My Lady's Dare. Gayle Wilson
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When Dare pulled back his arm, the hiss of escaping air and the gush of blood that followed told him this fight was at an end.
The dying man slumped against him, and the earl supported the body with his sword hand while he sought for the latch of the door behind him with his other. Just as he found it, a cry went up from the courtyard in front of the house where he was hiding.
He didn’t know how the French had found him. It made no difference now. What was important was getting out without being seen or heard by the soldiers in the street. He opened the door, making as little noise as possible, and stepped out, pulling the body of the dead man with him into the concealing darkness of the night.
Dare tried to execute his missions when no moon rode the night sky. During those expeditions, which put him within the very heart of the enemy’s strongholds, he needed every advantage he and nature could devise. But with the relentless manhunt now being carried out through the winding Parisian streets, he would need more of those advantages than ever before.
The earl eased the body he’d been supporting into the shadows cast by the wide eves and pulled the door closed behind him. Then he leaned back against it as, breathing suspended, he strained to follow by sound alone the progress of the search.
The shouted commands and the noise of the milling horses all seemed to be coming from the crooked lanes that ran in front of the house. He could hear no movement here along the river, except for the occasional lap of water against one of the rotting piers that serviced the shops and houses that had been built along this embankment.
Using his teeth, the earl pulled the thin leather glove off his left hand and put his bare fingers against the wound on his neck. The cut had begun to burn, and he found it was bleeding more profusely than he would have liked, the blood warm and thick against the chill of his trembling fingertips.
He took his hand away, holding it by force of habit in front of him. The Stygian blackness of the alleyway, an odoriferous cobblestoned ribbon which followed the left bank of the Seine, prevented him from being able to see either blood or fingers.
Wiping the moisture on his cloak, Dare pulled the glove back on, again using his teeth to finish the job. He was still listening to the sounds of the hunt, ready to spring to action if his pursuers approached. He tugged his cravat higher around his throat, hoping it would catch the blood.
Eventually the searchers would bring torches to try to find any trace of their prey as the hunt fanned out along the riverbank. He couldn’t afford to leave a tell-tale trail of blood by which they could track him. Although he himself might be back in England by the time those droplets were discovered, the man in whose house he would take shelter tonight would not be.
And the Earl of Dare had a hard-earned reputation for protecting his associates. Anyone who didn’t wouldn’t last long in this business. The line of the earl’s mouth slanted suddenly. Despite his predicament, he was amused by that thought. Actually, no one lasted long in his business, no matter the care he took.
He had certainly been pushing his luck tonight. Of course, that was something he had always done. His brother Ian accused him of needing the thrill this dangerous game gave him. The narrow escapes. The occasional pursuit. Perhaps his brother was right, he admitted, his lips tilting again. After all, Ian usually was. Especially about his siblings.
Dare stepped away from the shadows of the building, moving with the graceful stealth of a hunting cat, the hilt of his sword still clutched in his hand. He carried a loaded pistol as well, but it was the blade that had saved his life tonight. As it had on more than one occasion. The sound of a shot in a Parisian street would undoubtedly be investigated by the authorities, but the whisper of a rapier, as quick and deadly as an adder’s strike, had never given away his location.
Once he had put some distance between himself and the yard of the house where he had left the dead man, the earl began to hurry. He moved almost soundlessly, his booted feet running lightly over the rough and broken stones. His eyes examined every patch of darkness that loomed ahead, but gradually the noise of the soldiers faded away behind him.
It wouldn’t be long before they found the body of the man he had killed, however. And when they did, he had no doubt that they would redouble their efforts. If only his famous luck would hold a little longer, he thought, recognizing that he was nearing his destination. Then the French would again be disappointed in their efforts to capture him.
Eventually, the earl slipped into a low stone doorway, ducking his head to accommodate his height to an entrance that had been constructed three centuries before. This area was one of the oldest in the city, the buildings still partially enclosed by the medieval wall.
Even without light, it was obvious he was in the right place. The scent in the low room was so strong it was almost taste. Dare stood a moment, his nose raised like a hound’s, breathing in the thick air, richly pungent with hops and malt.
“Running late are you, my lord?” a voice asked. The accent was English, broadened by the speaker’s obvious Yorkshire heritage. “I was beginning to get worried.”
“Someone tried to slice my gullet,” Dare explained, closing the heavy door by which he had just entered and throwing the iron bolt across it. “I was forced to…dissuade him.”
As soon as the lock shot home, he heard the sound of a flint, and the pale, wavering thread of fire it had produced gradually became a glow. Then slowly, out of the shadows beside the strengthening light, a face, Mephistophelianlike, floated into view.
Unlike the voice that had preceded them, its features were nondescript, as easily French or Italian as British: dark eyes, an undistinguished jut of nose, a wide, generous mouth, arranged in a grin. And all of them surmounted by mouse-brown hair, which had been tied back in a neat queue.
“Oh, you ain’t gone and bloodied your linen, have you, my lord?” the earl’s valet asked plaintively. “You’ve no idea what a time I have with bloodstains. And you would be wearing one of our new cravats.”
“I’ve almost been beheaded, Ned, and all you can worry about is the state of my cravat,” the earl said, laughing. He slipped the woolen cloak off his shoulders and threw it carelessly over a convenient cask.
“It’s not just the linen that’s the problem,” Ned Harper said. “It’s the lace as well. Hard to come by now that Nappy’s got the continent tied up.”
“Perhaps we might shop for a yard or two before we leave Paris,” Dare suggested politely.
He crossed the room to where his valet was standing and took the brimming mug held out to him. The earl raised the cup and drank down its contents in one long quaff, then lowered it to look into his servant’s eyes.
“He wasn’t there,” Dare said softly, and watched the laughter fade from Ned Harper’s face.
“Damn,” the smaller man said feelingly.
“Bloody right,” agreed the earl. “He wasn’t there, and the gendarmes were.”
There was a long silence as his valet considered the information. “Someone told them you were coming.”
“There was only one man who knew that.”
“He’d never talk,” Harper declared with conviction.
“Anyone can be made to talk,” the earl said softly. “There are things which may be done to a man….” The words faded, and again the Earl of Dare’s eyes met those of his friend. “Anyone can be made to talk,” he finished simply.
Harper nodded, his gaze still locked on the earl’s classically handsome face. The grin with which he had greeted his master was gone. Perhaps he was thinking, as Dare was, of the terrible things that were done to prisoners in France today. The same unspeakable tortures that had once, a long time ago, been carried out in the bowels of England’s own dungeons.
“Then…we have to get him out,” Harper said. “Out of Paris. Out of the country.”
“Indeed,” the earl said, his eyes, made