stretched between two men, being dragged away. He staggered through madness and confusion, fog and pain. Adrian was swearing a blue streak.
Under the chaos he heard a monstrous racket of wheels on cobblestone. A goods wagon turned the corner.
The girl tore loose, leaving her cloak behind. She reeled straight into the path of the horses and slipped on wet cobbles. She had a split second to look up and see hooves. Her face was a mask of raw terror.
He launched himself toward her. Too late. He knew he’d be too late.
The driver wrenched on the reins. Horses reared and squealed. Frantic, she jackknifed away from the striking hooves. She was so close to scrambling to safety . . .
She slipped on the rain-slick cobbles. The wagon skidded. Iron rims shrieked on the stone. The wheel hit the side of her head with a soft, horrible thud. She whipped around, and wavered upright for an instant, and slumped to the dirty stones of the street.
Gaelic broke out. Limping, dragging their wounded with them, the gang retreated.
He stepped over a body and ran to the girl.
She huddled on her side, as if sleeping, covered with blood and mud, her pretty dress torn halfway off her. Her hand lay upcurled on the cobbles, open to the falling rain. For a sick moment he thought she was dead.
Adrian knelt beside him. “Gods. The dear gods. It
She was breathing. Sebastian ran his hands across her face and up into her hair.
She opened her eyes, but she didn’t see him. “Who?”
“You’re safe.”
“Hurt. I need . . .” She slipped out of consciousness with her eyes still open.
“How bad is it?” Adrian said.
“The wheel just glanced the side of her head.” He pushed her hair aside to show Adrian. “Here. Any harder and she’d have cracked like a melon.”
“There’s blood all over her.” Adrian dug out a handkerchief.
“Scalp wound. All flash and no fire.” He touched his way across her skull, trying to sense wrongness, any give that shouldn’t be there. In his years at sea he’d seen enough accidents to know what to look for. “Pupils the same size. Ears . . . nose . . . no bleeding. I can’t feel a break in her head. I’m drunk, Adrian. They wouldn’t have got to her if I hadn’t been drunk. Too drunk to do this.”
“I trust you, drunk, better than most doctors sober.”
She tried to roll. He kept her still. “I need more light.”
“Where? That tavern back there?”
She was soaked to the skin, lying in a puddle of water, losing the heat of her body into the ground. She was getting cold . . . a dangerous, clammy cold. “Not here. They might come back and bring friends.” He pulled his greatcoat off and wrapped it around her. When he gathered her up, she didn’t weigh anything at all.
She struggled when she felt herself be lifted. “Lemme down. I can walk.” Before she’d quite finished saying it, her head lolled against his chest.
“Right. You can walk. Bloody likely.” He shifted her in his hold so the rain didn’t hit her face. “Get me a knife. I’m unarmed. I’ll take her to the
“I’ll find you there.” Adrian was already wiping a knife on a dead man’s shirt. He slipped it into the sheath in Sebastian’s jacket. “I have to go. I have to find out who sent them. Take care of her for me, Bastian.”
Adrian wasn’t just a friend. He was a power in the shadow world of political spies, Head of Section for the British Intelligence Service. It wasn’t the first time Adrian had tangled him in his professional disputes. Fair enough. But sometimes innocents, like this poor girl, got hurt.
“You have some nasty enemies in this town.”
“I do indeed.” Adrian checked thugs as he passed, flopping them faceup, finding them dead. “Didn’t you see?” His dark, cynical face twisted in anger. “They weren’t after me. It’s her. She’s the one they want.”
Three
“GET THE DOOR,” SEBASTIAN ORDERED. THE CABIN boy scurried ahead, his bare feet slapping the planks.
When he laid her down on the bed, she mumbled, “Where . . . ?”
“She’s bleeding, Captain.”
“I see that, boy. Get me hot water.” The sharp tone sent Tom scrambling from the cabin.
Her braids sprawled in loops over his pillow. Hard to believe this little mite of a girl had armed men chasing her through alleys. What the devil had she got herself mixed up in?
Half-conscious, she rolled away, slapping at him feebly, trying to sit up. “Lemme be . . .”
“Softly, girl.” He was gentle when he pushed her to the mattress. “Softly. There’s no place you have to go. Lie still.”
Did she see him when she looked at him? Probably not. Her eyes were blank. “It’s dark. It . . . hurts. Hurts. I can’t get
“You’re safe. Where does it hurt?”
“Don’t be stupid. Hurts everywhere.” She decided to black out for a while. Her eyes slid shut, and she went limp.
“I imagine it does.” He eased her down flat. “Let’s hope you haven’t cracked anything important in your head. I’m damned if I can fix it.” There was nothing to do for her but wait. The best doctor in London couldn’t do more.
His fault she’d been hurt. The one day in the year he let himself get drunk, this woman needed him. There didn’t seem to be enough inventive ways to call himself an idiot.
He unwrapped her from his coat and pulled her shoes off. She wasn’t bleeding much anywhere, but she was soaking wet, shivering with shock and cold. That, at least, he could fix. All that filthy, soaked clothing had to come off.
He hesitated, then drew his knife. He set the point under the gilt locket she wore and turned the back of the blade and cupped his hand to shield her skin and cut. Lace snicked apart. That was Alençon lace, seven and sixpence a handspan these days, smuggled goods and illegal. And this was a very expensive whore.
She didn’t react when he peeled away damp, clinging cotton. Her breasts slipped free. They were peaches, golden on top where the sun got to them, pale below. They swayed, stippled with goose bumps, the nipples tight.
“No damage to that pair. That’s going to make hordes of men happy, won’t it?”
Beautiful and beautiful, left and right. Unruly parts of him took note, getting hard and ready. His cock was offering suggestions on the best way to warm her up. He and his cock were just going to have to disagree about that.
“Let’s get the rest of this off.” He sawed through a bit of silk ribbon, then cut a widening vee of nakedness down her belly, getting less and less dispassionate with every inch. Devil knew how doctors managed. Maybe they were all eunuchs.
Her skin was cold against the back of his hand, smooth as water. Soon enough he brushed a feathering of curly hair. She was blonde down there, too. Blonde as summer wheat. A man never knew till he checked.
A legion of men had plowed that particular wheatfield, and that was a sin and a shame for a woman like this.
Her belly curved down from her hips to the long, soft plain with that vulnerable navel at the center, then rose in a little mound where those curls sprang up. It was territory that called out for a man to come lay his head in the cradle of her, there, and turn and kiss his way up that hill and fill his mouth with the smell of her and the taste . . .
He shouldn’t have his hand there without invitation.
He took a deep breath and moved on, cutting away the rest of her skirt and peeling it back.
