Love Inspired Historical January 2015 Box Set: Wolf Creek Father\Cowboy Seeks a Bride\Falling for the Enemy\Accidental Fiancee (54 page)

“In January?”

She shrugged. So mayhap she wouldn't happen upon berries, but she might find some burdock or cattail root to dig. Anything to get her away from the fire. If she lingered there, she'd end up doing all Serge's work, and she could hardly sit still long enough for him to find another squirrel.

He likely wouldn't return until after dark, the dunce.

She made her way along the water, sluggish from the coolness of winter, but not frigid enough to turn to ice. Leafless brambles and shrubs sprang from soil still damp from yesterday's rain. She shivered inside her cloak and glanced up at the gray sky through the tree branches above. Home would be more temperate than this, near enough the channel's warm waters to drive winter's chill away.

Something rustled ahead, then a rabbit scampered out from beneath a bush and darted toward a little thicket. Within half a second, she had her blade in hand, her fingers gripping the familiar leather handle. One throw, quick as lightning and silent as a snake, and she'd have their supper.

Except
Papa
had all but commanded she let Serge do the hunting on their trip, saying he had to learn sometime. And she'd done most of the hunting on the way to Reims, then yesterday, on the first day of their journey, she'd killed a rabbit.

She was going to be good and obedient—for perhaps the third or fourth time in her life—and let Serge do tonight's hunting. She sighed, her grip loosening on the knife.

As though sensing the sudden lack of danger, the rabbit stopped and turned, sniffing the air before staring straight at her.

Too easy a kill to bother with now anyway. What was the fun of throwing a knife when her target was still rather than moving? She bent and slipped her blade back against her ankle and continued down the little stream, winding her way deeper into the woods.

She could almost see the resigned look in
Maman
's eyes and hear her exasperated sigh when
Maman
realized her eldest daughter had returned to Abbeville husbandless. Two towns, with a suitable groom yet to be found. Two!
Papa
claimed God had a plan for her. That she only needed to wait on Him, and everything would fall into place.

Evidently
Papa
didn't understand how hard it was for her to wait for anything—let alone for God, Whom she couldn't see or touch.

As though waiting for the right man to happen along hadn't already taken long enough.

A rustling sounded from the trees behind her. Likely another rabbit. But no, the noise was too loud for such a small animal. A fox, perhaps?

She stilled until only the trickle of the creek over rocks and the tapping of tree branches in the wind filled her ears. Another sound, deep and rich, carried on the faint breeze.

A distant, undeniably male voice.

She reached for the knife strapped at her ankle once more, then straightened, stepping stealthily around twigs and through a tangle of saplings.

Probably not anyone to worry about. Just another traveling party stopped to make use of the stream.

Except they were settled awfully deep into the woods to be merely traveling.

Then again, she was nestled rather deeply into the woods, as well. But the trees provided ample opportunity to find game, and with only her and Serge, she didn't want to invite trouble. She could defend herself well enough, 'twas true, but she wasn't going to seek disquiet, either.

A different person would probably turn around and head back to the campsite, pack up and move another kilometer downstream before settling in for the night. That would certainly be the safe thing to do. The predictable, normal, safe thing.

But then she wouldn't know who the travelers were, whether they posed a threat.

She crept closer to the voices. The cadences were low, all male but slightly different. She slipped silently between two shrubs, years of moving quietly through the woods while hunting with
Papa
aiding her stealth. She only needed to creep a bit closer.

Something about the voices didn't sit right. The intonation seemed off, rough and coarse, without the gentle roll of French off one's tongue. Perhaps if she overheard a word or two, she could better understand why they were camped so obscurely. The men could be anyone from gendarmes to army deserters to thieves.

Or they could be normal travelers having just left Reims and heading toward the coast like her and Serge.

Either way, she needed to know.

She crouched lower and inched forward. Something moved ahead, a flash of cream on the other side of the brambles. Then a cough sounded, loud and harsh and from deep within the chest.

Whoever made up this party, one of their members seemed not much longer for this world.

