Fritz answered by pulling down a basket from the driver’s perch. The warm smell of fresh baked bread escaped from beneath the check cloth covering the basket and wafted her way.

Mary, you sly match-making dog, Petra thought.

“Sir, if you and my lady wish to retire in the shade of the tree,” Fritz said, his words stiff, as if rehearsed. “I will fix the axle and return herewith.” He pulled a quilt from his perch and tucked it over his arm.

Herewith? The blanket suggested a stay overnight. Petra glanced at the cloudless sky, grateful for the sun and warm breeze. “My lord, we can walk,” she insisted.

“No!” Fritz said at the same time Garret bellowed, “We will not!”

Petra rolled her eyes, annoyed, but then her annoyance turned to distrust. “Wait. If I stay here, with you, doesn’t that…I mean, couldn’t that…” she searched her memory. In Laurel’s Regency romance novels, there were complicated rules of etiquette and if any were breached a marriage always seemed to be the punishment. Alcoves, terraces, and bed chambers were off limits, of course, but what about a tree in the middle of nowhere? Garret, as the son of an Earl, would be expected to uphold certain standards, but what were those standards? “If we stay too long together, alone, wouldn’t that be bad for my reputation?”

Fritz blinked rapidly, his lips forming words he didn’t say. Petra watched him through lowered eyelids. What was it with these people? Fritz, Mary, why were they so anxious for her to hook up with Garret?

“I will walk.” Petra announced, scrambling out of the carriage. Her skirts caught on the door jamb, pulling her dress up around her thighs. She yanked them free.

Garret stared at her legs with an open mouth. “Alone?”

“Yes, alone.” Petra swept a disgusted gaze over him as she righted her skirts and headed for the split-rail fence.

“My lady, I beg of you,” Fritz began. “I’ll return shortly, you have my oath, but if you’re in the field, I won’t be able to find you.”

“We could have been halfway home by now,” Petra said over her shoulder. She pulled up her skirts to climb over the fence. Behind her, she heard gasps.

A hand on her arm stopped her mid climb. “My lady,” Garret said. “Please, I know another way. We will be home within an hour.”

The panicked expression on Fritz’s face had eased, the pink had left his cheeks and returned to his neck.

“We’ll have to go through the woods,” Garret said in a tone that sounded like, we’ll have to go through hell.

They walked silently up the hill beneath sun dappled trees. Garret matched his long stride to Petra’s shorter one and she was glad for his quiet, if hostile company. Although she’d ridden to church in the carriage, supposedly on this same road, nothing looked familiar. They could have been transported to Italy for all she knew. “You do know where we are, right?”

“We aren’t far from the village,” Garret told her.

From a distance, the church bells began to toll long and low and Petra wondered why. It felt bizarre to be walking through the countryside with a strange man in a foreign place while church bells rang an ominous rhythm.

They rounded a corner and came face to face with a monster. Not literally a monster, maybe, but definitely monster-like compared to any creature Petra had ever seen up close and for real. Her mind said bull, but her gut said wooly mammoth. His horns glistened in the midday sun. Leaves of grass poked out of his mouth and twitched as he chewed. Standing three feet away in the middle of the road he seemed larger than any of his family members, distant brown menaces in a field.

Garret took a step backward and put a protective arm in front of Petra. “Let’s hope he has already eaten his supper,” he said softly.

The creature snorted, as if to say that he preferred humans to grass.

Emory squinted through the dust motes that filled the tiny wooden structure’s air and counted the powder kegs. Sunlight peeked through broken, gaping slats. Spiders spun in the corners and hay, like a golden mountain, covered nine kegs. The gun powder was easily enough ammunition to blow a wing off Hampton court, destroy the translations, the translators and a few members of the king’s court as well.

“My life for tinder and flame,” Anne said.

Emory glanced at her. Her fever-bright eyes told him that she was only partly jesting. “Come,” he said, putting a hand on her shoulder to draw her away. “We are halfway home. It is almost done.”

Anne refused to budge. “But it tempts me so. We should set it now. Imagine the flames.”

Emory, who had his own fearful memories of fire and flame, took her hand and pulled her down a cart path. “If we act too soon, they will have time to recover. The distribution is key. Until then, we cannot risk disclosure, nor can we endanger you.”

“I have no fear of them,” Anne said, shuffling and kicking up small dust devils.

“You should,” Emory told her. “I fear for you.”

“Because I am a gentle woman? Because you believe I should keep my concerns to home and hearth? But who is to say that the word of God isn’t a womanly concern?”

“Chambers and his lot are dangerous, Anne. As you well know, this is not a game.”

“Why have you no fear for yourself? Or for Rohan?” Anne asked. “Rohan is not in his youth; he should be safely tucked into a monastery tending herbs and perfecting Latin.”

Hearing voices, Emory stopped and placed his hand on Anne’s back.

Anne also heard the raised voices and whispered, “Tis the Sabbath. Have they no care?”

Emory slid his gaze toward her, smiling at her hypocrisy and indignation. “Hush, perhaps it is our zealots,” he murmured. Then he recognized the voices. Slowing, he crested a small hill and saw Petra, Falstaff carrying what appeared to be a picnic basket, and a bull standing in the middle of the road.

Petra waved a large stick in front of the bull’s nose, but the animal didn’t seem even mildly threatened. Further down the road was the carriage, lilting to one side with a wheel lying alongside of it.

Watching Falstaff and Petra battling the bull, Emory fought a wave of unreasonable irritation. “It would appear your would-be suitor is seeking another’s favor.”

“He is not my suitor,” Anne said through gritted teeth. She dropped her hand and turned away.

“Not for lack of effort,” Emory said. His heart thumped, suddenly off rhythm, when Falstaff pulled Petra against his back.

“I’m glad he’s turned his attentions elsewhere,” Anne said, lifting her chin and sounding small and young.

Then Emory realized that he was responsible for the roaming bull. “Did you close the gate?” he whispered to Anne.

She leaned toward him. “A manly chore, much too difficult for a gentlewoman such as myself.”

Emory’s lips twitched. “We must help them.”

Anne shielded her eyes from the sun. “They are as helpless as children.” She said it casually, fondly even, but Emory heard a steely note in her voice.

Emory knew he had to take Anne home. He had only brought her because she had refused to tell him the information, Rohan’s information, unless he’d let her join him. He should have left her in the churchyard and found Rohan himself, but Rohan had been speaking with Petra and he would rather compromise Anne than face Petra.

A bad decision and here he faced another decision. Turn away from Petra, Falstaff and the bull? Before he drew Anne away and bypassed the trio, he heard distant horse hooves. It might be anyone, he thought, but the chill down his spine warned him it was Chambers or his men.

It seemed Petra was not to be avoided.