Those Scandalous Ravenhursts: The Dangerous Mr Ryder

Chapter Two

As a way of restraining her it was remarkably effective, Eva admitted to herself as she lay glaring up at the man pinning her to the bed. She could struggle—fruitlessly no doubt, given the size of him and the strength he had already demonstrated—but that would simply press her body into even closer contact with his. She had far too much dignity to do so and he obviously knew it. He would probably enjoy it, too.

She regarded the wicked glint in the grey eyes stolidly for a moment, then said, ‘Would you kindly remove your person from my bed?’ She could only admire the steadiness of her voice, especially as some part of her, a tiny, suppressed sensual part, was aching to arch against the hard masculinity that was dominating her. She fought down the urge; she had, after all, been fighting that particular instinct for two years.

Jack Ryder responded by raising himself on his elbows, the better to look down into her face. The movement caused even more disturbing pressure on her pelvis; Mr Ryder did not appear to be fighting his own inner sensuality very energetically. His eyes were hooded, watching her with speculation. ‘In a moment, ma’am, when we have sorted this out. I am not sure what written proof of my identity and mission you would accept, given that, as you say, I could have stolen it. Will you accept your son’s word?’

‘Freddie? What do you mean?’

‘When I was talking to him, telling him I was coming to fetch you, I asked him if there was a password I could give you in case you did not believe me. He thought for a moment, then said, “Ask Mama how Bruin and the Rat are. It’s all right for me to say it, because we aren’t at home.”’

‘Bruin? Oh, the little wretch! Mr Ryder—’ She gave him a shove. It was like trying to shift one of the castle’s wolfhounds when they got on to the bed. ‘Please get off—I believe you.’ Too relieved to be indignant with him any longer, Eva sat up as Jack rolled off the bed to stand leaning against the bedpost, his eyebrows raised interrogatively. ‘They are his nicknames for his uncles and I made him promise never to use them to anyone but me because they might be offended. At least, Antoine would be.’

‘The Rat I presume?’

‘Exactly. He has a long nose that twitches when he is agitated. I believe you, Mr Ryder—now, will you get me out of the castle?’

‘That is my intention.’

‘And help me raise resistance to Antoine?’

‘No.’

‘Why not?’ Eva swung her feet off the bed and confronted him, all her indignation surging back. This official, this postman for the English government, had no right to dictate to her. He was obviously a man of action, just what she needed in these circumstances—he should do as he was told. ‘It is your patriotic duty, sir.’

‘Humbug.’ Eva gasped. No one spoke to her like that. It was so unexpected that she gaped at him. ‘Leaving aside the fact that I have no allegiance to this Duchy, it is not my duty to get most of its male population massacred by French troops, which is what will happen if Bonaparte wants this place and you resist. If he doesn’t, then you are risking a civil war for nothing. My duty, as I have already explained to you, is to remove you safely to England where you have the legal authority to look after your son until all this is over. It will also remove one hostage from Antoine’s grasp.’

‘What, slink off and abandon the Duchy to Antoine and the French just because I am a woman?’ He obviously thought she was some milk-and-water English miss. Despite him remembering—occasionally—to address her with due respect, he had no idea of the role she had had to play these past two years since Louis’s death, nor the iron that had entered her soul as she had done so.

‘No, execute a strategic retreat because that is the sensible thing to do,’ he retorted. ‘You do understand the concept of sensible action as opposed to romantic gesture, I presume?’

‘How dare you speak to me like that? You insolent oaf—I can perfectly well look after myself.’

‘Indeed, ma’am? You have escaped two accidents and one poisoning by the merest chance. If I was an assassin, you would be dead by now. Your son needs you, and you need me. Now, are you going to sit there on your—’ his eyes flickered to her body ‘—dignity, clutching an invisible coronet to your bosom, or are you going to come with me?’

I should slap him, but he is too quick for me. How can I leave? This is my duty, my country now…but Freddie. This Jack Ryder thinks I am an hysterical woman…

‘What about Philippe? He cannot be moved.’

‘Then we leave him. He is the Regent, he accepted the risks along with the office.’ He spoke as though it was a matter of leaving someone behind while they went on a picnic, not that they might be abandoning a man to his death. Dear Philippe, Freddie’s favourite Old Bear…‘Can you help him if you stay?’ She shook her head dumbly. ‘Then we go.’

