Love Inspired Historical January 2015 Box Set: Wolf Creek Father\Cowboy Seeks a Bride\Falling for the Enemy\Accidental Fiancee (66 page)

The man laughed, low and quiet but lewd nonetheless. “
Non, ma chérie
. I think there'll be time for some entertainment before you depart.”

* * *

Gregory pounded the side of his fist into the scratchy bark of an aged tree when the soldiers, Danielle and Serge left the road and started across a field.

“Easy there,” Kessler whispered from behind him. “Stay quiet or you'll give us away.”

“Why are they leaving with the soldiers?” He slammed his hand into the tree again. “This wasn't part of the plan. If we follow them through the trees, we might give ourselves away. But if we don't, we'll lose our guide.” The guide he'd spent too long holding in his arms last night, too long dreaming about in his sleep.

“They're heading toward that barn,” Westerfield spoke from where he leaned against a nearby oak.

“The barn?” His throat turned dry.

“Yes, my lord. That appears to be where they're going,” Farnsworth concurred.

“But why?” Surely Danielle knew better than to go into a building with three strange men. Once inside, they might—

“To escape the rain, my lord. That's likely the reason.”

Beside him, Kessler and Westerfield remained ominously silent. He'd found Suzanna in a barn on that fateful night two years ago. Had Kessler and Westerfield's thoughts wandered to the same place as his?

“No,” he rasped into the chilling rain.

“After the way she behaved with that gendarme yesterday?” Kessler's eyes were hard and flat as stone. “Why else would she go to the barn?”

Gregory curled his hands into fists.

“It doesn't look as though she has much of a choice.” Westerfield's calm voice floated through the rain.

Gregory swung his gaze back to Danielle. The soldier now gripped her arm, propelling her toward the barn without so much as an inch of space between them.

No choice, indeed.
“We have to do something.”

“She might be fine on her own, my lord.” Farnsworth's words came out as a squeak, then he rubbed his thumb back and forth across his throat. “She's rather handy with a knife, if you recall.”

Farnsworth was right. He shouldn't involve himself. Hadn't he decided as much last night? The last time he tried to protect a peasant woman, it had ended in disaster. And yet...

“There's three of them against a woman and a lad.” He started toward the clearing, but a strong hand wrapped around his wrist and yanked him back.

“You're not going anywhere.”

“Let go, Kessler.”

“You'll give us away.”

“And that justifies letting a woman be raped? Think of all she's done for you. For Westerfield. For all of us. She would have never met those soldiers were it not for helping us.”

“You don't know that.”

But he did. Day after day, she'd tirelessly urged their party onward, scouting the woods for danger and tending to Westerfield as he recovered. Now she was in trouble. The others might sit idly by and watch, but not him.

He jerked away from Kessler's grip and sprinted through the trees. Wrong was wrong, and sometimes a man needed to stand between wrong and its victim. Besides, the mere thought of another man touching Danielle, running his fingers through that thick, wavy hair, being close enough to breathe her scent...

Father God, please keep her safe.
Rain pelted his face and blurred his vision as he darted across the field and flung wide the barn door.

Danielle spun around, her knife in one hand and a half-sliced potato in the other. Behind her, the soldiers all sat in the hay...

Eating some of the dried apples she'd traded a farmer for?

They'd gone into the barn for something as simple as food? He stepped inside. “I—I'm sorry. I thought...”

And with those handful of words—
English
words—he realized his mistake.

Danielle whirled toward the others and caught hold of one of the soldiers who'd been harmlessly eating. She pressed a knife to the blond man's throat, holding it steady, but that didn't stop the other two men from scrambling up. Serge jumped on the back of a tall, thin man and similarly held a blade to his throat. A soldier with a girth wide enough to rival that of King George drew a pistol and trained it on Gregory.

Gregory's hands were slick with sweat. He'd had one gun trained on him before. One, in all his twenty-eight years. And the last time it had resulted in a leg injury and infection so dire he'd nearly died.

“You're English.” The man with the gun spit into the hay. “One of the men from the handbill. Put your hands out in front of you where I can see them.”

