Passionately Yours (Hellions of High Street 3)

Gaze glued on the narrowing ledge, she started to skirt around a jagged boulder when a sudden clap of thunder shook the night. Startled, she slipped in midstep. A gust tangled in the billowing folds of her cloak, spinning her around. The smooth leather soles skidded over weathered stone, the wet wool pulled her off-balance.

Caro felt herself begin to fall.

No, no!

Arms flailing, she fought to steady herself. But the wind kicked up, knocking her over the edge. For a heartbeat she hung suspended in the air…

And then everything went black.

Lightning lit the sky, the fiery flash illuminating the silhouette of a man standing on a ledge not far ahead. Wind whipping at his hair, Alec covered the distance with swift, sure-footed strides as rain started to fall.

Thayer turned, and a second booming blaze caught the look of surprise on his face. In an instant, the twist turned to a malevolent sneer. “You’ve lost yet another lady, McClellan,” he snarled, as Alec slowed and stepped onto the ledge. “You’re not very lucky in love, are you?”

Alec saw a crumpled form among the rocks and felt a roar rip free from his throat.

Thayer raised his pistol. “I was going to shoot the meddlesome chit, but she’s saved me the trouble.” The sound of the hammer cocking rose above the whoosh of the wind. “It will give me far greater pleasure to put a bullet through your oh-so-noble heart.”

To the Devil with bullets. No earthly force was going to stop him, vowed Alec. This was the man who, through his traitorous machinations, had been the cause of Isobel nearly losing her life on the moors in a storm like this one. And now Caro…

Out of the corner of his eye, he saw Caro move.

Thank God—she was alive!

The knowledge made him even more grimly resolved that Thayer would never harm anyone again. As his nemesis squeezed the trigger, Alec lunged for the gun barrel.

The hammer hit the frizzen with a metallic snap, only to be followed by a deathly silence.

Thayer stood frozen in shock for a fraction of a second—just long enough for Alec knock the pistol from his outstretched hand. Swearing a vicious oath, he tried to smash a knee into Alec’s groin.

Anticipating the foul blow, Alec turned and took it on his thigh. Oblivious to the pain shooting through his leg, he countered with a hard jab that broke the other man’s nos

e.

Howling in agony, Thayer staggered back, blood streaming down his chin. He kicked out blindly, forcing Alec back a step, then slid sideways and yanked a knife from his boot. “Wet powder may be useless,” he said, “but wet steel cuts just as sharply.”

“True. But your only skill lies in stabbing your friends in the back.” Alec calmly dodged a lethal slash. “In a face-to-face fight, let us see who holds the edge.”

Thayer tried an upward stab.

With a flick of his bare hand, Alec hit the flat of the knife, deflecting the blade. “My bet is that you’re a dead man.”

His taunt and his icy sangfroid goaded Thayer into lashing out with a flurry of wild strikes.

“The serpent seems a little sluggish,” said Alec, as he kept dancing just out of reach, deliberately drawing his adversary away from where Caro lay and toward a patch of unstable stone.

“Coward,” jeered Thayer, though his voice was sounding a little ragged. “You’ve always been lily-livered coward, though you hide it behind your babblings about honor.”

“It’s no wonder that any talk of honor sounds like gibberish to a greasy mawworm like you,” replied Alec.

The knife suddenly sliced out in a downward arc, its blade cutting through his sleeve and scoring a bloody furrow across his forearm. Thayer let out a cry of triumph, but Alec merely smiled and slid back, impervious to the pain, to the wind, to the rumbling thunder—to anything but beating the other man at his own devil-benighted game.

Growling in frustration, Thayer slashed again and hit nothing but a swirl of wind.

Alec laughed.

The other man’s breath was now coming in raspy gasps. Abandoning all caution, Thayer rushed forward and swung another arcing stab. But as his boots hit the loose rocks, his weight caused them to suddenly shift, causing him to lose his footing.

Crying out a curse, he twisted and threw out his arms, trying to break his fall just as the rocks lurched again and broke apart.