The Swashbuckling Yarn of Milady Vixen by Christopher Newman Page A

snickered. “Does it prop up your withered manhood to see a female helpless at your feet? Do you think you can make me beg, cry or plead for mercy? Foolish boy-lover, I will not bend so easily.”
    With a snap of his shoulder, Duke Popinjay sent the whip in her direction. Its tail flicked across her stomach, lancing her skin with burning stripes. Vixen sucked in a gasp. The hot trails upon her skin burned like a demon’s kiss.
    “Now where is your insolent tongue?” He chuckled. “Have I stilled it with just a single lash?”
    “You only wish it were so—you buggering bastard!” she hissed.
    “I will tear the hide off you!”
    The whip arched her way once more, but Vixen thrust out her arm parallel to the carpet. The leather wound its ends around her supple limb, and she yanked back hard, tugging the duke off his feet. His pistol flew through the air. Noting its trajectory, she watched it land twenty paces from its owner’s hand before bouncing to a rest on the canopied top of the bed.
    On nimble feet she danced forward and swung a foot to knock the sadist out cold. He dodged and hopped to his feet, his fists cocked in front of him. He stood, knuckles facing upward and his thumbs back toward his face, like some comical boxer.
    “I am the master of fisticuffs!” he declared loudly. “I will enjoy thrashing you. Too bad you won’t be much of a fight; I would wish for a better opponent.”
    She kicked him in the balls, depriving his sails of any further wind.
    “Foul!” he squealed through his clenched teeth.
    “Sorry, I don’t adhere to the Marquis of Queensbury’s rules,” she said.
    On teetering legs the royal headed toward the bell rope, but Vixen was hot on his heels. She snatched up his arm and, with a toss, flung him onto the bed. Leaping across the distance, she meant to take him by the throat and throttle him to death. He raised a knee instead. The bent limb’s point struck her amidships, blasting the breath from her lungs. Hugging her middle, she gasped for air while the duke staggered up and stumbled toward the summoning device.
    “Oh no you don’t,” she wheezed.
    Gripping a pillow, she flung it at his legs. He hit the carpet knees first and yelped in pain. She sprung from the mattress, somewhat wobbly, only to have him kick her in the upper thigh. Landing on the kneeling perfumed dandy, she knocked him to the floor with a thump.
    “Get off,” he husked out.
    “Not with the likes of you,” she jested.
    Entwining her legs around his middle and her arms around his throat, Vixen rolled over. She looked like an upside-down crab embracing another member of its race. If anyone had cause to enter the duke’s apartments, they would’ve thought it was a reenactment of some queer, aquatic mating dance.
    “Well, Archie.” She laughed. “You wanted a bit more of a fight out of your entertainment, but I fear it may be too much for you.”
    He elbowed her in the gullet, and she relaxed her grip. He sprang away from her like an arrow shot from a bow. On nerveless legs he reached the bell rope.
    “Blast you and be thrice damned,” Vixen gurgled, watching him tug it frantically.
    Climbing to her feet, she once more dealt him a swift kick amidships, and this time it carried all her anger and frustration of ten odd years. Archie’s face turned beet red and his eyes crossed. He toppled to the floor like a pole-axed cow to lie there, wheezing and moaning pitifully.
    “Shit!” she swore. “The guards are coming!”
    Launching herself to the bedposts, she shinnied up them like she had done so many times on a mast onboard a ship. She laid her hand on the dainty pistol just as the red-coated sentries entered the fray. Vixen leaped to the floor and got behind the weeping royal, his own weapon pressed muzzle first to his temple.
    “Avast ye!” she commanded. “Move not a step, or this powder-faced whelp will be dancing a jig in Hell!”
    “She has a pistol!” one of them shouted.
    “Aye, and unlike