Lady Alexandra's Excellent Adventure: A Summersby Tale (17 page)

“Oh for heaven’s sake, Michael, stop being so difficult. How many English spies do you suppose Bonaparte is housing? Even if it’s not Mr. Finch, should we just leave him here in the hands of the French, to torture while we live happily ever after? Hm?” She challenged him with her eyes, her hand on the doorknob while she waited for his response.

“I see your point,” he admitted.

“Good. Now let me see . . .” she opened the door onto a narrow stairwell. “My lord, it seems we are in luck.”

Alexandra beamed a smile in his direction that made him clutch at the wall for dear life. His legs were ready to give out beneath him. She was completely disarming as she stood there now with her big round eyes, imploring him to follow. Heaven help him—he would have followed her to hell and beyond in that instance.

“In answer to your other question, the dungeons tend to be below ground,” she said. “Shall we have a look?”

Muttering an oath, Michael couldn’t help but ask himself how this mad woman had managed to drag him along on this haphazard, wild goose chase, at the very core of the enemy’s lair in the first place. If this was what love did to a man, one had to wonder how the human race had ever survived, because this was plain and simple lunacy.

C
HAPTER
S
EVENTEEN

P
ierre Dupont was seated on the painfully uncomfortable chair his superior had issued him. Why somebody needed to remain outside the Englishman’s cell was beyond him—he was hardly about to make a run for it, and nobody would be mad enough to try and rescue him. Besides, the door was firmly locked with the key that dangled from his belt.

His duties pertaining to the prisoner were few. Occasionally, he would have to refill the man’s water jug, serve him his meal, or empty his chamber pot—the latter being the least appetizing of the three by far.

Well, at least the
sous sol
of the Tuileries Palace was comfortable compared to most. The floors were marble, the ceilings high and vaulted. Grand pillars surrounded by cherubs flanked the main stairway leading down to it and the cells were not only clean but also contained proper beds with sheets upon them.

Hell
.
The prisoner
s are
better off here than most of the Frenchmen I know are in their own homes
.

The sound of clicking footsteps approaching at a run caught his attention. He straightened his back and rose to his feet, his hand falling automatically to the hilt of his sword.

What the—?

Coming toward him, her hair in disarray, her eyes wide open in fear, and her bloodied hands pressing against her midsection, was a woman—the loveliest he’d ever seen.

“Aidez moi!
” she cried, rushing toward him. He felt momentarily stunned. “You must help me, I beg you.”

Pierre couldn’t help but be shocked. He wasn’t expecting a damsel in distress with a stab wound, no less, to be roaming about in that part of the palace. “
Madame,
what happened? Who did this to you?” he asked as he hurried to her aid.

“It was a lover’s quarrel.” Her voice was breathless as she clutched at his outstretched arm for support. “His wife . . . oh God . . . she saw us!”

The woman’s legs buckled beneath her, but Pierre managed to catch her in an awkward hold. The poor thing needed help, but how was he to . . .

Before he managed to complete that thought, something hard came crashing down over his head, his eyes rolled backward, and everything went dark.

Alexandra landed in a heap on the floor when the guard released her. “Well done,” she said, looking up at Michael. He was rubbing the fist he’d used to render the man unconscious. “I told you a bit of drama would serve to distract him.”

“So you did,” Michael conceded. “Do you have the key?”

With a big sigh and a shake of her head, she began fumbling about for the key, all the while muttering a string of oaths that were only occasionally interrupted by words to the effect of useless git and ungrateful oaf. Michael merely watched her in silent amusement, his arms crossed in front of him. If she would have looked up at him at that very moment, she would have seen his lips twitch.

“Here!” she finally snapped, thrusting a large iron key toward him. “See if it fits.”

Michael stooped to snatch up the key and then placed it in the lock. He turned it, the lock clicked, and the door swung easily open to reveal a large spacious room beyond it. “Mr. Finch?”

A man of medium height with straw colored hair and a full beard rose from a chair. A single candle flickered on top of a worm eaten table, sending puffs of smoke toward the ceiling. The man stepped toward Michael. “Yes, I’m Andrew Finch,” he said. “And who, may I ask, are you?”