Gregory's heart beat wildly against his ribs. He wasn't on the handbill—that was Westerfield. But the sketch looked similar enough to incriminate him—and speaking in English certainly didn't help. He glanced at Danielle, her eyes wide with terror as she gave him a subtle nod. He slowly extended his hands.

“First I'll tie you up, and then you're going to tell me where that friend of yours is.” The man approached, the gun not wavering the slightest from where it pointed at Gregory's chest.

Was there something he could do? Some way to knock the pistol out of the man's hand or lunge for him?

He looked at Danielle again. She was keeping her knife steady on one of the soldiers. Seeming to understand his thoughts, she mouthed the silent word
no.

The stocky man stopped before Gregory, the gun only inches from his chest. He produced a rope from the folds of his coat. “Now you hold your wrists together, one on top of the other good and tight.”

Knocking the gun away was the only way to secure Danielle and Serge's safety. And he certainly couldn't wait until his hands were tied to do so. He drew in a breath, long and slow, since it might well be the last time his lungs ever felt air, and then—

Crash!
A large noise sounded behind him. Gregory lunged, slamming into the brute and landing them both in a mound of hay.

The click of the gun's trigger resonated through the barn, but no boom of gunpowder accompanied it.

Thank You, God.

“What's going on in here?” Kessler demanded from somewhere near the door—right about the time a fist landed on the side of Gregory's jaw.

Gregory attempted to pin down the man's arm before another fist flew toward his face.

“Do you want help, my lord?” Farnsworth's boots appeared near the man's head.

“Yes. Grab his—oof!”

An elbow landed square in the side of his cheek. The valet crouched and grabbed hold of the soldier's free arm, then pinned the flailing limb in the hay before doing likewise with the arm Gregory held. Still lying atop the beefy man, Gregory heaved in a breath and reached up to touch his throbbing cheek and jaw.

“Kessler, take up the pistol in the hay there and then fetch me that length of rope hanging on the wall opposite the door.” Danielle's English command carried through the suddenly silent barn.

For likely the first time in his life, Kessler rushed to do someone's bidding.

Danielle released the knife from her soldier's throat for the barest of moments, only to bring the blunt end of the hilt down against his temple. He uttered not a single cry before he slumped forward into the hay.

The soldier beneath Gregory struggled anew, attempting to buck Farnsworth out of the way with his forehead and twisting his legs to wrench Gregory off. “There's three of you cursed Englishmen, not just two.” He glanced at Danielle. “And she must be a traitor. I knew her behavior was suspect. Just you wait. I'm going to—”

Thunk!

Danielle had approached so quietly he'd not realized what she was about. She now stood over them, holding her knife as though ready to strike the man in the temple again if needed.

“We've got to leave, posthaste.” Serge worked with Kessler to tie his soldier—already lying unconscious—to one of the posts supporting the barn's roof.

Danielle took another rope from the wall before returning to bind the fat soldier's arms and feet. Then she turned her furious eyes on Gregory. “What were you thinking, Halston? Five more minutes and we'd have been rid of them.”

He rubbed his cheek, still tingling from the brute's thrashing. Disaster. Just as he should have predicted. Kessler had been correct. Why had he thought Danielle needed to be rescued? “I didn't know. I assumed—”

“We wouldn't have been rid of them, Dani.” Serge tightened the knot that secured his soldier to the post. “They had foul intentions and would not have been dissuaded.”

Her face flushed as she deftly bound the stocky man's hands behind his back. Then she shifted to tie his feet. “We would have been fine. But now 'tis only a matter of time before someone finds these deserters or they escape on their own and tell their story.”

Deserters? Gregory had thought—

“Not if we kill them.”

The barn fell quiet in the wake of Kessler's words.

Danielle heaved in a breath, her eyes meeting Gregory's over the unconscious soldier's body. “Are you prepared to end three men's lives because you barged in here?”

What did he say to something like that? Had he truly saved her, as Serge seemed to think? Or had he made another terrible mistake?

Then again, it hardly mattered now that the deed was done. Kessler was right that killing these men meant an easier journey to the coast. If they were left alive, all of France would soon know not just about the “two” men from the handbill, but about at least one more Englishman and a French brother and sister aiding them.

