Espionage and the Earl

by Win Hollows

  As the horses approached, Elorie could see two men in unremarkable clothing atop them. Holding her breath, she watched as they sped by on the other side of the road, the dust from their horses’ hooves swirling around them. The men hadn’t even looked at them, much less attempted to interact, intent on whatever task they had set themselves to.

  She released her breath and let her shoulders fall. Max removed his hand from her thigh and coughed at the dust as he turned back around to face forward. Elorie turned to him and smiled.

  He began to smile back but froze as the sound of hooves thundered from behind them once more. They both looked back immediately, but couldn’t see very far due to the clouds of dust kicked up by the rider who had just passed them.

  Something didn’t feel right.

  Whatever instincts she had developed over the years rose in a flood of adrenaline and rising hairs on her arms and neck.

  The pounding grew louder, and out of the dust appeared two more riders right on the heels of their carriage. As soon as the horses were in range, the men atop them swerved to each side of the carriage and slowed to ride alongside it.

  The reins in Elorie’s hands jerked as the horses pranced skittishly in front of them. She dropped the leather leads and turned to the side just as the rider drew abreast of her.

  His face was unlined, but the brown eyes that met hers were hard as nails. The man’s dark shirt billowed out behind him as he stood in his stirrups and reached toward her.

  Elorie pulled up her skirts and kicked him in the stomach, eliciting a shout from him. His horse was well trained and continued to keep pace with their conveyance as he reared back and then made another lunge for her. He meant to pull her off the seat and probably leave her to be trampled or at least sustain serious injury upon impact.

  That wasn’t going to happen.

  She pulled her blade from the holster on her thigh and slashed as his arm came near again. He snatched it back with a growl, blood flecking from his sleeve. The cut hadn’t been deep, but perhaps he would hesitate to try that again.

  As he reached behind him with the other arm, Elorie suddenly knew he wasn’t going to attempt the same maneuver, for she knew what that motion indicated. He took a pistol from his waistband and brought it around to aim directly at her.

  Interestingly to her mind, her first thought was not to deflect the shot away from herself.

  It was to make sure it didn’t hit Max.

  She knew Max was struggling with the other horseman, and any bullet that missed her would surely strike him. So she did the only thing her panic would let her do. She lunged toward the rider, grabbing the gun just as it went off. The booming echo caused the horses to rear in fear, and the carriage lurched sideways, the knife slipping from her grasp to be lost underneath the carriage wheels. Letting go of the man’s wrist, Elorie felt herself sway backward. The rider fell slightly behind as he tried to holster his now useless, one-shot weapon. That was why she didn’t use guns. They were a liability if one depended on them to be your one chance. Tumbling into Max’s back, she righted herself quickly and looked to make sure she hadn’t harmed him with her shove.

  He was already looking at her and winked. “Having fun yet?”

  Elorie grinned. “With you? Never.”

  Max laughed and turned back to the horseman beside him, who was untangling his horse’s reins from the decorative brass knob Max had tied them to on top of the carriage. He could handle himself if she could do the same.

  Turning back to the other side of the carriage, she was surprised to not see the horse or rider there any longer. Looking back to see if he’d lagged further behind, she saw the horse galloping behind the carriage, but there was no one riding it.

  “Was that a gunshot?” Losif’s muffled voice called from inside the carriage.

  “Er, no,” Elorie yelled down toward the monk. “Just a broken carriage spoke. We’re fine.”

  Losif’s head poked out of the window, dark eyes round. “It doesn’t seem fine.”

  “Everything in under control,” Elorie replied, grabbing the backrest for balance as they continued to heave drunkenly down the roadway. “Just stay inside with Porthos, Losif.”

  “If you say so.” The monk’s perfectly round bald spot caught the sun as he dipped back into the coach.

  Elorie sighed and then caught her breath as the form of a man rose up from the back of the carriage. He crawled up on top of the roof and began to come toward her. “Bloody hell.”

