Chapter Thirteen

 

When the trap door gave way beneath her, Emmanuelle had the strange initial thought this was what it must feel like to be served a rough shave. The rope strafed her throat and snapped her jaw shut. Involuntarily, she kicked her feet and struggled against her own weight to gasp a breath.

Yet, as desperate as this instant was, she could not ignore any single shout from the crowd. Cruel pleas for her slow death echoed in her skull. An angry curse stabbed at her heart. A glob of warm spittle landed the corner of her eye.

She deserved it all. No, I do not!

But then, everything changed.

Her throat suddenly expanded. She gulped in a redeeming breath of air. Her body fell. Her left heel hit the wooden framework. She toppled forward. Before she could catch herself and tumble to the ground, she was once again airborne.

A strong arm clamped about her waist. She was thrown like a sack of market flour across a horse’s withers. The stallion reared on his hind legs, shuffling Emmanuelle down and against the rider’s thighs.

“Out of the way!” her rescuer yelled, and the astonished crowd parted.

The horse reached a gallop within seconds. Muskets snapped in the air behind them. Something tugged at her bare foot. A stranger’s hand. The horseman who had stolen her from death slashed his sword across the grasping hand. She was free again.

Free. But why? Who would rescue her from execution? Who would care? Unless there was an ulterior motive. She had her enemies. So many, surely they were countless.

The Brotherhood will pay dearly to know I have spoken with you.

Was this a daring rescue just so she might be tortured in a manner the Brotherhood deemed fitting?

The horse’s thumping pace pounded in her chest. The rope, still hanging about her neck, swung up and thwapped her on the cheek.

“Release me,” she managed.

Cold steel slipped over her bound wrists. The binding rope slipped away. To steady her balance she gripped the horse’s mane. As soon as she could blend into her surroundings she would jump and run. But as long as she was moving swiftly away from the angry crowd, she would, wisely, remain.

The horse suddenly veered right and trotted down a narrow street. Her rescuer dismounted smoothly as they came to a stop.

Emmanuelle hadn’t time to register what was happening. She slid off and gripped the rope hanging heavily upon her chest. The fibers on the end were serrated and burnt. From a musket ball?

Different hands grabbed her by the shoulders and shoved her against a wall. She connected so hard her jaw clacked. A hard male body enveloped her, circling her shaking limbs and drawing her into a deep shelter of safety.

“You are safe,” the second man whispered. “Blessed be. Safe.”

He hugged her so desperately, she surrendered to the moment and allowed her body to sink into the sweet oblivion of rescue. This is how dreams felt. Encompassing and sure. Breathless and stinging the eyes. She sniffed a teardrop and returned the embrace when the man spoke again, not to her.

“You got her.”

“Could not have timed the whole incident better,” said the rider. “You are an expert aim, my friend Athos.”

Pushing from the ridiculously tempting embrace, Emmanuelle blinked and stared hard through the flash of sun glinting off an overhead cooper’s sign. The two men’s faces blurred into form as she adjusted to the brilliant light. “You! And...you?”

Her accuser and her interrogator. Her two-faced captor had rescued her? And had, just now, clung to her as if he had lost something of value.

“No time for a reunion,” the one she knew as Lieutenant d’Artagnan said as he swung back onto his mount. “The two of you must flee at once. Have you horses?” he asked Athos.

“Waiting at the stable at the Porte du Temple.”

“A bit far.”

“Yes, but it will be the last gate the guards check. We can be there and gone if we bustle.”

“We?” Emmanuelle lifted the rope from her shoulders and peeled it over her head. She shook the noose at him. “We are not a we. You promised to help me! And instead I was hang—”

An admonishing finger halted her words. “Almost hanged,” Athos corrected.

What game did he play? To bring her to the Louvre and abandon her to fate, then to allow the rope to burn her flesh before he decided to perform a daring rescue? The man was toying with her!

“I will go nowhere with you,” she ground out.

“A grateful wench, she is.”

