And then, after agonizing moments—her left hand popped free! Now able to bring her hands in front of her, she managed to keep herself from tearing at her right wrist by an act of pure will, and slowly forced the other manacle off as well. Her wrists were definitely scraped and bleeding, but to her relief the damage wasn’t as terrible as it had felt. Now she looked for her sylphs—and the captain.

“Where are you?” she called softly, when silence and an apparently empty room met her searching gaze.

“Master . . .” came a small voice from the other side of the desk. “The man fell down and we let him go, but he is not moving.”

An ice-cold chill went down her spine at that. Surely not—

But her luck was well and truly out, because as she hurried around the desk, it was obvious that the captain was quite dead. He was completely still, his face set in an expression of horror, and his eyes—

Her first reaction was acute nausea, followed by terrible guilt, as the half-dozen sylphs looked up at her with solemn eyes. They might be a little malicious, but they never deliberately went past frightening their victims a bit. This was neither expected, nor welcome, to them either. What could have gone wrong? She had only intended for him to fall unconscious, long enough for her to escape! She hadn’t wanted to kill him!

Too late for that . . . he was stone dead. And there was no bringing him back.

Her mind went black for a moment, then restarted like a balky horse and galloped off at a manic pace. I was the last person with him. They’ll blame Gunther no matter what. She had to get out of there, and . . .

And first she needed to lock the door. With luck, no one would try it for a long time, and when they did, they might think that the captain wanted privacy. That should buy her a few hours. Moving as quietly as she could, she flipped the lock, then went back to the corpse on the floor as the night-sylphs watched her, waiting for her next request.

Part of her was appalled that she was thinking so clearly and quickly with a man lying dead near her. Part of her remembered the ugly look in his eyes, so like the man who had tried to rape her, and was not sorry at all for what had happened. And the third part of her ignored the guilty part and the part that was insisting he got what he deserved, and that was the part that was in charge.

She tore her handkerchief in half and wrapped her wrists with the two pieces. She took back the purse of prize money that he had confiscated, but stole nothing else, although there was a powerful temptation to go through his pockets. . . .