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respond, he dragged her over a cobbled street, and it was all she could do to keep on her feet. “Sir! Sir! Please stop!”
    He jerked to a stop, had the gall to drop his shoulders as if he were frustrated, and turned slowly around, his look all irritation. “Now what?”
    “If you weren’t about to kill me, why are you kidnapping me?”
    “Kidnapping you?” He scowled. “I’m not kidnapping you. I’m saving your sweet neck!”
    He wasn’t gonna kill her or kidnap her. She sighed with relief. Then his words registered.
    “Save me from what?”
    “Those soldiers would have used you to get to me.”
    “But I don’t even know you.”
    “Right, but they don’t know that, and they wouldn’t believe you if you told them. They would just figure you were lying, question you over and over until they’d finally get fed up and get rid of you.” He took her arm and started to move. “Now let’s go.”
    “Where?”
    “Back inside the city. Then I can get you to whatever hotel you belong in and out of my hair.”
    She stiffened at his rudeness, then dug in her heels to try to stop their motion, but he dragged her three feet before finally stopping. She drew herself up and told him, “But I’m not staying in a hotel.”
    He spit out a vile oath, and then very slowly, as if speaking to a foreigner, he asked, “Where are you staying?”
    “The Binondo District.”
    “Okay.” He nodded, taking in a long breath for patience. “That’s in the opposite direction.”
    She agreed, but he wasn’t looking at her because he appeared to be counting under his breath. Her brother Jed acted like that, except he was a southern gentleman.
    The Yankee madman clamped on to her arm and took off again, running so fast that he all but dragged her over an even rougher stone walk.
    “Would you please slow down!”
    He ignored her and dragged her on. Her heel caught on the jutting edge of a stone and broke. “My shoe!”
    He hauled her a few more feet, then thankfully stopped and turned around. She hopped on one foot while she tried to ram the heel back in place. “My heel’s broken.”
    He glanced at his hand for a brief moment, then said, “Disarmed, huh?”
    She frowned. What an odd thing to say . . . but then, everyone knew that Yankees didn’t think like normal people. She decided to try to make him understand. “Sir, you don’t seem to understand—”
    At that instant he picked her up in his arms.
    “Put me down!”
    He ignored her and headed south.
    “Pay me some mind!”
    “I didn’t know you had one.”
    She fumed, but remembered a lady didn’t show her anger. It was beneath her. She did what she’d been taught. She didn’t speak to him.
    Five minutes later she realized that was exactly what he wanted, and she gave up on acting like a genteel lady. She’d tell him off.
    “You’ve broken my shoe,” she complained, breaking the silence.
    He ignored her.
    “My new fan’s gone.”
    More silence, and he whipped around another corner so fast her head spun. It took a moment for her to try again. Remembering her drafty drawers, she added, “My dignity’s been completely shattered.”
    “Good,” he finally said. “Then you won’t mind this.”
    He threw her over his shoulder, clamping his tree arm ‘cross the backs of her thighs just as she screeched. With each jog, his hard shoulder now jabbed her corset into her ribs. It kept her from finding the breath to yell. She stared in a dizzying blurr at his hard back, her only view, and she almost gave up, until she remembered one more thing.
    She managed one deep breath and raised her head away from his broad back. “I’ve lost my parasol!”
    He never broke stride, just continued down the street, muttering some fool thing that sounded like “There is a God.”
    Eulalie had twenty-seven bruises. She counted every one while she bathed. Her arm had marks from that man’s tight fingers; her wrist and shoulder ached from being pulled like taffy all over