Guarded Heart by Jennifer Blake Page A

would be defeated. The need to prove him wrong drove her forward the instant he gave the signal. And he engaged her, meeting her advance with effortless grace and concentration, the point of his foil a glittering blur as he executed parry and riposte with narrow-eyed vigilance but made no attempt to pierce her guard.
    He could have. He could and she knew it, which was more infuriating than his constant touches had been. Her anger burned higher even as her strength flagged, draining away so her lunges became mistimed, almost clumsy. Still he would not end it but let her flail and hack at him while her breath rasped in her throat and rage turned her vision as red as blood.
    Just as she began a last desperate advance, one of the cords holding her skirt above her ankles slipped its knot. Her hem dropped of its own weight. The toe of her half-boot caught in the fabric and she plunged forward. Steel flashed before her eyes, whispering past her, caressing her arm as she fell. She dropped her foil with a low cry as she reached out to catch herself.
    Strong hands broke her fall, cradled her in a firm hold as she settled to the canvas strip. For a stunned instant, she allowed it and was even grateful. Then she struggled to her knees, trying to pull from the grasp of Gavin Blackford as he rested on one knee before her.
    â€œBe still,” he said in hard command. “Let me see where I cut you.”
    It was only then that she realized he held her arm in a tight grip just above her glove cuff while jewel-like drops of blood squeezed between his fingers. She froze in place, staring at him as she faced him there on her knees, caught by his rigid pose and something in his voice that grated like footsteps on broken glass.
    He reached up and dragged off his face mask as if it were in his way. Dropping it, he turned his attention to her glove. Loosening the fingers one by one, he slipped the soft leather from her hand. Slowly, then, without quite releasing his clasp, he uncurled his hard grasp from her wrist until he could survey the damage.
    Ariadne looked not at her arm, but at the man who held it. His face was drained of color, leaving the bone structure in stark relief while the sockets of his eyes seemed suddenly deeper, half-concealing the glittering blue of his eyes. His hair was flat where the band of his face mask had compressed it, and hung in gold, perspiration-damp spikes against his nape. He seemed hardly to breathe, yet his fingers where he held her were rock-steady.
    An imprecation, whispered and scurrilously inventive, feathered the air between them. Closing his fingers again, he leaned away from her to snag his coat from the nearby table with his free hand. He took a folded handkerchief from an inside pocket and shook it out. Draping it over his thigh, he folded it with a few precise moves of one hand then pressed it quickly to her injury. Laying her wrist across his bent knee, he released his grasp while he wrapped the handkerchief around the cut and tied the ends in a neat, flat knot.
    â€œThe slice isn’t deep and it damaged no artery, I think,” he said, his lashes shielding his gaze as he tucked the knotted ends under a fold, “but it may be painful.”
    â€œIt doesn’t matter.”
    â€œIt does to me. Cow-handed and imprecise I may be on occasion, but I don’t usually maim my clients.”
    â€œThe fault isn’t yours,” she said, driven by fairness and some peculiar inner disturbance brought on by the self-flagellation in his voice.
    â€œNo?” The look he gave her was bleak. “My tongue can be, often is, my undoing. I thought to demonstrate the necessity of holding anger in check. Instead, I am shown my fallibility. Again.”
    â€œYou could not know I would trip.”
    â€œI should have foreseen the possibility. At least you will now understand why this exercise is unsuitable for a female. Scars do not become the softer sex.”
    â€œI will heal,”