Page 105 of The Discount Damsel

Bradley sighed, a purge of breath and tension that left only tired irritation behind. And, perhaps, just a sliver of regret. “I threw that tea because I was angry and afraid and⁠—”

A crash sounded below.

Bradley’s head snapped to the door at the noise, ears pricking. Millie yanked her letter opener from her corset.

“It’s coming from the dungeons.” The apprentice raced for the stairwell. On the landing, he spun around. “Stay here.”

Millie was already crowding the doorway. “No! Those are my⁠—”

They froze as Sir Roger’s pained shout echoed up to the landing.

Bradley was the first to recover. He gripped her shoulder and pushed her back into the training room. Then he pressed the sailboat carving into her hands. “Stay. Here.”

She balked, startled by the ferocity in his words, the way his fingertips dug into her skin as if he could will her to stay put. He wasn’t angry, not anymore. He was worried and, she thought for the briefest moment, perhaps not just for the tower.

Millie glanced down at the keepsake he’d given her. At his rough hand cupping hers and pressing the sailboat against her stomach in an unspoken plea to safeguard it.

“Mr. Donmarin,” she protested.

But the apprentice was already racing for the dungeons.

CHAPTER 45

DIRK GETS DANGEROUS AND DECISIONS ARE MADE

The sounds of fighting echoed off the tower walls—scuffling and incoherent shouts, the twang of iron bars as something hit them, shifting sand.

Bradley leapt the final four steps, rolled out his landing, and surged for the dungeon door.

It was ajar.

Sir Roger knew to close it behind him when he was escorting the tutors to and from the training room. Bradley immediately strafed to the side and pivoted, checking the blind spot flush against the base of the stairs. No one lurked there, and there were no telltale ripples in the spring that someone had recently ducked their head beneath the surface.

The apprentice stormed into the dungeons to find Sir Beauregard, Jax, and Sir Roger in a three-way scuffle, or maybe it was Sir Roger trying to break up the two younger men? Duncan the gnome was huddled on his cot out of the way, knees drawn up to his chest and his books cradled in his lap, just in case. There was no sign of Fink, and Bradley hoped it was because the little scamp was out exploring instead of being the cause of the fight. He was small and the dungeons weren’t exceptionally bright and the little scamp could be easily stepped on.

“That is enough!” A feminine voice, shrill as a whistle, pierced the air.

Hells of the deep! He’d told her to stay in the training room. Didn’t she know brawling men were mindless until their rage was sated?

Bradley snapped around and found the princess on the last stair, one hand gripping the guide rope as she caught her breath. The sailboat carving was nowhere to be found.

At the sound of her voice, the menfolk stopped brawling, and Sir Roger shoved the others to opposite sides of the aisle.

Bradley found himself stepping aside as Mutineer Millie stormed into the dungeons.

Millie was trembling, but she didn’t show it. Not necessarily from fear, but from nerves. This was a precipitous moment. Every captain, pirate or no, would have to handle disorderly conduct on their ship at one point or another in their careers, and how they handled it dictated the future obedience of the crew.

If she was too harsh, they would rebel. If she was too soft, they wouldn’t respect her and then rebel. Millie had long ago decided to throw Machiavelli’s suggestion to the wind—she would be loved, not feared, because she would be inspiring and endearing and her crew would know there was nothing she would ask of them that she would not do herself. That, and a fabulous wardrobe, was the One in Ten.

These men needed discipline, not abuse. As Millie surveyed them and fixed upon them the fearsome stink eye she had learned from Miss Lottie, her second etiquette tutor, she opened her reticule and extracted one of the thin leather gloves she wore to protect her hands while fencing.

Sir Beauregard was closest, so her glove slapped him across the face first. Back-handed. Then she whirled around to deliver the same blow to Jax. The strike possessed the same physical force of a single raindrop falling into a birdbath—hardly worth measuring—but it stung and humiliated.

When neither man retaliated, Millie breathed an inward sigh of relief.

“What do you have to say for yourselves?” she demanded.

Neither man would out the other, and Sir Roger shrugged. “I didn’t see what caused it, miss.”