The Courtesan - Julia Justiss Mills & Boon M&B

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she’d feign the amateur and lure him to a humiliating defeat. Then he would leave her in peace and she could put him and his unsettling effect on her out of mind for good.

      But though she tried to play on the disdain she suspected he harbored for her skill, attempted with weak and clumsy thrusts to make him commit to a lunge that would allow her to deliver a blow that knocked him off balance and perhaps off his feet, he refused to comply.

      With a dawning respect for his perspicacity, Belle discarded that tactic and reverted to fencing him properly. Within a very few minutes, she began to wonder wryly whether she’d truly wanted this demanding a challenge.

      Unlike her opponents thus far, Carrington was a fencer who truly knew the art, handling his blade with more finesse than anyone she’d yet faced, save Armaldi himself.

      To have survived the slaughter of Waterloo, he must possess skill as well as luck. But she’d not expected a cavalryman, accustomed to brute slashing with a heavy saber, to be a master of subtle moves and shrewd strategy.

      Just then he paused, and seizing that chance, Belle lunged. Their blades caught, forcing Armaldi to step in and untangle them.

      Belle went immediately on the offensive again. Though the captain fell back, he never allowed her another opening. Seeming content to counter her moves with only an occasional strike back, he simply did not make any mistakes she could use to deliver the decisive hit.

      Back and forth across the floor they continued. Belle’s hands grew sweaty, her breathing labored. Already tired by her lesson, she knew she was flagging. She would have to redouble her efforts before the captain could turn her growing fatigue to his advantage.

      Breaking away to gather her breath, Belle caught sight of the gallery. Men stood beside their chairs, waving their fists and shouting, their eyes feverish, their faces distorted by an excitement very much like lust.

      The captain paused also, watching her with those bold dark eyes, a slight smile on his face. Aside from the sheen of sweat on his face, he appeared not at all fatigued. Not at all challenged.

      The humiliating, infuriating suspicion swept through Belle that the captain was not truly engaging her at all. No, he was merely playing with her, checking her moves to keep from being pricked, but not using his full abilities.

      Once again, a man was toying with her—while other men watched and cheered him on.

      Frustration, fatigue and anger ignited into a fireball of fury that, intensified by remembered shame and pain, blazed out of control. Her eyes narrowed, her head and body felt suddenly light and her breast filled with a single, murderous desire for vengeance.

      On the fencer now taunting her. On all of them.

      Teeth clenched in a snarl, she attacked.

      PAUSING HIMSELF as Lady Belle paused for a respite, Jack assessed his opponent. She was amazingly good, and he’d been hard-pressed to protect himself without resorting to the dragoon’s killing slash that might have injured her, despite the protective bit of cork attached to their foils.

      But not having the stamina he had developed after years of performing this deadly game, she was tiring. A few more turns about the room, he judged, and her arms would weaken, her steps start to falter. Then, he would wait for an opportunity to disarm her…and win that kiss.

      His whole body stirring at the notion, he smiled slightly. And then suddenly she sprang at him.

      Whipping up his blade to protect his face, he was forced to concentrate all his energies on defending himself as, in a frenzy of thrusts and parries, she drove him hard.

      Even as sweat began dripping from his face and soaking his gloves, he wondered what had happened. Between one instant and the next, this match had ceased to be a test of skill. He’d fought in enough battles to recognize in the ferocity of Lady Belle’s attack the blood lust of an adversary bent not on simple victory—but on murder.

      As he parried one furious slash, the momentum of her lunge carried the deflected blade to the floor, embedding the tip into the wood. With a growl, Belle yanked the blade free—leaving behind the cork protector.

      He should call the match to a halt, he thought as she drove him into a corner and tried to pin him. But before he could bring himself to end this curious, exhilarating contest, he gazed down into her eyes.

      And encountered a look of such complete, blind hatred that it shocked him to the soul. Unable to imagine what he could possibly have done to have inspired so venomous an expression, for an instant he stood motionless.

      In the next instant, he saw light dancing off a flash of blade, felt a blow to the chest followed by a searing, white-hot pain. As he looked down in bemusement, blood began seeping from a hole beneath his left shoulder.

      For a long moment, he watched the pulsating flow while the voices from the gallery faded to a hum. His head grew light, his limbs clumsy. Dimly he noted the sword falling from his nerveless fingers.

      As the room flickered and dissolved into black, he realized that he wasn’t going to win that kiss after all.

      CHAPTER SIX

      DEAR LORD in heaven, she’d just killed her soldier.

      Her fury washed away with the flow of blood trickling down Jack Carrington’s chest, Belle dropped her foil and tried to brace him as he swayed. Then his eyes rolled back and he collapsed, taking her to the floor with him.

      She scrambled out from under him to rip open his shirt. “Someone get a physician,” she cried, dimly aware of a chaos of shouts, overturned chairs and running feet.

      Hands shaking with dread, she ripped the cuffs off her shirt and clamped them over the neat hole she had punched into Jack Carrington’s chest. Willing away the nausea brought on by fatigue and the scent of blood, she leaned her full weight against him.

      Sweat dripped down her forehead and marred her view of Carrington’s face, now drained of all color. “Hold on, Captain!” she urged. “You didn’t survive Waterloo to die on a fencing-room floor.”

      A hand closed over hers and she glanced up, startled.

      “Edmund Darnley, Lady Belle—a friend of Jack’s. If you will allow me to hold the pads in place? I’ve several stone more than you to bear against them.”

      “But I must do something,” she cried, needing some distraction from the horror that had just transpired.

      Darnley’s lips curved into a grim smile. “I’d say you’ve done quite enough. But if you can find something to put under his head, ’twill ease his breathing, I think.”

      Reluctantly Belle ceded him her place and scurried to grab a cushion from one of the overturned chairs. Dropping on her knees beside Darnley, she wedged the pillow under the captain. “I’m sorry,” she whispered to Darnley.

      The captain’s friend gave her a short nod.

      Then another gentleman—blond, exquisitely dressed, a bit stout, whom Belle recognized as one of the crowd that usually attended her lessons—knelt beside them.

      “Aubrey Ludlowe, ma’am. How does he, Edmund?”

      “Jack’s a tough old trooper. Is a doctor on the way?” Despite the calm words, Darnley looked grim and his gaze remained riveted on the still, white-faced figure whose chest rose and fell almost imperceptibly under his palms.

      “Armaldi dispatched his assistant to fetch him,” Ludlowe said. “Damned if I want to see my best friend stick his spoon in the wall right in front of me when he’s scarce returned from battle!” Ludlowe inhaled abruptly, his eyes widening. “Besides, should he…not recover, Lady Belle might be forced to flee to the continent!”

      “Unless she had the protection of someone very well connected,” Darnley agreed and then frowned. “Is Rupert still here?”

      “The whole crowd is milling about.”

      “If

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