“What do you intend to do with my husband?”
Jacques shrugged. “For now he will enjoy the delights of my cellar.”
She chewed her bottom lip. “You swear he will not be hurt?”
“There will be no injuries that will not heal.” Jacques regarded Gabriel with blatant disgust. “At least for now. I make no promises for the future.” Lifting a slender hand, he motioned toward the hovering soldier. “André, ensure our guest is made comfortable.”
“No…wait…”
Talia’s words of protest went unheeded as André grabbed her around the waist and with one smooth motion yanked her out of the window and slung her over his shoulder.
Her last sight was that of Gabriel struggling against the soldier and Jacques, who had wrapped his arms behind him, his face twisted in lethal rage.
“Get your hands off my wife,” he shouted. “Talia!”
BLINDED BY his violent fury at seeing Talia manhandled by the damned soldier, Gabriel struggled against the arms that held him captive, refusing to calm until he felt a gun pressed to his temple.
“Do not be an idiot, Ashcombe,” Jacques rasped. “She is beyond your reach.”
With an effort Gabriel leashed his primitive compulsion to battle his way to Talia. Damnation, how could he rescue his wife if he were dead?
Ending his struggles, he stood rigid as Jacques and the soldier warily released him, shifting the gun to aim it at his heart.
For the moment the damned Frenchman held the upper hand, but soon…soon he would find the means to reverse the situation. And then he would take vicious delight in destroying Jacques Gerard before collecting his wife and returning her to Carrick Park.
And his bed.
“If she is harmed…”
“Thus far I am the only gentleman of her acquaintance that hasn’t offered her harm,” Jacques pointed out in silky tones, waving his hand toward the nearby path. “This way.”
Gabriel clenched his teeth, unable to deny the charge, damn the bastard.
Even when he had come to rescue his wife from the clutches of the evil French he had managed to insult her with his accusations. And why?
Because she stirred feelings inside him that were as incomprehensible as they were unwelcome?
Forcing himself to follow at the Frenchman’s side, he wrenched his tangled thoughts from his wife, concentrating on the dangers at hand.
“A charming home for a vicar,” he drawled.
“Oui.” A smile of bleak satisfaction curved Jacques’s mouth. “It once belonged to the gentleman who condemned my father to death. Ironic, is it not?”
“There is nothing ironic in countrymen slaughtering one another.”
“So speaks the pampered nobleman,” Jacques said and sneered. “You would not be so smug if you were forced to watch your children starving in the gutters.”
Gabriel arched a brow, deliberately allowing his gaze to skim the vast gardens and sprawling palace that surrounded them.
“Instead you drown your citizens in blood while you take comfort in the luxury you profess to detest. How many have died since your grand revolution?”
With the typical conceit of a zealot, the man shrugged aside the thousands of deaths suffered since the assault on the Bastille. Deaths that only continued beneath the rule of Napoleon with his insatiable lust for power.
“Freedom is not without cost.”
Gabriel snorted in disgust. “Is that what you tell your orphans?”
“They will understand that sacrifices were necessary when Napoleon is victorious.”