Runaway Lady. Claire Thornton

      ‘He was a man of resolution and determination,’ said Harry.

      ‘Yes, he was.’ She lifted her chin.

      ‘And ingenuity.’

      ‘Yes.’ Her relationship with Pieter had been severely damaged by the impact of his accident, but there had been many times since she’d fled from Cornwall she wished she could call on some of his practical ingenuity. She still had no idea how she was going to rescue Benjamin.

      ‘Why couldn’t he walk?’

      ‘He was hurt when a rope broke and a wooden chest fell on him,’ she said. ‘It was being hauled up to the second floor.’ She stopped speaking as vivid, still shocking memories crowded her mind.

      Like many houses in Amsterdam, their home had been built with the end wall slanting outward over the street, so that goods could be easily winched up to store below the roof. Pieter had used that method to have a large, finely carved chest lifted, rather than have it carried up several flights of stairs. He’d been overseeing the work when the chest had come crashing down, pinning him beneath it. Saskia had heard the impact from indoors, and the muffled shouts and screams that followed. She’d run outside to find Pieter face down in the street, unconscious, blood on his forehead. In her first moment of horror she’d thought he was dead, and then that his skull must have been cracked. Later she’d discovered he’d suffered only minor grazes to his face. The permanent damage had been to his ability to walk. His legs weren’t broken, but after the blow to his lower back he could no longer feel or control them.

      ‘How did he die?’ Harry’s sharp question dragged her back to the present.

      ‘A fever last autumn,’ she said. ‘He was more susceptible to illness after his accident—but until that last time he’d always recovered.’

      ‘He was not killed in the war between the Dutch and the English?’

      ‘No.’ Saskia frowned with confusion at the unexpected question. ‘He was a merchant, but he never left Hol—home,’ she corrected herself just in time. She cast her mind anxiously back over all she’d just said. The picture of Pieter lying at the foot of their Amsterdam house had been so vivid she was worried she might have inadvertently said something that gave away the location. She was sure that once she’d explained the whole situation to Harry he would understand her Dutch connections were irrelevant, but she wasn’t yet ready to confide in him completely.

      Harry’s dark eyes were alert and watchful as he studied her. She sensed the contained energy within him and felt a flicker of apprehension. She’d seen a hawk suddenly fold its wings and arrow down out of the sky when it spotted its prey. Was she the unwary prey on which Harry meant to swoop? Was he working for Lady Abergrave after all? Or was her nervousness caused by a far more fundamental reason—the awareness of a woman for a powerful, attractive man?

      ‘Are you going to eat anything?’ he asked.

      ‘What?’ She blinked and then glanced down at her forgotten breakfast. ‘I’ll bring it with me.’

      ‘Then let’s linger no longer. There’s no point in tormenting yourself by rising early if you don’t make good use of the extra hours.’

      There was a note of amusement in his voice that caused Saskia to look at him suspiciously. ‘Do you like getting up early?’

      ‘As it happens, I do.’

      ‘I can’t stand people who like getting up early,’ she muttered as she collected her bread. ‘No matter how wayward they are in other respects, they always consider themselves entitled to moralise over the rest of us.’

      Harry grinned. ‘The early bird catches the worm.’

      ‘Do not talk to me about birds,’ Saskia said darkly.

      * * *

      Harry rode beside the coach, relaxed in the saddle, though his eyes constantly scanned the surrounding countryside. The lush green fields and woods of southern England in early summer were very different to the dramatic and beautiful Turkish landscape which had become so familiar to him. The sky was a clear blue, and it had turned into a hot June day. The heat was of no consequence to Harry, but he felt the familiar urge to abandon the main thoroughfare and explore the shady woods and tranquil fields and heaths along their way. His tendency to investigate beyond his immediate surroundings had been of great value to him in the past. Experience had shown him that increased knowledge tended to confer increased power and choice. But he knew how to discipline his curiosity. Especially when he had a mystery closer to hand that was far more compelling than any slow-running English stream.

      According to the woman in the coach, her husband had been crippled in a mundane accident years ago and died as the result of a fever, not a British cannonball. Had she nearly said Holland before she’d corrected it to home? The evidence that he was indeed dealing with Saskia was increasingly strong, but he was no closer to knowing her true plans. All he could be certain of was that either Saskia or Swiftbourne’s informant was lying. He could see no reason for Saskia to make up such a complicated story about her husband’s accident, whereas her lie about the jealous mistress did serve a purpose—it gave her an excuse to claim the need for protection.

      He considered what he knew about Swiftbourne’s informant. According to Tancock’s story, he’d been secretary to the late Earl of Abergrave before continuing to serve the widowed Lady Abergrave. Lady Abergrave was Saskia’s aunt. Tancock claimed Saskia had returned to England after the death of her husband fighting the English, and that her bitterness against her former countrymen had soon become evident. Swiftbourne said Tancock had spoken most eloquently of Lady Abergrave’s torment as she struggled to choose between love for her niece and loyalty to England.

      Even though he’d never met either of them, Harry had taken an immediate, possibly irrational, dislike to both Tancock and Lady Abergrave. He found it hard to warm to a woman who had her servant inform one of the King’s Ministers that her grieving niece was a traitor. Had Lady Abergrave made any attempt to comfort or talk sense into Saskia before giving Tancock the order to approach Swiftbourne? Harry knew better than most that grief, anger and the driving need for revenge could propel almost anyone to take terrible actions. But from all he’d seen, Saskia wasn’t driven by rage, but by an anxious need for haste.

      He wondered when she was going to tell him they were going to Plymouth, not Portsmouth. She couldn’t delay much longer. Once they reached Guildford the routes diverged.

      It was after one o’clock, and Harry was thinking he’d insist they stop for dinner at the next inn when his instincts suddenly prickled with danger. It was the hottest part of the day and the heath around them dozed in the bright sunshine, the air heavy with the scents of summer. The low-lying heather was studded with birch and hazel trees, patches of yellow gorse and bramble bushes. A butterfly danced past on the warm air. A woodlark singing in a nearby birch was startled into undulating flight by the approaching coach, but there was nothing to alarm him. Yet with every heartbeat Harry’s sense of imminent threat intensified.

      A casual movement brought his hand close to one of his pistols as he surveyed the landscape with eyes narrowed against the glare of the sun.

       There!

      The betraying toss of a horse’s head as it stood in the shadow of a hazel copse fifty yards away. Two waiting men on horses. One man taking aim with a musket—