  Chapter Twenty

  Max could admit he was rather enjoying himself. However, the gunshot from Elorie’s side of the carriage had quickly snuffed out that emotion and replaced it with raw fear. Once he’d looked and determined she was all right, his chest had eased slightly, and he focused once again on the man who had pulled out a knife and was cutting his horse’s lead loose from its tether to the carriage.

  That had been a rather good move on his part, but now the rider was determined to use his knife on Max. He had a gun strapped to his waist, but he hated to use it if the other man was in arm’s reach. As the rider struck forward with a wrist-up movement, Max dodged to the side and chopped down on the horseman’s forearm, causing the knife to clatter to the footrest. Quickly reaching down, he grabbed it before it could be jostled out of reach and lunged up with it.

  He hated fighting when horses were involved. After all, it wasn’t the beast’s fault that the dunce riding him was misbehaving. As a rule, he always tried to avoid hurting them if he could. This time, when he slashed through the rider’s saddle belt, he must have nicked the horse’s side because the horse skidded to a complete stop and bucked the rider, now not secured by his saddle, right off him onto the road.

  Letting out a laugh, Max saluted the horse and rider goodbye with two fingers.

  Yet things didn’t become any better in the next moments.

  As he looked ahead, the two riders who had passed them earlier were now thundering back toward them. Max could see they both had guns pointed straight at him and Elorie and were waiting until they were in a good position to aim more closely.

  Wonderful. Just what they needed. Clearly, this had been an ambush from the beginning. Swearing, he turned to Elorie, who was currently punching the man who had climbed onto the roof of their carriage directly in the face. The man was lying flat on his belly, trying to get ahold of her arm while holding on to the edge of the roof. She smiled wickedly at the man, which would have been a bit odd for anyone but her. Then he watched as she stabbed the man’s hand holding him to the roof decisively with a small dart. The man screeched but didn’t let go. He looked to the side and saw the implement stuck in his hand, but he didn’t bother to pull it out, probably because it looked so small.

  Max knew it didn’t matter. In a few seconds, the man would be done for without even knowing it.

  Elorie deflected the man’s attempts to yank her toward him with a series of fluid hand movements, and Max thought he heard a finger bone crack at some point. Suddenly, her assailant went limp as a rag doll, eyes rolling back in his head. He rolled off the edge of the roof, landing hard in the ditch behind them. Max didn’t envy the injuries the bloke would have when he awoke.

  “We’ve got more company,” Max said loudly, pointing ahead of them. The two men were bearing down on them, and it wouldn’t be but a few more seconds until they would be within shooting range.

  “What do you propose?” she asked as she whipped her now-messy loose braid behind her shoulder, the wind snatching wisps of it to dance around her face.

  “As neither of us are bulletproof, I think evasion best.”

  Elorie nodded.

  “After you.” He bowed slightly, indicating her side of the carriage.

  She didn’t hesitate, but turned and jumped from the driver’s perch, seeming to fly on the wings of her voluminous skirts for a tiny second before she hit the ground in a roll.

  A gunshot sounded, and Max didn’t wait for another as he followed suit, leaping af
ter Elorie toward the ground. Weightlessness was a euphoric and deceptive moment before the hard impact knocked the breath from him. As his body took each bump on the road, Max had the fleeting thought that perhaps living quietly for a bit wouldn’t be so bad after all.

  There wasn’t time to recover from the jarring jump if he fancied living to see another day, so Max forced himself up to assess the situation. It wasn’t ideal.

  Losif had his head stuck out of the speeding carriage’s window and was screaming something while waving his arms, but Max couldn’t hear it. The riders were now passing the runaway coach, thankfully on the side opposite Losif. They didn’t seem to give a fig about the monk, hell-bent as they were on running Max and Elorie to ground. The horses’ hooves pounded the ground in furious rhythm as the horsemen bore down on them.

