Her father had told her how footpads and robbers carried bludgeons and if a man was hit squarely on the head with one it could kill him.
She knew now, although it had all happened too quickly even for thought, that that was what would have happened if the second man had struck the Duke on the head as he was preparing to do.
‘I saved him!’ she told herself.
Yet the screams of the man she had struck with the rapier seemed still to ring in her ears and she knew that, when she had ridden back to pick up the Duke, she had seen a crimson flood of blood over the rough handkerchief he wore round his neck.
Now they were free of the trees and the Duke was riding a little faster and, when the house was in sight, he said,
“I want you to go straight upstairs to your room, Samala, and lie down. You
