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Praise for USA TODAY bestselling author
KASEY
MICHAELS
‘Kasey Michaels aims for the heart and never misses.’
—New York Times bestselling author Nora Roberts
‘The historical elements…imbue the novel with powerful realism that will keep readers coming back.’
—Publishers Weekly on A Midsummer Night’s Sin
‘A poignant and highly satisfying read…filled with simmering sensuality, subtle touches of repartee, a hero out for revenge and a heroine ripe for adventure. You’ll enjoy the ride.’
—RT Book Reviews on How to Tame a Lady
‘Michaels’s new Regency miniseries is a joy… You will laugh and even shed a tear over this touching romance.’
—RT Book Reviews on How to Tempt a Duke
‘Michaels has done it again… Witty dialogue peppers a plot full of delectable details exposing the foibles and follies of the age.’
—Publishers Weekly, starred review, on The Butler Did It
“Michaels can write everything from a light-hearted romp to a far more serious-themed romance. [She] has outdone herself…’
—RT Book Reviews on A Gentleman By Any Other Name (Top Pick)
‘[A] hilarious spoof of society wedding rituals wrapped around a sensual romance filled with crackling dialogue reminiscent of The Philadelphia Story.’ —Publishers Weekly on Everything’s Coming Up Rosie
Dear Reader,
It’s always a bit sad for me when I have to say goodbye to beloved characters. But having been the one to set the Blackthorn brothers on their journeys in the first place, it was wonderful to watch them as they found their way to their destinations.
You see, with the Blackthorn brothers, as with any book I write, my ‘people’ take over. They go where I never planned to send them, do things that surprise and even shock me, and say things that make me laugh and cry.
Jack Blackthorn and his Tess, for instance, kept me up nights worrying about them. These are two people who could very easily have become victims, were it not for their strong characters, their determination and the love they share… even when they’re butting heads.
In all three books, The Taming of the Rake (Beau’s book), A Midsummer Night’s Sin (Puck’s book) and Much Ado About Rogues, there are a lot of outside struggles, dangers to be met and defeated, problems to be solved. But the real stories between the covers are Beau and Puck and Jack, and the sort of men they are… the kind of men they become. And, most definitely, the women who dare to love them.
Happy reading!
Kasey Michaels
Much Ado About
Rogues
Kasey
Michaels
THE BLACKTHORN BROTHERS
To Marcia Evanick,
one of the best friends a person could have,
a marvellous writer and truly the bravest lady I know.
I love you, Marci!
Speak low if you speak love.
—William Shakespeare Much Ado About Nothing
PROLOGUE
DICKIE CARSTAIRS, pudgy of body and pleasantly vacant-eyed, stood a little too close to the yellow circle of lamplight across the street from the Duck and Wattle to remain undetected. That was Dickie’s job, to be detected, and he performed this office with such brilliance that government clerk Miles Duncan was not only confident but smiling as he nipped out the back door of the inn whilst Dickie was so obviously watching the front.
The smile faded quickly as a firm hand clapped down on his shoulder even as a sharp tug on the satchel he carried relieved him of its burden. “Good evening, Mr. Duncan. Going somewhere? Mind if we join you?”
Miles Duncan did mind, but not for long, all his earthly cares forgotten as he slipped almost gracefully into the fetid puddle that had once been the contents of several chamber pots recently dumped from an upstairs window. Poor Miles Duncan, another victim of the violent crime rampant in certain quarters of London.
Will Browning calmly retrieved his knife from Duncan’s mortal remains and wiped the blade on the deceased’s coat. He then slid the weapon into the cuff of his boot before relieving the dead man of his purse and inferior garnet stickpin, to lend credence to the crime of robbery. “Jack? Mind if we join you? What a strange choice of words. Not where he just went if you don’t mind, thank you.”
Don John Blackthorn, best known as Black Jack, was already undoing the flap of the satchel, to assure himself the pilfered papers the prime minister had commissioned them to retrieve were inside. “Very well, Will. Next time you talk, and I’ll wield the sticker.”
“Ha! Isn’t it just like you to want the fun for yourself.”
Jack ignored the remark, knowing Will Browning employed his knife and sword without conscience or compunction. It was probably a good thing he’d found government service; otherwise, he’d have been hanged by now.