A gruff voice filled the air. “I still say we're better to travel during the day.”

The breath in her lungs turned to ice. She couldn't have heard right. No. Certainly not. It almost sounded as if they spoke...

“He's right,” another man rasped, followed by a small cough. “We can't travel at night. We hardly know which way to go during the day. We'd be lost within a matter of hours.”

English.

She swallowed against her suddenly dry throat. That vile country's navy had killed her older brother. If she never saw another Englishman or heard the language spoken again, she'd be happy, indeed.

But what were a band of Englishmen doing here?

She squeezed her eyes shut. No. Never mind. She didn't want to know.

Definitely didn't want to know.

Most assuredly didn't want to know.

She simply needed to get herself and her younger brother away from this place.

She began to back away as stealthily as she'd crept up. Except, with her hands shaking and her heartbeat thudding wildly in her ears, she wasn't stealthy at all. Clumsy, more like. Her foot cracked a dried twig, and her cloak brushed against the brambles. She paused for a moment. Had they heard?

“We're lost now.” A third voice, higher pitched than the first two and with a hint of intelligence behind his words, spoke.

She let out a silent breath. They'd noticed nothing. Now she need only move quietly—because she could be quiet if she didn't let panic get the better of her—back through the brambles. Then she'd find Serge, and they'd pack up camp. Dinner could be some of the salt pork and bread they carried. No need for freshly roasted squirrel now, not when they had to find a gendarmerie post and report the Englishmen.

Because Englishmen traveling through France during the middle of a war could only be spies.

What secrets would these men impart to the British government if they reached the coast and no one stopped them? She was glad they were lost. They could walk around in circles for the next week.

Except by then, she'd have found that gendarmerie post and explained everything. A week hence, those British spies would be moldering in some nameless dungeon, likely being tortured and pouring forth whatever secrets they'd discovered about her country.

Which was exactly what they deserved.

But first she had to get away without anyone noticing.

“What do you want us to do? Stop and ask for directions?” The third, intelligent-sounding voice dripped with sarcasm. “Or perhaps a map? I'm sure there's a very welcoming gendarmerie station along the road to Saint-Quentin. We need only present ourselves and say, ‘Good day, sirs. Could you tell me the quickest way from here to the channel? You see, I've two es—”

Something crashed in the woods behind her. Danielle whirled, the leather handle of her knife clamped tightly between her fingers. But too late. A male body slammed into her from the side and crashed her to the ground.

Shrubs scratched her arms and tore at her cloak as the man rolled himself over her. She fought as he struggled to sit up while holding her to the ground. He wasn't overlarge or terribly strong, but he plunked himself down directly atop her while trapping the forearm that held her knife beneath his knee. If she could only find some way to upend him...

“Come quickly! I've found a spy.”

A spy?
Her?

She wasn't a spy. She was just...well, spying, but not for the reason they thought.
They
were the spies, and she'd only wanted to make certain she and Serge were safe from the men camped so close to their own site.

Or rather, that's all she'd wanted to do until she'd discovered the mysterious men were English.

“What's that you say?” The English voices grew closer and footsteps thudded on the muddy ground.

“You found someone?”

If she was going to get free, she had to do so quickly. She'd not lie there docilely while men from the same country that had killed Laurent attempted to capture her. She brought her knee up, trying to uproot the oaf's bottom. The man only gripped her shoulders and pressed her harder against the damp earth. She twisted and turned, but his weight made it difficult to suck in air and his knee still pinned her knife hand.

“She was watching from the bushes,” her captor explained. “I wouldn't have spotted her except she started moving as I was coming up from the stream with the water.”

Danielle pressed her eyes shut and stifled a groan. She should have considered someone might be at the stream, should have thought to scout the area before she'd even started into the bushes. Instead, she'd turned into a complete and total idiot at the sound of one simple phrase in English.

“What's your name?” the intelligent voice asked in English.

