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The words rang out like bells through the silence of the boat. Neil’s Arabic was far from excellent, but he was fairly certain the words meant something along the lines ofthat scrawny Englishman is getting away.

“Drat,” Constance cursed—and let her knife fly.

The big-eared mercenary and his companion stumbled back onto the platform to avoid the blade.

With the pair out of view, Constance shoved Neil through the nearest doorway.

He found himself nose-to-nose with the contents of a linen closet, and only just managed to turn around before Constance slammed into him and shut the door.

The space between the shelves and the threshold was tight. Neil was sandwiched between piles of sheets and the lush frame of the danger gnome.

The darkness was absolute. Constance’s soft curls tickled at his nose, and her breath puffed against the thin fabric of his shirt. The rhythm of her exhalations was perfectly regular, as though racing through a boat packed with violent thugs was the sort of thing she did every day.

Neil tried to figure out where to put his hands. The only sensible option seemed to be holding them over his head—which felt patently ridiculous.

Not that it made any difference to his anatomy. He was feeling pathetically turned-on. How could he be turned on by Ellie’s unruly schoolmate, of all people?

Though she wasn’t Ellie’s schoolmate anymore. She was an intimidatingly gorgeous force of nature who had just thrown a dagger at a pair of dangerous criminals.

The force of nature began to wriggle.

“What are you doing?” Neil breathed desperately, certain that his involuntary state was about to become humiliatingly apparent.

“Trying to access my other blade,” she retorted in a hiss.

“Where is it?” Neil recalled the intimate location of her first dagger and felt a jolt of alarm.

“In a special sheath sewn into my corset,” she replied.

Cloth rustled in a terrifying manner from somewhere around the level of Neil’s abdomen.

“Why would you put a knife in your corset?” His voice was strangled, and he was beginning to sweat.

“For emergency situations, of course,” Constance retorted. “Ah!”

A sliver of light through the narrow gap in the frame of the door glinted against her blade. Voices sounded from outside, calling to each other in frustrated Masri.

They passed, and Constance silently yanked Neil back out into the hall.

She glanced at the landing, but Neil could hear some of the Al-Saboors shuffling out there, obviously on guard. Constance hauled him toward the bow instead, only to pivot sharply at the sound of angry voices from the forward deck and shove Neil into a narrow stairwell.

They hurried up, twisting around a sharp turn and emerging into the broad, open-air salon that occupied the upper deck of the boat.

The space was softly illuminated by scattered lanterns hung from the pillars of the canopy, their wicks lowered to a glimmer. The golden glow mingled with the silvery moonlight to paint the mahogany dining table and the well-appointed bar.

Beyond the rail, sand-blasted cliffs soared up against the eastern side of the river, looming over them in fantastical pillars and billowing shapes. They were tall enough that their upper reaches were out of view behind the canopy of the salon.

Neil glanced down at the bow. The crew were awake, making a careful adjustment to the sails as the reis shouted orders. TheIsiswas moving at a quick clip, white-capped foam roiling to either side of the boat as it rushed along with the current of the narrow, fast-moving river.

“This way.” Constance tugged Neil hurriedly across the night-haunted stillness of the salon.

They stopped at the low railing that bordered the back of the deck. It hung over the landing platform at a height of perhaps twelve feet, though all Neil could see from his current angle was the frothing chop of the river and the lightly bobbing rowboat.

“Take off your coat,” Constance ordered in a whisper.

“Why?” Neil asked even as he shrugged out of the garment and handed it to her.

“We’ll use it to climb down, take out those two Al-Saboors, and steal the boat,” Constance replied, crouching down to tie the tweed sleeve around a banister.