Emmanuelle cast a glare at D’Artagnan.

He tipped his hat, fastening a cavalier smile to her. “Hand me that rope. Mustn’t leave it lying about, marking your trail.” He tucked the noose under his tunic, and heeled his horse onward. “I hope you are right, Athos. I sincerely hope you are right about this woman. It would be a pity—”

“Don’t say it,” Athos growled. He still held Emmanuelle firmly pinned to the wall. “She will prove my guesses truth. Or she will die by my own blade. Merci, D’Artagnan.” He nodded to the retreating musketeer.

“All for one!” the lieutenant called, then picked up to a trot.

Athos turned to Emmanuelle, his voice urgent as he spoke. “There is no time to discuss our daring little rescue, or the fact I was not able to get to you sooner. You have a choice.”

“Do I really?” A fine position he was in to offer her a choice.

“You’ve always a choice, mademoiselle. What you do with such a privilege will see either your redemption or your downfall.”

In an attempt to keep from punching him—or worse, hugging him—she slapped her arms across her chest. “Very well. What are the options?”

“You come with me and confess all. I help prove your innocence—”

“Now you believe me innocent?”

He did not answer her. “Or, you remain here waiting for the guards and risk a second dance with the hangman.”

“What makes you believe I won’t fare as well, or better, on my own?”

“So that is your choice? Fine.”

He released her with a rough push away from her shoulders. She felt the hard brick marry to her bones in a way that recalled a dark, cold grave. She had been so close. Hell, she would have gotten exactly as la Belle Dame sans Merci deserved. Now she had been granted a reprieve, she could certainly fare on her own.

But the mere fact that the musketeer thought her innocent—he believed, or he would not have rescued her—worked against her angry heart. She was not innocent. No one had ever given her the opportunity to be innocent. But how desperately she wanted to be!

And this man had offered her that option.

Was it yet another ploy? She did not like to be toyed with. Michel had cast her as the object of sport far too often.

But that hug. Athos had been genuinely relieved. No man could fake such emotion. Could he?

She rubbed her arms briskly. Her wrists burned from the rope; a few swallows lessened the ache in her throat.

He strode away from her, his silhouette growing smaller as the street narrowed to open onto another passage. She had no idea where they were, nor how they stood in relation to the place de Grève, though the angry crowd could yet be heard in the distance.

Sucking in her lower lip, she vacillated between the two choices. Freedom was the most desired. But which offered the wisest path? On her own she would always be running. Attached to this man, this musketeer, she might never know his true alliances...until it was too late.

Why did you not release?

Blessed be. Safe.

He cared. He clearly did not want to. But he did.

“Wait!” She took off at a sprint after him. He did not turn around, but he did stretch back his gloved hand. She gripped it and he dashed into a run.

“I don’t trust you,” she gasped as they turned into another passage.

“Trust is a cruel device,” he returned.

Very well. She liked to know exactly how things stood. The man likely despised her. Which he rightly should.

And she despised him for the rope burns about her neck. But at the moment, he was the one with the plan. So she would stick to him for a while, see what came next.

If he proved a true enemy, as she feared, she would find a way to overcome him and escape.

* * *

“There are horses at the stables ahead.” Athos strode swiftly onward.

Emmanuelle followed, gasping from exertion. He did not suspect she would flee him. Though he could feel her trepidation vibrate through the air between them in tangible waves.

“Why?” she asked from behind him.

He knew exactly what she was asking. “The marquis is alive.”

“I knew that.”

“You would have preferred to hang than to prove it?”

“The punishment was deserving.”

He was surprised she admitted such. He stopped, turning to bring her to a halt with his splayed hands. No time for argument. But, as well, now was no time for lies.

“Answer me this. Would la Belle Dame sans Merci have hanged had I not interfered today?” He wanted the truth, once and for all.

She regarded him with a cool eye. Tangles of raven curls tumbled down her shoulder. Too luscious for her dark nature. “Yes. I have already confessed to that.” She pushed past him and entered the dark coolness of the stables.

