Improbable Eden (35 page)

“
I'd rather die than let you touch me!” she cried. And in a flurry of skirts and petticoats, she flung herself through the window, hurtling into cold, empty space. For a brief, terrifying instant, Eden thought she had misjudged. But suddenly her body struck something solid and soft. As children squealed and passersby screamed, Eden clung to the ruins of the fat snow woman and gasped for breath.

The first person to reach her was a young girl. “Coo,” she exclaimed, reaching for Eden's hand, “it's alive ye be! Wot a bleedin' miracle!”

“
What a bleedin' memory,” murmured Eden, thankful that she had been able to recall where the upstairs window was in relationship to the coffeehouse entrance. Struggling to her feet, she brushed clumps of packed snow from her clothing and dabbed at a cut on her cheek. A crowd had gathered, coaches stalled in the lane, and a cartload of kindling was trapped against the opposite wall. Warily, Eden glanced at the front door of Old Slaughter's. As she expected, it burst open, revealing Rudolf, his two companions and several other coffeehouse patrons.

“
They pushed me!” Eden screeched, pointing straight at Rudolf. “Snowball them! They're wicked foreigners!”

The children had recovered from the excitement of a young lady falling out of a window and the disappointment at having their snow sculpture flattened. They needed no urging to take up a different form of winter sport. Indeed, they were joined by some of their elders, who weren't precisely sure what had triggered this particular sensation, but hated to be left out. To Londoners, foreigners were always fair game.

But Rudolf was not daunted by child's play. Ordering his men to draw their pistols, he had them trained on the youngest of the merrymakers. “Halt or I'll blow you to Piccadilly!”

Several members of the snowball-wielding contingent froze with their arms in midair. Eden took advantage of the diversion to push her way through the crowd. But Rudolf spotted her. “Stay, Mistress!” His voice was harsh. “Would you have me slay one of your small warriors?”

Slowly, Eden turned. She was cold without her cloak, and her gown was soaked through. “Only you, Count Rudolf of Hohenstaufen, would threaten children! You're not just a Jacobite traitor, you're a murdering coward to boot!”

Through the light snowfall, Eden saw Rudolf's eyes narrow. “For that, you die at my hand.” His voice was as cold as the ice that formed on the waterspout above the door. As the onlookers gasped, Rudolf grabbed the pistol from the man on his right and leveled it at Eden.

Her immediate thought was to fall to the ground in the hope that Rudolf would aim high—but the shot might kill an innocent child standing behind her. With a cry of terror she threw her hands in front of her face. Rudolf tugged at the trigger just as Max fell upon him like a great bird of prey.

The pistol went off with a shattering roar, ripping a hole in the nearest coach and startling the horses. Max and Rudolf were on the ground, grappling in the snow. Eden could only guess that Max had come out through another window and had somehow managed to leap from the sturdy oak coffeehouse sign. With all eyes fixed on Rudolf, and with the snow coming down more heavily, no one had noticed Max's unorthodox arrival.

As the two men rolled in the slushy lane, Rudolf's armed companion turned his gun on Max, but could not get a clear shot. Frustrated, he danced this way and that, the snow blurring his vision.

“ '
Ere!” a stocky bargeman shouted at Rudolf's men, “leave 'im be! 'E saved the little miss 'ere!”

The crowd responded with a unified charge at the two henchmen, who were swiftly subdued.

Eden, with three of the smallest children clinging to her wet skirts, tried to see what was happening to Max in the midst of the melee. At last she caught sight of the two combatants a few yards away. Max had Rudolf in a viselike grip and was trying to haul him down the lane. With one great heave of his body, Rudolf threw Max off, then went for his dagger. Still staggering from the force of Rudolf's defensive maneuver, Max unsheathed his rapier. The weapon Rudolf wielded was shorter by half than Max's swept-hilt sword, but its thicker blade and curved cross-guard made it equally lethal.

