The moment his fingers closed around her wrist, she moved, twisting one arm down and reaching into the slit in her gown with the other. One would think that her fingers would get tangled, but she’d practiced for hours until the act of getting the hilt in hand was second nature. She sliced her blade across his chest, leaving red in its wake, and leaped back at the same time.

“Get Her Grace and Lady Ravenna out of here!” she shouted to the gaping footmen.

As if they’d been in a trance watching her, they jolted into action. She didn’t take her eyes off the assassin who had brought up a second razor-edged blade to his bleeding chest. She retrieved her second kukri from its sheath. They circled each other like predators in the water.

“That was devious,” he said.

She scowled. “You expect me to offer you my neck meekly?”

“Your cousin wants to talk.”

“And I’m the queen of England.”

Snarling, he lunged forward, one blade coming precariously close to her shoulder as she shifted her weight onto her heels and brought up her left arm to block the blow. Within seconds, their blades spun and crashed, the noise echoing in the now-empty foyer. The man was skilled. Then again, if he was the man who had murdered her father, he would have to be.

She didn’t have time to breathe before he came at her again, his knives whirring so quickly she had to work to keep track of them. Sarani danced around him a few times, observing his footwork and the way he held his weapons, searching for anything that she could use against him while keeping him off-balance with a basic attack strategy. It was a technique she’d learned fighting Rhystan.

As if she’d conjured him, she felt the duke’s presence even before she laid eyes on him.

“Sarani!” The growl was male and guttural and tore through her like a tempest, but Sarani didn’t dare take her stare off her foe. One mistake, and it would be over; she knew that much.

“Stay back, please,” she told him.

She cleared her mind of everything but the man in front of her, lunging and parrying. Learning. The assassin was good, but there were flaws in his skill, like the roll to his back heel every time he struck left and then right in a certain sequence. It threw him off-balance the tiniest bit. Waiting for the right moment, Sarani propelled all her weight forward as they both fell, her kukri flashing in midair in a vicious six-strike series.