  “Come with me!” He felt Elorie grab his hand and yank him after her.

  He turned to follow, and they jumped across the ditch to flee into the rows of grape trees that comprised the large vineyard spread out before them. How Elorie ran in her heavy skirts was a mystery to him, but she could almost outpace him. Almost. They dodged between different rows, swiping heavy-laden grapevines out of their way as they went. The vegetation wasn’t the most advantageous cover as all the trees were planted in precise configurations with bare bases, leaving their legs exposed to anyone who ducked down to look.

  Elorie had let go of his hand in order to maneuver between the trees, but she looked back at him for a moment with a wide grin, and he was instantly back in Covent Garden with her. They were flying through moonlit paths between sharp, pale branches, laughing like lunatics and forgetting who they were. Elorie’s hair was still in its usual braided crown, but her lips were swollen from his kisses in the folly.

  Everything else seemed to fade away. He knew they were running for their lives, and the horsemen could not be far behind, but all the knowledge did was serve to make him want to stay right here longer. Her hair flowed out behind her like golden ribbons, the braid coming loose from all its fetters. She ran with abandon like a hedonistic child between the ripe grapes, her tightly muscled legs eating up the ground in graceful leaps. Sunshine caressed her face with the ardor of a lover as if she had been born to bathe in its illumination, and Max almost stumbled as he was momentarily struck by her fierce beauty.

  He never would have thought then he’d be in France letting Elorie Lavoie lead him on an escape from Hand assassins while making their way to retrieve the Damarek together. Or that he’d have fallen in love with her.

  It wasn’t even hard to admit now. Maybe he’d loved her ever since she’d stolen his carriage in Rome. Maybe it was when he’d kissed her at Cairdygyn Hold. Or perhaps it was when he’d placed his fingers on hers at the piano and listened to her stuttering notes fill the waiting air. She was everything he had ever wanted, and everything he couldn’t have.

  He vowed then that if she ever did give him her heart, he would never let her go. Nothing on earth would be able to take her from his side if she were his.

  But he knew you don’t wrap up a bolt of lightning and hold it too close. She needed someone who understood her and let her be who she was without the chains he had seen many people place on each other in a marriage. He could give her that. With him, she would never need to be anything but who she was.

  And he could be himself as well. She wouldn’t expect him to be his father or Asher or anyone else of their circle. They would be whoever they wanted with each other, even if no one else understood them.

  The booming echo of a gunshot rent the air, and a cluster of grapes near his right ear exploded. Elorie instantly changed direction like a fish darting through water, and he adjusted his course to match. Through the vines ahead, he could see the honey-colored stone of a structure, which must be what Elorie was heading for. It was the best move they could make given the circumstances, as the structure would hopefully provide them cover or even other people to hinder their pursuers’ goal.

  Looking behind him, he saw two men running after them at a distance of about fifty meters, their horses nowhere to be seen. Most likely, they had realized the beasts couldn’t maneuver through the vineyard efficiently due to the close placement of the vines and had abandoned them on the side of the road. In the hasty glance he took, Max saw that one still carried a gun in his hand, but he didn’t know if it was loaded any longer since two shots had been fired. It was entirely possible that they carried guns with multiple shots on them as he had in the past.

  Ahead of them, the trees ended abruptly, but neither stopped to take stock of their surroundings for long. From what Max saw, there were three buildings within the clearing in the midst of the surrounding vineyards, one larger and two smaller. A few white geese and a donkey loitered in a pen near the side of one, but no humans were in sight. They made for the closest one, which was the smallest of the three. Whipping around the corner of the building, Elorie found a door and pushed it open.

  They rushed through it and froze to find themselves in a dim room with three people staring at them. The aromas hit him first, yeast and cinnamon and caramel mixing with the richness of sweet cream. It was obvious the entire space was a kitchen, kneading tables spaced out with round heaps of dough on them and white flour powdering the wooden surfaces. Herbs hung from the rafters and over the great hearth that was roaring with heat he could feel from where he stood. One of the people, a large woman with a faded blue apron, crossed her arms with raised brows.

