Free Cates, Kimberly by Angel's Fall

duel!
    "I don't care if you scowl until you blister me!" Fletcher insisted. "You pledged your sword to Miss Grafton-Moore."
    "She won't be needing it this evening. Even that surly mob of hers wouldn't be roaming about on such a miserable night, I promise you. Now, you can stand here in the rain all night if you want. I'm going into a warm tavern, dry out by the fire, and drink myself blind."
    "I'll go back to guard the lady myself," Fletcher insisted, jaw jutting at that pugnacious angle that had tempted half of Christendom to take a swing at it.
    Adam resisted the urge to grab him by the scruff of the neck and drag him inside the tavern. "Fine. Go sit in the rain like a half-wit. Just leave me in bloody peace!"
    Adam turned his back on the youth and tramped the last few steps to a tumbledown tavern tucked beside a pawnshop that marked the edge of a seedier part of town. The dens Mother Cavendish's mob had sprung from.
    It made him more than a little uncomfortable that he was stalking into the same tavern where some of those animals had doubtless drunk their pint of courage before they marched on a house full of women. But Fletcher had riled up his stubborn streak, and he'd be damned if he'd turn back now, like a green lad shamed into behaving himself.
    He flung open the door, heard the sullen roar of those within. Instincts honed in years of battle had given him the ability to gauge the mood of any room he entered. This tavern was a cave filled with spitefulness and anger, edged with just enough cruelty to make Adam's fingers check the hilt of the sabre strapped to his lean waist.
    He'd been in worse places. More dangerous ones. He preferred them. One step into a hell-hole, and a man knew where he stood—a heartbeat away from an honest dagger in the back. Here, violence and ugliness would be cloaked behind benign smiles and drooping lashes, in a place where nothing might be what it seemed.
    Adam made his way to a scarred table and sat down, his back to the wall, his eyes scanning the room. He could tell the instant the rest of the occupants noticed him. A choked-off sentence. A forced cough. Elbows poking ribs, stubbly chins jerking in his direction.
    More than one of the patrons looked vaguely familiar. And after a moment, Adam could feel the press of two dozen furtive gazes. He glared back, a cold warning that he was aware of the attention and alert to any movement. Sabrehawk's warning. One he had perfected in countless years of trying to discourage the foolish from seeking death at the point of his sword.
    His ebony gaze clashed with that of a portly man who had been among the mob at Angel's Fall, and the coward all but dove beneath a serving wench's skirts.
    But there were plenty of other culprits that weren't so wary. The half-pay officer who'd led the attack nursed his wounds in the corner with a half-dozen cronies. Percival's eyes shimmered with hate, and Adam was dead certain that the man was imagining his pistol-ball splitting the flesh of Adam's chest.
    Ah, well. If the fool attempted to strike, it would be the last mistake he ever made. Sabrehawk's enemies claimed that he could hear the whisper of a dagger being pulled from a boot top on the other side of the city. It was the greatest gift any soldier could have—that fierce instinct as much a part of him as his dark hair, his sinewy hand. Never, in the years since Adam first took up the sword, had it failed him.
    With arrogance born of that certainty, Adam surveyed the rest of the establishment, a motley collection of men and women who hovered beneath the gloss of respectability. Black sheep from merchant families, sailors doing their best to live up to their vile reputations. People smart enough to know they were scorned by decent society and mean-tempered enough to make someone pay.
    It would be easy enough to raise a mob out of such rabble. Easy enough to goad them into a frenzy, Adam realized with a chill, recalling the cozy house just down the street, its