The Untamed Bride by Stephanie Laurens

crunch, then the large man’s grip on her eased and fell away.
    Del pulled her to him, to his other side. Peering back, around him, she saw the man who’d seized her laid out unconscious on the flagstone path.
    Then every man and woman who’d been in the tap came pouring out—to see, exclaim, ask questions, demand answers.
    Del suddenly found himself and Deliah surrounded by a well-meaning throng. Many seemed to think Deliah wouldbe in imminent danger of collapse, presumably from overwrought sensibilities, an assumption she seemed to find as mystifying as, and rather more irritating than, he did.
    Questions, solicitude and sympathetic outrage came from all sides; it took vital minutes to calm everyone down.
    Finally Del looked up and saw Mustaf and Kumulay striding back up the lawn. Mustaf shook his head, gestured with his fingers—the man had had a horse waiting.
    They’d intended to grab Deliah and take her somewhere. Del’s mind supplied the where—wherever the Black Cobra or his lieutenant was waiting.
    He swallowed a curse, looked for the man he’d laid out—then clamped his lips shut on an even more virulent oath.
    The man had vanished.
    Teeth gritted behind an entirely false smile, he tightened his hold on Deliah’s arm and started steering her through the crowd, toward the front of the inn.
    Having noted the disappearance of the man, and Del’s direction, Mustaf and Kumulay went to summon the others and ready the carriages.
    It was another twenty minutes before they were once again underway, and rolling out of the no-longer-so-sleepy village.
    Del slumped back against the seat, finally registered the throbbing in his left hand. Lifting it, he saw he’d split the skin over one knuckle. He put the injured joint to his mouth.
    Deliah noticed, frowned, then she looked ahead. Lifted her chin. After a moment, she said, “I believe your commander, whoever he is, would agree, now, that I have a right to know.”
    Del grimaced. He glanced at her profile; her lips weren’t pouting—they were set in a grim line. “I don’t suppose you’d accept that those men were merely footpads—itinerants looking for an easy mark?”
    “No.”
    He sighed.
    “If I’d known I stood in any danger of attack, I wouldn’thave gone out of that door.” She turned her head, met his eyes. “You can’t not tell me—it’s too dangerous for me not to know.”
    He held her gaze for a moment, then looked ahead, filled his lungs. And told her.
    Initially he gave her a carefully edited description of the Black Cobra and his mission. She seemed to sense his prevarications and refused to let them lie, verbally pulling and prodding until she’d extracted an account a great deal closer to the full picture from him.
    He inwardly winced as he heard himself tell her about the manner of James MacFarlane’s death, and of the evidence he’d given his life to get to them.
    “Poor boy—how utterly dreadful. Yet at least he died a true hero—I imagine that would have been important to him. And this is the evidence you and your friends are endeavoring to ensure gets into Wolverstone’s hands?”
    “Yes.”
    “And part of the plan is to make the Black Cobra attack, so he can be caught and thus implicated entirely independently of the evidence itself?”
    “Yes.”
    She was silent for a moment, then said, “That’s a very good plan.”
    He’d expected her to be appalled, and then horrified, frightened, even terrified by the very real threat of very real and nasty danger—something she certainly wouldn’t have missed. Yet while she’d been as appalled as he’d imagined, horror, fright and terror didn’t seem to be in her repertoire; if he’d had any real doubts that she was made of sterner stuff, her immediate focus on the salient points of his mission had slain them.
    After another, longer silence, she looked at him, met his eyes. “I will, of course, help in whatever way I can—you have only to ask. As the Black Cobra clearly