They were an odd trio of rogues. Dickie, third son of an earl, was socially inept, regarded as pleasant enough but rather dim, yet one of the bravest men Jack had ever met. Not just anyone would constantly set himself up as the most visible and vulnerable target. Dickie’s was the public face that made it possible for the rest to work.
Will was the weapon. Handsome, wealthy, smooth, an impeccably dressed darling of the ton, and always ready with a pleasant word and a smile. His sense of right and wrong, however, was his own, and quite singular. There was a certain civilized madness about Will. If you knew you weren’t quite a friend, you never wished to be his enemy.
And then there was Jack, the brains and nominal leader of the trio. Jack, who’d never quite felt at home anywhere. Bastard son of the Marquess of Blackthorn, he hadn’t felt at home on the estate, with his brothers, or with the world in general. He was different, and he’d recognized that difference early in life. He had a fire deep inside him, a need that he couldn’t articulate, let alone grasp. That had made him a wild, impulsive youth, and he’d learned life’s lessons the hard way.
Finding work as one of the government’s most trusted covert agents had fed the fire, for a time. Now he was growing tired of always being on the outside of life, the observer, never a real participant. Once, he’d thought he’d found the answer, a way to the unnameable acceptance he’d always been seeking, the one place where he knew he would fit. But then he’d lost his way, his purpose in living, and knew he could never get it back. Get her back. What he did now was merely exist from mission to mission.
“It’s all there?” Will asked as Dickie joined them, both of them leaning in to see the contents Jack quickly began returning to the satchel.
“I wasn’t made privy to an inventory, but there’s enough here that Lord Liverpool should be satisfied,” Jack answered noncommittally. “And more diligent about whom he trusts with the Crown’s business in future. In any event, we’ll be well recompensed for tonight’s work, and that’s what matters—correct, gentlemen?” He hesitated for a moment, and then pulled one of the pages back out of the packet when he saw a name he recognized. “Damn.”
“Shouldn’t be reading that, Jack,” Dickie pointed out. “We know too much, we could end up like our friend here, and I don’t much care for the neighborhood.”
“He’s not listening, Dickie,” Will pointed out. “You’re scowling more than usual, Jack. Is there a problem?”
Jack was still reading. “You could say that. It would seem the Marquis de Fontaine has gone missing.”
“Really? Haven’t heard that name in a while. Your mercenary mentor in the dark arts during the war, wasn’t he? And then there was that business with you and his daughter. Tess, correct? You never said, but I’m assuming that ended badly.”
“He doesn’t talk about it, no,” Dickie told Will quietly when Jack didn’t answer, but only replaced the page and closed the satchel.
“Still, the war’s over, more’s the pity, or else we’d still be hunting adversaries more worthy of our time than overly ambitious clerks, and de Fontaine has been pensioned off, or whatever we do with mercenaries we no longer need. So what does Liverpool care if the fellow’s taken a flit?”
Dickie carefully stepped over the late, overly ambitious Miles Duncan as Jack led the way out of the alley. “Old secrets or new, they’re probably all the same to Liverpool, yes, Jack?”
“Governments never want to give up their secrets,” Jack answered shortly. The mention of Tess, coming out of the blue along with seeing her father’s name, had set off a cascade of memories he’d rather stay dammed up behind the stone wall he’d built for them in his brain.
“So what are they going to do about the missing marquis, Jack?” Will asked as they climbed into the unmarked coach waiting at the end of the alley.
“Find him,” Jack said at last. “Liverpool’s memorandum to his secretary concerns my next small project for the Crown. It has been decided that, since I know him best, I’m to be asked to find Sinjon.”
“Liverpool wants to know what he might be up to since they set him out to pasture? That seems reasonable enough,” Will said, settling back against the squabs.
“Yes, reasonable enough. Find him. Question him,” Jack said, twisting the gold-and-onyx ring on his right index finger as the image of Tess’s sad, beautiful face seemed to float in front of him inside the dark coach. “And then, for the good of king and country, eliminate him.”
CHAPTER ONE
LADY THESSALY FONTENEAU sat perched on the window seat, her slim frame and riot of tumbling blond curls outlined by the sun shining through the windowpanes behind her.
