Free The Daredevil Snared (The Adventurers Quartet Book 3) by Stephanie Laurens

responding to a hail from somewhere out of their sight to the right.
    Even from where they crouched, they saw his face light up. Diccon all but jigged on the spot, clearly waiting...
    A young woman appeared. Brown haired, pale skinned, she moved with a grace that marked her as well bred. Smiling, she came up to Diccon and held out her hands. Diccon readily placed his hands in hers, all but wriggling with impatience and excitement.
    Closing her hands about the boy’s, her gaze on his face, the woman crouched as Caleb had done.
    Immediately, the boy started talking, although from the way the woman leaned toward him, he was keeping his voice down.
    “Miss Katherine, obviously.” Caleb scanned all of the area around the pair that he could see, but there were no guards or, indeed, anyone else close enough to hear the exchange.
    As Diccon poured out his news, Caleb saw the woman—younger than he’d expected by more than a decade; he’d had no idea a governess could be that young—start to tense. Clearly, she’d realized the import of what the boy was telling her—and she believed his tale.
    That last was verified when she glanced out of the gates—not directly at them but in their direction.
    Immediately, she caught herself and refocused on Diccon again.
    But Caleb had seen that look, had caught her expression. However fleeting, that look had been a visual cry for help that had also held a flaring of something even more precious—hope.
    By some trick of the light, of that moment in eternity, he’d felt that hope—fragile, but real—reaching out to him, something so indescribably precious he’d instinctively wanted to grasp it. To hold and protect it.
    Then she’d clamped down on the emotion, but he no longer harbored the slightest concern that the adults in the camp wouldn’t believe Diccon’s tale. She—Miss Katherine—did, and even though Caleb had yet to exchange so much as a word with her, he felt certain a woman brave enough to stand up to a mercenary captain in order to save an urchin’s life would have the backbone to carry her point with the English officers in the camp.
    Diccon finished his tale. Her gaze fixed firmly on his face, Miss Katherine slowly rose to her feet. Then she released one of his hands, but retained her clasp on the other. Drawing him around, she set off with a purposeful stride, heading in the direction of the mine. In just a few paces, she and Diccon had passed out of their sight.
    They continued to watch for several minutes, but no alarm was raised, and there was nothing of particular interest to see.
    Caleb frowned. He leaned toward Phillipe and whispered, “We need to see into the compound—we need a much more comprehensive view.”
    “I was thinking the same, and it just so happens”—without raising his arm, Phillipe pointed, directing Caleb’s gaze upward—“the compound is nestled into a curve in the hillside, and if you look very closely just there...”
    Caleb looked. His eyes were accustomed to reading ships’ flags at considerable distance; he quickly picked out the rock formation Phillipe had spied. “Perfect.” Caleb grinned. He glanced back at Quilley and Ducasse. “We’ve plenty of time before the light fades to find our way to that shelf.”
    They did and discovered it to be the perfect vantage point from which to survey the compound. The rock shelf was wide enough for all four of them to sit comfortably, sufficiently back from the edge that the shifting leaves of trees growing up from below screened them from anyone on the ground. They spent another half hour observing the movements of the guards and the captives, thus confirming and acquainting themselves with the uses of the different structures in the compound. Diccon had given them an excellent orientation, but it seemed that most of the adult males were down in the mine and not presently available to be viewed.
    There was a large circular fire pit in the space between the entrance to the mine, the