‘Now?’ Her head was spinning. For so long it seemed she had had to think for herself—now this man was calmly taking over her decisions and her actions and the frightening thing was, it felt like a relief to let him do so. Eva straightened her spine and tried to think this through, ignoring the hard grey eyes fixed on her.

‘Yes, now. Unless you can think of any reason why leaving in broad daylight might be safer. Can you change into something completely neutral—a walking or carriage dress with a cloak or a pelisse? Something an ordinary lady would wear, if you own such a thing.’ His gaze swept down over the rich figured silk of her crimson evening gown to the tips of her exquisite slippers, assessing it, and probably, she thought irritably, pricing it, too.

‘I will need to pack,’ she began. How was he going to get them out of there?

‘A valise only. Essentials—one change of outer garments at the most. A discreet gown, nothing showy.’

‘But it will take us days to get back to England, I need more clothes than that.’ Court routine, even on a quiet day, demanded a minimum of four changes from rising to retiring.

‘We can buy more as we go. Have you any luggage here?’

‘Of course not. I will have to ring for my maid to help me change, and how am I going to explain why I need a valise at this time of night?’

‘Tell her you want to pack up some clothes for the poor—No, better, you know of a deserving young woman in the town who has the opportunity for a post as a governess and you want make her a gift of a valise and have decided to give her one of your old ones. Then tell her you want to change into your nightgown because you have a headache and do not want to be disturbed again tonight.’

‘And how, pray, am I going to get into a walking dress by myself?’ She knew the answer as soon as the words left her lips and spoke before he could. ‘I presume you are going to tell me that King’s Messengers have training as ladies’ maids?’

‘No, but I am capable of tying laces with my eyes closed,’ he confided.

‘I am quite sure you are, Mr Ryder,’ Eva said grimly. And untying them, too, no doubt. He would have a certain appeal for some women who liked the quietly dominant type, she could see that. It was fortunate that she was inured to male appeal. She tugged the bell pull and watched with a certain malicious interest to see where Mr Ryder was going to hide himself. It was a positive disappointment to see him drop to the floor and slide under the bed without any apparent discomfort.

She was beginning to wish she could catch him out in some way—he appeared to have an answer to everything. In fact, the only sign of humanity she had witnessed so far was the occasional glint in his eyes which, in anyone else, she would put down to mischief.

‘Your Serene Highness?’ It was Hortense, her dresser, slipping into the room with her usual soft-footed discretion.

‘Fetch me my valises, Hortense, if you please.’

‘Now, ma’am? All of them? You want to pack?’

‘Yes, all. And now, and of course I do not want to pack, Hortense. I am thinking of ordering a new suite of hand baggage from Paris and I want to see what I have.’ There was no reason why she should not have used Mr Ryder’s ingenious excuse—it was sheer stubbornness on her part and she knew it.

She was not given to issuing capricious orders and made a point of being considerate to the castle staff, so such a quixotic demand at that hour of the evening was unusual. But Hortense was too well trained to register surprise. ‘Yes, ma’am, right away.’

It took almost twenty minutes, but eventually the dresser was back with four menservants carrying fifteen bags between them. ‘Thank you, Hortense. I had no idea I had so many. Put them over there, please.’ She waited until the men had gone, then added, ‘Help me undress, please. I am a little fatigued and I will not need you after that.’

‘Yes, ma’am.’

It felt decidedly risqué to be undressing with a man under the bed, even if he could see nothing. Eva slipped her arms into a wrapper and tied the sash firmly. ‘Good night, Hortense.’

As soon as the door shut behind the woman, she ordered, ‘Stay there,’ and began rummaging through her clothes presses for a suitable walking dress. She was answered by a faint sneeze as she threw her wrapper and nightgown aside and began to pull on her underthings again. A simple pair of stays which she could lace from the front solved one problem, but what to wear on top?

Finally she struggled into the plainest gown she had, which by almost dislocating her shoulder she could button up behind by herself, and found a stout pair of walking shoes to match. There was a large, but rather worn, valise in the pile and she added a good selection of undergarments before announcing, ‘You may come out now.’

Jack Ryder slid out from beneath the bed and got to his feet as she was gathering up toothbrush and toiletries. ‘That bag? No, far too large.’ As Eva gasped, he delved into the valise, extracted the pile of frills, fine lawn and filmy silk and deposited it on the bed.

‘Mr Ryder! That is my underwear!’

