Page 43 of The Rebellious Countess (The Ruined Duchess #2)

She popped the cork from the bottle with her teeth and dribbled the oil slowly into the lock and then on the end of her tool.

Inserting the pick into the lock, she wiggled back and forth.

She pulled it back out and poured more oil on the tip.

Poking and turning until she found the right position and felt the mechanism tightening around it.

Slowing she pushed, but still, it wouldn’t budge.

She pulled out the pick and ran her fingers down the length of it, afraid she would find a stress fracture.

“You know how to tease a man,” Elias said from directly behind her.

She met his gaze over her shoulder, and for one blessed moment she swore she saw love in its depths.

Then he winked and she remembered the mission.

The mission that started with a wink and a dropped package.

That wink had stolen her heart the very first day they’d met, and she suddenly realized the fissure wasn’t in her tool, but it would be in her heart when this was over.

“You can do it. I have faith in you.”

He did. She looked at Simon who was on the ground leaning against the wall to her right while Sébastien stroked the hair from his face.

She steeled her heart and refused to let it break.

Simon was the reason they were here. It may not have been her mission in the beginning, but it was now. She would get him home.

She nodded and refocused on her task. She thrust the tool in the lock and turned, attacking the lock with as much force as she dared, and just as she suspected the tool would break, the lock snapped open, iron slamming against iron.

It would have been loud inside the abbey, out here at the sea wall, the noise was drowned out by breaking waves as the door creaked open.

Elias turned toward Sébastien his voice low and steady. “This is where we must part, Sébastien. I cannot take you across the bay. Tell the women you could not make it across before the tide came in.”

She stepped in front of him. “What? We can’t leave him behind! That soldier saw him with us,” she whispered.

“That man will be dead before dawn,” Elias countered.

“I want to go with the earl.” Sébastien pleaded. “He needs me.”

Elias bent down and met the boy’s pleading stare. “I cannot help you across the bay. The sea will be too rough.”

Tears filled the boy’s gaze as he looked at the earl, and Máira’s heart nearly broke. He had lost his father, and God only knew the circumstances with his mother. The earl owned this boy’s heart.

“I can take him.”

Elias’s jaw tightened. “You will barely be able to make it across the bay yourself.”

“I can swim,” she insisted, as Sébastien looked on pleadingly with big, round eyes.

“This is not a Scottish loch. This bay has some of the most dangerous currents known. We will be lucky if the three of us make it across.”

“The boy comes, or I stay.” The three of them turned to look at the man who had brought them to this holy place that was more hell than heaven.

Simon’s soft, shaky voice held his conviction as he looked at Sébastien.

The effort to lift his head seeming to take every bit of the strength he owned.

The boy hugged Simon, who gifted him with the briefest of smiles from within his scraggly beard.

“We won’t leave him behind,” Máira assured him.

“He is French. They will not hurt him,” Elias argued as the muscle in his jaw ticked.

“His father…was French.” Simon’s voice was but a whisper. “And he betrayed his country.”

“The boy did not,” Elias argued.

“I have an aunt and uncle who promised my father they would take me in if anything happened to him,” Sébastien interjected, hope evident on his face.

“His father…was caught with a letter…” Astley’s voice faltered.

It was taking every ounce of his strength to argue with Elias.

His last statement also took all his fight away.

His gaze slowly traveled to Sébastien, and what Máira saw in his eyes was unmistakable.

Guilt racked his soul, but the fondness for the boy was his saving grace.

“Your aunt and uncle can’t take the risk, Sébastien.

” The earl’s words were hard to hear, even harder to deliver for Simon.

“He could stay with Father Charles,” Máira suggested.

“No.” That one word held more passion than Simon had yet to demonstrate. “He returns home with us.” His eyes closed for the briefest of moments before staring Elias down. “I will not leave him to die or to be raised by strangers.”

A single nod from Elias was all it took to calm him and send Simon into a deep sleep.

It was as if the earl had used every drop of fight he had within him to argue for Sébastien.

Máira bent down and checked his breathing, then she reached into her bag and pulled out her flask.

She had a bit more of the elixir. If he could take a bit more now, it would help him and give him strength for their journey.

“Won’t his stomach reject that?” Sébastien asked.

“No, it will soothe it and help him consume soup when we arrive at?—”

“After we cross the bay,” Elias cut her off before she could say where they were going.

Sébastien grinned. “You are a bad spy.”

Elias squatted down in front of Astley. His irritation and resistance gone, once the decision to take Sébastien with them had been made. “Help me get Astley on my back before you blurt out any more of our plans.” He winked at Sébastien, who grinned in return as they turned toward the steps.

“Stop! Identify yourself!”

They froze at the French command to stop.

None of them had seen the large burly guard approaching them with a pistol in his hand.

He held it across his chest with the barrel pointed in the air as if he were on a casual midnight stroll.

His navy-colored uniform blended amongst the shadows, but as he walked toward them across the piazza, a scabbard holding his long-curved saber slung low across his left hip.

It clinked against his leg, the golden braids of his uniform glistened across an imposing barrel chest.

Máira swallowed hard. This man was dangerous. Leather lined the inside of his pant legs, identifying him as one of Napoleon’s reputed hussars who feared nothing and didn’t plan to live past the age of thirty—an age he’d well surpassed.

Máira wanted to curse the bloody island where they stood.

