come. Dragan opened the door, and she couldn’t believe the air of the rancid alley smelled almost sweet. However, her relief only lasted a moment. Two men flanked the door, rough, bullish men with short necks and mean faces.
Dragan took her arm, walking smartly to the left, retracing their earlier route. A boy with a barrow hurried past. A woman with a bundle of washing on her back dipped out of sight, and a door slammed. Coming toward them were two more men who could have been clones of those behind.
Dragan must have seen them, but his step didn’t falter. Instead, he leaned his head nearer hers as though to continue a private conversation. “Be ready to run.”
Chapter Nine
God knew she was ready to run now. The direction was the problem, for she could hear the following footsteps of the men from the pub door.
Abruptly, her arm was yanked to the left as Dragan pulled her through a doorway she hadn’t even seen. She seized her skirts to avoid tripping and bolted with him along a covered passage into a small courtyard surrounded by buildings and doorways, one of which was almost certainly the backdoor to the alehouse.
Without hesitation, Dragan dragged her to the right and through the first door. A voice objected, though she could see no one. Hand in hand, they ran toward a small seam of light and broke through a doorway, back into the alley they had just left, and pelted on. The men who had been in front had vanished, perhaps through another door, hoping to catch them in the courtyard.
A shout went up just before they flew around the corner at the end of the alley and into the next. Footsteps pounded behind them. Dragan heaved his shoulder at a wooden gate, but it appeared to be locked. From it, a wall about five feet high stretched for the next dozen yards or so.
Dragan seized her by the waist, all but throwing her up the wall. She gasped, clinging with both hands and hauling herself up to straddle it. By then, Dragan was sliding over the top and dropping down. He held up his arms, and she jumped without hesitation.
He caught her, pushing her at once against the stone wall, his finger to his lips.
Someone battered on the wooden gate, making her jump.
“Locked!” the unseen man snarled, and footsteps ran on—two pairs.
A shout went up some distance away, echoed surely by their running pursuers. Griz breathed again, though her heart still hammered, which may have had less to do with fear than with her close proximity to Dragan, still squashing her into the wall. He was very large, warm, and solid. She could feel the rise and fall of his chest with every quickened breath. Did all men have this strangely exciting smell? Something faintly earthy, herbal, and utterly masculine…
“Stupid men always underestimate women,” Dragan murmured happily, dropping his gaze to her face as he stood back. “No one would believe you would or could climb that wall.”
Griz adjusted her spectacles more securely on her nose. “What made you think I could? That I wouldn’t just scream as you hurled me over the top?”
He only grinned. “Come on, let’s find a way out.”
“Here!” yelled a man emerging from what might have been a workshop at one end of the yard. “What d’you want, then?”
With a breath of laughter, Dragan seized her hand again, and they ran like children through the yard, leaping over a much lower wall that led to a fence full of gaps. They rolled through the nearest, and Griz jumped to her feet, gasping with the sudden desire to laugh. But there was no time, for Dragan seized her hand once more, and they ran along the narrow, busy street, dodging carts and people who screamed obscenities after them. At least, Griz supposed they were obscenities.
At one point, Dragan released her hand and leapt over a barrow full of highly fragrant fish, while she sprinted across the front of it with inches to spare. They came together again with the furious yells of the barrow boy ringing in their ears and ran on.
She couldn’t deny it. It was the most fun she’d had since childhood games of tag, and somehow that seemed to wipe out the actual danger presented by their pursuers. She could only assume that Dragan, too, missed the adventurous life he had left behind.
Sharing a quick, conspiratorial grin, they rounded the