Regency Immortal (The Immortal Chronicles Book 5) by Gene Doucette Page B

she’d largely ignored the men nearby, up until the closest one decided to offer a lewd suggestion, the general gist being that perhaps what she was missing was located in his pants.  When she didn’t reply, he worked a little harder to get her attention by putting his hand on her shoulder, which was just a huge mistake.
    “Remove your hand, sir,” she said.  There was an iron in her voice that should really have been enough of a warning to leave her alone.
    It wasn’t enough, because the hand went from the shoulder down the front and on a misguided journey toward her cleavage.  He wasn’t going to be getting that far though, because a moment later she’d broken his wrist.
    He shouted out in pain and fell over, which just drew more attention.  It also didn’t do anything to dissuade the men whose wrists hadn’t been broken yet.  That in itself showed an amazingly poor self-preservation instinct, because the effort she expended to break bone was not at all extensive, and it’s not easy to do that.  I can do it, but I’ve had a lot longer to practice.
    “Now why did you do that to my friend?” said the next nearest gentleman, who was neither a gentleman nor a friend to the injured man so far as I could tell.
    “That wasn’t nice,” agreed a third man.  “You should try to be nicer.”
    I was nearby, emerging from a different alley only a few paces away.  (I was in the alley for reasons involving my bladder.  The streets were dirt and we had no toilets—I swear to you this was normal.)  If there hadn’t been any rape-minded men wandering by, I expect I would have concocted some excuse to engage the lovely noblewoman in the wrong end of town all on my own.  The slowly assembling mob presented a much better excuse, however.
    I had a sword with me, which was just a happy coincidence, as I didn’t always travel around town with it on my hip.  It was a good sword, the kind that convinces people not to give the owner an excuse to use it.  So a few second after the third man spoke, my sword was resting on his shoulder.  This caused him to freeze, which is what blades do to people whose necks they touch.
    “ I think you good fellows should return to your tavern,” I said.  “I’m sure they miss you there.”
    Anna, who had widened her stance as much as her dress and boots allowed, knees bent and in a defensive crouch, looked at me with something less than love in her eyes.  “I can protect myself,” she said.  Her hand—which I had taken to be holding her dress out of the mud—was actually fingering the hilt of a knife sewn into one of the layers of her skirts.
    “I’m sorry, would you like to kill them yourself?” I asked.  “Gentlemen, do you care which of us kills you?”
    “Seems to me, sir, this has been a misunderstanding,” said the one with the blade on his neck.  His able-limbed companion was already backpedaling while the one with the broken wrist was getting to his feet and thinking that going through life left-handed was preferable to not surviving the day.
    “I’m certain you’re right,” I said.  “Why don’t you walk away from the lady and discuss it amongst yourselves.”
    I lowered the sword and waited to see if anybody was foolish enough to see how good I was with it.  I happened to be very good with it, so it was always a little disappointing when nobody challenged me. Honestly, the first time I held this sword there was a better-than-even chance I’d get to use it on a bunch of pirates.  Who knew that was going to end up being my best chance at really swinging the thing?  I mean, none of these guys even had a sword.  It was depressing.  I miss the fifteen-hundreds.
    Anyway, the area cleared out pretty quickly.  There were still a couple of dangerous-looking malingerers at the edge of my vision, but none of them looked like they were prepared to take on a swordsman.  Unfortunately.
    “I told you I didn’t need your help,” Anna growled, showing me