‘How very dashing of you to mention it, I was endeavouring not to. French, I observe,’ he added outrageously. ‘That bag there will do, but you will need to halve that pile of frippery. Here.’ He flipped through the pile, sorting it into two, and handed half to her.

Eva contented herself with one glare, dumped it into the small bag, then began to find the other items, trying to think which were the essentials to take. ‘What about money?’

‘I have enough. The journey to the frontier should only take us just over a week.’

‘But Napoleon controls France!’

‘He is in Paris, massing his troops. It would not do to show we are foreigners, but we should have no trouble passing as French travellers—it worked well enough on my journey down. Your French is perfect, mine good enough to pass as regional.’

Eva shrugged; he had got to Maubourg, true enough, now she just had to trust he could get them both back to England. ‘How do we get out of the castle?’ Travelling virtually the length of France seemed simple in comparison to walking out of her own castle with a strange man and a valise.

‘Have you a cloak with a hood?’ Eva nodded and went to take it from the press. Ryder folded it, placed it in another of the valises, then stripped off his own coat and added that to it. ‘I need a sash.’ He stood there, waiting for her to catch up with him; of course, in shirtsleeves with his dark waistcoat and breeches, he could be taken at a distance for one of the menservants, except that they all wore a red sash around their waists. But what did that achieve? She could hardly disguise herself the same way.

And if he could see from his hiding place under the bed the way that the footmen were dressed, what else had he been able to see?

Eva forced that worry away and rummaged in the press until she found a long scarf of almost the right colour. ‘Let me.’ She was so focused on being brisk and matter of fact that her arms were round his waist before she thought what she was doing. Jack stood very still for her, his arms lifted. Eva felt the colour rising in her cheeks; it was impossible to do this without touching him.

‘The way it is knotted is distinctive,’ she said briskly. ‘There, that should do.’ She stepped back, hoping her blushes would be taken for general agitation. The heat of his body had been disturbing for some reason. She forced herself to think clearly—it had to be the shock of the whole situation, otherwise what could account for the way she was reacting to this man? ‘Now what?’

‘Do you know which way to go to reach the lower courtyard without passing many guards?’ Ryder was securing the pistol out of sight in the swathing sash, his movements crisp.

‘Yes, of course, but we cannot avoid them all, there are two at the end of the corridor, for a start—my bodyguard.’ She watched him, puzzled. ‘I doubt I can disguise myself to deceive them, nor any of the others, for that matter.’

‘You don’t even try. Just walk with me, scolding me for something or another, then take the route for the lower courtyard using the least frequented areas.’ He swung the small valise up on to his shoulder, casting his face into shadow, and lifted the other one in his other hand. With only the cloak and coat in it, it hung in his grasp, obviously light and apparently empty.

‘I understand.’ Eva found her face relaxing into a smile. It felt strangely stiff and she realised how long it was since she had found anything genuinely to smile about. ‘Come on.’ She pressed open the door and led the way out into the corridor. A short distance ahead, where the passage to her private suite joined the main gallery, guards stood on either side, pikes at the slant. At the sound of her voice, they snapped to attention, their weapons crashing upright.

‘I cannot imagine how it can take one man so long to mend a simple strap,’ she complained, remembering at the last minute to speak the Maubourg patois. ‘And how you can say you do not understand which valise I want to replace it with, defeats me! I suppose it will be faster to come and look at them myself. How long have you been employed here? I must speak to the major-domo about his selection of staff.’

They passed between the guards, Eva, nagging away, keeping herself between Jack’s unprotected side and the right-hand man. There was no response from the guards as she marched along, her heels clacking on the stone floor, her voice raised peevishly. ‘This way, man, I do not have all evening!’

Jack strode along in Eva’s wake, suppressing a grin at her tone. Although, if she was this bossy in real life, it was going to be a tense trip back. It was hard to understand how such a feminine-seeming creature could be so hard. He had seen genuine tears when she had feared for her son’s life, but beside that she seemed cold, arrogant and wilful. As he had been led to believe.

He kept his head down as they passed a knot of female servants, all too busy bobbing curtsies to look at him, and followed the willowy figure of the Grand Duchess.

She wound her way down spiral stairs, along narrow passages and through what were obviously the working areas of the castle with surprising confidence. Perhaps, despite her autocratic manner, she took a practical hand in the supervision of the household. Jack found himself admiring the way she moved, the swing of her hips in the plain gown, then made himself concentrate on trying to maintain his sense of direction and to keep count of floors.

