Falling for the Enemy

“No, but she likely understands we’re English.” Kessler tilted his nose down at the woman. “Where do you think she’ll head the moment we free her?”

Of course Kessler would have to argue with him. Though he did agree on one point: the woman was trouble, plain as day, with all that thick black hair ready to tumble from beneath her mobcap, those sharp blue eyes, quick reflexes...

And the blade.

She’d lain meekly under Farnsworth the entire time they talked about her, and somehow they’d all missed she had a blade. “Ah, shouldn’t we be more concerned about her freeing Farnsworth at the moment than us freeing her?”

Kessler waved his hand absently in the air. “She’s only a wench. Surely she can’t hold him for more than a minute or two, and then we’ll need to know what to do with her.”

True, they needed a plan for after she released Farnsworth, but first and foremost, they needed to get that knife away from her and his valet off the ground.

“Excusez moi.” He stepped closer to the woman, the rusted French bumbling over his tongue. He cringed a bit, and a trace of a smile curved the woman’s lips. But at least she didn’t press the knife closer to Farnsworth’s throat. “I give you my word that we won’t hurt you, but we have a few questions.”

Kessler made a disapproving sound, but what did he expect the woman to be told? That they wouldn’t let her go? They’d have to eventually. They could hardly cart another person all the way to the coast just to make certain she didn’t run off and inform the gendarmes of their whereabouts. A napoleon or two would likely keep her silence for the next half century.

“Leave it be, Kessler,” Westerfield said from where he lay on his blankets, his weak voice ten times more alarming than finding a woman spying on them through the bushes. Though if Gregory had to pick between some foul lung disease or a half-crazed Frenchwoman holding a knife to his neck, he might just pick the lung disease.

“You can’t truly think the girl will keep quiet,” Kessler protested, but he’d turned to face Westerfield, the rigidness leaving his shoulders like it did whenever the man was around his brother.

“Just watch.” Gregory crouched down, meeting the woman’s eyes. Eyes that were too blue in a face that was smooth and perfect as porcelain. She looked like some Celtic warrior sitting atop Farnsworth, the knife still gripped in her hand. She wasn’t the typical English rose, but if a woman of her beauty entered a ballroom in London, she would have half-a-dozen suitors come morning.

Except first she needed the wealth and position that would place her in a London ballroom. Her presence in the woods, coupled with her rough brown coat, indicated she had neither.

He held up the two coins in his hand. “I’ll give you two napoleons. One if you put that knife away, and another if you don’t tell anyone we were here. We’ll be gone in the morning and won’t be back. Agreed?”

The woman’s chin came up. “I don’t want your filthy coin.”

He slipped the French coins back into his pocket, took out two guineas and extended his hand. “Guineas, then.”

She spit into the dirt at his feet. “As if filthy, English money will do more to change my mind.”

He raised an eyebrow at that. His “filthy English money” was gold, like the napoleons, but the British currency was far more stable than the French, which was why he carried both with him.

“Are there any others in your traveling party?” Kessler snapped in a French accent not nearly as horrid as Gregory’s. The liar.

The defiant look left the woman’s face, and her eyes skittered wildly to the left then right. She drew her knife away from Farnsworth a fraction of an inch and sucked in a deep breath.

He sensed her plan an instant before she moved. She loosed a bloodcurdling scream and heaved herself off Farnsworth, bolting into the brush and vanishing even quicker than she’d first appeared.

Gregory instantly moved toward the creek. He lengthened his gait, one stride then two, nearly close enough to catch her. “Stop.”

She sprang lithely through the brambles, then darted around a dead log and between two saplings, quick as a pickpocket running through London alleys. If not for his guessing her escape, she’d have been gone.

“Stop!” he tried again.

She didn’t even look back, just kept running.

He pumped his legs harder. A thick stand of fir trees loomed ahead, its shadows black in the growing darkness. If she made it into the dense branches, he’d never find her. Yet she was only a few steps ahead of him. He couldn’t reach her with his arms, but would likely fell her if he lunged.

He grimaced at the thought of crashing to the ground, as she’d just held a knife to his valet’s throat. What else was he to do? He drew in a breath, readied his legs, braced himself for the pain of landing on the forest floor...

And dove.

His hands felt only the fabric of her skirts as he fell. He stretched farther as he collided with the dirt, finally gripping a limb beneath the layers of cloth. One hard yank, and the woman squealed. Then she crashed in front of him, landing in earth still soft from yesterday’s rain.

She rolled quickly onto her back, but he kept hold of her ankle—which she attempted to kick furiously at his head.

“Be still,” he gritted in English.

She only fought harder, as though his words, which she couldn’t understand, had somehow incensed her.

He climbed closer, resting his weight on her legs until she was forced to stop kicking. Only then did he see why she struggled so hard. Her knife lay on the ground an arm’s length in front of her.

“Farnsworth, Kessler,” he called, then frowned. Was he really about to ask the man who’d shot him in the leg for help?

One way or another, this trip was going to be the death of him.

“Over here,” he shouted a bit louder. “I need some...help.”

It was galling to admit, both because Kessler would be involved in the helping, and because his opponent was a woman. Yet he couldn’t keep her still enough to—

A sharp slice of pain seared his cheek, followed by a screeching, “Non!”

Teach him to not watch her wolfishly quick hands. He reached up to grasp the woman’s wrist before she could withdraw it and stared down at her bloody nails while his cheek throbbed wildly. Blast, but that was going to leave a nice wound.

“Let me go. I know nothing,” she spit out in French.

But she did know something. Otherwise, she wouldn’t be struggling so hard to free herself. Otherwise, she would have taken his guineas.

Footfalls sounded, and a moment later Kessler’s and Farnsworth’s boots appeared on the ground beside him. “Someone get the knife.”

Kessler headed toward the blade while Farnsworth hunkered down and grasped the woman’s free arm.

“You’re bleeding, Lord Gregory.”

As though he hadn’t noticed. He would have rolled his eyes if he wasn’t so busy stilling the woman’s legs as she tried to knee him in the stomach yet again. Instead, he wiped his bleeding cheek against the shoulder of his shirt.

Farnsworth clucked his tongue “And you’re rather a mess.”

That he was, covered in mud from ankles to shoulders. Even now cold dampness seeped through his clothing around his knees.

“Perhaps, but I have the girl.” Which ought to count for something.

Kessler returned, knife in hand.

“Hold her other arm while I get up.”

Kessler shoved the knife into a pocket of his greatcoat and came near enough to take the woman’s shoulder opposite Farnsworth. Gregory rolled away from her legs quickly enough so as not to get himself kicked—though she tried, the hoyden.