Page 62 of The Duke and the Darkness

“Allez!”

Peyton feigned an attack, only to catch Devlin off guard with a parry into thin air. He retreated a step, his eyes flashing.

“So that’s how we’re playing, is it?” he muttered.

“Saber rules.” She shrugged. “Anything goes.”

She attacked, this time coming full-on with her foil and easily parrying his defensive thrusts. His might be bigger and stronger, but all those broad shoulders and taut muscles took longer to move, leaving him constantly a half-step behind, which evened out the disadvantage of her skirt.

Only a few lunges and retreats later, she ascertained that they were equally matched in skill. She wouldn’t win unless she found a chink in his armor. Easier said than done, too, since he wore no armor. He barely wore anything at all.

His foil slapped her shoulder. “Touch!”

With a faint curse at her lack of focus, she retreated a few feet so they could reset for the next volley.Concentrate!But she also needed to change her mode of attack. She’d never win by simply fencing.

She needed to attack his control. If he lost control, he’d lose the match.

They both took their ready positions, and she called out,“Allez!”

Devlin rushed at her, but she retreated, not because she needed to but because she wanted to draw him in closer.

“Titus taught you to fence?” she asked, expertly parrying his thrusts.

“And others here and there.” He lunged. “That’s why I’ll win.”

She thrust at his chest, only for her foil to be knocked away at the last moment. She laughed at how easily she’d set up the parry. “Not if you keep fencing like that.”

She saw his eyes flare.Good.She needed to prick him, and not just with the foil, although she promptly did, right in his broad shoulder.

“Touché,” she purred and demurely flexed her foil on the floor at her heel, as if she’d just noticed she held a weapon in her hand and didn’t know how to use it. “If you want to quit now before you lose, I’d be happy to accept your forfeiture.”

This time when he smiled at her, his expression was tight.

A dangerous thrill raced up her spine. When she was with him, she often felt like a mouse being played with by a lion.

It was the mouse’s turn now to taunt.

“What do I get when I win?” he asked.

“What doIget whenIwin, you mean,” she corrected and took heren gardeposition. “Any opponent who bends his wrist when he parries shouldn’t be hard to defeat.”

He lowered into his stance. “I don’t bend my wrist.”

“No? Apologies.” But the glance she shot to his wrist wasn’t at all mistaken. Or apologetic. “So it all comes down to this next go, then. Do try to concentrate. I would hate to be able to tell everyone that Dartmoor was bested in both cards and fencing by a skirt.”

The heated look he cast over her was scalding. “I don’t mind being bested by a skirt,” he purred in a husky voice that tingled through her like liquid heat. “I find it exhilarating when a woman comes out on top.”

Thatturned the tingle into a pulsating ache. She pushed from her mind the unbidden, and thoroughly wanton, images his words created but didn’t give him time to center himself.“Allez!”

She charged. They met in a flurry of thrusts and parries, charges and retreats, and the metallic clang of metal foil against foil reverberated against the cellar’s stone walls.

Peyton side-stepped his slashing thrust. Had he been a real foe, she would have run him through with her foil or dropped to the ground and taken him out at the knees. Instead, she closed the distance between them, pressed the hilt of her foil against his, and pinned both foils between them. Neither could move back without losing the advantage to the other.

“You’ve trapped us both,” he told her.

“But I know the way out, and it isn’t by hiding.” Emotion tightened her chest. “I’ve hidden from the past long enough. Soon, I won’t be able to hide any longer.”

“And you think I am?”