Except for the frightened horses, the crowd grew quiet as they watched the two big men duel. Eden held her breath when Max slipped on an icy patch and Rudolf tried to drive his dagger home. Max dodged just in time, the blade missing flesh but tearing his clothes. Righting himself, Max countered with a thrust that caught the baldric on Rudolf's sash, driving him to the wall. With a well-aimed kick, Max knocked the dagger from Rudolf's hand, sending it into a pile of slush-covered garbage.

As the wind howled down the lane, the onlookers huddled closer together, awaiting the outcome of what they were sure was mortal combat. The two blond giants were skirting the precipice of life and death and though both were foreigners, the London crowd seemed to know that one was good, the other evil.

Through the thick, swirling flakes, Rudolf glared at Max with a fanatical hatred. “Kill me! Kill me as you killed Sophie!” Taunting his adversary, he yanked off the sash, ripped open the brocade waistcoat and tore at his linen shirt. With chest exposed, he let out a stream of German curses, then reverted to English: “Do it! Let this foul multitude see what a murdering pig you really are, Max! They'll tear you to shreds!”

Breathlessly Eden waited for the fatal lunge. But Max stood riveted to the ground, the rapier poised at an angle. “I prefer the King's justice,” he said at last. “Call me coward, but don't call me murderer, for that I am not.” Deliberately he took a backward step, but kept his weapon at the ready. “You will come with me down the lane to the Eagle and Child. We will await the King's men there.”

With surprising docility, Rudolf shrugged and moved toward Max. “I don't fear Wee Willie,” he said in a pallid imitation of his usual amiable tone. “I have friends even more powerful than he.”

“
Really,” remarked Max, glancing at Eden, who was giving the terrified children a farewell pat on the head. The crowd was already dispersing, driven away by the sudden severe change in weather as well as realization that the battle was over. Rudolf's henchmen were nowhere in sight, apparently having retreated into Old Slaughter's to lick their wounds.

Up ahead, the driver of the damaged coach was still trying to quiet his skittish horses. With Eden at his side, Max held the rapier at Rudolf's back. The trio paused by the coach, waiting for the vehicle to move out of the way.

“
You'll pay for this,” the coachman yelled, still struggling with his animals. “Milord Sunderland will see to that!”

“
A pox on Milord Sunderland,” Rudolf replied agreeably, pulling his shirt and waistcoat into place. “The man's a snake.” Casually, Rudolf turned to look at Max. The small ivory-handled pistol he held in his right hand was pointed at Eden's abdomen.

“
I'm going to walk down the lane alone,” he said evenly, his terrible smile in place. “This little cannon would probably not kill your lovely trollop, but it would certainly spoil your pleasures with her. I'm disappointed in you, Max. You really ought to have searched me. Do you think I'd carry only a dagger in a dangerous city like London?”

Max's lean face had darkened with rage, directed not only at Rudolf but at himself, as well. He said nothing, the sword still held a tantalizing, impotent foot away from Rudolf. Eden knew she was shaking as much from fear as from the cold, and tried to move closer to Max.

“
Stay where you are, all of you,” Rudolf barked. “You didn't deserve to win. Victory goes only to the bold.” His smile turned into a ghastly leer. “A pity there's only one ball in this little toy. It would be more of a pity to waste it.” Slowly he raised the gun a few inches, squinted down the gleaming barrel and moved the weapon from side to side. “Which one of you will make the ultimate sacrifice for the other? How true is true love?”

Max threw his arms around Eden, offering her as much protection as possible. Rudolf's menacing figure was a blur. Eden cringed in Max's grasp, yet wanted to hurl herself between her beloved and his vengeful cousin.

Unable to watch the coachman while aiming at Max and Eden, Rudolf sensed rather than saw that the horses had finally quieted down. In the ensuing deadly stillness, he steadied the pistol and pointed it at Eden's breast. Bracing for the horrible explosion, Eden opened her mouth to cry out, but there was no sound, from her or from the gun. Lord Sunderland's irate driver had swung the whip at the horses. The big animals had reared up, hooves thrashing in the wind, then hurtled down, to send Rudolf flying against the coach wheel. The pistol dropped from his hand as he let out a terrible curse. The horses broke away, thundering in a circle and crushing Rudolf's body beneath the heavy wheel.

