‘Hey! What have we here?’ The voice was loud, cultivated and arrogant. ‘Can we all join in, friend?’
Jack raised his head, catching a glimpse of furious, rebellious brown eyes in the second before he pressed Eva’s face into his shoulder, muffling her snarl of fury in the cloth. ‘Sorry, but this lady’s all mine.’ There were half a dozen of them, officers in the pale blue-and-silver Maubourg uniform that he had learned to recognise as he had scouted the castle and its defences. They had been drinking, but only enough, it seemed, to make them boisterous and over-friendly.
He kept his accent pure Northern French, gambling on them finding that more intimidating than provocative—which was more than could be said for the Grand Duchess’s efforts to free herself from his grip. He had his hands full of scented hair and sweet curves and she was pressed intimately against him. He tightened his hold, which had the unfortunate result of pressing her harder against the part of his anatomy that was entering into the deception with enthusiasm, and growled, ‘Patience, sweetheart, wait until these gentlemen have gone at least.’ Her reaction was to attempt to plant a knee in his groin. ‘Friends, give us some privacy, the lady’s husband will be looking for her—have some fellow feeling.’
That provoked the predictable lewd reaction, guffaws of laughter and cries of encouragement. They turned away, beginning to descend again to the river, when one, the most senior by the glimpses Jack had of his epaulettes, stopped.
‘Why, the lady has dropped her cloak. Allow me.’ He stooped, gathered it up and stepped close to lay it over Eva’s shoulders, holding up the torch, all the better to see exactly what he was doing, and, Jack guessed grimly, to catch a glimpse of the lady in the case.
Colonel de Presteigne! At the sound of his voice Eva stopped her efforts to free herself from Jack’s outrageous embrace and clung to him instead, pressing her face into the angle of his neck. This was not a group of young subalterns who could be relied upon not to recognise their Grand Duchess in a plainly clad figure glimpsed in a dark alleyway. This was a senior officer who knew her all too well.
Against her lips she could feel the pulse in Jack’s neck, strong and steady, and tried to stay as calm. ‘Here, allow me, ma chère.’ The weight of her cloak settled heavy on her shoulders and the colonel’s fingers trailed, lingering, across the nape of her neck. He had done exactly the same thing two nights before as he had restored her gauze shawl at a reception, counting on her not knowing whether it was deliberate or accidental. Now she could recognise that it was quite deliberate, no doubt a favourite ploy of his he could not resist trying on any female, whether noble or bourgeoise.
‘Merci.’ Jack’s hand came up, ostensibly to smooth the cloak around her shoulders, in effect bringing the edge of his palm sharply against the colonel’s groping fingers. ‘Bon nuit,’ he added pleasantly. Under the words the threat of violence hung like a lifted rapier.
Eva could feel the atmosphere crackle between the two men and knew instinctively that Jack had let his gallantry override his common sense. It was foolhardy, yet she felt a frisson of pleasure run through her that he had reacted that way. To be protected as a woman and not as a grand duchess was so novel she felt quite flustered. Or was that simply the effect of his outrageous kisses?
She felt Jack’s arm tighten and could tell from the way the muscles flexed that he was preparing to push her out of harm’s way if the other man reacted. There was a second where everyone seemed to have stopped breathing, then de Presteigne laughed. ‘Bon nuit. Bon chance, mon ami.’ The officers clattered off down the hill, leaving them in darkness and silence. Eva felt herself slump against Jack in relief as she felt both her poise and her balance desert her. She dragged down a deep breath and tried to stiffen her shaking knees, even as her arms clung to him.
Before she could free herself, Jack lifted both hands, cupped her face and kissed her again with a fierceness that spoke of relief, tension released and, quite simply, sexual demand. His mouth was hot, hard and experienced and Eva surrendered to it, swaying into his embrace again with a sensation of letting go. Physical pleasure, direct and straightforward, was such a liberation that she felt her mind go blank and let herself slide into the moment, ignoring the squalid little alley, the greasy cobbles underfoot, the danger of pursuit.
Her mouth opened to the thrust of his tongue, its message echoed by the hardness of the male body she was clinging to. Behind her closed lids stars spun against blackness. Need flooded her body like the kick of a glass of spirits at the male taste of him, the scent of his skin.
‘Hell.’ He lifted his head, still holding her tight against him, and reality and reaction hit her simultaneously.
Hell? They were very nearly making love on the cobbles and all he could say was Hell? She must have been mad—what would have followed if that moment of insanity had happened in her bedchamber? How dare he presume to touch her? How could she have allowed it?
‘You…’ she began furiously.
‘I forgot myself, indeed.’ The rueful admission was tinged with a satirical note, reminding her of her own part in what had just occurred. In the darkness she could not read his face; it was perhaps as well he could not see hers. ‘Relief and tension do strange things to us. Shall we go on?’
It was, certainly, the most dignified course to say nothing at all about the incident. Discussing it would lead nowhere but into more embarrassment—as it was, thinking about it made her skin hot all over. ‘Certainly, Mr Ryder,’ she said haughtily. ‘Have you the valise?’ Eva clutched the broken cloak clasp at her throat, feeling her pulse race against her knuckles.
‘Here.’ He stooped, a dark shape in the shadows, then took her arm. Knowing another fall risked injury, she made herself accept his touch, and tried to focus on something other than the newly re-awakened demands of her body.
‘Who is looking after the coach?’ She had not thought to ask, but this was the real world outside the castle, the world where coaches did not appear with drivers, grooms and outriders ten minutes after one had the whim to drive out. In this world people stole horses if you left them unattended. It was a world she had been insulated from for almost ten years, one she was going to have to learn to understand and survive in very rapidly.
‘My groom, Henry.’ Jack’s pace increased as the hill levelled out and they reached the quayside. Light spilled out from taverns and bawdy houses all along its length; the destination, no doubt, of the colonel and his companions.
‘What if someone speaks to him?’ Eva pulled up her hood and watched her feet as they stepped over mooring ropes stretched taut across the quay.
‘He spent two years in a French prison, so his grasp of the language is adequate, if colourful.’ Jack sounded amused and alert, not at all like a man who had been indulging in a torrid kiss with a virtual stranger not minutes before. She only wished she had his sangfroid. Perhaps he had not found her very exciting. Now, that was a dampening thought. ‘Here we are.’
The carriage was drawn up opposite the entrance to what Eva was quite certain was a brothel, as though waiting for its owner to return from his pleasures. A group of men were standing outside, talking over-loudly, and a bruiser with fists like hams stood watching them in the doorway. From the brightly lit windows came the sound of music and laughter.
The driver must have been on the lookout, for Eva saw a figure in a greatcoat sit up straight from its huddled position on the high box seat. ‘There you are. Quel surprise.’ He bent down as they came alongside and addressed Jack in accented French and with a familiarity that amazed her. ‘Thought I’d be picking your broken bones off the rocks come morning. Quite resigned to it I was. This