“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.”
“We’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.”
Oh, 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.
“Hurry up!” Alexandra called down to them from her perch on the coachman’s seat. “Stop twiddling you thumbs and get in. We haven’t much time.”
“Let me help you,” Ryan offered, taking hold of Andrew’s other arm and easing the load for Michael.
“Leave him,” William snapped. “He’ll only slow us down.”
“What?” Michael and Ryan exclaimed at once.
“You can’t be serious,” Michael added, not moving as much as an inch in spite of the fact that Bertrand would be upon them shortly. “We can’t just—”
He didn’t have a chance to finish before William’s large hands grabbed hold of Andrew’s jacket and snatched him out of Michael’s grasp, discarding him with a careless shove.
“Are you coming or what?” Alexandra yelled, her impatience quite audible in her voice.
“I’ll explain later,” William muttered as he caught Ryan by the arm and steered him closer to the carriage before shoving him inside. He then snapped his eyes back to Michael and nodded in Alexandra’s general direction. “Up you go.”
Michael wasn’t one to miss a cue, not when his life and those of others depended on it, yet he still couldn’t help but pause at the sight of Andrew who was writhing and groaning upon the ground. It was a damnable mess to be sure, but if William insisted on leaving his friend behind, he must have a good reason. With one final glance over his shoulder he leapt up onto the coachman’s step just as Alexandra whipped the horses into motion, barely escaping the tip of Bertrand’s sword. A loud curse filled the air behind them, forcing him to look back. Bertrand was already clambering aboard another carriage and shouting instructions. Would it really have been too much to hope for that the blasted man would just let them slip away?
“Is everyone accounted for?” Alexandra asked as he scrambled up beside her. She didn’t look at him, her eyes completely trained on the two horses as she steered them along at an increasingly haphazard pace. A shot sounded from behind them—too far away to make much difference, yet a solid reminder that they were being pursued.
“Everyone except Mr. Finch,” Michael told her. He watched as her jaw clenched and her hands tightened against the reins, whipping them a bit more roughly to mark her irritation.