Max pulled Eden close, shielding her eyes with his hand. “Don't look,” he breathed.

She didn't need the caution. The horrific grinding of the coach and the trampling hooves painted a grisly picture in her mind's eye. “He's dead?” she asked in a faint voice.

Max winced as he took a last glance at the blood-spattered snow and the crumpled form that had once borne the hopes of the House of Hohenstaufen. “Yes,” he said, his voice unsteady. “This time he's really dead.”

Despite Eden's initial urgency in getting to the Tower, she was unable to continue directly. Nor could Max leave the scene of the tragedy until the authorities had been summoned. “I owe Sophie that much,” he explained as they sat in the Eagle and Child, drinking Nantes brandy and recovering their nerves.

Eden, who had been rendered speechless by the events of the past hour, noted with gratitude that the strain was beginning to ebb from Max's lean face. Sitting near the fire so that her clothes might dry out, she shook her head and at last found her voice. “You're an amazing man, Max. Half of me wanted you to kill Rudolf, the other half begged for mercy. I admire you more for your compassion than I would for what others might have called heroics.”

“
I'm glad,” he said with a wry grin. “Harriet would have called me dismal. But,” he noted, slipping his hand under hers, “Sophie would have sided with you, even if Rudolf hadn't been her brother. In some ways the two of you are more alike than I thought.”

Eden smiled for the first time since she'd left Clarges Street some two hours earlier. “Perhaps we can be even more alike,” she said with a mischievous glint in her eyes.

Max looked up as a serving man brought plates of Westphalian ham and buttered potatoes. “How do you mean?”

Eden waited for the server to leave. If Old Slaughter's had reeked of stale tobacco and overbrewed coffee, the Eagle and Child dispensed an aroma of roasting pigeons and sizzling mutton steaks and fresh-baked bread. Eden took knife and fork to her thick slice of ham and gazed at Max through her lashes. “Like Sophie, I can be your wife. The King has freed Jack.”

Max choked on a piece of potato and had to cover his mouth with a napkin. “Holy St. Hubert!” he finally gasped, leaning forward in his chair. “What happened?”

Supremely pleased with herself, Eden tossed her head and toyed with a piece of ham. “Oh, I simply explained to His Majesty about Roark's perjured testimony and then I suggested he take me as his mistress and after he got over the shock I admitted that you and I were in love and he said, ‘Fine, somebody has finally told the truth to a poor Dutchman.' Or something like that.” She gave a little lift to her shoulders. “Well?” The ebony eyes were very round. “Didn't I perform admirably?”

Max let out a whistle and sank back in his chair. “It's incredible. Does Jack know?”

“
Not yet. That's why I was so anxious to find you. I wanted us to go together to the Tower. But by now the news may have already gotten there ahead of us.”

“
Perhaps not.” Max considered briefly, then gazed at Eden with open admiration. “I can hardly believe it! I don't think I ever thought we'd be free to be together.” Still dumbfounded, he reached across the table to lightly touch the cut on Eden's cheek.

For a long moment they sat looking at each other, their smiles as wide as their eyes were bright. Max was the first to break the spell, placing a kiss on his fingertips and brushing Eden's lips with his hand. “We have plans to make, plans I never thought we'd have the chance to consider. But first, we must get to Jack, wherever he may be. I have some news of my own.” He began to eat in haste.

Eden was about to ask what sort of news when Lord Sunderland's coachman approached their table. He had, as far as Max and Eden could tell, spent the past quarter of an hour explaining to the authorities how the accident with his horses had come to pass.

“
Bloody nuisance,” he grumbled, sitting down without waiting to be asked. “Milord is on his way to Kensington, I'm told, but from what I hear, King William won't grieve over a Jacobite spy.”

“
True enough,” agreed Max, passing the man the brandy bottle. “We owe you our lives, you know. If this were the army, I'd commend you for your … assistance.” He started to reach for some coins, but the coachman waved his hand.

“
No, Your Highness, I needn't get paid for ridding the world of that traitor.”