The man's tall fur hat with more gold braiding and a thick frond stood nearly a foot off the top of his head. He didn’t need the ridiculous hat to make him appear large. The closer he got, the more obvious the inches he had on Elias became. She’d never seen a man of his stature in her entire life.

Elias remained silent, yet with the man’s demand to know who they were, was a question only Elias could answer.

For two boys to respond instead of a soldier would be completely out of place.

Elias stood rigid and tall, looking absolutely magnificent as he turned toward the new obstacle to their escape.

The corner of the soldier’s lip rose along with the corner of his long mustache, as if he suddenly relished the challenge in her husband’s stance.

He pointed his pistol in the middle of Elias’s chest, and Máira was certain the man would shoot him with the least provocation.

His actions might make one think he was afraid of Elias, except for the unabashed joy written all over his face at the prospect of killing.

If the soldier felt a drop of fear, she could not see it. Nor could she see one in her husband’s hardened gaze.

She wanted to smack him for putting on such a display, but then he spoke in that beautiful French dialect she’d adored.

“My name is Elias Maximilien Allistair Drake, and I am here on a mission for my grandfather.”

Máira blinked. Elias Maximilien Allistair Drake? Just days ago, he’d said his name was Elias Allistair Drake.

He lied. Again.

The soldier laughed and jutted his pistol in her direction and then Sébastien’s. She pulled the boy behind her and focused on translating his French in her head. “With two boys? And what is that on your shoulders? Drop it.”

Elias stood tall, scowling at the soldier who didn’t care to be ignored. The soldier cocked his pistol.

Elias dropped the earl like a sack of grain.

His feet hit first and then his upper body.

The blanket that had covered him, somehow unfurled about his body, obscuring what was underneath.

Simon groaned, and Sébastien immediately followed it with a curse a boy his age shouldn’t know and hopped around as if Elias had dropped the earl on his toes. “Mon Dieu !” he cursed.

The boy was a good spy.

“Do you not recognize my name?” Elias asked, completely unfazed by what was happening behind him as he took on the air of nobility. Was he French nobility? Did that carry any weight in France anymore? Or would they want to chop off his head?

The soldier’s head cocked slightly, as if he were contemplating Elias’s self-importance.

In the soldier’s silence, Elias clarified his identity for all of them.

“Elias Maximilien Allistair Drake, the grandson of the Minister of War for France. My grandfather is also Chief of Staff to Napoleon Bonaparte. Would you like to verify my identity with Napoleon himself? He is my godfather, after all.”

Her heart stuttered. The soldier’s grin faltered and his gaze strayed to the blanket on the ground when Simon moaned.

That was all it took. Elias charged. His large body slamming into the soldier’s. The two collided in a bundle of arms, legs, and weapons, their bodies coming together in a blur. The pistol discharged, the sound rolling across the piazza to reverberate off the arched walkway.

“Move!” Sébastien’s young voice held a desperation she had not heard before. The boy stood behind her with Elias’s large pistol swaying in his grip.

“Sébastien, put the gun down,” she ordered, and held her hands out to him, hoping the motion of her palms down pressing to the ground would calm the boy.

His brow drew downward as he bit his lip.

His eyes were wild, his movements jerky.

He appeared too stunned to grasp what was happening around him as the fight raged on at her back.

Elias was fighting for their lives with a soldier who was larger, more seasoned, and less affected by killing.

“He’s the war minister’s grandson! It’s a trap, he will kill the earl! Move!” Sébastien waved the pistol and she was almost certain he’d not had a chance to load it—but Elias had.

“He’s not the enemy, Sébastien.”

Sébastien moved to the side, his view of Elias clear, the pistol in his hand aimed at her husband’s back.

“No!” She swung at the gun, knocking it from Sébastien’s hands.

The gun hit the gate and bounced down the steps toward the sea.

Sébastien didn’t hesitate, he ran for the fight and jumped on Elias’s back.

Desperate to stop the carnage, she entered the fray as fists swung and heads collided.

Elias tried desperately to protect her and Sébastien—the soldier did not.

A fist struck her shoulder, and pain radiated through her body as she staggered backward.

She reached for her knife ready to kill another Frenchman for the man she loved.

Elias cursed. “Máira, get him out of here!” The hussar’s fist hit Elias in the nose sending blood everywhere.

“Bastard,” he gritted out, and tackled the man to the ground.

She ran forward and put her knife to the man’s neck, the blade firmly held against his flesh.

Everyone froze.

But it wasn’t because of the threat her knife delivered.

It was the much larger blade extending in-between the faces of the two men on the ground and biting into skin.

On her neck. The blade pricked, and the hussar on the ground with her knife to his neck smiled.

Máira slowly tilted her head back to look up at this new threat to her life and their escape.

Additional gold braiding and red ribbons, along with bear fur on the man’s jacket marked his higher rank, but the gold belt for his scabbard and his bizarrely baggy red trousers screamed that the rules of standard issue uniform did not apply to this man.

He was a hussar of great import. He led soldiers, and he held everything in the balance as he stood over them with his long, curled mustache pointing toward the sky and twitching with his grin.

“Despite all her machinations, it seems fate has insisted I meet my lover’s son after all.” With every word the new hussar seemed to mock them, but his words were meant for Elias and they hit with great force.

“Bloody fucking hell,” he muttered.