Her long legs, encased in high, dark brown leather boots and tan buckskins, were bent at the knee, her heels pressed against a low stool shaped like a camel saddle. She was leaning slightly forward, her arms akimbo, her palms pressed against her thighs, her face in shadow. The white, full-sleeved lawn shirt she wore had been sewn for a larger frame, and rather billowed around her above the waistband, the deep V of the neck exposing the soft swell of breasts beneath the worn brown leather vest.
Just above her breasts hung the oval gold locket suspended from a thin golden chain. A pair of painted images were inside, one old, one newer, both painted by the marquis himself. The locket had hung from a black velvet ribbon until her father had pointed out that one should never wear a weapon in aid of the enemy: a thin chain will break, but a tightly knotted ribbon makes for a tolerable garrote.
She possessed the sort of classic beauty artists wept to paint. Aristocratic, finely boned. Gallic to the marrow. Yet with an air of sensuality about her, in those high cheekbones, that slim, straight nose, the wide, tempting mouth, those darkly lashed hazel eyes.
Those eyes, awash now with tears she refused to let fall.
“Where, Papa?” she breathed, surveying the shambles that was once the Marquis de Fontaine’s neat study, now searched to within an inch of destroying it completely. Her anger, her frustration, her growing fear, it was all there in the aftermath of her latest search, evidence as damning to her as would be a bloody knife in her hand as she stood over a body. “There has to be something. You would have left me something.”
Tess had instituted her search of the modest manor house a week ago, the day after her father’s disappearance. She’d been slow, neat, methodical, as she’d been taught to be.
She’d begun with the servants, who either knew nothing or said nothing. You never knew with servants, where their loyalty truly stood, if anywhere. Her papa had never employed any of the staff for long, as familiarity invited a relaxation of one’s guard; a paper carelessly left on the wrong side of a locked drawer, an unguarded word spoken at the table, with a servant still in the room. Always assume you are among enemies, he’d advised. It’s safer than relaxing with those you think friends.
It had been a trusted servant who had betrayed her father all those long years ago, he’d told her, and the marquis’s beloved Marie Louise who had paid the terrible price for her husband’s indiscretion.
No, the servants knew nothing, save for the one who had immediately reported the marquis’s absence to London. She’d known about that within days, having gone to the village to beg to be allowed more credit at the grocers until the end of the quarter, only to return home with a woefully inept government tail wagging behind her.
There had been no reason to dismiss the servants now, or to bother ferreting out the one who had tattled to Liverpool. Whomever she’d hire, one of them would be there expressly to spy on her. Save for Emilie, who had come with them when they’d escaped Paris all those years ago. Thank God for Emilie.
And no reason to hide the fact that she didn’t know where her father had gone, or why he’d left, or if he’d ever be coming back. Indeed, it was imperative that she let everyone see her lack of knowledge as to what her father might be planning or doing at this very moment. Her safety depended on her ignorance. That’s why she’d found no note, was given no warning. He’d been protecting her.
“But he would have left me something, something to assure me he’s all right,” Tess said aloud, pushing away the stool in a renewed burst of energy and getting to her feet. “I’m just not seeing it, that’s all.”
Pulling a key from her vest pocket, she approached the special cabinet the marquis had ordered built into the room, and inserted it in the lock. She pulled the glass doors open to reveal shelving holding various artifacts her father had bought or traded for over the past two decades. His treasures, he called them, some of them Roman, some Greek, most Egyptian. Bits of stone, chipped clay bowls, a small carved idol of some long-forgotten god, an ancient pipe with a broken stem. The prized possessions of a man who had traded in his love of things ancient and turned his mind, his talents, to revenge, a man at last left with nothing save these ancient, inferior relics of what had been. And a reminder of all this small family could afford, when the Marquis de Fontaine had once claimed one of the premier collections of ancient relics in all of France.
Tess hadn’t touched any of these prized possessions during her earlier searches, but they were all that was left. Her last chance.
One by one, she lifted the items from the shelves. She looked at them from every angle before depositing each piece on the desktop, her frustration building until it took everything within her not to throw the very last item, the broken pipe, into the fireplace.
Because there’d been nothing. Nothing. She put her palms on the bottom shelf and leaned her head against the edge of another, her position one of abject defeat.
“Second shelf, the left end of it. Lift it… there’s a button there. Push it, and then close the doors and step back.”
