Louise Allen - Regency Scoundrels And Scandals

‘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 black 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.