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One of his men came at her from behind. A pair of crushing, heavy arms swept around her waist, dragging her off her feet. That man, too, paid the price of getting too close.

The soldier screamed as he clutched at his face, his eye bloody and bulging from its socket. Kelly kicked at her again. Morgana caught his heel and jerked his foot with all the force she had, toppling him onto his backside in the mud.

“Bitch!” Kelly shouted, grabbing her skirts. “I’ll teach you to raise your filthy Irish hands against an Englishman!”

“Bugger yourself. I’m more English than you’ll ever be. My Norman ancestors conquered Ireland while yours were filthy, naked Celtic peasants rutting in peat bogs.”

“Augh!” Kelly grunted as he got back on his clumsy feet. He charged her like a raging bull, then caught himself up short, dodging another vicious swipe from her dagger. Morgana swept the blade back and forth with both hands, daring any of them to come close again.

Kelly caught the hem of his coat, briefly examining the gash underneath it and the trickle of blood running down to his knee. “Oh, you’re going to pay for that, bitch.”

“Come, you murdering whoreson,” Morgana taunted him. “Come, let my steel kiss you again.”

He motioned to the other men to get closer to her, but none seemed inclined to be cut. The fool who had lost his eye shouted like a castrated bull and charged her. She slapped her wet cloak into his injured face and let him go rushing past. Wet wool shrouded and blinded him as he slipped and crashed to the muddy ground.

Morgana saw her chance to escape then, and bolted for the bridge. She hiked her skirts clear of her strong feet. She slashed the hand of a soldier trying to catch her, and leaped over the man struggling to unwind his head from her cloak.

Despite Morgana’s deep-seated fear of water, she ran for the bridge, praying the water rushing over its sunken planks wasn’t as deep and treacherous as it looked.

At the brink of the raging flood, she choked, unable to plunge into what her mind perceived as certain death—water, deep and bottomlessly malevolent water. Morgana’s terror at being captured by Kelly paled against her fear of drowning.

A third blow drove Morgana to her knees. Kelly hammered the hilt of his drawn sword into her neck. He fell upon her, flattening her, wrenching her blade from her fist.

She fought to breathe, crushed by Kelly’s weight. Cruel fingers dug into her hair, lifting her face from the mud, bending her neck against the agonizing pains still rippling across her shoulders. Astraddle her back, he stuck her own blade against her throat and rubbed the knuckle of his thumb against the soft flesh under her jaw.

His breath fanned her ear as he clucked his tongue. “Now then, my little fighting Amazon, I have you at my mercy.”

A large knuckle raked across the path the blade would take slitting her throat. He thrust his wet tongue inside her ear and ground his hips suggestively across her bottom. His fingers tightened on her hair, pulling harder to make her bow up from the ground. He laughed cruelly as he licked the sensitive flesh behind her ear. Then he slowly brought the point of the blade against her throat and turned it down. The dagger slipped between her breasts, severing the lacing of the embroidered stomacher covering her gown.

Taut linen was no match for well-honed steel. Powerless, Morgana pressed her hands into the mud, arched way back by his painful pull on her hair. She grit her teeth as he cut her gown and kirtle down to where her belly made contact with the earth.

“Well, well, well, boys, look at this,” Kelly called. “Who would think an Amazon would have such big and pretty titties? Look at them well now, my good.men, because they’re going to get all soiled and dirty. Are you listening, Lady Morgan? I’m going to take you first on your face. An animal like you will probably like that.”

Morgana clawed desperate fingers in the mud, searching for a rock or a stone that could be wrenched free, anything to use as a weapon. The mud rendered nothing. She twisted, balancing precariously on one hand, using her fingernails to scratch at him. He jerked his face out of range, tipping her blade under her right breast.

“Ah, ah, ah, Morgana. Mind those claws of yours. Else my hand slips and severs this lovely mound clean away from your ribs. Think what a curiosity you’ll be in your cage outside Dublin Castle then, hmm?

“Why, you’ll be the governor’s prize attraction, the Irish savage with one tit—another Celtic freak of nature, rivaling the cyclopes of ancient Greece.”

Morgana stiffened, sickened by the touch of his filthy fingers. His two uninjured men dared to come close. Spittle was clotted on their panting lips.

Kelly jerked Morgana’s face toward them, commanding, “Look, Morgan le Fay. They all want to shove their pricks in you. And they will, soon, my little Irish witch. Soon. Then I’ll have the pleasure of watching you grunt and heave to satisfy their lust. Think you I won’t have my revenge for the merry chase you’ve led me from Dublin?”

Morgana’s fingers itched to snatch her grandfather’s Celtic dagger from Kelly’s hand and skewer him with it. Soured whiskey breath fanned her face. White rage at his effrontery in threatening her with her own blade flooded through her. She would show Kelly no mercy when the tables turned.

He twisted her head more, bringing his foul-smelling mouth closer to her lips. She jerked her head away. “No!”

“Good, Lady Morgan, fight me.” His fingers tightened, painfully ripping hair from her head, forcing her head far enough back that she could see his gray eyes darken with cruel pleasure.

“There’s nothing I like better than a woman who struggles as hard as she can against being taken.”

Bent as she was, she couldn’t see where he poked the point of her blade. But she felt it. And she felt the knife score her flesh as he drew it between her breasts. It came to rest pressed into the hollow of her throat.

“Come on, my sweet, fight me.” He taunted her with cold-blooded malice. She wouldn’t give him the satisfaction of crying out, so he ran his thumb back down the line he’d cut, smearing her blood. His eyes gleamed diabolically as he put his thumb in his mouth and sucked it. “Ah, but I do like the taste of a woman’s blood.”

“Whoreson!” Morgana grabbed a fistful of mud and threw it in his face.

Blinded, Kelly screamed, stabbed at her. She was ready, driving her fist backward, smashing his nose, using his momentum to topple him off her. He swore viciously, blinded by the mud in his eyes, losing control. “Grab her!”

Morgana wrested her blade from his slackened hand, rolling free as she stabbed at him with all her might.

“You bitch! Get her, damn you cowards!”

“You’re the coward, Kelly!” Morgana sank her blade into his neck with all the force she could muster. His men fell on her then, wrestling to get control of the knife.