She opened her eyes and stared at the tall form above her, with tousled dark brown hair, an arrogant, aristocratic nose, and eyes the color of fog over the ocean. Not quite gray but not quite blue, and just mysterious enough one might stare into them a bit too long, trying to understand—

“Her name matters not,” a deeper voice snapped. “How much did she overhear?” Another man appeared above her, leaner and taller than the first, with a face so thin and wan the bones seemed to jut from it. His hands appeared just as bony, as though he hadn't had a good meal in the past half decade. But his emaciated body didn't stop his shrewd green eyes from narrowing at her.

She licked her lips. What should she tell them? She hadn't overheard much beyond that they were lost and debating when to travel. Could she pretend as though she didn't know English and hadn't understood a word? They had little reason to suspect a woman such as her would know their language.

And even if she wanted to answer their questions, she couldn't manage to speak more than a word or two with an English ignoramus sitting atop her stomach and squishing the air from her body.

“I daresay she didn't overhear anything,” the raspy voice spoke from the other side of the brambles. Then that horrid coughing filled the air again.

“A woman like her isn't going to know English,” the dunce atop her proclaimed. At least he was useful for something besides squishing the breath from her body. “Lord Westerfield is right.”

Lord
Westerfield? She nearly groaned, would have if she possessed the ability to breathe.

She moved her gaze between the two men standing above her, their patrician noses and arrogant bearings suddenly more than mere circumstance. As if finding regular Englishmen hiding in the woods wasn't trouble enough. She'd somehow stumbled into a nest of aristocrats.

Just her luck.

“Try in French, Halston.” The thin blond man nudged the darker haired one—Halston, evidently.

Halston scowled at the other man. “You try in French. You're the one who's spent the past year and a half in this wretched country.”

“The only French I found use for were curses. The rest of the language I'd like to forget as quickly as possible.”

Danielle bit the side of her lip. This was probably supposed to be the moment she turned grateful for all those horrid English lessons her mother had forced upon her while growing up.

Except she still didn't feel all that grateful—though it was rather helpful to know what they were saying instead of being left to guess their intent.

And now that she had a moment to consider, she'd best not speak in English. She might lay pinned beneath a wiry man who felt far heavier than he looked, but she still had two things to her advantage. First, her captors didn't realize she understood their words, and second, they didn't know about Serge.

If she managed nothing else from this debacle, she would at least keep them from learning of her brother.

“Stand her up, Farnsworth. Let's have a look at her,” the blond commanded.

“She's a person, Kessler, not some dog,” Halston growled.

The two men stared at each other, the air between them igniting like the sudden spark of a flintlock. Then Kessler turned away and the man atop her began to rise.

She tightened the grip on her knife, waiting for the perfect moment...

Chapter Two

G
regory had never seen anything more astounding. One second the woman was lying docilely beneath Farnsworth's hold, and the next she'd reversed their positions, flipping his valet to the ground and sitting atop him, a knife pressed to his throat.

“Come any closer, and your servant dies.” The woman spoke in a calm, controlled voice, and judging by the fierce look etched across her face, she wasn't bluffing. The French words fell comfortably off her tongue, only confirming what they'd already suspected. She knew not a lick of English.

Something sick rolled through his stomach. Why had he brought Farnsworth on this wretched journey in the first place? As though endangering himself, his brother and Kessler wasn't enough.

He took a step closer to the woman, but her grip on the knife only tightened and her lips pressed into a thin white line. How was he supposed to get her off Farnsworth if she wouldn't even let him approach?

“Lord Gregory,” Farnsworth gasped, evidently not minding moving his throat to speak despite the wicked-looking blade pressed against it. “I could use a little help here, if you don't mind. Perhaps you might find my service to you worth a guinea or two and be willing to—”

“Silence!”
the woman snapped.

Though the pronunciation in French was quite different from English, Gregory had no trouble recognizing the word.

He reached into his pocket and fished out two napoleons, speaking to Kessler without taking his eyes off the woman. “We can let her go.” Once he convinced her to leave Farnsworth unharmed, that was. “She couldn't have understood what we were saying.”

