Rachelle McCalla - Defending the Duchess

File? She couldn’t make sense of the man’s words. What did he mean? Stars danced across her vision. Beyond them, she saw the dark outline of the craggy bluffs that lined the pristine Lydian beach. A deep chasm ran inland, uphill, away from the peaceful coastline. Her captor carried her up and away, out of sight of the guard who was too far away to be of any help to her now.

A fresh shot of terror surged through her. Trails led up the bluffs toward a highway that followed the coastline all the way to the Albanian border. Where was this man taking her? What was he planning to do? The man had come out of nowhere, leaping from the shadows of the rocks and grabbing her the very instant she’d realized he’d appeared.

She had to get free of him before he reached the highway. If he got her in a vehicle, she might never get away.

Her attacker had tight hold of her arms and torso. She tried to jab him with her elbow, to pry her arms free—anything—but his overwhelming size advantage made that impossible. With a desperate lunge, she kicked at him with flailing legs.

Thunk.

Pain shot up her leg as her shin slapped against the protruding rocks of the cliffs.

If she could have, she’d have cried out in pain. Tears stung her eyes, but she refused to give in to self-pity for even a second. The man already had every advantage. She tried again to wriggle free. She couldn’t even see her captor. How could she fight him?

Suddenly the man cried out and she felt the arms around her slacken.

“Run! To the beach!” The guard’s voice echoed across the rocks.

Twisting and writhing, she lunged free from her attacker as the guard pried him away. Darkness filled the small gorge where the trail cut through the cliffside. Julia lunged back in the direction of the seashore, clutching the rocky sides of the gorge as pain speared up from her injured shin. She half hopped, half dragged herself away, crumbling almost to a crawl as her ankle protested and she scrambled to put distance between herself and the battle being waged behind her.

She looked back to see two shadowy figures fighting in the distance and cringed at the sound of knuckles connecting against bone and flesh. If she could have seen who was who, or even stood on her injured leg, she might have tried to help. Instead it was all she could do to pray silently but earnestly for the safety of the guard who’d come to her aid.

“Who are you?” a harsh male voice demanded. The guard who’d come after her? In spite of the darkness of the evening, she was nearly certain it was Linus. The handsome guard’s chivalrous actions the day before—opening doors for her, pulling out her chair, bringing her anything she wanted before she had to ask for it—had left her feeling uncertain of precisely where she stood with him. To her understanding, his gracious behavior was simply part of his job. But at the same time, she wasn’t used to it, and had escaped for her evening run alone in part to distance herself from his unfamiliar courtesies.

Now Linus’s chivalry had him struggling with her attacker, demanding to know the man’s identity and intent.

The masked man didn’t answer, but pulled back far enough to throw a punch, sending a stinging blow across her rescuer’s face before darting away into the shadows of the craggy cliffs.

Rather than chase after him, Linus spun toward her, the concern on his features only easing slightly when he spotted her.

He ran from the shadows toward her, and for the first time she got a look at his face, certain now of his identity.

Linus. The man had a great smile, but right now his lip was bleeding from his fight with her captor, and his expression was one of concern.

“Are you okay?” He bent down beside her.

Julia pointed up the cliffs. “He’s getting away.”

“I called for reinforcements. They’ll catch him. I can’t leave you alone.”

Julia had hold of her bloodied shin. Already a bruise was starting to swell above her short socks.

Linus carefully lifted the injured limb. His touch was gentle, his fingers calloused and comforting as he inspected her injury in the waning light.

“I kicked the cliffs while I was fighting to get away.” Something halfway between a sob and a laugh came from her lips. “I hurt myself more than I hurt him.” Her words were buried under an overwhelming urge to cry. She’d come to Lydia to support her sister, who seemed weighed down by the stress of her new role as queen. How would Monica feel once she found out what had happened?

Julia wondered if she’d been wrong to come to Lydia after all. She’d been unnerved by strange occurrences over the past few weeks. And with her sister in need of a familiar face around the palace, the trip had seemed like a perfect excuse to leave her troubles behind her.

What had happened? Her attack couldn’t be related to her troubles back in Seattle. It just couldn’t. That would mean whoever had tried to hurt her had followed her halfway around the world.

Nobody was that crazy.

Were they?

The man had said he wanted a file. The request fit too closely with the events back home, and yet...which file did he want? And why? What could possibly be so important?

Linus spoke into his earpiece. He quickly relayed what had happened, giving his fellow guards their location and instructing them to try to find her attacker among the cliffs, or on Seaview Drive, the highway that followed the Lydian coast.

Then he returned his attention to her. “Can you walk on it?” Linus bent one gentle arm around her torso as if to help her up.

Fighting back tears, Julia realized there wasn’t time to cry. What if whoever had attacked her came back before Linus’s fellow guards arrived? What if the brute wasn’t alone? Were there other men lurking among the bluffs? She shivered as she tried to stand.

With a tentative hand she reached for the guard. His arms were very muscular, the sweat already drying from the breeze off the sea. She placed her hand on his forearm and felt her heart lurch. What did it mean? There wasn’t time to consider it. Leaning heavily on Linus, she hoisted herself onto her good foot and tested her injured limb.

“Ow.” She winced as her toes touched the sand.

“I need to get you out of here,” Linus cautioned her softly. “Can I carry you?”

“You can try.” She started to protest that she wasn’t as light as she looked, but before she could speak Linus scooped her up, cradling her in his arms as though she didn’t weigh a thing. He turned and trotted down the beach, moving as quickly as she had while jogging.

Tears leaked down her cheeks in spite of her efforts to restrain them. Her ankle throbbed. Somewhere in the craggy cliffs behind them, her attacker was probably escaping.

“Do you have a flashlight?” Julia sniffled back her tears.

“Not on me. Sorry.”

“Shouldn’t we try to find that guy before he gets away?”

“No. We could be outnumbered. That man was a trained fighter.”

The sobs she’d been biting back rippled convulsively through her. Why had a trained fighter attacked her on Lydia’s peaceful beach? She slumped against Linus’s shoulder, grateful he’d intervened.

“I called my fellow royal guards,” Linus assured her, still running. “They’ll look for him.”

“He’ll be long gone.”

“Good. Maybe he won’t ever come back.”

Julia wanted to believe the guard’s assessment. The attack had to have been a fluke, a freak coincidence after the incidents back home. The guy was probably some random weirdo. Surely Linus had chased him away for good.

Right? Just some random weirdo who happened to be a trained fighter.

Who’d jumped out of nowhere when she was the only person around, and asked her for a file, mere weeks after someone had broken into the files in her office.