Irresistible (22 page)

"If you will get the letter, Miss Towbridge, and bring it to me, I would be most appreciative."

Claire nodded, and stepped toward Hugh. A more accomplished actress would doubtless have made a production of searching all his pockets, as if she didn't know where the letter might be. But she was too frightened— so frightened that her hand was trembling as it delved into the pocket where she knew very well the faux letter was. Her breathing was shallow and fast, and her heart raced. A quick sideways glance as her fingers closed on the letter told her that the soldiers on their big, glossy horses had now drawn even with the stuck wagon.

They were almost out of time. Her throat was so dry she had to swallow before she could speak.

"I have it," she said loud enough for the captain and his men to hear. Her gaze, wide and frightened, met Hugh's even as she pulled the letter from his pocket and held it up. If he was going to shoot someone, anyone, now was the moment.

"Drop it," he hissed as she was about to turn back toward the captain and his men. She must have looked incomprehendingly at him, because he said it again, in a low growl that this time she could not mistake. "Drop the bloody letter."

"Miss Towbridge, is there a difficulty?" The captain, voice raised, sounded suspicious. Had her glance, or Hugh's command given them away? He couldn't have heard the words, Claire was willing to swear. He was too far away, and there was too much noise around them.

"None at all." Holding the letter high so that he might see it, Claire turned almost gaily to face him. "As you may see for yourself."

Then, mindful of Hugh's instructions and also of the French soldiers bearing down on them, looking tall and menacing astride their huge horses and now no more than perhaps three yards away, she opened her fingers and let the wind take the letter. "Oh! Oh, dear!"

The white rectangle fluttered, swirled in a circle, then floated to the ground. The eyes of the captain and his four men followed it down until it hit the mud and lay there, absorbing water like a sponge and threatened by a curious pig.

Claire was still staring at the letter herself when, from the corner of her eye, she saw Hugh's arm jerk up. The pistol fired, so close at hand that it was like a thunderclap next to her head. Ears ringing, she screamed; no sooner had the sound emerged from her throat than it was cut off by a tremendous weight hitting her in the back, knocking her face-first into the sand and crushing her down. As she fell she got just a glimpse of the captain's head snapping up. Then there was a tremendous boom, followed by an explosion and a rush of hot air as a fireball shot over her head, which she instinctively buried in her arms.

Screams rent the air, along with shouts and curses and the shrieks of terrified animals. Fire was everywhere, blazing brightly toward the dark sky, burning so fierce and hot that Claire felt as if her face was being singed when she dared to glance up. It was the wagon— the stuck wagon that had somehow caught fire and exploded. The captain and his men were down. One soldier was on his feet, thrown from his horse but having managed to hang on to the beast's reins, though it reared and fought as it tried to get away. She couldn't see the others, though perhaps a dozen sprawled bodies lay on the ground within her view; others were rushing to their aid. All this Claire registered as the most fleeting of impressions. Then the weight on her back lifted and she was dragged to her feet.

"Run!"

A hand locked around her wrist before the command had quite filtered past the ringing in her ears. Without any more warning than that, she was yanked into motion. Hugh was running, dragging her after him, and as his identity registered suddenly she realized that they were escaping and she began to run, too, her feet in their flimsy slippers scrabbling for purchase in the muddy sand.

"Sacre bleu!"

"My wagon! My so beautiful wagon!"

"Bloody English…"

"Aidez-moi! Aidez-moi!"

More explosions, fast and powerful, rocked the night. Fire, orange and yellow and red, lit up the sky as brightly as a giant's bonfire. The heat and smoke were tremendous. All was chaos, confusion; everywhere people screamed, and ran. Toward the explosion, and away.

"This way!"

Hugh pulled her behind a sand dune, into the blackness of the night beyond the reach of the worst of the fire's intensity. Claire caught just a glimpse of two more of the French soldiers, on their feet now, trying to catch their fleeing mounts, before the dunes obscured her view. Then Hugh was pounding through the tall grass toward the dark village, pulling her behind him, and she was running too, as fast as her feet would carry her. Running, she realized, for her life.