Passing through another checkpoint would be impossible.

Merely meeting someone on the road could turn into a deadly situation if their descriptions were made public knowledge.

He looked down at his hands, turning them palm up against his thighs. He need only give the word, and they would be dead. But could he permanently stain his hands with another's blood?

He forced his gaze back up to Danielle's. “Let them live.”

She jammed her knife back into the sheath at her ankle and stood in her usual brisk manner. “Serge, pack up the cart and ready Clyde. Farnsworth, I assume Westerfield is still hiding in the woods due to his condition?” The valet nodded. “Fetch him and then catch up with us. We're going to start across the field and keep close to the woods. If we make haste and travel through the night, we might evade spending the next ten years of our lives inside a dungeon.”

Gregory could only pray she was right, and that he hadn't just signed everyone over to death by a guillotine's blade.

Chapter Fourteen

“O
f all the insolent, ridiculous, foolhardy things for you to do.”

Gregory took a step away from Kessler, but that didn't stop the other man's steady stream of complaining as they trudged through a darkened field. Despite the hat smashed low over his head, the rain somehow pelted his face and slowly soaked its way into the untreated wool of his greatcoat.

Ahead of them, Danielle held one of their two lanterns, and Serge gripped the mule's lead as the beast staggered on. Westerfield slept in the cart while Farnsworth held the second lantern and walked along beside it, leaving Gregory and Kessler to follow behind in the darkness.

They'd been walking for what felt like hours, though he knew not how late it was. If the ache in his feet and weariness in his muscles were any indication, dawn should already be lightening the eastern sky.

But no hint of light flickered on the horizon, nor did Danielle show any sign of stopping. All night she'd led them on, through muddy open fields and along back trails that the mule could follow. They'd not once stepped foot onto a road, a wise plan considering the deserters might have already been found and gendarmes could be combing the countryside for them. He only hoped the ceaseless rain would be enough to wash away the tracks from the mule and cart.

“You gave us away by barging into that barn.” Kessler stopped and tilted his hat so the pooling water streamed to the ground in front of him.

“And I refuse to apologize for it.”

“They would have fared perfectly well without our interference.”

On this, Danielle and Kessler seemed to agree, but Serge was adamant that the deserters had more dastardly plans in store for Danielle—plans that she could not have evaded with only Serge to help. Gregory dropped his head, staring at the darkness that swallowed his feet. He'd merely wanted to protect the woman who'd done so much to help them, not get them all caught. “Right is right, Kessler. I can't change that because it happens to inconvenience you.”

“Inconvenience?” Suppressed rage tightened Kessler's voice. “You think this is an inconvenience? You might single-handedly land us all in a dungeon.”

Single-handedly?

Him?

The ingrate. “I got you
out
of the dungeon. I didn't put you in one.”

“And come morning, a swarm of soldiers and gendarmes will be searching the woods for us.”

“Perhaps if we all had listened to the lady in the first place, we wouldn't be in this situation.” Farnsworth's ever-reasonable voice rang out from where he tromped beside the wagon.

“Lady?” Kessler sneered. “What lady? I see only servants and peasants before me. Certainly no ladies.”

“That's enough,” Gregory warned.

Unfortunately the warning wasn't enough—one never was for Kessler. “Since when do you speak out of turn, Farnsworth? I heard not your lord ask your opinion.”

“Since you decided to attack Citizen Belanger.” Hardness rang from Farnsworth's usually quiet voice.

Kessler rubbed his face. “We've been in this forsaken country too long, Halston. Even the servants are forgetting their place.”

“Maybe I've realized my place isn't the one that Lord Halston gives me.” Farnsworth stopped walking and faced Kessler in the dim light of the lantern. “Maybe I think that France has the right of it. No lords. No ladies. Everyone equal. Everyone a citizen.”

Kessler stalked toward Farnsworth until his shadow blocked the light. A moment later, the unmistakable sound of flesh slapping flesh echoed across the field and Farnsworth's lantern crashed to the ground.

“Halt!” Danielle raced toward them, her own lantern swinging wildly. She set it on the back of the cart near where Westerfield blinked open his sleepy eyes. Gripping the knife that had been sheathed against her ankle, she wedged herself between Farnsworth and Kessler. “I care not whether you're a lord or some other esteemed member of society, Kessler. If you strike another person in my presence, you'll find a blade through your hand.”

