The Price of Temptation by Lecia Cornwall Page B

among themselves.
    “We vote that the lady remains unharmed,” his sergeant spoke up.
    He’d twisted her arm behind her back until she screamed. “This is not America!” he shouted. “You don’t get a say in this. The woman is mine!” He raised his pistol, and the nearest man went down with a cry, clutching his leg. The French bitch began screaming again, a shrill, earsplitting sound. He hit her to make her stop, knocking her unconscious, just as her husband arrived with a troop of French Guards.
    There’d been murder in d’Agramant’s eyes when he saw his wife. Creighton remembered the burn of fear in his belly. He’d dragged the woman against his chest and held his knife at her throat. “I’ll kill her,” he warned.
    Now, he picked up a letter opener from his aunt’s desk and threatened the back of the cabinet, looking for a secret compartment.
    “And I’ll shoot your men, one by one, until you let her go,” the colonel had replied, imagining that he cared about their sodding lives.
    It made him laugh even now. He pressed the letter opener into a promising crack in the jewelry chest’s mahogany frame the same way he’d pushed the knife against her breast.
    “Throw down the ransom and go, monsieur . I will send her to you when you are out of shooting range.”
    The colonel’s expression didn’t change. At his nod, one of his men shot the first British soldier. Rutherford threw himself in front of the rest of the cowering redcoats.
    He faced the Frenchman without a trace of fear in his eyes. “They’re innocent.”
    The colonel gave Rutherford the cold, sour, superior French smile usually reserved for English visitors to Paris. He pointed his pistol at Rutherford’s heart.
    “ Et vous, monsieur? Are you innocent as well?”
    Rutherford hadn’t answered, didn’t plead for his life. Creighton would have, if there’d been time, but d’Agramant didn’t wait. He glanced at his wife’s battered face, her torn dress, and gave the command to fire.
    In the deafening volley, every man on the road was running, screaming, dying in the hot yellow dust. Rutherford dropped and rolled. He landed next to Creighton and the woman. He actually stood in front of her, Creighton recalled, protecting her even then.
    Did the fool think he was impervious to death? When the firing stopped and the air was filled with the acrid stink of burnt powder, d’Agramant dismounted and stalked toward them, his eyes locked with Rutherford’s. Creighton flinched as the colonel’s sword dimpled the skin of Rutherford’s throat.
    “Your wife is unharmed, monsieur . Take her and go,” Rutherford said, his voice steady.
    “Unharmed?” the colonel hissed. “You think I can allow you to get away with this?”
    “Do it,” Creighton encouraged as the Frenchman’s sword pressed deeper into Rutherford’s flesh.
    He used the letter opener to destroy another drawer, imagining it was Rutherford.
    The Frenchwoman woke and began to scream at her husband in rapid French, explaining everything. Creighton would have hit her again, or stabbed her, but Rutherford turned on him like a wolf, moving even before the colonel could put up his sword. D’Agramant’s blade carved a long deep gash in the captain’s neck, and hot blood splashed across Creighton’s face as Rutherford wrenched the knife out of his hand. His only thought then had been of escape.
    Creighton could tell by the look in d’Agramant’s eyes that he knew the truth. He shoved the woman at Rutherford and ran, leaving the honorable fools to see to her.
    He hadn’t gone more than a mile in the hot Spanish sun, with Rutherford’s blood drying on his face, before he began to have doubts. If the Frenchman let Rutherford go, or he escaped, what then? Wellington hanged men for rape. It was his word against the captain’s. Creighton had ridden hard for headquarters.
    He’d told them how he found Rutherford selling secrets to the French. His men were all dead, killed by Captain