Chapter 18

"What did you do back there?" Claire gasped out the question as Hugh lifted her bodily over a low stone wall that ran along the road in front of the village.

"The barrels in the wagon were loaded with gunpowder. I shot one of them." Placing one hand on the top, he vaulted the wall with remarkable ease.

"And they all exploded?" Claire remembered how he had knocked her to the ground a split second before the wagon blew up. "Did you know that was going to happen?"

"I hoped." He was breathless too, she noted as he grabbed her hand and pulled her after him again as he dodged behind one of the darkened houses.

"The horses— they should be in— that barn near the woods."

Claire had not realized that James was running with them until she heard his gasping voice behind her. Glancing around, she saw the heavyset man panting and lurching in their wake as he pointed toward a tumbledown barn. It was located on the far edge of the village, set back a little way from the farmhouse to which it apparently belonged and just in front of a dense copse of tall pines that swayed in the wind.

Although Claire had no idea what he was talking about, Hugh apparently did. He ran through the field in front of the barn, pulling Claire willy-nilly after him. She had a stitch in her side, pebbles in her slippers, and sand in her mouth from being facedown on the beach, but still she ran headlong over the rough ground because there was no help for it: Hugh's hand was like a vise around her wrist, and he wasn't letting go.

There was no doubt that they were being pursued. The only question was: how closely?

The barn was dark and smelled of hay and manure. Cows milled in a group at the far end of the structure, lowing as the three humans burst in to disturb their rest, their liquid eyes shining faintly at the intruders. Hugh let go of her wrist as soon as they were inside, and Claire practically doubled over in relief. Hands on her knees, she gasped for air, unable to inhale deeply because of the pain in her side. Vainly she wished her corset to perdition; the thing still continued to bind her just when she most needed her lungs to be able to expand.

"Are they here?"

James, still panting audibly, asked the question as he passed her, then followed Hugh into the depths of the barn.

"They're here. Minton's a good man. He's never let me down yet."

Still bent over just inside the door, doing her best to catch her breath and at the same time spit out sand from the beach, Claire missed the rest of the conversation. The men's voices mingled with the soft whicker of a horse, the stomping of hooves, and a leathery creaking.

After a moment, she heard them moving. Clearly they were heading in her direction. She took a deep breath and finally succeeded in filling her lungs.

"All right, then, just leave her."

At that, which she heard quite distinctly, Claire looked up. The speaker was James, his tone was urgent, and she had no doubt at all that he was referring to her. Two shapes were coming toward her, black and solid against the charcoal stripes painted by moonlight filtering through the poorly chinked walls. As the shapes drew near they resolved themselves into men and horses. Hugh and James were each astride saddled, bridled mounts.

The snippets of conversation they had previously exchanged flashed through her mind, and she concluded that someone named Minton, anticipating their arrival on the
Nadine
, had concealed a pair of tacked-up horses for Hugh's and James's use in quickly leaving the vicinity.

Realizing that there were only two horses, she had a brief flash of fear that Hugh would agree with James, and they would leave her. What would she do if they did? Her blood ran cold at the thought.

"She's coming with us." Hugh's voice was rough with impatience. Claire gave an inner sigh of relief. Of course he wouldn't leave her. She should have known he wouldn't leave her. This was a man she could trust with her life. This was a man she did trust with her life.

"Master Hugh, I'm begging you, think: We only have two horses."

"She'll ride with me."

"We're riding for our lives!"

"Damn it to hell, James, I'm not leaving her, and that's the end of the bloody discussion."

They reached her side at that moment. Claire straightened and took one more deep breath as the animals drew abreast of her. She felt the warmth of their bodies, smelled the leather of their tack mixed with the undefinable scent of horses. One snorted, shaking its head, its bridle jangling.

"Give me your hand," Hugh said. Looking up, she saw that he was reaching down to her. Like his face, his hand was a pale blur in the darkness. The rest of him was in shadow, a tall, formidable-looking shape looming high above her, mounted as he was on horseback. He kicked his foot out of the stirrup as she put her hand in his.

"Put your foot in the stirrup and swing on behind me."