Tess couldn’t breathe. Every muscle in her body had turned to stone; heavy, immovable. Her mouth went dry, her heart stopped, then started again, each beat hurting. Hurting so bad. It was a voice she hadn’t heard in nearly four years but would never forget, could never forget. She heard it nightly, in her dreams. I love you, Tess. God help me, I love you. Let me love you…
“You?” she asked, not moving. “They sent you? That’s almost funny, Jack. The student, sent to find the master. And you came, you agreed, knowing what could be at the end of the day for the two of you.” She turned around slowly, placing her hands on the edge of the sturdy shelf behind her, knowing that otherwise she might slip to her knees, sobbing. “You, of all people.”
He remained where he stood, which was yards too close for her not to have heard him, sensed him, smelled him. Jésus doux, he still stole her breath away, just by looking at her. She knew every inch of him, had touched and tasted him, taken him in, given herself to him, even as he gave to her. A dark passion, too intense, too urgent and much too fleeting. The fire that blazed, but couldn’t be sustained.
Her dark lover. Dark of hair, dark of soul and mind and heart. Even his green eyes were dark, intense beneath those black winged brows, and unreadable. He might have been chiseled from warm stone by a master of the art, his leanly muscled body perfection itself, and life breathed into that beautiful, sometimes cruel mouth by a goddess bent on mischief once he’d been placed on the earth with all the lesser mortals.
That sensual mouth opened now; Tess was mesmerized by his lips as they curled into a brief, almost amused smile. “Fetching outfit, Tess. I doubt those buckskins flattered their original owner half so well.”
Tess snapped back to the moment, and took advantage of Jack’s remark to throw out a barb of her own. “I wouldn’t have noticed. They belonged to René.”
At the mention of her brother’s name, the winglike brows lowered, the stare became unnervingly intense. “So now you’ve made yourself over into the son? You’d do anything to please him, wouldn’t you? Have you ever succeeded?”
“Not as well as you did, no.” Another barb that hit home. Those that didn’t know him, hadn’t all but been inside his skin, wouldn’t notice. But she did. She’d hurt him. Good. They could both hurt.
Jack took a step forward. “I’m here to help, Tess, not go back over covered ground. Your brother’s dead. You and I never were what we thought we were, nor had what we thought we had. That’s the past. You don’t know where Sinjon is, do you? He’s left you here alone, to face me.”
“He couldn’t have known that you’d be the one to—” But then she stopped, shook her head. “No, he would have known that. I’m the fool who didn’t realize you’d be the one. Nobody knows him better.”
“But not well enough, apparently. I’d ask if you really don’t know where he’s gone, what he’s up to, but it’s obvious you don’t. What were you looking for?”
Tess shoved her splayed fingers through her hair, curling her hands into fists at the back of her head, not caring that she was probably only making a tangled mess worse. “I don’t know,” she admitted. “How could he have done this to me, Jack? To… to leave me with nothing?”
“I’m here,” he said, putting out his hand, but it was only to motion her aside so that he could approach the cabinet built into the wall. “He knew I’d come. He knew I’d be the one. That makes him either a genius or a fool, doesn’t it? Let’s see what he’s up to, shall we?”
He reached into the cabinet, running a hand beneath the second shelf, lifting the left end of it slightly. She heard a slight click, and then Jack stood clear, closed the cabinet doors.
As they watched, the cabinet seemed to come toward them and then began to pivot until it stood sideways, allowing them access to whatever lay beyond the opening.
Jack lit a brace of candles as Tess could only stand there, staring.
“I never… He never told me about this. He told you, but not me. Not his daughter.”
“We’re keeping score now?” Jack asked as he stepped through the opening and then turned to extend his hand, this time clearly intending that she take it.
She shook her head. “I’m fine on my own.”
Jack ran his gaze up and down her breeches-clad body. “Yes. Any fool could see that. Hug yourself close to you, Tess. Don’t let anybody in.”
“How dare you! It wasn’t me who—”
But he was gone, seemingly disappearing below her line of sight, taking the candlelight with him. Stairs. There was a flight of stairs behind the cabinet. Tess looked toward the opened door to the hallway, knowing if she left the study, Jack would want to know why she hadn’t followed him. She’d have to trust Emilie. Emilie would have learned by now that Jack had come to the manor house. She’d know what had to be done. Please, God, just this one time, toss the dice in my favor.
Tess quickly lit a candle and followed Jack down, into the depths.
