be easy enough to grapple again.
No one else alive had ever made him pay so dearly for a mistake in the moment. She swept his feet from beneath him before he’d even regained his balance. He landed on his arse in an indecorous heap. She was with him the entire way, controlling his fall, leaping atop him so her weight, insignificant as it might be, was concentrated on his chest, her legs trapping his arms and her knees threatening to squeeze the life from his throat.
The throat to which she now held his own knife.
“I don’t want to hurt you, not for doing your job.” Though still out of breath, her words were measured and even. “No one need know I was here. No one need know I got one over on you.”
The smug triumph in her voice wasn’t required to identify her. Nor was his body’s sudden and thorough reaction to her.
Francesca Cavendish.
Or, rather, the woman who masqueraded as same.
Christ, he could have killed her in the dark. His breath trapped for another reason, one for which he wanted her to kill him. He’d done her violence. Punched her in the stomach … hard.
She was still regaining her breath.
“I’m sorry I hurt you,” he said, reflexively.
She snorted and ground down with her knees, her slim frame a darker shade of black than the night shadows. Her hair was hidden beneath a sailor’s cap, knitted to pull down over her ears.
“You hurt me?” She huffed out a laugh. “Please, I’m not the one trapped.”
“I wouldn’t say I’m trapped beneath your thighs, my lady, I’m merely enjoying my current situation.” His own English accent protected him from recognition as Lord Drake. At least while the lights remained doused.
In reply, the muscles in her legs tightened, forcing a gasp of air out of him in a cough. Instinctively, his hands lifted to the tops of her thighs, fingers digging in, but it would have taken a crowbar to pry them apart, and he didn’t want to hurt her.
Lord, she was strong.
“Are you going to be a good boy, and let me go?” she asked huskily, unfazed by his wickedness. “Or will I have to spill blood on your floorboards?”
His blood sped away from every one of his limbs, racing to his cock with dazzling and infuriating speed. Surely that’s why he was light-headed.
Not because her knee dug into his carotid.
He took too long to answer, apparently, while contemplating just why her threat of murder gave him such a painful hard-on.
“Did you hear me?” The knife nicked the tender flesh of his throat, and he sobered instantly. “Because it’s been a while since I’ve buried a body, but I’m certain I’ve not forgotten how.”
Chandler did his best not to investigate the intriguing fabric covering her thighs. She didn’t wear a skirt, but they were like no trousers he’d ever seen. Er—felt. They clung to her legs like a second skin, but stretched and moved as she did. Cotton perhaps? Lord he’d give his left eye to find out. Or maybe his left arm, as he’d need both eyes to see her.
She was magnificent, this woman. Who the devil was she to have been entrenched in Francesca’s life since finishing school? A spy? Did she work for the council?
Gads he hoped not. He’d hate to see a woman he so thoroughly admired hanged for high treason.
“You failed, you know,” he said evenly.
“This ought to be rich. Please tell me which one of us is a success and which a failure under our current circumstances?”
“Whether you intended to kill the Lord Chancellor or rescue him, you have botched both endeavors.”
Her scoff was a short breath that he could feel through her entire body. Tightening it. “Men have such vague imaginations sometimes.”
Chandler could feel every flex of her buttocks against his chest, every quiver and clench of her thighs as she maintained her balance, her power, her control.
“Oh, I can imagine plenty.” Right now, his thoughts were conjuring all sorts of scenarios that had had absolutely nothing to do with the Lord Chancellor. And everything to do with figuring out how to get his head deeper between her thighs.
“Now is not the time to be disgusting or disrespectful,” she snapped. “Or must I remind you I’m the one with a knife against your throat?”
Chandler knew he could likely disarm her before she did any lethal damage.
Probably.
However, she’d astonished him more than once tonight with her physical prowess, so it might do him well to be careful.
Just