Black Velvet.
The man who had sat watching the battle was now crashing through the underbrush behind her, his cloak flying behind him like the wings of a great bird of prey.
Juliette ran faster, trying desperately to outdistance the man in black.
Tears were running down Louis Charles’s cheeks.
She jumped over a hollow log, staggered, and almost fell as she landed in an unseen hollow behind it. She regained her balance and ran on. Pain stitched through her side.
“Merde, stop. I mean you no—” The man broke off, cursing.
A glance over her shoulder revealed he had fallen to his knees in the hollow that had almost been her own undoing.
She felt a surge of primitive satisfaction. She hoped the villain had broken his leg. It would serve him well if—
A bullet whistled by her ear, striking the tree next to her.
“The boy. Give me the boy.”
The guttural voice came not from behind but ahead of her!
A huge, burly man dressed in ragged trousers and a coarse white tunic stood only a yard in front of her,holding a smoking pistol in his hand. He threw the empty pistol aside and drew a dagger from his belt.
Juliette froze, her gaze on the gleaming blade of the knife.
She couldn’t go back toward the man in black. She desperately sought some way to escape.
The branch lying on the path a few feet away!
“Don’t hurt me, Monsieur. See, I’m putting the child down.” She set Louis Charles on the ground at her feet.
The huge man grunted with satisfaction and took a step forward.
Juliette snatched up the branch and brought it up between the man’s legs with all her might.
He screamed, clutching his groin and dropping the knife.
Juliette picked up Louis Charles again and darted past her victim.
Only seconds later she heard the man cursing as he pounded after her. How had the lout recovered so quickly? She knew how disabling a blow to that part of a man’s anatomy could be. Only a few months earlier the Duc de Gramont…A stream to jump. Her skirts trailed behind her in the water.
Within seconds she heard the splashing of heavy boots in the water.
He was closer!
A meaty hand grasped her shoulder, jerking her to a halt.
“Bitch! Whore!”
She caught the gleam of metal from the corner of her eye as he raised his dagger to plunge it into her back.
Sweet Mary, she was going to die!
The dagger never fell.
She was jerked and whirled away from the peasant’s blade with such force she fell to her knees on the ground.
Black Velvet.