“I’m Michael Ashford, Earl of Trenton, come to rescue you. “And this . . .” he gestured toward the doorway expecting to find Alexandra standing there, but there was nothing but empty space. “Alex?”

“Do you mind giving me a hand, or do you plan to stand about chatting while I do all the work?” an annoyed voice called from the hallway.

“Excuse me a moment,” Michael told Andrew as he popped his head back out the door. Alexandra was bent over, pulling frantically on one of the guard’s arms in an attempt to haul him along with her, but every time she stepped forward, her slippers slipped backward on the slippery marble floor. Michael tried desperately not to laugh at the sight of her walking in place, her face scrunched up in determination while the lax guard shifted only from side to side. It was like watching Sisyphus and his infamous rock played out in a cloud of lace and ribbons.

“Well, don’t just stand there grinning like a bloody idiot!” she fumed. “Help me move him into the cell.”

“Right,” Michael complied as he donned a serious frown. He gently pushed Alexandra aside and picked up the floppy guard, carrying him into the cell and laying him carefully on the floor. He righted himself before turning once again toward Andrew. “As I was saying, this is Lady Alexandra. You really owe her a great deal of gratitude, Mr. Finch. This whole rescue mission was her idea.”

“It appears I am in your debt, my lady.”

“Think nothing of it,” Alexandra said as she brushed his words aside with self-conscious embarrassment. “Now, put these clothes on so we can all walk out of here without raising too many alarms.” She began tugging at the guard’s jacket as both men bent to help her.

“Er . . . Lady Alexandra . . . are you all right? That’s an awful lot of blood you have there.” Andrew commented as he looked across at Alexandra with marked concern. He was in the middle of pulling off a shiny black hessian. The boot suddenly gave way, projecting Andrew backward onto his bottom.

Alexandra grinned. “Not to worry, Mr. Finch. It’s only tomato soup. We found a big bowl of it near the kitchen—on its way upstairs to fill the stomachs of the French, no doubt. Have you ever seen a treacherous bowl of soup before? It warms my heart to know that those French toads will be slurping away at the very thing that helped you escape. Unfortunately, my gown had no choice but to sacrifice itself and shall have to be deemed a casualty. It’s positively ruined!”

Andrew nodded as if in a daze, then turned to Michael. “Is she always like this?” he asked him curiously.

“No, not always,” he chuckled while he glanced in her direction. “Sometimes she can be quite pleasant.”

Alexandra apparently chose to ignore that last comment so Michael turned his attention back to the task at hand. They weren’t there to banter with one another. In fact, the faster they moved, the quicker they could get the hell out of there before someone happened to notice a missing guard and he dared not even consider what might happen to them then.

“Here,” Alexandra said, tossing the guard’s navy blue jacket to Andrew. “I’m not sure it will be a perfect fit, but it will have to do. I’ll step outside while you change.”

“W
e’re ready,” Michael told her when he and Andrew emerged from the cell a moment later, locking the door behind them.

“Very well.” She paused for a moment while she gave Andrew a quick once over, followed by a nod of approval. She then turned an assessing gaze on Michael. “May I have your jacket please?” she asked.

He must have followed her line of thought, for he didn’t question her. Instead, he merely shrugged out of his jacket and draped it over her shoulders. She was practically drowning in the heavy garment, but they simply had to cover up the suspicious stain on her dress. Without another word, they moved silently toward the same back staircase they’d used before and climbed all the way back up again.

Reaching the floor from which they had come, Alexandra eased the door open until she had a clear view of the hallway beyond. She could just make out the corner of the grand staircase leading from the salon de Paix to the foyer and the freedom that lay beyond it.

A couple of voices caught her attention and she stiffened. Coming toward them was none other than Bonaparte himself and his Grand Marshal, the distasteful Comte Bertrand.

She quietly held her breath and pulled the door shut. What if they decided to use this very staircase? How the hell was she going to explain their presence in it? That she was having a threesome with her husband and a soldier? Or that she’d enlisted them both to rid her dress of tomato soup? Both explanations were outrageous.

