Irresistible Read Free Page A

she imagined it? No, there it was again. There was no mistake.
    Were her pursuers coming after her by boat now? she wondered, panicking anew. But no. A glance up confirmed that they were still above her, presumably searching the cliff. The yellowish glow of the lantern light through the fog was unmistakable.
    But she had seen something. Perhaps it was no more than a fairy light, she thought, shivering as she clambered over another rock and at last reached the relative flatness of the beach itself. The moors thereabouts were legendary for elusive beacons sighted briefly in the dead of night, and fairy lights were the name the local folk gave them. Or perhaps it was a fisherman, late getting in. Or, more likely, smugglers…
    A muffled crunch on the shale behind her was her only warning. At the sound, Claire's heart lurched. She whirled, but it was too late: A man loomed behind her, a tall dark shadow just separating from the legion of shadows that were rocks and cliff and sea, close enough to touch. She was caught! She would be killed….
    She never had time to let loose the scream that tore into her throat before something slammed hard into the back of her head and she crumpled without a sound into blackness.

 
    Chapter 2
    "That were simple enough." James Harris's voice was hushed but cheerful as he lowered his pistol. Hugh Battancourt, who instinctively caught the collapsing female around the waist to keep her from measuring her length on the shiny-wet shale, cast his henchman a sardonic look, which of course, thanks to the fog-shrouded darkness, James didn't see.
    "Simple indeed."
    "We'd best be loping off, then, before them that are with her come nosin' around. Seein' as how we're not exactly the party they're expecting."
    Hugh, having come to that conclusion on his own, already had the woman hoisted over his shoulder and was heading back toward the sea. As James had said, this particular part of the job, which in theory had seemed rife with possibilities for error, had so far been problem-free. Under the circumstances, he preferred not to tempt the gods of disaster any further than he had to.
    A successful mission, after all, was one carried out in secrecy, with the enemy not finding out they had been bested until it was far too late.
    "Wait to give them the signal until we're well away from shore," he said over his shoulder as, with a great deal of relief, he lowered his limp burden into the longboat that awaited.
    "Aye, with any luck they'll be thinkin' the Frenchies have her safe." James chuckled, clearly relishing the notion of pulling off so neat a scam. "At least, until they meet up with the Frenchies."
    For the past two days, Hugh had been suffering from a premonition that this, his latest mission, was destined to end badly. The premonition had arrived the week previous in the form of a toss from his horse, which embarrassing mischance had happened to him only a handful of times in his adult life, all just before some far more dire mischance had overtaken him. This particular spill had been spectacular, in full view of a courtyard full of snickering French lords and ladies, and had left him with, among other less tangible injuries, several badly bruised ribs. Despite the resultant stabbing pain in his midsection whenever he made an unwary move, and the corollary catastrophe he had learned such a fall invariably seemed to portend, he had nevertheless answered the call of duty when it had sounded upon his door.
    That call had come in Paris, where, in his role as the mincing cher ami to the fabulously rich Louise, Marquise de Alençon, he had been observing with keen interest the return to Paris of Napoleon Bonaparte, along with the straggling remnants of the French Army. The little general, apoplectic at finding his troops defeated by the harsh Russian winter, had already turned his rapacious gaze once again to England as he plotted fresh and, as he undoubtedly hoped, redemptive atrocities. As yet Hugh had not been