Louise Allen - Regency Scoundrels And Scandals

Eva sat watching the carriage roll away down the dusty road towards Beaune. ‘He knows about us, doesn’t he? Did you tell him?’ Jack was checking the pack horse’s girth and she was amused to see the flush on his cheekbones at her question.

‘Of course not. It is not something I would ever speak of—to anyone. But he has known me a long time, the insolent old devil. He says I look happy and that you are glowing.’

‘Oh.’ Eva was so taken by this unexpectedly romantic side to Henry that she had to urge her mount to a trot to catch up with Jack. ‘I think that’s lovely. But I expect you bit his head off.’

‘I did. You don’t need to worry that he would ever gossip.’ Eva shook her head—no, she wouldn’t imagine Henry ever doing anything that was against his master’s interests. ‘I’m not at all sure I like being so transparent, even if it is him.’

‘You have a good gambler’s face, I would guess.’ Any excuse to gaze at Jack as they rode along was welcome—she had the urge just to sit and stare at him all day.

‘I have. At least, I had thought I could bluff anyone. It seems I am wrong. You are a bad influence on me, Eva.’

‘I am?’ Eva’s amusement fizzled out, leaving a hollow feeling inside. Jack had enviable focus and concentration—was she undermining that, distracting him? Even weakening him? Was that what Henry was anxious about? She had put his disapproval down to moral objections to a liaison, now she wondered.

Mortified, she rode in silence, picking up pace when Jack spurred on, wrapped in examining her conscience. Jack was a professional. He might have been attracted to her, but he had been keeping that attraction well in check. She had stormed straight through that armour.

He could always have said ‘no’, she told herself defensively. Or perhaps she was not doing any damage and was being over-sensitive. Just because I have fallen in love, it doesn’t mean that he…

Eva swallowed hard. Just because I have fallen in love. Oh, my God, I have done just that. She thought she simply wanted comfort—physical comfort and the emotional relief of being close to someone who seemed to care about her. But she loved him. And it was impossible. She was a Grand Duchess, he was a King’s Messenger at his most respectable, an adventurer at worst, even if he was the younger son of a good family, which she guessed he must be.

I can’t ever tell him. She stared at Jack’s broad shoulders, relaxed almost into a slouch as he rode at an easy hand canter. He even managed to be elegant when he was slouching. But it was not his physical beauty that made her feel like this, even if that had been a powerful attraction to begin with. She loved the man under that hard, cool, competent exterior. And she must not let him guess.

She had said that this could only be while they were out of England and he had agreed. Now she knew she must persuade him otherwise, without betraying her innermost feelings for him. She could not lose him so soon, it was too cruel.

‘Eva?’ He reined in and circled back to come alongside her. Eva realised with a start that she had come to a halt and was sitting gazing blankly into space. Hurting. ‘Are you all right?’

‘Yes. Yes, of course, I am sorry I was just thinking…about England.’

Jack reached over and touched her cheek fleetingly. ‘You miss Freddie, I know. I’ll try and get you back as soon as is safe. Come on, let’s get past Beaune before we stop again.’

Guilt washed through Eva as she followed the black gelding along the vineyard terrace path. Freddie. His reaction to this had never crossed her mind. He must never know his mother had taken a lover, and she could not hope to keep it a secret in England under the close scrutiny of court and society. If Henry could see it, then others could, too. She had told Jack she would have no regrets if they were to become lovers, and she must never let him guess how she felt, how she had broken her implied word not to become involved.

Some people are never able to consummate their love, she told herself fiercely. I have been fortunate, I have him for this little span of time. It must be enough. It must.

Four days later they were across the border, the River Sambre just behind them after the bridge at Thuin. The days had been hot, the nights dry and they had not had to take refuge in an inn yet. Somehow Eva managed to push her knowledge of her love for Jack away to the back of her mind, not to think about it, only to feel—and in that way hide her feeling from him.

Or she tried. ‘What is it, sweet?’ he would ask, capturing her face between his big hands and staring deep into her eyes. ‘Tell me what is hurting you.’

‘Nothing,’ she said every time. ‘Just worries.’ And she would stand on tiptoe and kiss him until he forgot whatever betraying expression had crossed her face. Until the next time.

By the fourteenth they had begun to hear cannon fire. At first it was so distant and irregular that she thought it was thunder out of a clear blue sky, but Jack shook his head. ‘There’s fighting up ahead, border skirmishes as they all sort themselves out, I expect. Now we begin to take great care.’

Dodging small groups of French troops became routine. Jack seemed to know the uniforms, jotting notes whenever they sighted them. Sometimes they were seen themselves, but Jack would let the horses walk, wandering along, doing nothing to raise suspicions that they were anything but innocent local riders. No one challenged them.

Making love by starlight in owl-haunted woods, or in meadows so soft and sweet you could almost taste the goodness of them, became completely natural. They had never made love inside, on a bed, and somehow that did not seem a loss to her, so it was a surprise when Jack sat studying the sky in the late afternoon.

‘It is going to rain,’ he said, taking the notebook out of his pocket and studying one of his meticulous maps.

‘Is it?’ Eva looked round, puzzled. ‘I am no weather expert, but it looks just the same as yesterday afternoon to me.’

‘No. It will rain.’ Jack gathered up the reins and turned his horse’s head down the fork in the track through the woods. Ahead, across fields, a church spire punctuated the low hills. ‘Or there will be a heavy dew in the morning. Or a thunderstorm.’

‘Or a plague of locusts?’ Eva enquired, beginning to see where this was going. ‘You are looking for an excuse to find an inn. Why not say so? Do you think I am going to accuse you of becoming soft because you want to bathe in a tub instead of a cold stream?’

‘I think you might be alarmed if you guess the things I would like to do when I get you alone in the Poisson d’Or’s best bedchamber with its big goose-feather bed.’ Jack grinned, managing to look nearer twenty than thirty.

‘Indeed?’ Eva attempted a severe expression. She appeared to have forgotten how. ‘What a very depraved imagination you have, Mr Ryder.’

‘I am shocked you can know of such things,’ he teased back. ‘Tell me, what would you like to do in that big feather bed?’

‘Ooh…’ Eva pouted provocatively. ‘I would like to take all my clothes off—very, very slowly. Then I’d brush out my hair, bathe in a deep hot tub with scented soap, climb out, dripping wet…’ Jack’s eyes were glazing in a very satisfactory manner. ‘Dry myself, then climb into bed. And—go to sleep.’

Laughing at his expression, she urged her horse on, cantering down the track. It curved, perhaps fifty feet above the main road that cut across the country between them and the village. Some instinct made her glance to her left. Dust was rising above the scrub and spindly trees that covered the slope. Eva reined in, holding up her hand to halt Jack, who was rapidly catching her up. They moved into the shelter of a coppice and waited.