Eva opened a heavily studded door, then stopped. Puzzled, Jack glanced at her and saw she had gone pale. There seemed nothing to account for it, no voices, nothing but the start of a dark spiral staircase. It seemed she braced herself, her fingers white on the ring handle, then she stepped forwards.

After that hesitation she led the way unerringly down the precipitous flight to the solid oak door at the bottom. She pushed it and they stepped out into a brightly lit hubbub of steam, cooking smells and bustling women. In the centre of the room a massive, florid-complexioned individual brandished a ladle and harangued his subordinates. ‘Which criminal idiot put cream in this?’ he was demanding. ‘Do you not know what her Serene Highness likes? Do you wish to poison her?’ He glanced across the room, caught a glimpse of the newcomers through the steam and gasped. ‘Madame!’

‘Just carry on.’ The Grand Duchess waved a hand imperiously and the workers turned back to their tasks, leaving the maestro goggling amidst his cooking pots. ‘Through here,’ she murmured and Jack found himself outside in the wood yard. A lad staggered past carrying a basket of logs, then the door into the kitchens swung shut and they were alone in the dark.

He put down the lighter valise and took out her cloak and his coat. ‘Here, pull up the hood and hide your face as much as possible.’ He kicked the empty bag into the shadows, took her arm and began to walk steadily towards where he guessed, if his internal compass had not failed him, the lower courtyard would be. The townsfolk had unrestricted access there; in a few moments they would be simply two passers-by.

It proved easier than he had hoped, although the Grand Duchess was stiff at his side. She was obviously unused to being manhandled by subordinates. There were guards, but only on the main entrance to the inner courtyard, and no one took any notice of one couple amongst so many townsfolk.

‘I’ve a carriage waiting down by the East Bridge,’ he said as he steered her out of the gates and past a group laughing as they headed for a tavern, then dodged a stallholder who had finally given up for the night and was packing his wares into a handcart. ‘This is busier than I expected.’ At least the woman was less trouble than he had feared she might be from the way she had been described. She had a cool head, even if she had a sharp tongue.

It was hard not to give in to the temptation to run—the slope of the street towards the river encouraged haste—but that would only draw attention to them. Below, Jack could just make out the glint of water and ahead was the creaking inn sign he had used earlier as a landmark. ‘Down here.’

It was a steep lane, almost an alley, with steps down the centre and cobbles at the sides, and it led directly to the riverside. Beside him Eva was walking briskly along, clutching her cloak at the throat and showing no sign of fear. Now they were well embarked on their escape she was still calm. Jack offered up thanks for being spared an hysterical female and allowed himself to think they were going to make it.

Then, only yards down the alleyway, Eva slid away from him with a little gasp of alarm, her feet skidding on the greasy stones. He dropped the valise and used both hands to reach for her, but she tripped on the steps and was down with a loud noise of rending cloth.

‘Ouch! Oh, that is hard.’ She sat up, batting irritably at the tangling folds of the cloak. In the gloom he could make out the white oval of her face, and the moth-shapes of her moving hands, but that was all.

‘Are you hurt?’ Jack dropped to one knee and reached out to support her.

‘Bruised, I expect, nothing serious.’ Eva began to get up, then clutched for her cloak. ‘Oh, the wretched thing! The fastening at the throat has broken.’ Jack helped her to her feet and steadied her. She moved well, he noted automatically. She was fit, slender, active. That was a relief—he had feared finding a pampered, plump princess on his hands. The cloak slipped away, invisible in the shadows at their feet.

‘Just stand there a moment, I’ll find the cloak and bag,’ Jack began, then froze at the sound of loud voices. The flare of torchlight lit up the mouth of the alley with dramatic suddenness as booted feet hit the cobbles. He spun back against the nearest shuttered shop front, pulling Eva to him. The narrow lane filled with torchlight. ‘Make this look good,’ was all he had time to say before he bent his head and fastened his lips over hers.

‘Mmmf!’ she protested against his mouth, trying to jerk her head back. Jack applied one palm firmly to the back of her head, held her ruthlessly around the waist with the other hand and focused on giving a demonstration of blind rutting lust in action. It was not easy when the lady in question was trying to bite your tongue with vicious intent.

‘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.

Chapter Three

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.