Ryan's Bride (2 page)

Angele made ready. She had the act down to a fine art and knew exactly how to snatch the reticule without knocking her victim down. She did not want to hurt anyone and sometimes even apologized for robbing them.

The woman was upon her. Angele leaped forward to grab the small lacework bag, then took off running as the woman screamed in outrage.

Ryan saw the scruffy young boy just as he leaped from the hedging. It was obvious what he was up to, but Ryan was too far away to do anything except yell.

Ryan reached the woman, who stopped screaming when he clutched her shoulders and quickly asked if she were hurt.

She was shaken and angry but said no harm was done. He ordered Corbett, catching up to him, to stay with her. “I’m going after him.”

“It’s no use,” the woman called as he took off. “He’s headed for the catacombs. You’ll never find him down there.”

Ryan had heard about the city’s network of tunnels belowground. Once the site of Roman stone quarries, they were now haven for the homeless…as well as the thieves and scalawags of Paris. But he had never been the sort to give up, and kept on going, undaunted.

He could see the boy in the distance, rounding the corner of the Place Denfert-Rochereau. He was not very tall and dressed in rags. He was also holding his tattered knit cap on his head as though it was his most prized possession. Then he reached the entrance to the catacombs and disappeared inside.

Ryan was right behind but skidded to a stop as two burly-looking men stepped from the shadows to block his way. One held a knife and the other, a big stick.

Ryan’s wild streak had landed him in the middle of a few brawls in the past. He knew how to fight, and, with no time to waste, reacted quickly. A chopping blow to the throat of the one holding the knife made him drop the weapon and fall to his knees gasping for breath. Snatching the stick from the other, Ryan rendered a blow across his chest that sent him also crumpling to the ground.

The fight gone out of them, the men began scrambling toward the bushes and escape, but Ryan let them go as he plunged into the catacombs.

He could hear the boy running in the distance and cursed to think he might lose him. There were probably tunnels going in every direction, and if he weren’t careful, he could wind up lost in the bowels of the earth. But the boy was probably as familiar with the catacombs as the rats that skittered across his feet.

Finally, Ryan knew he had to turn back. He was running in pitch darkness, bumping into rock walls as the path twisted and turned.

Then he heard a splashing sound and a yelp. Rushing ahead, he nearly stumbled over the boy, who had slipped and fallen in the slimy water. “I’ve got you, damn you.” He groped for, and found, the nape of his neck and jerked him to his feet. “You’re coming with me, and you better not give me any trouble.”

Angele was not about to surrender. She swung at the man holding her and connected her fist to his jaw, but the blow was glancing. He easily caught her arm to pin it behind her back with a painful twist. She bit her lip against the pain as he began shoving her along.

“I ought to wring your scrawny neck,” Ryan muttered as he headed for the light in the distance. “You’ve made me good and late, damn you. And I’ll have to throw these clothes away. They’re ruined.”

Angele did not speak. She was biding her time. Her arm was hurting terribly because of the way he was holding her, but she was not about to give him the satisfaction of knowing it. As for his clothes, it served him right. He should have to sleep in the catacombs and go days without eating, and then he would know what true misery was.

Once they stepped outside, she came alive. Catching him off guard, she tore from his grasp and bolted for the shrubs. But Ryan was quick and sprang after her. They both stumbled and fell to the ground in a heap. “You just won’t learn, will you? I’ve a mind to—”

Ryan froze. He had rolled on top to grasp the front of the boy’s shirt to give him a sound shake to set his teeth rattling, only it was not a boy’s chest he felt. His hands were closed about her
breasts
—small but firm breasts that had been concealed under bulky clothing.

He was holding a woman.

His gaze crept upward. Her cap had fallen off, and when she gave her long, thick mane of coal-black hair an arrogant toss, he was suddenly, strangely, reminded of the same spunk he had seen in wild, untamed colts. No matter she was no longer free. Her spirit was yet unbridled.

She glared up at him with eyes the color of warm cognac, aflame with her rage. Her coat had fallen open, and her bosom was heaving. His palms rested against her nipples, and despite the bizarre circumstances, Ryan felt himself becoming aroused.

To avoid embarrassment, he rolled to one side but slid his hands down, grasping her waist to keep her from getting away. “Why, you’re nothing but a girl. What the hell are you doing robbing old ladies?”

“I was hungry,” she said in French. “Something you would never understand.” She gave her hair another insolent toss, then nodded to the stolen reticule on the ground nearby. “I haven’t opened it. Take it and let me go.”

She was not pleading. Ryan sensed it was not her nature to do so. That was probably what had driven her to steal rather than beg like other paupers—pride, as well as stubbornness.

“And if I do, what then? Will you keep on robbing old ladies?”

Her laugh was bitter. “Which do you prefer—that I steal a few francs or starve to death? But maybe you think I should walk the streets instead.”

It was Ryan’s turn to laugh. “From what I felt, I think you’re more suitable for a rich man’s courtesan.”

“Like you?” She eyed him with contempt. She could see he was well-to-do despite his rumpled appearance and smelly clothes. “What I am or what I become is no concern of yours. Now let me go.”

“Why are you dressed as a boy?” he asked in the French he knew so well—which was fortunate, he thought, since the girl clearly would know no English.

“You think I could survive as a woman? Living in the catacombs? The streets? I wouldn’t last a day. Bad things happen to homeless women. Now will you take your hands off me?” She wriggled in his grasp.

Ryan wondered what could have driven a young woman to become a thief and live among the dregs of humanity. Despite her dirt-streaked face, he could tell she would be quite pretty if she were cleaned up. He made his voice gentle. “Why do you live this way?”

She looked at him as though he were daft. “I told you—because I don’t want to starve. So I live as a man and steal to survive.”

“Don’t you have family?”