“Listen to her.” Gregory grabbed the back of Kessler's collar and yanked him away from Danielle. She could handle herself with a blade, yes, but what manner of gentleman let his woman break up a fight while he looked on?

She is not your woman!
a voice inside his head all but screamed.
She can never be your woman.

But she could, if he held to her idea that all people were equal, that birth didn't place one person above another.

Kessler jerked away from him and straightened his ill-fitting greatcoat, a rather ludicrous action, since he stood soaked and weary in a forgotten field. “Don't tell me you hold to this foolishness, Halston. That you intend to start treating your valet as though he's your equal.”

Of course he didn't intend such a thing. The notion was ridiculous.

But then, if Farnsworth was his equal, so was Danielle. And that prospect opened an entirely new realm of possibilities.

“Well?” Kessler straightened his glove.

Gregory's heartbeat thudded in his ears. He didn't need the light of dawn to know all eyes riveted to him, or that his answer was of great interest to one person in particular. Did he believe Danielle's words? Did he ascribe to France's theory that the common person had value? To God's theory that
all
people had value?

He couldn't.

Yet he could. Was not Danielle more valuable than any blue-blooded debutante he'd ever met?

He wet his lips. “I don't sanction you striking my servant, Kessler. Nor do I like you threatening the woman who has sacrificed her own safety and that of her family to help us.”

He didn't need to look at Danielle to feel her disappointment in him. It rolled from her to him like waves from the sea to the beach. And why shouldn't it? Had he not taken her in his arms and kissed her as though he intended a future for them last night?

But he hadn't made her any promises, just that one mistake of kissing her.

Because certainly the kiss had been a mistake, had it not?

“You don't like me threatening a peasant,” Kessler sneered. “I should hardly be surprised seeing how two years ago you challenged me to a duel over a serving girl.”

“A serving girl?” Danielle looked at him as if she was about to pull her knife, though she didn't seem sure whose throat to hold it to, his or Kessler's. “Is that what all your incessant fighting has been about? A serving girl from two years past?”

So now she knew of his disastrous attempt to defend Suzanna's honor. Why was she upset about it? She of all people should be championing his efforts to protect a servant, not angry at him. Unless she thought he and Suzanna—

“I'll leave you lords to play your games without me.” Danielle's voice rose over the waning drizzle. “Dawn is almost upon us, and someone needs to walk ahead and scout a campsite so we can stay hidden until nightfall. Farnsworth, you're welcome to hold the lantern and walk ahead with Serge.”

Danielle's footsteps thudded against the muddy, sopping earth, though not even a lantern guided her now that Farnsworth had broken their spare.

He wasn't about to let her walk off alone while half the countryside searched for them. “Danielle, wait. I'll scout with you.”

But of course she didn't wait. If anything, she quickened her pace.

* * *

Danielle hastened across the field, moving as rapidly as she could toward the dim line of trees in the dusky gray dawn. Halston called after her, but she didn't stop or even look over her shoulder, no. She was done with him.

With them.

With this whole wretched business.

She smeared a tear across her cheek as the implications of Halston's answer to Kessler sank in. He didn't think Farnsworth his equal. Had all her lectures on people's innate value had such little effect on him? Did his eyes get soft when she spoke of France and citizenship only as some cruel joke?

She'd thought he'd been listening, if not to her, then at least to Serge and his Bible verses about equality in God's eyes.

She'd altered her opinion of him, had she not? She'd first thought him an arrogant, spiteful British spy, the kind of man to smile in satisfaction when he learned of Laurent's death at the hands of the British navy. But he hadn't been happy to learn of Laurent's death, and she no longer saw him as spiteful or a spy—though the arrogant part still held.

But evidently Halston's view of Farnsworth was no different than when he'd first entered France.

And if he still thought of Farnsworth as his underling, he certainly didn't view her as his equal, either.

But how had he seen some unnamed serving girl differently? In England, men of Halston's station weren't supposed to fight duels over serving girls.

