Page 28 of The Duke's Price
Could she do it? Could she marry him? If only she could be certain he would not regret it. Regret it and, in time, come to resent her. It would be different if he loved her. Love was the one persuasion she could not refuse, and the one he had not offered. She stepped up on deck. Perhaps a short walk along the dock, just to have a breath of fresh air.
Several of the canal folk were up and working. They called out enquiries about the Moreaus and were pleased to hear that the whole family was on the mend. Walking from group to group to answer their questions took her further than she hadintended. She was surprised, when she looked back towards the Moreau boat, by how far she had come.
She had better return before someone came looking for her.
Ruth was almost back at the boat when she heard the horses. Glancing over her shoulder, she could see riders coming—a dozen men, with Carlos and Garcia at their head. She lowered her head and tried not to run. She was still dressed as a man. In her cap, she must look much like the other canal people.Just an anonymous man. Nothing to see here.
What went wrong, she never knew. Perhaps they knew she was disguised. Perhaps she did not walk like a man and Garcia was perpetually suspicious. One moment she was walking, and the next she was slamming into the ground, Garcia on top of her, shouting with triumph in Spanish, “I have the English bitch, excellency!”
Bella wanderedinto the cabin some time after Ruth left. “Would you like some coffee and a bun, De-Ath?” she asked. “Is Ruth sleeping?”
Perry went from half awake to panicked alertness in a breath. “Ruth went to bed. If not with you, then where?”
“I’ll check with the sisters. You look at Walter,” said Bella, and whisked herself out of the room. But Ruth was not below deck in any of the tiny cabins.
“Look after your parents,” Perry told the Moreau girls, all of whom were looking much better. “Don’t wake them. Sleep is their best doctor now.”
“That is what Ruth always says when our patients are out of danger,” Bella observed, almost tripping on Perry’s heels inher haste to follow him up the narrow stairs to the deck. Walter clattered up behind them.
The scene on the docks was spread out before them as if it was on stage and they spectators at a play. A chorus of boat and townspeople, drawing away into worried clumps to observe from safety, a cluster of heavily armed horsemen, Garcia jerking Ruth to her feet by an arm, Carlos striding across the wooden boardwalk, reaching Ruth as they watched and yanking her from Garcia’s grip into his own.
“Get your hands off my wife!” Perry roared, sheer instinct driving both shout and words. Bella shot him a startled look, but he had no time for her. “Protect the princess,” he muttered to Walter and leapt from the canal boat to the dock.
“I said,” he repeated, “Get your bloody hands off my wife. Now, Carlos.”
“Not before she tells me where I can find my princess, Death,” Carlos growled back. “I thought she had kidnapped Isabella. I might have known you were the thief. And married? To a mouse of a governess? The Duke of Depravity? What a joke! Have you ruined them both, Death? For if you have, I shall kill you.”
“I escorted the Princess Isabella to safety after you threatened to force her to be your wife and her governess to be your mistress.” Several of the Carlos’s escort shifted uneasily, so Perry continued, infusing a taunt into his voice. “The princess knows you plan to kill her as soon as you have got a son or two on her, to be your excuse to keep control of Las Estrellas. How did you get yourself named guardian, Carlos? Or were you? Did you forge Prince Rodolfo’s signature on the will?”
He was too successful. Carlos tugged Ruth against his body, wrapped an arm around her to keep her trapped, and set the edge of his knife against her throat.
“Where is Isabella?” he demanded.
“Here,” said Bella’s clear young voice, and Carlos’s eyes widened. Perry didn’t want to look away from his beloved, standing straight and proud with a knife to her throat, her eyes fixed on him, sending a message of confidence and love. When his gaze met hers, she smiled, the gallant creature.
“Put that gun down, princess,” Carlos ordered. “Females should not play with guns. Put the gun down and I shall let Miss Henwood go.”
Perry spared a glance in that direction. Bella and Walter both stood on the canal boat, one with each of his pistols. Bella looked as if she knew what she was doing, and Walter was a champion sharp-shooter, but Ruth still had a knife at her throat, and Perry was not going to be able to breath until she was free and safe and in his arms.
“You put the knife down, Uncle Carlos,” Bella responded. “And let the Duchess of Richport go. You are in France now. You and your men are breaking the law. I am not in your control any more, and I shall not marry you.”
Behind Carlos, the same men exchanged an uneasy glance. Perry recognised some of them—they were all from Estrellas rather than the Spaniards who had come home with Carlos. Would they stand with the princess? Or with the duque?
“I’d heard that about you, Carlos,” Perry said, strolling casually a few steps closer. “That you were bravest when faced by women and children. Why don’t you let my wife go and face a man!”
“What man?” Carlos sneered. “You? A warrior of the sheets? A man whose only sword is fitted between his legs?”
“And a fine weapon it is, too,” Perry replied, unperturbed. He had the man! “Get one of your men to loan me a sword and we shall see who is the better man. You! Garcia—or should I call you El Lobo? The devil’s wolf, are you not?”
The boat people drew further back, and Perry heard a few low growls as some of them recognised the nickname. With luck, if he fell today, the onlookers would get Bella and Ruth away. The Estrellasan men would help, unless he missed his guess, but there were only five of them to the seven Spaniards, and the Spaniards were all vicious men without family or any friends except their comrades. Dangerous as wounded wolves, in other words.
“Give him your sword,” said Carlos, and when Garcia obeyed, he shoved his knife and Ruth at Garcia. “Keep the bitch for me. After I have killed this dog I shall enjoy her, then give her to you while I take the princess.”
Garcia’s sabre was heavier than the foils Perry usually used in duelling and in exercise. It was a cutting weapon rather than a thrusting one, but it could be used to thrust, and if Carlos gave Perry an opening, he might not expect Perry to use a fencing trick.
Carlos returned to his horse for his own sabre, and came at Perry in a rush, swinging with deadly precision. But Perry was ready for the attack, and danced out of Carlos’s way, sweeping his own weapon in a wide arc that should have connected with Carlos’s side. Except that Carlos was already moving, spinning out of reach, and then attacking again. Slash, slice, crash as Perry lifted his own weapon to block, slash again, and withdraw. Each was more cautious now, eyeing one another for a moment.
“You’re a fool, English,” Carlos proclaimed, “and today, you shall be a dead fool and your widow shall be my whore.”
