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I just sobbed louder.
“Don’t cry,” he said helplessly. “It’s all right.”
But it wasn’t all right. It was all horrible. That frantic chase around the house, only last night, when they’d thought I was a thief. Rakoczy’s sinister eyes, the count with his ice-cold voice and his hand around my throat throttling me, and finally poor Wilbour and the man I’d stabbed in the back with a sword. And, most of all, the fact that I couldn’t even manage to give Gideon a piece of my mind without bursting into tears and making him feel he had to comfort me!
s much heavier than I’d expected, but I immediately felt better. True, I had no idea how to handle a sword, but it was certainly sharp and pointed, I knew that all right.
The fighting carried on. I risked a glance around the coach and saw that the two men had managed to force Gideon back against it on the other side. Some strands of his hair had worked free from the ribbon holding it back and fallen over his forehead. One of his sleeves was ripped wide, but to my relief I saw no blood. He was still uninjured.
I looked all around one last time, but there was no help in sight. Weighing up the sword in my hand, I stepped firmly forward. At least the sight of me would distract the two men. I might be able to give Gideon an advantage that way.
Instead, the opposite happened. The two men were fighting with their backs to me, so they didn’t see me, but Gideon’s eyes widened in horror when he caught sight of me.
For a fraction of a second, he hesitated, and that was long enough for one of the black-clad strangers to score another hit on him, just next to his ripped sleeve. But this time blood flowed. Gideon fought on as if nothing had happened.
“You can’t last much longer!” cried the man triumphantly, attacking Gideon with more force than before. “Pray if you can, because you are about to meet your maker!”
I clasped the hilt of my sword in both hands and ran at him, ignoring Gideon’s shocked expression. The men didn’t hear me coming. They didn’t notice me until the sword had sliced through the black coat that one of them was wearing and slid soundlessly into his flesh. For a frightful moment, I thought I must have missed—maybe I’d run the sword through the gap between the man’s body and his arm. But then his breathing slowed. He let go of his weapon and dropped to the ground like a felled tree. I couldn’t bring myself to release the hilt of the sword until he was lying there, nearly dead.
Oh, my God.
Gideon used the other man’s momentary alarm to thrust at him so hard that he too fell to his knees.
“Are you out of your mind?” Gideon shouted at me as he kicked his opponent’s sword aside with his foot and put the point of his own blade to the man’s neck.
The other man collapsed entirely. “Please … please, let me live,” he said.
My teeth were beginning to chatter.
This can’t have happened. I didn’t really just run a sword through a man’s body—did I?
The man I’d attacked let out another gurgling breath. The other one looked as if he was about to burst into tears.
“Who are you, and what do you want from us?” asked Gideon coldly.
“I was only obeying orders. Please don’t!”
“Who ordered you to do what?” A drop of blood formed on the man’s throat where the point of the sword met it. Gideon’s lips were tightly compressed, as if he could only just manage to keep the blade still.
“I don’t know any names. I swear I don’t.” And then his face, distorted by fear, began to blur in front of me. The green grass of the park spun around and around. I closed my eyes, almost relieved to fall into the whirlpool.
THIRTEEN
I’D MADE A SOFT landing in the middle of my own skirts, but I was in no fit state to stand up. Every bone in my body seemed to have dissolved, I was trembling all over, and my teeth were chattering frantically.
“Get up!” Gideon held out his hand to me. He had put his sword back in his belt. I saw, with a shudder, that there was blood on it. “Come on, Gwyneth! People are already looking at us.”
It was evening, and it must have been dark for some time, but we’d landed under a streetlight somewhere in the park. A jogger with headphones on glanced at us in surprise as he ran past.
“Didn’t I tell you to wait in the coach?” I didn’t react, so Gideon took my arm and pulled me to my feet. His face was completely drained of color. “That was incredibly reckless and … dreadfully dangerous and…” He swallowed hard and stared at me. “And, dammit all, rather brave of you.”
“I thought when the blade struck a rib I’d feel it,” I said, my teeth still chattering. “I didn’t expect it to be like … like cutting up a cake. Why didn’t that man have any bones?”
“I’m sure he did,” said Gideon. “But you were lucky and thrust the sword somewhere in between them.”
“Will he die?”
Gideon shrugged. “Not if it was a clean wound. But eighteenth-century surgery can’t really be compared with an episode of Grey’s Anatomy.”
