Bride for a Night(49)

And his bed.

“If she is harmed…”

“Thus far I am the only gentleman of her acquaintance that hasn’t offered her harm,” Jacques pointed out in silky tones, waving his hand toward the nearby path. “This way.”

Gabriel clenched his teeth, unable to deny the charge, damn the bastard.

Even when he had come to rescue his wife from the clutches of the evil French he had managed to insult her with his accusations. And why?

Because she stirred feelings inside him that were as incomprehensible as they were unwelcome?

Forcing himself to follow at the Frenchman’s side, he wrenched his tangled thoughts from his wife, concentrating on the dangers at hand.

“A charming home for a vicar,” he drawled.

“Oui.” A smile of bleak satisfaction curved Jacques’s mouth. “It once belonged to the gentleman who condemned my father to death. Ironic, is it not?”


“There is nothing ironic in countrymen slaughtering one another.”

“So speaks the pampered nobleman,” Jacques said and sneered. “You would not be so smug if you were forced to watch your children starving in the gutters.”

Gabriel arched a brow, deliberately allowing his gaze to skim the vast gardens and sprawling palace that surrounded them.

“Instead you drown your citizens in blood while you take comfort in the luxury you profess to detest. How many have died since your grand revolution?”

With the typical conceit of a zealot, the man shrugged aside the thousands of deaths suffered since the assault on the Bastille. Deaths that only continued beneath the rule of Napoleon with his insatiable lust for power.

“Freedom is not without cost.”

Gabriel snorted in disgust. “Is that what you tell your orphans?”

“They will understand that sacrifices were necessary when Napoleon is victorious.”

“More likely they will return to starving in the gutters when the Corsican monster is destroyed and his allies scurry away like the pathetic cowards they are.”

Gabriel enjoyed a stab of satisfaction as Jacques’s expression tightened, but with admirable control the Frenchman smoothed his features.

“Time will tell which of us is correct.” Altering his course, Jacques led Gabriel through a low archway. He paused to retrieve a lit torch from a bracket on the stone wall before he pulled open a door that led to a stone staircase cut deep into the ground. Behind them the French soldier held his gun at the ready, preventing Gabriel from any foolish hope of a swift escape. “Although it is questionable whether or not you will live long enough to enjoy France’s inevitable triumph,” Jacques continued in smug tones.

Gabriel refused to be goaded, instead distracting himself by memorizing the path through the narrow tunnels that had been chiseled beneath the palace.

“You might be an arrogant bastard who is willing to sacrifice his honor for a futile war, but not even you would be foolish enough to murder the Earl of Ashcombe,” he challenged.

“Who would know?” Jacques waved a hand to indicate the damp passageway. “I possess a convenient talent for making bodies disappear.”

Gabriel forced a stubborn smile, as his companion pushed open a heavy wooden door and waved him inside the cavernous room that had obviously been a wine cellar before being emptied of its shelves of bottles. Now there was nothing more than a few narrow cots and a meager washstand to fill the emptiness.

“You do not think I traveled here alone, do you?” he demanded, stepping into the room and turning to regard his captor with a nonchalance he could only hope would fool the Frenchman.