Venus Read Online Free

dripped from the cut; the tavern keeper roared like an enraged bull, bringing the cudgel down with full force. Nicholas jumped aside, and the club just missed shattering his arm; but he was almost against the wall now. There would be nowhere to jump the next time.
    A sudden blast of freezing air filled the room, setting the sullen coals in the hearth to hiss and smoke. Someone had opened the casement at his back. “Quickly!” Polly’s anguished cry from behind told him who to thank for that piece of quick thinking. He relinquished all vainglorious thoughts of fighting to the death to preserve the honor of the Kincaids. There’d be no honor in the demise that awaited him here, beaten to a pulp like a rabbit in a harvested field. He leapt backward onto the broad stone sill,keeping his assailants momentarily at bay with rapid thrust and parry of his sword, desperation lending him both speed and strength. Then he consigned himself to the air, jumping backward into the unknown.
    He landed with a jarring thump. But he had landed on earth, not stone, and for that he could be grateful. The cold air, combined with the tension and excitement of the last few minutes, cleared his head miraculously. He blinked, trying to accustom himself to the darkness. The men would, know how to find him, and since he didn’t know where he was, he could not know how to remove himself from this insalubrious neighborhood.
    “Catch me!” a now familiar voice called in a desperate plea. He looked up to see Polly in her white smock poised on the sill. A hand reached to seize her waist; with a wild shriek she kicked herself free before tumbling, unbalanced, from the window. Nicholas managed to break her fall, although she knocked him to the ground again, and he wasted desperate seconds trying to disentangle himself from her flailing limbs, swirling hair, and the folds of her smock.
    The sounds of confused bellowing from above ceased abruptly. “Quick,” Polly said. “They are coming downstairs.” She grabbed his hand, tugging him into the shadowy darkness, away from the lamplight of the window. “This way.”
    Nicholas opened his mouth to protest, then closed it again. So he was going to run through the streets of London on a foggy, freezing December night in the company of a barefoot tavern wench wearing nothing but her smock! It seemed a fitting enough conclusion to such an evening.

Chapter 2

    N icholas had no idea where Polly was guiding him, but she was fleet of foot, showing no hesitation about their direction, so he followed where she led and saved his breath for running. The sounds of pursuit, at first alarmingly loud behind them, finally faded; the racing figure beside him turned yet another corner onto another narrow alley and came to a fast-breathing halt under an archway.
    “They’ll not find us now.” Her breath came on a sob; she shivered as the heat engendered by movement abated and the freezing air whipped her smock against her body.
    “God’s good grace!” her companion exploded softly. “Are you crazed, girl? To come out like that!”
    “Had I stayed for my clothes, I would not have come out at all,” was the tart rejoinder. “And had I not done so, they would have caught you easily. There is only one way out of that garden, and ye’d never have found it in the dark.” She hopped from one foot to the other. The mud in the alley was frozen in hard ridges, and her feet were rapidly becoming numb.
    “Just what do you intend doing now?” demanded Nicholas, shrugging out of his coat. “Put this on.”
    “Coming with you.” Polly went on to inform him blithely of the part he was to play in her life. The idea hadhit her with the blast of cold air from the opened casement, complete and perfect—the opportunity she had sometimes despaired of being given. It would require a little cooperation, of course, but surely he would be happy to take what she could offer in exchange. Men were not in general indifferent to her