WHEN HE’D GONE away, she’d still been more girl than woman.
No more.
Jack hadn’t known what to expect when he saw her again, either from her, or from himself. Seeing her had turned out to be both better and worse than he’d imagined.
The hurt was still in her eyes, undoubtedly made more raw by her father’s disappearance and his refusal to include her in his plans. This was an old pain for Tess. She’d told Jack she understood: Sinjon Fonteneau was not a demonstrative man, making him uncomfortable with any displays of emotion. He loved his daughter, yes, he did, but praise did not flow easily from his mouth. She understood, but understanding and acceptance are often strangers to each other, and Tess clearly was still trying to please her father, make him admit out loud that he was proud of her.
She was wearing René’s breeches. Because she felt less constricted dressed that way while destroying rooms in her search? Or just because that’s what she now wore? What the hell had gone on here these past four years?
With the familiarity of his former acquaintance with the underground room easing his way, Jack dipped the brace of candles again and again, lighting a dozen squat candles, illuminating the cool, dank-smelling room.
“Damn,” he bit out as he turned in a full circle, seeing what was there, taking note of what was gone.
He heard the click of Tess’s boots on the stone steps and quickly rid his face of all expression as she joined him in the center of the room.
“I’d often wondered where he kept…” she said, but then her voice trailed off. “Did René know?”
Jack nodded, not wanting to discuss the fact that Tess’s twin had been privy to this sanctum of sanctums, but she was not. Not then, not since René’s death. “He kept everything,” he said, still taking his mental inventory. “The disguises, the pots of paint and powder, the wigs.” He walked over to pick up the crude wooden crutch leaning against one of the tables. “I remember when he used this. He’d even tied up his leg beneath his greatcoat to lend more credence to his role of crippled veteran. The French lieutenant actually pushed a sou into his hand before Sinjon slashed his throat. And all of it accomplished while balanced on one leg. I’d argued against the disguise, pointed out that a one-legged man was vulnerable. I should have known better.”
“He only killed when necessary,” Tess said firmly, her belief in her father’s motives unshaken. “He only does what is necessary. Ever.”
Jack replaced the crutch and turned to her. “Yes, of course, the sainted Marquis de Fontaine. And what is so necessary for him now, Tess? The war’s over, he’s been rewarded for his service to the Crown, cut loose, left to live out his life in peace and security. That’s all he wanted, wasn’t it, all he ever said he wanted for all of you?”
“Both of us,” she corrected, wandering over to the large desk and opening the center drawer. “He never really wanted René to be like him.”
“All right, Tess, let’s do this now, get it over with,” Jack said, walking over to slam the drawer shut. “Your brother was young, foolish. And wrong. Sinjon never favored me over his own son. René had nothing to prove that night. Nothing.”
Her eyes flashed in the candlelight. “He had everything to prove. To our father—to you. He worshipped you. He wanted nothing more than to be like you. The so-brave and clever Jack. See, René, how Jack does it. Observe and learn, René, Jack will show you how it is done. Jack, so fearless as he enters the wasp’s nest. Jack, who is steel to the core, with the mind of a devil and the skills of an army. Watch him, even if you can never hope to equal him. He is one in a lifetime. Fearless.”
“Christ,” Jack bit out, putting the width of the desk between them. “Because I didn’t care. Because I had nothing to lose but my life.” Until you, he added silently.
“But it wasn’t your life that was lost, was it, Jack?”
“And do you think you’re the only one who grieves his loss? René was my friend.”
“No, he was never your friend. You have no friends, you make sure of that. I knew him better than anyone. René was meant for books and beauty, never destined to bleed out his life’s blood in that Whitechapel alley.” Tess pounded her clenched fist against her chest. “Me, Jack. I should have been there.”
“To die in his place?” Jack asked her, his voice hard, cold.
“None of you would have been in that alley if you’d allowed the original plan as my father and I drew it up, damn it, and you know it! René would never have been in any danger. We all knew he was too eager to please you and Papa, too eager to remember his lack of skill if the opportunity to… to…”
“To show off for us presented itself? Are you finally ready to admit that, Tess? Is Sinjon? Or am I still to take all the blame?”
“You convinced Papa to change the plan, to keep me out of it.”
