Page 22 of Stay with Me

Keeping her focus upon him, she read his expression and eyes to anticipate his next move. When he lunged at her, she was ready and sidestepped.

Before he could spin and swing again, she landed a kick in his lower back and then the bend of his knees. Both moves sent him stumbling into the opposite wall. Before he could steady himself and raise his sword, she dropped her knife and threw a punch into his temple, one hard enough to knock him out.

Like the other guard, he slumped against the wall and crumpled to the ground, unmoving.

From past experience, she knew she had less than five minutes before they began to gain consciousness. She made quick work of retrieving her knife and stripping them both of their weapons. Then she dragged them together and used a set of discarded shackles to immobilize their feet.

Without wasting further time, she unlocked the door and jogged toward Nicholas’s cell.

He was waiting at the iron bars of his cell, obviously having heard her fighting with the guards. Even though the darkness shadowed him, there was no disguising the solidness of his frame and the power in his bearing.

“You are unharmed?” His gaze skimmed over her, as though he was searching for any injury.

“I’m fine.” She jabbed the key into his door, the faint light from the opposite end giving her sufficient illumination. Even so, she fumbled as she had with the other lock, not accustomed to the old style.

“Let me.” He pushed aside her hand, twisted the key, and in the next instant swung the door open.

“The guards did not accost you?” His tone held a deadly note, one that told her what he’d do to the men if they had hurt her.

“No. They didn’t touch me.”

As he stepped out and was but centimeters from her, his presence was even more overpowering, but not in a way that repelled her. Quite the opposite. He felt safe. He was the one suffering, but instead of focusing on himself, he was more concerned about her. So unlike Dawson.

She gave herself a mental shake. Now wasn’t the time to think about her feelings. She had to stay focused and act.

“They won’t be out for long.” She started back down the passageway at a jog. “Let’s move them into the cell to keep them from alerting anyone of your escape.”

He was on her heels, and as they entered the area by the stairs, he halted abruptly, his eyes rounding upon the guards shackled and unconscious where she’d left them. “You disabled them without drawing blood?”

Obviously. But she bit back the word.

His attention shifted to her and then dropped to the dagger she still held. “You have my knife.”

A strange energy coursed through her at the realization that of all the knives she could have chosen from the wall in the study—ancient knives that had been preserved for hundreds of years—she’d picked his.

Surely Providence was somehow drawing them together. What other explanation could there be for how she’d ended up with his dagger?

She handed it to him, unable to keep from admiring his bare chest. The light of the sconce highlighted the perfection of his muscles. He was buff.

Her gaze drifted upward, taking in the dark scruff on his chin and jaw. His firm mouth and straight, narrow nose. His bottomless dark eyes.

As with the last time, he seemed to be trying not to let his sights drop beyond her chin. He apparently had more manners than she did.

Pressing his lips together, he crossed to the younger guard and pulled his mail off none too gently. With his back facing her, she had a full view of his mangled flesh. His wounds glistened with the salve she’d gloped on yesterday, bright crimson, some still oozing blood.

Inwardly, she shuddered, could only imagine the pain he was in. How was he even moving? If her back looked like his, she’d be delirious or crazy or both.

They didn’t have time to stand around and strip the guards, but maybe Nicholas assumed they’d be safer wearing the mail as they made their escape. Whatever his intentions, she had to stop gawking and join in his efforts to speed things along.

She crossed to the older guard and hefted the chain mail over his head. As she dropped the cloak of linked chains to the ground, one of his hands snaked around her neck and the other gripped her upper arm, drawing her flush.

“You decided to give me a turn after all.” The stench of his breath came from rotting teeth. Or maybe it was his rotting soul. She’d smelled it before, and he didn’t frighten her. She slipped out her knife, but before she could disable him, Nicholas rammed the hilt of his dagger against the man’s head, jarring him and forcing his grip to loosen around her throat.

She fell back a step, in time to see Nicholas lift the man’s hand and stab it to the wooden doorway of the stairway closet. She wasn’t sure whose knife it was, suspected it had been the guard’s and that she’d missed confiscating it when she’d searched him previously.

The man released a cry, but Nicholas quickly silenced him with a fist to the mouth and a choke hold around his throat. “Next time you lay a hand on her, Potter, I’ll chop it off.”

Nicholas squeezed hard, and the man’s eyes bulged, radiating fear.

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