovers who had exhausted themselves, but not their desire to touch.

  ‘Mmm? I wondered what it would taste like if I licked it off your body.’ Jack lifted himself on one elbow to look down at her from under hooded lids. He looked tousled, sleepily replete, yet that fire was still there, banked down perhaps, but enough to warm her deep inside.

  ‘Really?’ Eva pondered this. ‘That sounds nice.’

  ‘That’s what I thought. But it is a pity to waste it when we are both too tired to really concentrate on wine tasting. We’ll take it with us.’

  ‘To Brussels? But can we…I mean, where will we be staying?’

  ‘I am sure that, wherever it is, your bodyguard will find it necessary to spend the night in your dressing room.’

  ‘Armed to the teeth?’ Happiness bubbled up inside her like the champagne they had drunk earlier. This was not to be the last night after all.

  ‘Well, certainly fully armed,’ Jack said with a certain male smugness, settling down again and pulling her into his arms. ‘And ready to give you his undivided and close personal attention.’

  ‘There was a battle at Ligny yesterday, that was what we could hear,’ Jack told her as Eva came out to the stables. The inn had been in hubbub that morning, the staff distracted and the breakfast service haphazard. They had eaten up and stayed quiet, trying to overhear what was going on, but making sense of it was impossible. Jack had left Eva to settle their account while he went out to saddle up, hoping to get a more coherent account from the stable hands.

  ‘Ligny.’ Eva frowned, trying to place it. Jack opened a much folded map from his pocketbook.

  ‘Here,’ he pointed. ‘And at Quatre Bras to the north-west of it.’

  ‘Who won?’ Jack was maintaining his usual neutral expression, but Eva could tell it was not good news.

  ‘Napoleon, by all accounts. Wellington has pulled back towards Brussels. Quatre Bras is a key crossroads,’ he added, folding the map away.

  They mounted up and rode north in sombre mood until they were out of sight of the village. Then Jack halted and stripped the packs off the led horse, dumping out everything except weapons, water and some of the food. ‘Will this fit in your saddle bag?’ He flipped open the flap to push in a small loaf of bread. ‘The champagne? Eva, what’s that doing in there? We are supposed to be travelling light!’

  ‘For tonight,’ she insisted. ‘You promised.’

  ‘For tonight,’ he agreed.

  With the led horse free of its burden they made better speed, riding at a canter, constantly scanning the land ahead as they rode through the fields and along the dusty tracks. They saw nothing, for the local peasants seemed to have kept close at home for fear of what might be out there in the aftermath of the battle, but there was sporadic gunfire from their right.

  Jack kept away from the main roads, crossing the rivers by little pack mule bridges, or splashing across fords. ‘We’re not far south of Nivelles,’ he told her as they pulled up to a walk to rest the horses.

  The edge of a wood curved ahead of them and they hugged it close, grateful for the shade. The sun was scorching now, the sky a queer brazen colour forewarning of thunderstorms to come. They rounded the curve and there, right in front of them, were the first troops they had seen all day.

  A dozen men slumped on the ground or hunkered down around the pile of their packs. Weary horses stood, heads down, barely able to flick their tails to keep the flies away. The men were filthy, bandaged, and their uniforms were torn, disfiguring the familiar light blue cloth and the silver trimmings.

  ‘Jack! They are the Maubourg troops!’ Eva was riding forward even as she spoke, ignoring Jack’s sharp order to come back. There were so few of them, perhaps half of the troop Henry had seen, but they were here, her men, and these, at least, were alive.

  At the sound of the hooves they raised their heads, hands reached for weapons and a man strode out from behind the screen of horses, a pistol in his hand.

  The long muzzle lifted, the tiny black eye unwavering on her breast as she pulled the horse to a slithering standstill. ‘Antoine!’

  Chapter Sixteen

  ‘Fleeing the Duchy with your lover, my dear sister-in-law?’ Antoine enquired. The pistol did not move. Behind her she could hear Jack’s horse, stamping in impatience as he reined it in. The rest of the men got to their feet, staring.

  ‘I am the Grand Duchess Eva de Maubourg,’ she said, ignoring Antoine and raising her voice to reach the troopers. ‘Prince Antoine has no right to lead you to war, no right to break our neutrality.’

