caught a glimpse of the knife embedded into the wood of the trellis beside them, still vibrating with motion.
Whereas time had seemed to stand still during their kiss, everything now raced to catch it up.
Felicity’s joints were no more substantial than jelly and her brain made of little more than porridge. The air might have been quicksand for how it impeded her responses and movement.
Gareth, in contrast, reacted with twice the speed and ease of someone half his size.
A metallic flash in the lanternlight barely registered before he shoved her roughly to the ground.
Felicity landed hard, the breath knocked out of her with a startled grunt. He crouched over her in time for another blade to sail through the space their standing bodies had only just occupied. When it landed in the garden, she stared at it for a moment, imagining where it might have found purchase in her flesh.
Her chest, possibly? Or her throat.
Trying to capture control of her empty lungs, she watched her personal guard leap up like a cat, yank the first blade from the trellis, and toss it back into the direction from which it sprang.
A low grunt told her he’d hit the mark, but that didn’t seem to mollify Gareth.
He whipped the tails of his coat back, pulling a dagger from some unseen sheath.
“Stay down,” he ordered.
She could do nothing but.
Two men materialized from the shadows of the corner of the garden. Gareth lunged for them, leaping over the railing only to duck another thrown dagger upon landing. He crushed pansies and geraniums as he charged, and Felicity couldn’t imagine the courage it must have taken for the men to stand against him.
Courage or madness.
One of them, a tall, pale fellow with thick arms for his lanky form, limped slightly, the blade in his hand dark with his own blood.
Served him right.
Though her protector wielded his own knife, he didn’t use it, not immediately. Instead, he kicked out at the pale man’s injured leg. It buckled beneath him and, with a strangled sound, the assailant dropped to the ground in a heap.
Gareth stood over him like the very angel of death. “Who sent you?” he demanded.
“Go to the devil, savage!”
The man’s neck made the most sickening sound as Gareth stomped on it before quickly turning to his next victim. This time, their blades flashed and flickered in the dim night as they circled each other, neither of them speaking a word.
She’d never expected violence to be so quiet.
It occurred to her to go for help. To run inside and make someone contact the authorities, but her struggling lungs kept her pinned to the ground.
A third man melted from the shadows, placing his stocky form between her and Gareth. At the sight of the blade he lifted against her guard, Felicity finally found the strength to draw a frantic breath.
To warn him.
Air screamed into her lungs with agonizing labor, and the pitiable sound drew the notice of this third interloper, who turned and advanced upon her.
Panicking, Felicity remembered the knife that’d sailed past them into the garden, and struggled to her hands and knees.
She heard the clomp of a boot on the opposite end of the pergola, and looked behind her. Gareth was still across the garden, applying his blade to his opponent. The stocky blighter smiled the smile of a shark, one of a predator who knew he’d cornered his next kill. He made a sound of perverse delight as he lifted his dagger.
Felicity scrambled to the bed of moss, finding the abandoned blade.
She hadn’t the slightest notion how to use it, but she had to try. Fingers wrapped around the hilt with a death grip, she thrust it in his direction.
Just in time to watch as Gareth rose behind the villain.
His fingers splayed over one side of the stocky man’s face one moment before Gareth smashed his skull into the column of the pergola.
Which shattered.
The pergola and the skull.
Felicity turned away from the sight. Her hand clamped over her mouth as her guts rolled and bile clawed its way up her esophagus.
Blood. She hated her body’s reaction to it, but knew it couldn’t be helped.
“Felicity.” Gareth’s voice was barely a growl above a whisper. “Felicity, look at me.”
She shook her head, convulsively swallowing as the punch she’d enjoyed earlier threatened to make a ghastly reappearance.
Not now. Not in front of him.
She convulsed several times, retching all over the moss, shuddering as her body rejected everything she’d had to eat or drink over the past