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collect themselves enough to maneuver the blonde hellion into the empty cell, Swinton was on his feet.
    “You little
bitch
!”
    He struck her, hard—a blow across the face with the back of his fist that snapped her head sideways. The girl cried out and suddenly went limp, falling.
    Swinton caught her but Bickford shoved him aside before he could inflict any further damage. “Come on, Swinton, ye’ve had yer sport fer the night.” He dumped her in the cell, shut the door, and locked it quickly with a sigh of relief.
    “Her ladyship just don’t appreciate yer handsome face,” the other marshalman commented, still laughing as he turned to leave.
    Swinton stood there, shaking with fury, glowering down at her.
    “Come along, lad.” Bickford walked off, carrying the lantern. “Ye’ve got an early morning of it on the morrow.”
    With one last growled curse, and a glare—which he shared equally with the girl and with Nicholas—Swinton turned away and followed his cohorts toward the exit, slowly. Limping.
    He slammed the door behind him, and Nicholas heard the sound of a bar being dropped in place, then the heavy clatter of the chain.
    The rest of the prisoners, their brief entertainment ended, settled down once more. One man whispered his prayers. Another moaned for a while in pain or simple misery before he fell silent.
    Nicholas turned his gaze to his new neighbor.
    The girl lay unmoving, her breathing even but shallow. From the force of the blow, she might be badly hurt.
    But somehow he didn’t think so.
    Leaning one shoulder against the bars that separated his cell from hers, he looked down at her.
    She was young, no more than twenty-two or twenty-three, he guessed, with a flawless honey-colored complexion framed by a regal mane of tawny hair. A straight little nose that tilted ever so slightly upward at the tip. Thick, dark lashes resting on elegantly high cheeks. It was an aristocratic face. One that should be painted on an expensive cameo, protected in a gold locket, and kept close to some wealthy young lord’s heart.
    Nicholas frowned. He was supposed to be making escape plans, not ogling fellow inmates.
    He picked up the mutton leg from his interrupted supper and took a bite. “You can get up now,” he said with his mouth full. “They’re gone.”
    Her even, shallow breathing suddenly stilled.
    After a moment, she opened one eye and cast a cautious sideways glance toward the door. Then she opened the other and glared up at him. “How did you know I was faking?”
    “Women have fainted on me before,” he said sardonically. “One learns to tell a true faint from a display of female dramatics.”
    She sat up, gingerly touching her bruised cheek, and squinted at him, as if her vision were only now adjusting to the torchlit darkness. Her eyes widened as her gaze traveled from his beaten, bloodied face down over the breadth of his shoulders and chest.
    She quickly, warily moved to the other side of her cell, as far away as she could get. Which wasn’t far. Her slender back came up against the metal bars with a muted clang. She sat speechless, staring at him as if he were some kind of dangerous animal in a zoological park.
    Her expression made him feel every bit as rough and brutish as he must look. She regarded him with a trace of fear in her eyes, and something else... a certain disdain, a haughtiness that he had seen before in the eyes of ladies of quality.
    It was a look that never failed to annoy him.
    And it made him stare all the more boldly back. He allowed his gaze to roam over her, deliberately undressing her with his eyes.
    Every rich, creamy inch of her.
    He mentally slipped her lemon-colored silk gown from her shoulders and admired the delicate line of her collarbone... the generous swell of sweet feminine flesh below, almost overflowing her lacy bodice... her slim waist and the womanly swell of her hips. Her skirt had tangled around her, revealing a glimpse of long, long legs.
    He lifted his