Louise Allen - Those Scandalous Ravenhursts

‘Oh, bother!’ Eva jumped to her feet to retrieve it just as the door opened and a group of men walked in. She straightened up, the flowers in her hand and found herself staring, across the width of the bistrôt, straight into the eyes of a tall blond man with sharp blue eyes and a sensual mouth set over a strong chin.

Good-looking, arrogant, unmistakable. It was Colonel de Presteigne.

The colonel had seen her, recognised her. There was no way to avoid him. The way the hunter’s smile of sheer triumph slid across his face sickened her. Eva clenched her hand around the slender vase, as she counted the men standing at his back. Three of them, all ordinary soldiers out of uniform by the look of them—there were no impressionable young officers to appeal to here.

Behind her she felt Jack slide out from behind the table, then stand, almost as if to hide behind her. But Jack was not a man to hide behind a woman—he had a plan, she knew it. He moved smoothly, so she was not surprised that the men kept their attention on her. His hand closed round her left wrist. ‘When I tug, throw that vase and run with me.’ The words were a breath in her ear and she nodded fractionally in response as he released her.

‘Bonsoir, madame.’ De Presteigne, feigning deference. ‘Dining in style with your gallant lover, I see.’ His lip curled in a sneer at the sight of Jack apparently hiding behind the shelter of her skirts. How had she ever thought the colonel charming?

Eva sensed Jack shifting his balance, her whole body attuned to him as though they touched. Out of the corner of her eye she watched the waitress come out of the kitchen door with a steaming tureen and walk across to a table. Their escape route was clear. She shifted her balance slightly.

‘Better a humble bistrôt than a formal dining room in the company of traitors,’ she retorted, seeing the smile congeal into dark anger on his face.

‘You call supporters of the Emperor traitors?’ he demanded, raising his voice. People shifted in their chairs to stare, the amiable faces of the diners changing to suspicion. Lyon, she remembered, supported Bonaparte.

‘You betray your Grand Duke,’ she flashed back as the colonel took a stride towards her. She felt Jack’s hard tug on her wrist and she threw the vase full in de Presteigne’s face. Water and flowers went everywhere as the man roared in shock and clawed at his eyes.

Eva saw no more, she was running with Jack, through the door, into the kitchens towards the back door. Kitchen staff scattered. They passed a rack of knives, she snatched one, a small vegetable peeler, then they were outside in a cobbled alley, rank with the smells of food waste. A cat bolted away, hissing with fright as Jack made for the mouth of the alley. Behind them the door crashed back. Eva risked a glance over her shoulder.

‘Two of them, not de Presteigne,’ she gasped.

‘Here’s the rest.’ Jack skidded out on to the street just ahead of the colonel and the other soldier, turned, reached inside his coat and threw something. With a grunt the man toppled and fell and de Presteigne went down with him, tripped beyond hope of balance.

‘Run!’ Jack pushed her. ‘The waterfront’s that way.’ They took to their heels, splashing through foul puddles, leaping piles of garbage, dodging the few passers-by. The pounding feet behind them were relentless. Eva heard de Presteigne’s voice cursing the men for not catching them as they erupted into a little square.

Jack made for the far exit, then recoiled. ‘Dead end.’ It was enough to bring their pursuers up with them. Jack pulled a pistol from his pocket and held it steady, his back almost to the wall, his left arm outstretched, urging Eva behind him.

It was as she had known instinctively: he would stand and protect her at the risk of his own life—and the odds were too great. She edged behind him, then further, out into the open, towards the alley to her right. Keeping the little knife concealed in her skirts, she waved the reticule that was somehow, against all probability, still swinging from her wrist. ‘Is this what you want, Colonel? The plans? The notebooks? Don’t you wonder what we took, what we know? Who we told?’

‘Eva!’ Jack lunged for her, but she had done what she had meant to do, split their attackers. De Presteigne shouted, ‘Ducrois, with me! Foix, break his neck’, and dived towards her. She spun round and ran, light-footed, impelled by the desperate urge to leave Jack with manageable odds. There was the bark of a pistol—his or Foix’s? Then she was out on to the quayside. Which river? It hardly mattered, either would have boats, surely?

The edge of the quay was slippery beneath her feet. Wary of mooring ropes, she began to edge along it, half her attention on the swirling water, half on the colonel and the soldier who had come to a halt when they saw her and were now, with the caution of hunting cats with a bird in their sights, padding forward.

‘Stand still, you silly bitch,’ de Presteigne said irritably. ‘Where the hell do you think you are going to?’

‘You are the one going to hell,’ Eva retorted. ‘That is the place for traitors and turncoats.’ She risked another glance down. It seemed a long way to the river’s dark surface and there were no rowing boats in sight yet. Where is Jack? There was a shout echoing from the little square, the soldier half-turned and stopped at his officer’s curse.

‘Never mind them. Get her.’

Eva held her knife that had been concealed by the reticule in front of her. ‘Try,’ she invited.

The man rushed at her, grinning at her defiance. She slashed at him, he ducked away, slid on the slippery surface and pitched into the river with a yell of fear and a loud splash. ‘Colonel?’ she invited politely. The light from the lanterns hung along the fronts of the warehouses glittered off the little knife.

The tall man reached into his coat and produced a pistol. ‘No. You come here, or I’ll shoot you. And then, if your lover isn’t dead yet, I’ll shoot him.’

Slowly, trying to control the trembling in her arm, Eva held the reticule out over the river by her fingertips. It hung with convincing heaviness, thanks to the novel that she had tucked inside it that morning. ‘Then you’ll never get these.’

He shrugged. ‘So? They’ll be at the bottom of the river.’ He stepped forward. ‘Come on, don’t be such a little fool. Back to Prince Antoine.’ Eva’s head spun as she tried to decide what to do. Drop the reticule, then he won’t look anywhere else…Jack…

As she thought it he came out of the alleyway. Even at that distance she could see his bared teeth, the killing fury in every line of his body as he came, his pistol hand rising to level on the colonel. De Presteigne snatched at her as her attention wavered, caught her by the arm and held her, his own pistol swinging round towards her breast. ‘Stop right there or I’ll kill—Aagh!’

Eva fastened her teeth on his hand and he released her, scrabbling for balance. For a moment she was free, poised on the edge of the quay, then the momentum of her movement took her and she felt herself falling towards the river. There was the crack of a pistol, a shout immediately above her, then she hit the water and stopped thinking of anything but survival.

Despite the warmth of the summer night the cold almost knocked the breath out of her. Some corner of her brain registered that the river was fed by snowmelt as she kicked off her shoes and clawed at her bonnet strings and the fastenings of her pelisse.

I can swim, I can swim well, she told herself, fighting to calm the panicking part of her that was wanting to thrash and scream. It was a long time, but as a child she had swum naked in the river that ran through the grounds of their château. As a young woman she had swum in the private lake in the castle grounds. I haven’t forgotten, thank God…