Free A Summer Seduction by Candace Camp

door. Her head cracked painfully on the handle of the door, and she crumpled to the floor.

Five
     
    T he man jumped into the carriage after her, and the vehicle rolled off. Damaris lay on the floor, dazed. When the man casually shoved her legs aside with his foot, she realized that he must think he had knocked her head so hard she had lost consciousness. Instinctively she rolled limply with the movement. It was better that he believe her immobilized, and now she was facing away from him. At a bump in the road, she turned even further, so her shoulder was now against the opposite seat, completely hiding her face and front from her abductor. The recent movements had loosened the cloak around her enough that Damaris was able to raise her hands up and pull the rag from her mouth.
    Her reticule was still looped about one wrist, and she carefully edged it open and slipped her fingers inside. There was not much in the way of weapons there, but she did have a small leather coin purse, filled with coins. She tugged off her gloves and made sure the jewel of the ring on her right hand was facing out. Then she wrapped that hand tightly around the coin purse, to add a bit of weight to her fist. With herother hand, she located the small sewing kit, no more than three inches long, opened it, and pulled out the little scissors. The blades were no more than an inch in length, but they were sharply pointed. She held them in her other hand like a hilt on a knife.
    Then she waited. The carriage was moving at a steady clip; it would be foolish to try to jump out, even if she could make it to the door. But she worried that the vehicle would take her so far from home that she would be unable to find her way back. What if they removed her to the countryside? Or perhaps into the dark, twisting alleys of the East End? She thought of the tales of white slavers that she had heard whispered, and she wondered if she had been too swift to dismiss them. The idea seemed absurd, but she could think of no other possibility. Why would anyone abduct her? Who would want to, and what could they hope to achieve? She was, she mused, an ordinary sort of person living an uneventful life.
    The carriage slowed to a stop, and Damaris tensed. The man opened the door and stepped out of the carriage, reaching back inside to pull her out. As he did so, Damaris rolled to her back, jackknifed her legs and kicked straight out. Her feet, fortunately clad in heeled boots instead of soft slippers, hit him squarely in the chest and, caught by surprise, he staggered back, letting go of her.
    Damaris scrambled out of the carriage. He reached for her, but she jammed the tiny scissors into her abductor’s forearm, following up with a punch of her be-ringed fist into his cheek. The man howled, reeling backward, and luckily forDamaris, he stumbled over the uneven cobblestones of the street and went down on his backside. His cohort, still in the act of climbing down from the driver’s seat, stared at the scene in astonishment.
    Damaris did not wait to see what they would do. She whirled and pelted back up the street in the direction from which the carriage had come. She heard a man shout, but she had no idea what he said or whether it came from a passerby or one of her pursuers. A wagon rolled down the street toward her, and at the last moment, she darted across in front of it. The driver yelled at her, but she managed to avoid the horse, and she hoped that the wagon would slow the men following her. A man stood on the street corner, staring at her, and she ran up to him.
    “Please! Sir, please help me! Those men are—”
    “Here! Grab her!” yelled a voice from behind her. “She’s mad!”
    The stranger looked at her uncertainly, his hand coming out to take her arm. “Here. What’s going on, now?”
    Damaris was suddenly aware that she probably did indeed look like a madwoman, clutching her embroidery scissors, points out, her eyes huge with fright and her hair escaping every