Hello Stranger (The Ravenels #4)(3)

“Then why are you here?”

“You’re the only female physician in all of England. It would be a shame for anything to happen to you.”

“I need no protection,” she informed him. “Furthermore, if I did, you’re not the one I would hire to provide it.”

Ransom gave her an inscrutable glance before going to the soldier she had bashed with her cane. The unconscious man was sprawled on his side. After using a booted foot to roll him onto his front, Ransom pulled a length of cord from his vest and bound the man’s hands behind his back.

“As you just saw,” Garrett continued, “I had no difficulty in trouncing that fellow, and I would have defeated the other two on my own.”

“No, you wouldn’t,” he said flatly.

Garrett felt a simmer of irritation. “I’ve been trained in the art of cane fighting by one of the finest ma?tre d’armes in London. I know how to take down multiple opponents.”

“You made a mistake,” Ransom said.

“What mistake?”

As Ransom held out his hand for the bayonet knife, Garrett gave it to him reluctantly. He slid it into the leather sheath and hooked it onto his own belt as he replied. “After you knocked the knife from his hand, you should have kicked it away. Instead you bent to pick it up, and turned your back on the others. They would have reached you if I hadn’t intervened.” Glancing at the bloodied pair of soldiers, who had begun to groan and stir, he remarked to them almost pleasantly, “If either of you moves, I’ll castrate you like a capon and throw your balls into Fleet Ditch.” His tone was all the more chilling for its casualness.

They both went still.

Ransom returned his attention to Garrett. “Fighting in a fencing master’s studio isn’t the same as fighting in the street. Men like those”—he flicked a contemptuous glance at the soldiers on the pavement—“don’t wait politely for you to fight them in turn. They rush simultaneously. As soon as one of them came within reach, your cane would have been useless.”

“Not at all,” Garrett informed him smartly. “I would have jabbed him with the point, and felled him with a hard strike.”

Ransom moved closer to her, stopping within an arm’s length. His shrewd gaze slid over her. Although Garrett held her ground, she felt her nerves spark with instinctive warning. She wasn’t quite sure what to make of Ethan Ransom, who seemed both a little bit more, and less, than human. A man designed like a weapon, long in the bone and muscular, with a fluid, limber way of moving. Even standing still, he conveyed a sense of explosive power.

“Try it with me,” he invited softly, his gaze locked on hers.

Garrett blinked in momentary surprise. “You want me to hit you with my cane? Now?”

Ransom gave a slight nod.

“I wouldn’t want to hurt you,” she said, prolonging her hesitation.

“You won’t—” he began to reply, just as she surprised him with an aggressive thrust of the cane.

As fast as she was, however, Ransom’s reaction was lightning swift. He dodged the cane, turning sideways so the tip barely grazed his ribs. Grasping the cane mid-shaft, he leveraged Garrett’s forward momentum with a strong tug, pulling her off her feet. She was stunned to feel one of his arms close around her, while he twisted the cane from her grip with his free hand. So easily, as if divesting people of weapons was child’s play.

Gasping and infuriated, Garrett found herself held firmly against his body, the knit of muscle and bone as unyielding as cordwood. She was utterly helpless.

Perhaps it was the reckless velocity of her pulse that accounted for the strange feeling that came over her, a velvety quietness that routed her thoughts and smothered every awareness of the scene around them. The world disappeared, and there was only the man at her back, his brutally hard arms around her. She closed her eyes, conscious only of the faint scent of citrus on his breath, and the measured rise and fall of his chest, and the wild tumult of her heart.

The spell was broken by his soft chuckle, the sound rippling gently along her spine. She tried to wrench free of him.

“Don’t laugh at me,” she said fiercely.

Carefully Ransom released her, assuring himself of her balance before handing the cane back to her. “I wasn’t laughing at you. I only liked it that you caught me off guard.” He held up his hands in a gesture of surrender, a dance of amusement in his eyes.

Slowly Garrett lowered the cane, while her cheeks burned as red as poppies. She could still feel his arms enclosing her, as if the sensation of him had sunk into her skin.

Reaching into his vest, Ransom pulled out a small silver whistle shaped like a tube. He blew three shrill blasts.

Garrett gathered he was summoning a constable on patrol. “You don’t use a police rattle?” she asked. Her father, who’d had a beat in King’s Cross, had always carried one of the official weighted wooden rattles. To raise an alarm, a constable swung the rattle by its handle until the blades made a loud clapping sound.

Ransom shook his head. “The rattle’s too cumbersome. And I had to give it back when I left the force.”

“You’re no longer with the Metropolitan Police?” she asked. “Who employs you now?”

“I’m not officially employed.”

“You do some kind of work for the government, however?”