“No. But that is none of your business.”

“But surely—”

She gritted her teeth and clenched her fists. “You wouldn’t understand anything about me or my kind. And if you don’t let me go, I’ll be sent to prison, and I’d rather die.”

He saw a glimmer of tears in her eyes but also noted how she bit down on her lip—hard—to hold them back.

A shrill whistle cut into the silence that hung between them.

A gendarme was running toward them. Ryan found himself wishing he had longer to think about whether he should let her go.

“I will take over now,” the gendarme said when he reached them. “It’s not often we’re able to catch these wily bastards.”

The gendarme’s brows lifted as he realized it was a woman in Ryan’s grasp but surprise quickly turned to a scowl. “A woman thief. It always disgusts me.” Grabbing her arm, he jerked her roughly to her feet.

“I don’t think it’s necessary to be so rough with her,” Ryan said as he stood.

He yanked Angele’s wrists behind her back and tied them with a thin rope that had been looped around his belt. “If these thieves want to pretend they’re men, then that’s how they’ll be treated.”

The gendarme spotted the reticule on the ground and bent to pick it up. Then, grasping Angele’s arm tightly, he steered her toward the street.

Ryan kept up with them. “Where will you take her?”

Angele turned to look at him coldly. “What do you care?”

The gendarme gave her a sharp smack on the back of her head. “Be quiet. People are in church. They don’t want to hear the likes of gutter trash like you.” Curtly, he told Ryan, “Jail. For a long, long time. She won’t get mercy because she’s a woman, believe me.”

Rounding the corner to the Place Denfert-Rochereau, Corbett came running to meet them, then slowed, wide-eyed, to see the angry-faced young woman, her hands tied behind her back. “You…you mean the thief was actually a woman?”

Ryan stared after the gendarme and the girl as they kept on going. “Yes,” he said quietly, sadly, “I’m afraid so.”

He watched them till they were out of sight, needled to wonder why he felt so deeply moved.

Perhaps it was the spirit mirrored in her eyes.

And the strange, smoldering desire he felt to try to tame it.

Chapter Two

Angele fought to keep track of time, but it was difficult. She could not distinguish night from day, because there were no windows. The only light came through the small square in the door when one of the guards walked by holding a lantern.

Twice a day a bowl of thick, sour-smelling gruel was pushed through the opening. But since the food was always the same, she could not tell the difference between morning and evening meals.

Once a day a guard would briefly open the door to exchange buckets of water for drinking and personal needs, but that, too, didn’t occur on any kind of schedule.

At first, she had tried to talk to the guards. She wanted to know when she would go before a judge, and she asked what day it was…what time it was. But no one ever answered.

The day she was arrested, she had been puzzled when she was not taken to the central jail in Paris. Instead, she was led along streets and alleys and finally down steps to a dark, narrow hall lined with cells.

Sometimes she could hear the other prisoners, and they all sounded like women. Maybe that meant the city jail was full of men, and the women were kept elsewhere. But then she did not know about such things as jails and prisons and wouldn’t be learning now if not for the meddling stranger.

Thinking about him made her stomach churn with fury.

Why had he been so determined to catch her? Most people would have minded their own business rather than chance entering the catacombs. He had obviously fought off Bruno, and Felix, too, which was quite a feat. She had passed them on her way in and called out that someone was after her. They had said to keep on running, that they would take care of it.

She had noticed the stranger spoke French with a foreign accent. American, probably. If she had not fallen, she would have escaped. And he would have eventually got turned around and lost and never found his way out.

And it would have served him right, too, she thought with a fresh wave of anger. Thanks to him, she might be sent to prison for years and be an old woman when she got out.

“Damn him,” she whispered in the stillness. “And damn Uncle Henry all the way to hell.”

Uncle Henry.

The name rolled like hot bile over her tongue.

He was her father’s brother and the reason that her life—her whole world—had been ripped to pieces. If not for him, her father would still be alive, for he’d had him accused and convicted of a crime he did not commit.

Stripped of everything he owned, the shame and humiliation had driven her father to take his own life, and she and her mother were left alone and poverty-stricken.

The reason Henry Mooring hated his brother Cecil and wanted to destroy him was quite clear. In the past, Henry had caused their father much grief with his gambling and drinking, which resulted in his being disinherited. Cecil was bequeathed everything. He offered to share with Henry, but Henry was furious and said he didn’t want his charity, vowing revenge. It had been a long time coming, but when it did, Cecil never had a chance against Henry’s carefully planned scheme.

But Henry hadn’t stopped with taking over the family property and all the wealth and position that went with it. He also wanted Angele and said it did not matter that she was his niece. When she rebuked him, he had brutally raped her and vowed if she did not marry him he would see her in prison, just like her father.

When her mother found out about it, they had fled England and gone to France, her mother’s native country. There they used her mother’s maiden name of Benet, because they learned word had spread across the Channel that Henry Mooring was offering a huge reward for their return. They were forced to hide, but it was not long before her mother died without warning in her sleep. Angele suspected she had just grieved herself to death.

So Angele was left alone to fend for herself, which was not easy after the way she had been raised. Surrounded by maids, she’d never had to do a thing for herself and spent her time riding the horses she adored over the countryside she loved.

But her mother had also seen to it that she learned everything a well-bred young lady should know. As a result, Angele was just as comfortable among nobility and royalty as she was with the groomsmen who tended the horses and the gardeners who cared for the estate’s lush gardens.

It had been a happy life, and though Angele was in no hurry to marry, she enjoyed the attention of would-be suitors. One day, when the time was right, she intended to take a husband and have children. She was confident of continuing the lifestyle she was accustomed to, never dreaming what fate so cruelly held in store. The thought of winding up orphaned, homeless, and starving was inconceivable.