She obeyed, and then he was pulling her up behind him as easily as if she weighed no more than a bit of swansdown. There was no choice but to ride astride, Claire realized instantly, although it was not a thing she had ever done. Hitching up her skirts, she gamely swung a leg over and scooted herself into position on the horse's powerful rump, her bare knees gripping the animal's warm, prickly hide for balance. Leaning forward, her breasts pressing against his hard back, she wrapped her arms around Hugh's waist.

"Hang on," he said over his shoulder. Even as she nodded, he clapped his heels to the horse's side and it leaped forward. Then they were out of the barn and away, galloping through the muddy field with its stubby remnant of a crop long since harvested. Silent as bats they flew, swift, dark figures with Claire's cloak flapping like a single great wing behind, just two more indistinct shapes among the other shadows populating the night. Looking south, Claire saw an orange glow lighting the sky: The wagon still burned. The acrid scent of smoke had drifted far enough that she could smell it distinctly. There was another smell, too, mixed with the smoke, and after a moment she identified it as gunpowder. Smuggled from England for use by Napoleon's army? It seemed so, and the perfidiousness of such an act both shocked and angered her. To think, safe at home, she had never realized that there were traitors all around her, traitors everywhere.

Suddenly she stiffened, and her hands clenched on the heavy wool of Hugh's coat. Against the blazing backdrop she could just make out the low-slung houses of the village they were rapidly leaving behind. Coming over the rise from the beach, she saw riders. Riders in tall hats…

The soldiers had regrouped and were coming in search of them. She had no doubt at all about their object. Could they see the galloping horses fleeing through the dark? She was able to see the soldiers only because they had been briefly outlined against the horizon by the fire, she realized. Please God, let her, Hugh, and James be securely hidden under the blanket of the night. If the soldiers should see them, she feared, they would not stand a chance. As far as she knew, neither Hugh nor James had any kind of workable weapon with them.

All they could do was flee for their lives.

"The soldiers! They're coming!"

The wind tore the words from her mouth, but Hugh must have heard because he glanced briefly over his shoulder, then nodded. He put his heels to the horse's sides again. Mud flew from the animal's hooves, which Claire could feel sliding as it pounded over the muddy ground. Without warning a stone wall appeared in front of them, a long, low, winding ghost in the darkness. Claire barely had time to tense before the horse was up and over. Holding on for dear life, she closed her eyes as they landed awkwardly in the muddy field on the other side, but though it slid a little the horse managed to keep on its feet, and she, knees clenched against its sides, managed to keep her seat. Glancing behind her, she saw James clear the wall, not gracefully but his horse stayed up and he stayed on it, which was all that mattered. Then they careened into the wood, and she hid her face against Hugh's back as branches slashed, nearly tearing them from the saddle.

They rode for a long time, at first at a dead gallop and then, with the pursuit, as they hoped, now well behind them, at a slightly slower pace. Always they stayed away from the roads, traveling cross-country because the roads, as Hugh warned in a quick exchange with James, were the first places the soldiers would look.

"What about the
Nadine
's crew? Won't they be looking for us too?" If there was a slightly hysterical edge to Claire's voice, she forgave herself for it. It had been just a little more than twenty-four hours since she had been kidnapped from her carriage— in a crime that had seen her coachman, and possibly her other servants, murdered— had overheard plans for her own murder, hit a vicious brute over the head with a chamber pot, crept out a window, run across a boggy moor for her life, climbed down a cliff so slippery and treacherous that she had feared falling to her death with each step, been hit over the head and kidnapped yet again, nearly drowned, been terrorized and humiliated by a ship's crew and then by the very man with whom she now fled, been accused of being both a tart and a traitor to her country, held a pistol on her captor only to discover that it was unloaded, been kissed within an inch of her life and discovered that she quite liked kissing and her captor as well, gotten so horribly seasick that for a time she'd wished herself dead, come within a breath of being handed over to enemy soldiers, nearly died in an explosion— and now she was fleeing across the French countryside along with her erstwhile captor and his disapproving henchman while the French army swarmed after them like bees after a honey-stealing bear.