He shrugged off her blows one by one, she growing increasingly weary and light-headed because of the corset. She stepped on the hem of her dress and nearly bowled right over.
Their fight carried them out of the main exhibition hall into the wing with the wax figures. She was struggling now, struggling to remain standing, struggling to breathe, struggling just to lift the sword, which seemed to gain pounds with every blow he parried.
They locked together again.
“So enjoyable,” he said, “to dance with a lovely woman. I wonder if you would be this feisty in my bed.”
She jerked her knee up between his legs, but her skirts foiled the blow. He broke away, chuckling at her. She swung wildly, but he turned aside, the momentum of her blade chopping off Lord Mirwell’s head. It plopped neatly into its receiving basket.
The thief hooted. “Well done!”
Karigan rounded on him, her breathing harsh now. Some hair had come lose from a comb and hung in an annoying strand down the middle of her face. She stared at him, puffing, the sword valiantly held before her in hands trembling from fatigue.
With one swift blow he knocked it from her grasp and sent it clattering across the marble floor. She fell to her knees, too robbed of breath to do anything else. She was going to burn the damnable corset the first chance she got. If the thief didn’t kill her first.
The tip of his rapier flashed to the hollow of her throat. It pricked her skin as she swallowed, warm blood trickling down her chest.
The thief smiled, his gaze intent. “Ladies should not play with swords. The steel type, anyway.” He lowered the rapier tip to the top lace of her bodice and toyed with it. “But you’ve provided me with a most interesting diversion.”
Karigan wanted to tell him a thing or two that would burn his ears from the inside out, but she hadn’t the breath to speak.
“Thank the gods!” someone shouted from without. “The constables have finally arrived!”
Karigan had forgotten about all the others, and so had the thief, so immersed in their swordplay had they been.
“Time to go,” he said. With a flick of his wrist he sliced the lace of her bodice, then wrapped the chain of her necklace around the blade and yanked it from her neck. “To remember you by,” he explained. He unwound the necklace from the rapier and dropped it into his pocket.
Karigan grabbed at her gaping bodice. “You—you—” But she had so many things to say, they bottled up in her throat.
The thief backed toward the end of the exhibit hall at the sound of approaching feet. He paused and tugged off a velvet glove that matched the deep wine color of his frock coat. He kissed it and tossed it to the floor before her. “For you to remember me by.”
“You—you—you.” The venom in her voice made him wince, then grin broadly. He hopped onto the arm of King Jonaeus’ throne.
Karigan pulled off one of her useless shoes and threw it at him. She missed, knocking off King Jonaeus’ crown instead.
Armed constables rushed into the hall. “Stop, thief!”
“Good day,” he said, and he climbed up onto the casement of the window above King Jonaeus, kicked out the window, and vanished, but not before another well-aimed shoe clobbered him in the head.
“Ow!” came his cry from the street below. “That hurt, my lady!”
“You clobbered him in the head?” Mara asked incredulously.
“I was angry.”
“Karigan, you are the only person I know who can turn a pleasant excursion to a museum into a swordfight.”
Karigan sighed. Dressed now in her green uniform, she sat with her feet tucked under her in the chair next to Mara’s bed. It had been a huge relief to pry the corset loose from her body. It felt like her rib cage was still trying to spring back to its normal profile, and the whalebone ribbing had left deep indentations in her flesh.
Mara rubbed her chin. “Good aim with the shoe, though.”
Karigan had been very pleased with the throw herself, and felt no remorse over the loss of the shoe. What she hadn’t liked was how vulnerable she felt when at the mercy of the thief, which, she realized, was most of the time. She had not been able to defend herself while trapped in the dress, and he could have killed her at his pleasure. Her fingers went to the hollow of her throat where his rapier nicked her, and felt the scab. She never wanted to feel that vulnerable again. Ever.
Mara pushed back into her pillows, her gaze distant. “He sounds like the Raven Mask.”
“Who?”
Mara smiled. “The Raven Mask, a stealthy gentleman thief who prowled Sacor City some years ago, stealing select items like rare paintings and precious jewels. It’s said he especially favored entering the chambers of ladies to steal their fine jewels even as they slept in the night. He would leave some token for those he favored.” She glanced significantly at the velvet glove Karigan had dropped on the bed. “Some ladies were said to leave their windows wide open with gems sitting on their dressing tables in hopes he would come to them in the night, and they’d offer him other, ahem, favors. If caught and confronted, he was always polite, but he always managed to escape. He was known as a master swordsman.”
“He…the thief, he was good.” Karigan said.
“It was believed the Raven Mask retired, or was finally killed by an enraged husband, but more rumors point to him retiring to some country estate and a manor house filled with the riches he had accumulated throughout his career. Come to think of it, he’d be an elderly fellow by now.”