Had he really wanted her to confirm that? Sometimes delusion was a better thing.

She tugged at her chemise to bunch at her waist, which exposed her legs to under her knees. Not self-conscious, merely assuming a tight silhouette for ease of movement. “What are your plans for me now?” she asked.

“Prove the marquis is alive.”

“You say you know he is alive, yet have no proof?”

“We need the man himself. Anything less will not serve the king’s fickle alliances. Once in hand, I shall see him confess to his crimes.”

“And then see me hang for la Belle Dame sans Merci’s crimes against the nobles?”

Athos tore his gaze from the luscious curves swelling from the bodice of Emmanuelle’s chemise. He’d wanted to caress her breasts before, but now…

“Musketeer?”

“Huh?” He cleared his throat. “Ah. You promised to tell me why. There must be good reason for a woman—”

“To take up a cause which would make her a criminal? To know exactly the consequences of her actions and not show remorse?”

The woman was harder than he could have ever imagined. He watched as she skillfully saddled the horse he pointed out to her, her movements precise, not a single wasted motion. Determination held her jaw tight.

During that brief moment he’d held her after D’Artagnan let her down from the horse, Athos had exposed the raw, open core of his soul. The iron fetters had melted away. So true that one moment.

Had she felt the same?

And now, the strange compulsion to leap forward and kiss away the tension from her face, to draw out the fear and replace it with comfort, captured him. Could she know he only wanted to keep her safe?

Dare he reveal so much of himself?

Never.

Fumbling with the hilt of his rapier, he scanned the ground at his feet. Damn, but the woman was impossible to disregard. Like all dangerous women, she used her beauty to an advantage. As she had when she’d allowed him to follow her into the alleyway for an illicit coupling.

Hell, he had wanted her as much as she had wanted him. And she had wanted him, eh? For what other reason would a woman lure a man into such a situation without then demanding reparation, coin, or drink?

He hadn’t thought of it that way before. She had chosen him.

“What?”

He shook his head. “Hmm?”

“You are staring, monsieur.”

“Thinking.”

“I see. A thinking man is a dangerous man, indeed.”

She would laugh at his foolish thoughts. Emmanuelle Vazet was a hard woman. Her exterior was too steeled to attempt to penetrate with a commodity so precious as his heart.

So he would keep to business.

“I suspect the marquis has fled Paris. Perhaps to Marle for supplies. We will look there first.”

“I will not.”

“You will.” He gripped her wrist right over the brand. The raised flesh taunted him with visions of his past indiscretions. “You must consider yourself my prisoner until the marquis is found.”

“I cannot— I mean, I must go home…to…check on things.”

He shook his head. “That is the first place the guards will search.”

“You are the only one who knows where I live.” A heavy sigh softened the tension stretching her jaw. “And it is on the way to Marle, as you well know. It won’t take long. I simply want to check on my uncle and cousin.”

“You tell me true?”

She turned her dark, glittering eyes on him. “Firmin worries when I am gone. And when last he and Jeanne saw me, I was being escorted away by a royal guardsman. Come, Monsieur Athos, I can hardly be on the run with a king’s musketeer in my pocket.”

He looked at his tunic, rubbed his thumb over the silver lace, which shaped a fleury cross on his chest. “Two days ago I had plans to muster out of the Blacks.”

“You did not?”

“This final mission called my name.”

“To capture a dangerous woman and watch her swing from the gallows.”

“No, it was—”

“I know your sort, monsieur. As I have said before, I represent the woman from your past who dared seduce you and made you love her.”

Athos studied the ground.

She left you with a broken heart.” Emmanuelle guided the horse from the stall and led it past him.

“She did not break my heart,” he said firmly, resolute. “She annihilated it.”

Emmanuelle turned. He could not see her expression in the darkness. He did not want to see it. He had pressed a precious sliver of his heart to the enemy’s ironclad exterior.

What was it about this woman he could not simply walk away from?

“Let’s be off,” she said to him. “I will take the lead.”