She could feel Michael breathing heavily behind her, his breath gently tickling her skin in a most annoying fashion—under the circumstances. She knew he had enough sense not to question her reasoning behind closing the door again, and silently prayed that Mr. Finch did too. Pressing her ear against the door, she strained to hear what was happening behind it. There was nothing that stood out—just muffled conversation as if Bonaparte and Bertrand had stopped right in front of their hiding place for a nice little chat.

Damn!

There was nothing to do but wait.

It was the longest five minutes of Alexandra’s life. In fact, she was positively sure that her hair must have turned gray by the time she heard Bonaparte’s and Bertrand’s voices receding.

She eased the door open again and looked about. There was nobody around. With a sigh of relief, she quickly stepped out from behind the door and held it open for Michael and Andrew to follow. Together, they hurried along the corridor toward the top of the grandiose staircase. Taking Michael’s arm and clutching his jacket against her as if she’d caught a chill, she started down the stairs.
“Chérie,”
she said to Michael. “Was it not the best Champagne you ever tasted?”

“Indeed, I believe it was, my dear,” Michael responded with a tilt of his head.

“And thank you,
Monsieur,
for retrieving my earring for me,” she continued, briefly touching Andrew’s arm in a sign of gratitude. “Heaven knows how I managed to drop the thing, but I do know that I would have been quite lost without your assistance.”

“It was a pleasure,
Madame
,” Andrew said as they swept past the guards and out into the cool night air.

“Oh, and the music,” Alexandra exclaimed as they waited for their carriage to pull up. “It was a wonderful selection, was it not? Really, we must remember to send our thanks. Don’t you agree?”

“Indeed, I do,” Michael said. “It would be very rude of us not to.”

O
h, he was so proud of her. She was born for this, he realized. She’d single-handedly pulled together a rescue mission at a moment’s notice and without hesitation. They weren’t out of the woods yet, that was true, but he had no doubt that they would be very soon. His heart tightened with pleasure at watching her carry on as if standing there in front of the Tuileries Palace with two agents from the British Foreign Office was the most natural thing in the world.

He knew she did not feel for him what he felt for her. Indeed, he very much sensed that she never would. Something about their conversation in the kitchen when she’d cut her feet had told him so—the way she’d described her mother’s passing and her father’s heartache. He sensed that she was terrified of feeling such grief—that she would push love away with all her might, rather than open herself up to inevitable pain.

It was heartbreaking, knowing that they would enter into marriage this way—he, hopelessly in love with her and she quite indifferent. Well, not indifferent perhaps. There was passion in her eyes when she looked at him, but she would never let her guard down and allow herself to love him, of that he was quite sure.

A carriage pulled up in front of them, just as a loud shout rang through the air, followed by another. Michael turned his head to see what all the commotion was about. He spotted Ryan and then he spotted William, both men hurrying toward them at an alarming pace.
What the devil?
A split second later, Bertrand emerged in the doorway, his arms frantically waving about. He seemed to be issuing orders of some sort, and then he heard the man holler at the top of his lungs
“Arrêtez-les!
Don’t let them get away!”

Bloody hell!

He sensed Alexandra move at his side and quickly turned to warn her, only to discover that she was three steps ahead of him. How she’d managed to clamber onto the coachman’s seat of the awaiting carriage and push the driver aside he couldn’t imagine, but what he did notice was that her skirt was hiked up over her knees. He watched in astonishment as she elbowed the helpless coachman in the face, upon which, he quickly fled.

“Don’t just stand there,” she said, looking very serious and determined. “Get everyone on board!”

Michael blinked as he fell back to reality, the rattling sound of swords being unsheathed coming closer. Without another moment’s hesitation he called for William and Ryan to hurry. They’d just reached the bottom of the steps when another shot rang out, shaking the air. It was Bertrand, his pistol still trained on them from no more than twenty paces away. Another shot rang out and Michael’s ears were filled with an agonized yell. He turned, searching for the source and found Andrew, his mouth gaping open and his eyes widening in terror. He wobbled a little before tilting sideways and Michael realized that he must have been shot.

They’d just managed to save the man, and now this? He mustn’t let him die. In one fluid motion, Michael had his arms around him, holding him upright as Ryan and William came up beside him. Behind them, his face bright red with anger, came Bertrand followed by a dozen soldiers.