Jack felt the fabric of his composure split. He’d never wanted Tess involved in any of their missions; that had been Sinjon’s choice to use his own children, Sinjon’s mistake. “Because I loved you!” he all but shouted, his words echoing back to him from the stone walls. “Because I couldn’t bear the thought of losing you.” He pulled himself back together, not without effort, then ended quietly, “And lost you anyway…”
Tess said nothing, the silence lasting nearly to the breaking point, turning the physical space between them into a yawning chasm that stretched across the lost years.
“Wherever he is, he’s well armed,” Jack said at last, looking toward the glass-fronted cabinet usually filled with weapons both deadly and unique. Tools of the trade. The cabinet had been the first thing his eyes had gone to when he’d entered the room, for he knew it would tell the tale. A man didn’t carry a dozen weapons into the woods with him if all he meant to do was blow out his own brains. Clearly it was destruction of some kind Sinjon had in mind when he’d done his flit, but not self-destruction.
He heard the drawer slide open once more. “There’s this,” Tess said, apparently just as eager as he was to put their recent confrontation behind them. “The Gypsy hasn’t been active in England for several years, not since… since René. Why would he have kept this?”
Jack returned to the desk to pick up the calling card Tess had placed there.
“Cheap theatrics,” he said coldly, looking at the card made of rich black stock and embossed with a golden eye with a bloodred pupil at its center. He passed it back to Tess. “I never agreed with Sinjon on that.”
“Papa says the government believes the man is Romany, and the eye symbol is that of the querret, the seeker. That’s why he was given that name. The seeker. As if he follows some higher purpose in what he does.”
Jack shook his head. As the son of an actress, he believed he could recognize a flair for the melodramatic when he saw one. “He seeks lining his pockets, and always has. Working for the French, working for anyone who will pay him, and filling the rest of his time working for himself. Whoever he is or once was, now he’s a thief and a murderer, and leaving these cards behind is his way of tipping his cap at those bent on stopping him. He’s an actor playing a part, and we who pursue him are his audience. Each time he places that card on another body, on the cushion where some treasure had been resting moments earlier, he’s taking his bow. We’d actually begun to believe him dead. But we found one of these cards a month or more ago, left behind after several very good pieces were removed from the Royal British Museum.”
Tess looked at him for long moments. “So he’s back. And you’re hunting him, aren’t you? Because of René. Because… because of everything.” Then her eyes went wide. “You… you don’t think…?”
“I don’t know, Tess. He’d have to be mad to try to find him on his own. Has he spoken of the Gypsy often?”
She sat down on the chair behind her, her long fingers tightly clasping and unclasping around the ends of the chair arms. She was nervous, a highly strung filly ready to bolt at any moment. Why? She should be searching the room, eager to see what was there. Was it him? Was it that difficult to be in the same room with him?
“Never. Not since René died. It was all over then, just as you said. The war, the assignments, the reason for the fight. Mama was still dead, and all the revenges he’d exacted for twenty years hadn’t changed that. He was given a small pension and told his services were no longer required. He still taught me things, although obviously he never trusted me, not if I wasn’t allowed to see this room.” She looked up at him. “But you know that. He’s never been quite the same since René died. Since you left. Suddenly old, and defeated.”
“I had no reason to stay, you’d made that plain enough. And it’s clear nothing’s changed there, either.”
“Not for you, certainly. You’re still working for the Crown, still doing their bidding. Which brings us back to why you’re here. You’ve as good as said Papa summoned you by disappearing. I think I know what the Crown would ask you to do once you found him. But what does Papa want from you?”
“When I find him, I’ll be sure to ask,” Jack said shortly, suddenly needing to be out of this room, out in the fresh air, away from Tess and her incisive questions.
“I won’t help you, you know. I’m not a fool. I know I can’t stop you. But I won’t help you.” She got to her feet. “In other words, Jack—for us, it ends here. I’ve seen your party trick with the cabinet and I thank you for it. But now I’m telling you to leave. You’re not welcome beneath this roof.”
He looked at her as she stood there. Magnificent. Frightened, but hiding it so well, the way she’d always done. He wanted her so badly he ached with it.
When she made to sweep past him, he grabbed her wrist and pulled her around, chest to chest with him in the flickering candlelight, her wrist still in his possession, their bent arms pressed between them. She raised her chin, stared at him in defiance, didn’t flinch, didn’t fight him, didn’t blink.