He mounted and heeled his horse to parallel hers. As he passed her up, he thrust back his shoulders and said, “I don’t think so. I will lead.”

“This is not going to work—”

“I rescued you, woman!”

“For a purpose I have yet to determine. Is it that you want to lead me about by a tether? Am I now indebted to you?” Her horse reared on its hind legs in mimic of its rider’s frustration.

With a swift move, Athos dismounted and strode over in front of her. She glared down at him. “Get off,” he commanded.

With a shrug she swung a leg over, gripping the chemise to ensure discretion, and slid off.

Athos stabbed a finger into her shoulder. “I could bring you in. Right now.”

She finessed a smirk. “Try me, musketeer.”

He saw her move for her hip. No sword there. Nor had she the fancy little crossbow. The jailer at the Louvre had most likely claimed that prize. He would see to severely remanding Franck. Meanwhile, this blazing beauty had been stripped of her power.

“I don’t want to fight you,” he said. “But this struggle for control must end.”

“Why? So you can feel superior?” she challenged. “Is it not enough I accede to your keeping me under thumb? I am your prisoner, but I will not be your slave.”

Her knee connected with his thigh. Thankful she was off the mark, he used the pain, buckling forward, and butting his forehead into her chest. He felt her hand at his hip, and gripped her fingers, crushing them over the hilt of his rapier.

The horses whinnied and backed off as he spun, bringing her around. When she hit the ground, she rolled and righted herself. Slightly crouched, she stood on guard like a wild animal ready to strike. The horses stomped behind her. She circled, a trapped wildcat. A tangle-haired feline.

“Why is it every time the two of us meet it always ends in fighting?” he asked, exasperated.

She straightened, gifting him with proud shoulders and a fierce determination. “Or swiving. Come, musketeer, pin me against the wall and take your pleasure. If you can.”

He waved his hand through the air, dismissing her lewd challenge. “I prefer women. You are not like any woman I have ever met.”

“What is that supposed to mean?”

“You are...I don’t know…not normal. You are like a wounded animal, cornered. Who did this to you?”

He approached, surprised she did not retreat. The heat of her body permeated his chilled bones, though it was he who wore the cloak and gloves, and she but a thin shift.

“You are like a fortress, mademoiselle. Yet, you’ve the agility of a cat and the prowess of a predator stalking prey. I have to wonder how you came to be thus. No woman is born so hard.”

The curve of her left brow arched.

He unclasped his cape and swung it from his shoulders. He shoved it at her, then turned to claim his mount. “It is a long ride to Ribécourt, you will need that to stay warm.”

“So that is it? You are taking control?”

He mounted the rented gelding, twisting the reins about his gloved hand, and looked into the steeliest pair of eyes he had ever seen on a woman. “Would you grant me the lead if I ask nicely?”

With a lift of her chin, she considered his proposal. Then, the slightest movement of her head, from side to side.

“Then I presume I shall follow you. Let it never be said I expect repayment of a kindness served. Heaven forbid.”

“Oh, you will have your repayment,” she muttered as she swung the cloak around her shoulders and approached the waiting bay with long strides. “Soon enough you will have the joy of watching my lifeless body dangle from the gallows. I know very well that finding the marquis alive will erase but a small portion of the crimes of which I have been accused.”

Athos had no answer for that.

She swung onto the saddle in a move of grace and spare motion. Cloaked in gray wool and crowned in glittering black tresses, her face shone as she glanced over at him. She held his gaze for long moments. Time stopped. The stable sounds, the frenzied pulse of escape settled.

A moment of blatant indecision passed across her eyes. He waited for her to speak. To become soft.

He thought she might cry. Was that not what women did when they wanted a man to cede to their wishes?

With a snap of her chin, she turned and heeled her mount. No tears. Too hard, this woman.

Yet, in those few moments Athos had felt sure she was ready to relinquish control, he’d witnessed the bare truth of her. She wanted to give up her hard façade.

Perhaps she did not know how?