And she knew what was coming next. He’d yank open her coat and vest, and tear open her shirt, expecting to prove she wasn’t a woman. And as soon as he saw she was—well, there she was, a woman in man’s clothing, who presumably had no men to protect her, and all alone with him. And what proper woman would be cavorting about in men’s clothing anyway? Only loose ones, like that notorious writer, George Sand! Even people who were illiterate knew about women like that!

The devil take you, she snarled in her mind. I need no man to protect me!

“Take his breath!” she shouted to the night-sylphs above her. There was a flash of puzzlement in his eyes—well, this was not the reaction he expected. But there was no time for him to do more than have that instant of puzzlement. Because the night-sylphs reacted immediately to her order.

Quicker than the tick of a clock, they dove down on the captain and enveloped his head before he even had a chance to respond to what must have seemed to him like the cry of a mad person, wrapping their long hair about his face and neck. He couldn’t see them, of course, but he could most certainly feel what they were doing. They could not do much in the physical world, but they most certainly could make air move, and they made it all move out of his lungs.

She could see his head through them. He clawed at his throat, trying to gasp, and unable to. His eyes bulged, and he staggered backward, tripped, and fell behind his desk. The padded carpet meant he didn’t make much of a noise, and it seemed he wasn’t thrashing. But then again, his ramming her into the wall hadn’t brought his men running into the office to see what the matter was, so perhaps they were used to violent sounds coming from within.

Sadistic bastard. She felt her mouth forming a silent snarl. Well, he had just taken on an opponent that was going to give him a taste of his own back.

But she didn’t want to kill him, after all, so she added, quickly, “Once he is unconscious, give him his breath back,” and turned her attention to getting herself out of those irons.

She closed her eyes and concentrated all her attention on her hands and wrists. The irons had been made for a man’s bigger hands and thicker wrists and were very loose on her. Loose enough that she was certain she could get them off. She might lose some skin doing so, but she was sure she could get them off.

It was all going to depend on relaxing her hands while at the same time trying to squeeze them into the smallest possible shape . . . which was not the easiest thing to do, when you were crushing them and scraping the skin off. . . .

Painfully. And soon they were damp with blood.