  Elorie cleared her throat and spoke in French. “We are hiding from my uncle’s men. He wishes me to remain unmarried so he can control my inheritance.”

  The baker woman didn’t react, and all was silent, but after a moment, she nodded once. “Carry on.” The three bakers looked away and began to attend their duties as if nothing remotely interesting was happening.

  The French were an odd lot, but Max had to applaud their absolute commitment to insouciance.

  Elorie smiled at the baker and grabbed his hand, taking off again to weave between the large tables in space before them. They went toward the other side of the room and ducked in through a smaller internal door. This room was a larder with shelves lining three sides full of dozens of baked bread loaves and pastries set out on brown parchment paper. Max was aware that many wineries sold specialty breads and cheeses to pair with their wines, as he had purchased such luxuries plenty of times, but he had never fully appreciated how good sweetbuns smelled until this exact moment. His mouth began to water as he thought about how long it had been since the hasty breakfast he’d had on the ship this morning. It seemed like years.

  “It smells like you,” Max blurted, causing Elorie to turned toward him.

  “What?”

  “Why do you always smell like dessert?” he asked as they walked further into the long pantry.

  Elorie scoffed, but he saw her cheeks heat as she turned away. “I don’t think now is the time.” She strode toward the very back of the room toward an enormous wooden butter churn. The contraption loaded from the top, but, through a series of gears and levers, the operator was able to crank a wheel near hip height in order to turn the paddles inside it. Max had never seen one this large, but he supposed estates that were producers of pastries must have need of them. “Perfect,” Elorie breathed, taking off the heavy lid with both hands.

  Understanding her plan, he helped her quickly dismantle the paddles within and set them underneath the lowest shelf out of sight. “I should go first,” Max said. “You can sit on my lap.”

  She sent him a look. “You’re more eager than you should be about this.”

  Max grinned. “I enjoy my work.”

  She snorted but moved so he could carefully climb into the churn. As he crouched down inside it and made to sit, he realized it was barely going to be large enough for the both of them to fit.

  Voices shouting from outside the bakery drifted in.

  Elorie maneuvered nimbly into the churn and then grabbed the lid from where she’d pro
pped it against the side. Though the wooden lid had to be heavy, she lifted and lowered it just right to fit atop the churn as she squatted down to sit on top of him.

  The second she let herself fully relax against him, Max knew there was going to be a problem. Her fully rounded derriere was pressing right against his crotch, and there was no room to shift or stop the reaction his body had to hers. He wrapped his arms around her torso to accommodate her shape and tried not to move as she squirmed to get comfortable, sliding herself this way and that against him. Her breasts grazed against his biceps as she twisted, causing his mouth to go instantly dry. Fate must be getting a real kick out of his predicament, he was sure.

  Men’s curt voices asking questions in the main baking room momentarily distracted him. The baker answered them, but Max couldn’t make out what she had said.

  His brain was clouded as the rounded barrel holding them created a cocoon that seemed to insulate them from everything outside. Their combined body heat turned the atmosphere damp and warm, and Max tried to keep his breath even as he listened for signs of anyone approaching their hiding spot.

  Eventually, he became aware of Elorie’s breathing and realized that she was struggling with the same problem as he. The way he held her with his arms tight around her ribcage was ideal for feeling the thudding heartbeats pounding through her. It seemed she wasn’t unaffected by his proximity either.

  “I hope Porthos and Losif are all right,” she whispered.

  Max’s thoughts scattered. That was what she wanted to talk about right now? “I honestly wasn’t thinking about monks or monkeys,” he murmured in her ear. Her loose hair tickled his nose, and he nudged it with his chin, reveling in the feel of her trapped against him, all her curves notched perfectly against his body.