  ‘This woman is a whore, a traitor who has fled with her lover,’ Antoine countered, drawing their attention back to him. ‘Seize their horses, bring them here to me.’

  Some of the men started forward. ‘No! Remember who I am! I am the mother of your Grand Duke and I am on my way to him now.’ But their faces showed nothing but exhaustion and dull shock. Would they even recognise this woman in man’s clothing from the images that they would have seen of her, or the glimpses caught from a distance at parades?

  What was Jack doing? Nothing, probably; seeing the aim that Antoine was taking, there was little he could do without risking her being shot. Then she heard him, his voice pitched just for her ears, in English. ‘Faint. Now, to the left.’

  With a little gasp she slumped sideways, keeping a grip of the pommel just sufficient to break her fall. As she hit the ground, her horse between her body and the men, she saw the led horse gallop riderless through the gap, sending the troopers scattering. There was a sharp report—the pistol—she thought hazily, and then Jack was there, the big bl
ack gelding a wall between Antoine and herself.

  Had he a pistol? Eva ducked down, peering under the belly of the two horses. Antoine was scrabbling in a holster for a loaded weapon, his horse backing away, frightened by the firing; three hefty troopers were hurling themselves towards Jack.

  Eva swung back on to her horse, groping in the saddlebags in the hope that Jack had stashed a weapon there, but all her frantic hand met was the neck of the champagne bottle. She dragged it out, hefted it in her hand and kicked the animal into an explosive canter. They rounded the knot of troopers Jack was holding at bay with a long knife and bore down on Antoine. His second pistol was in his hand now, aimed at Jack. Eva dragged on the reins and swung the bottle. As her horse crashed into the prince’s, the champagne cracked over his head and he slumped, unconscious, beneath her hooves.

  ‘Jack!’ She pulled up the bay on his haunches as the big black horse erupted towards her through the group of troopers.

  ‘Ride!’ His hand came down on the bay’s rump and both animals flew along the track at a gallop. ‘Keep down!’ Eva flattened herself over the withers, expecting the crack of musket fire behind at any moment, but nothing came. Jack kept up the pace, zigzagging through the trees until they reached the far edge of the wood. Even there, he only slowed to a canter, twisting in the saddle to check behind them for pursuit.

  ‘Jack,’ Eva called across to him. ‘I must go back—those are my troops, my men, I cannot leave them.’

  ‘You can and you will.’ The face he turned towards her was implacable. ‘Philippe may be dead. If that is so, who will rule Maubourg for Fréderic? You. I cannot risk Antoine being in a fit state to rally them, and I cannot risk your life for the sake of a handful of men who made the wrong choice.’

  ‘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.’

  ‘Oh, good. Breakfast.’ She rubbed her eyes, then, suddenly completely awake, stared at him. ‘What?’

  ‘Stay here.’ He got to his feet, checking the knife was still in his boot top and picking up the pistol that had lain by the makeshift pillow all night.

  Outside the day was sodden and chill. The ground was soaked, the heavy clay turned to mud by the torrential downpours of the night before. Jack scanned the field in front of him, but it was empty, the wisps of misty steam already rising as the faint early sun, struggling through the grey clouds, struck the moisture.

  He slid round the corner of the barn and made his way up the slope. Beyond the hedge that formed the northern boundary the land rose for perhaps fifty yards, then dropped away. What lay beyond was invisible, but smoke rose in a myriad of thin trickles. Camp fires. The breeze shifted, bringing with it the smell of cooking again and, faintly, the sound of many voices and of barked orders. Troops.

  ‘What is it? The French?’ Eva, was at his elbow.

  ‘I don’t know, I can’t see. And I told you to stay put.’

  ‘I needed to find a bush, so I had to come out,’ she said with dignity. ‘Are we going to find out who it is, then?’

  Ordering her to remain behind was probably futile. How he had ever imagined he could compel any obedience from this woman he had no idea. ‘Watch my back from here.’ Jack put the pistol into her hand. ‘Don’t use that unless it is absolutely necessary or we will have two armies down on our heads.’

  ‘I can do that better if I follow you,’ she said stubbornly, taking the pistol.

  ‘You will be safer here. Will you do as I tell you? Please!’ He felt his voice rising and lowered it hurriedly.

  ‘I know it is your job to keep me in cotton wool, but, Jack, don’t you see—’