Knowing he had done so should make her happy. At least at some point in the past, he'd thought a serving girl's honor important.

So why did her heart feel as though it would burst into a thousand jagged pieces?

Because she wasn't the serving girl he'd fought for? He'd started a duel at some point in his past, yet he didn't see her as his equal and even admitted such to Kessler.

Halston was no different than any other aristocrat—than any other man. He'd taken what he wanted from their kiss last night and then left her once he was finished.

The difference this time was her. She'd been willing to give him what he desired. A kiss in the night, an hour spent burrowed in his arms.

And now he was finished with her.

It shouldn't matter. None of this should matter. She'd known better than to get involved with Halston from the first.

But then she'd spent the next week and a half traveling with him, watching as he tirelessly fought for his brother's life, as he did everything in his power to move a band of four men across a country filled with people who wished them dead.

As he watched her when she sat by the fire skinning a rabbit or roasting a squirrel.

As he kissed her as if she was valuable to him.

Lies, the lot of them. She broke into the trees and kept striding forward. Gray was already lightening the sky, providing a dim illumination by which she picked out the path with the fewest brambles and greatest gaps between trees. If gendarmes combed these woods, they'd be found in an instant, but what other choice had she unless she abandoned the mule? Though Westerfield had improved, he was hardly hale enough to walk the distances she required of the others every day, and he'd likely suffer a setback after being exposed to today's rain.

“Danielle.”

A hand rested on her shoulder, and she jumped, then furiously swiped another tear off her face. It seemed as though the rain had finally stopped, so she hadn't even the respite of blaming the weather for the moisture on her cheek.

She turned to find Halston staring down at her. “What are you doing sneaking up on me in such a manner? You're going to get us all caught.”

“I don't want you walking alone.”

“I'm scouting. That's the point of a scout, one person goes ahead. Alone.”

A lopsided smile tilted Halston's mouth. “You didn't look as though you were scouting, just crashing through the forest.”

She glanced toward the field, but trees obscured the rest of their party from view. “Go back and leave me be.”

“I won't leave you on your own.”

“You will.”

“Danielle, look at me.”

“No. I'm not looking at you, I'm not talking to you, and I'm certainly not kissing you again.” She clamped her mouth shut the instant the words left her mouth. What was she saying? Did her wretchedly honest tongue insist on giving away her every thought?

Gregory gripped her shoulders with one hand and raised her chin with the other so she had no choice but to look into his misty blue-gray eyes. “Kissing me? Is that what this is about?”

“Of course not.” She attempted to jerk away, but she was too weary to fight in earnest and his grip proved strong enough to hold her.

“Danielle.”

“Don't say my name like that, all soft and compassionate. Like you...like you...care.”

“I do care.”

She fisted a hand in his coat. “People who care about each other don't steal kisses one night and then ignore the person they kissed the next day. They don't evade questions about each other, and they certainly don't—”

His mouth covered hers, the pressure of his lips cutting off her words while their breaths tangled hot and fast. She stilled beneath the onslaught. She had something important to tell him, had been right on the verge of explaining...

What?

And why had it mattered in the first place? Did anything matter except the feel of his arms around her and the pressure of his mouth on hers? Her hand that had been fisted in his coat loosened into a soft hold. He pulled her closer, the scents of damp wool and musky man surrounding her, the strength of Gregory Halston wrapping around her to form a protective barrier between this moment and the rest of forever.

But the rest of forever would come eventually. Most likely in the shape of a dungeon cell. The tasks of both caring for Westerfield and keeping these men out of prison now that they'd been discovered seemed impossible.

Almost as impossible as a future between her and Halston.

Which had been what she had been about to tell him before he'd kissed her. That he couldn't care about her. That there could never be anything more than friendship between them. No, not even friendship. They had a business arrangement. She got his party to the coast, and he paid her handsomely. Nothing but cold, hard business.

She wrenched herself away from his warmth, his lips still seeking hers for a fraction of a moment. “I just told you not to kiss me. Don't touch me. Don't kiss me. Don't do anything other than leave me alone.”

His eyes blazed. “Why? Was my kiss not good enough for your passionate French blood? Because unless I misread something, you enjoyed that.”