“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.

He stood while Kessler and Farnsworth hauled her up. Two men to hold one woman, and still she looked around as though planning another escape attempt. Then her gaze landed on the hilt of her knife peeking from Kessler's pocket.

Gregory sprang forward and wrenched the blade away an instant before the woman's hand touched the spot where the hilt had rested.

Her lips curled into a snarl.

He took a step back lest she attempt to swipe the blade from his hold. Instead she jerked hard on the shoulder Kessler held, forcing his hand to slip an inch.

“Hold still, wench, or we'll use that knife on you,” Kessler snapped in French.

The woman stilled, panic flashing through her eyes for the briefest of instants before she masked it.

What was he going to do with her? Her hair had come completely free of her cap and hung wildly about her shoulders with thick clumps of mud matted in the riotous mess. More mud splattered her dress, starting at the hem and working up her body. And from how she'd lain on the ground earlier, the back of her dress was probably soaked through and caked with mud as well.

Yet somehow, despite her filth and bedraggled state, she was magnificent.

And here he'd thought Joan of Arc had been burned at the stake several centuries past. Surely the woman before him could lead an army into battle just as well as the legendary heroine.

“Before you ran, I asked who you traveled with.” He spoke slowly in French, so she wouldn't mistake a single word of his statement

Her nose came up and her jaw hardened, yet she met his gaze with her icy, sky-blue eyes. Once again, she resembled the ancient woman warrior who had defied the English even when facing death.

“Answer me. Who else is with you?”

Silence permeated the forest, the faint trickle of the creek and the occasional tapping of tree branches in the breeze the only sounds surrounding them.

“Perhaps she travels alone, sir.” Farnsworth shifted his weight beside the woman. “Or perhaps she doesn't understand your question.”

Oh, she knew what he asked, all right. Knew more than she was willing to admit.

“Hold the knife to her throat,” Kessler commanded. “She'll talk then.”

Gregory ground his teeth together. The man had shot him in the leg, fled the country and then found himself in a French prison for sixteen months...and still failed to learn that violence seldom solved one's problems. “I promised not to harm her.”

Though that had been before she'd fled into the woods, rolled around in the mud with him and scratched his cheek.

Kessler arched an eyebrow. “How else do you plan to force answers? She's not volunteering any.”

He glanced at the woman's throat, slim and creamy beneath the mud that splattered it. Unfortunately, Kessler had a point.

And what kind of barbarian had this journey turned him into that he considered holding a knife on a woman?

“No. There's another way.” He gestured in her direction, though she'd remained curiously still ever since Kessler had threatened to use the knife on her. “This is no fool lass. When she reached the creek, she headed upstream, which means her traveling party must be downstream. We only need to find them.”

The woman jerked against Kessler's and Farnsworth's holds, forcing the two men to grapple for a better grip on her shoulders. Slight though she was, restraining a woman wasn't exactly an everyday task valets and future earls performed in England.

France, on the other hand, was proving to be quite different.

A torrent of French words poured from her mouth. Most of them came too fast for him to understand, though he caught something about how she'd sit down and talk with them now.

Finally.

“Do you remember those napoleons I showed you earlier?” He spoke haltingly as he approached her. “I have more, but you need to be silent first.”

Her body grew still though her chest heaved from spent exertion. She tossed her head backward, likely trying to dislodge the mess of hair that had fallen over her face to hide her eyes.

Kessler and Farnsworth hardened their holds on her shoulders, but Gregory stepped forward and reached out a hand, smoothing the tangled hair away from her cheek and back over her shoulder. Frightened blue eyes came up to meet his, and he paused, his hand resting on her shoulder. He'd thought her beautiful before, but he'd underestimated. Her skin wasn't just creamy, but as soft as a daffodil's petals during spring. Her hair not merely long and wavy, but as rich as velvet. And those eyes...they appeared a light, icy-blue at first, but when standing this close, darker streaks flared through the lighter blue like little starbursts before they rimmed her irises. Irises that still held a muted look of fear.