Chapter 11
“So Prince Valentin saved your sister from drowning and returned her little dog, too. Fool! His sense of chivalry will be his undoing.”
Linette blinked against the moisture blurring her vision, her cheek throbbing where her captor had viciously slapped her. No tears, no tears! She needed to keep her wits about her for both herself and Estelle, whose sobs filled the cottageat seeing the Frenchman strike her.
Not once, but twice, as if to convince her that he’d meant what he said about threatening Estelle. Yet Linette had needed no further convincing and had told the man everything she knew three times over, which from the disgruntled look upon his stubbled face, clearly wasn’t enough. Cold fear sliced through her as once again, he glanced menacingly at Estelleand then back to Linette.
“You said the prince and his man Robert left two weeks ago?”
“Yes, three days after Christmas. That evening, or so we were told—” Linette bit her tongue, realizing her inadvertent blunder as the man’s expression darkened. Oh, Lord, now she may have just exposed the rest of her family to terrible danger!
“Whotold you?”
Linette hesitated for only an instant and hercaptor waved to his burly compatriot, who tossed Estelle as if she weighed nothing at all, upon the bed. At her sister’s near hysterical shriek, Linette grabbed her captor’s arm.
“Please, don’t hurt her, I beg you! It was my brother-in-law, the Duke of Arundale, though I don’t know how he learned Prince Valentin had left Porthleven. Donovan only told us we must never speak of him to anyone—”
“A duke, is he?” her captor cut her off, an appraising look lighting his narrowed eyes. Then he sobered. “Did you say your party would be looking for you?”
Linette bobbed her head, knowing it was a lie and hoping desperately that the man wouldn’t realize it as such. If he believed that others might arrive at the cottage at any moment, maybe he and his two companions would mount their horses andride away. He must realize she had no more to tell him—
“Get that one off the bed. I’ll take this one,” came his guttural command, the warning look he gave Linette truly ominous to behold. “Don’t try to escape me, don’t even dare. You’re going to take us to your brother-in-law, the duke, before anyone comes to find you. How far away is his home?”
“N-not far.”
“Good. If he doesn’t want to seeyour throats cut right in front of him, he’ll tell us everything he knows about where your sister’s gallant rescuer has gone and what his plans might be.”
“Then what?” Linette demanded hoarsely as her captor yanked her up from the stool. “Will you leave us in peace?”
His sudden coarse laughter chilled her to the bone. “What? Not take with us the perfect lure to make Prince Valentin surrenderto us and return to Bratavia? He saved your sister’s life once. Why wouldn’t he do so again for the two of you?”
“But Donovan will come after you! He has great wealth and influence! Surely you cannot think you’ll elude him…”
Now the man laughed harder, making Linette fall silent as if the breath had been sucked from her body. His two compatriots joined in as together, they dragged Estelle betweenthem toward the door, skirting the squire’s inert form. Linette realized her sister must have fainted from terror, while her own knees had grown so weak she felt sure she would collapse.
“Elude him? We’ll have sailed long before anyone finds your brother-in-law’s corpse...and those of any others who try to stop us. Do you think this a novice’s game? We were hired for our persistence at huntingfugitives and won’t rest until we’ve earned our gold. Now move!”
Linette did, nearly stumbling until her captor grabbed her and wrenched her along with him, twisting her arm even more cruelly than before.
The door was flung open and she heard the crashing of the waves upon the beach below, one of the men throwing Estelle’s limp form over his shoulder while the other brandished two pistols ashe stepped first from the cottage. They spoke rapid-fire French to each other now, Linette knowing little of the language, but clearly whatever was said made Estelle’s captor follow after his compatriot out the door.
“Go on!”
Now her captor gripped her by the hair, a pistol in his other hand. He pulled so tightly that she cried out, twisting her head slightly to ease the pain when she spieda dark shape suddenly move past the window. Dear God, had she only imagined it? She didn’t have another second to think as she was shoved out the front door, her captor holding her in front of him like a shield.
She blinked in the sunlight, blinded momentarily as she glanced around her for the man holding Estelle…and then it seemed the entire world erupted into the blasting of pistols and a manscreaming and horses whinnying in fright.
She screamed, too, her captor’s loosened grip upon her hair as he cursed behind her all she needed to twist away from him and lurch forward into a run.
As if in a daze she saw Estelle crumpled upon the ground, the man who’d carried her lying face up beside her with a bloody hole in his forehead. Horror-stricken, she lunged for her sister even as sheheard someone yelling her name.
“Linette, get down! Get down!”
Pistol fire exploded behind her, a searing pain through her left shoulder knocking Linette to her hands and knees. Then an echoing blast, but this one sounded strangely dull to her ears and so very far away.
She swayed for an instant, the world spinning around her, until she sank to one side into the grass as Estelle’s voice screamedher name.
“Linette!”
