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ground, gathered the fabric between her hands, and tugged with all her might.
    With a surge of horror, Nicholas suddenly realized how perilously close she was to the edge of the cliff.
    “No!”
he shouted.
    His warning went unheard in the raging storm. Just as he had feared, after several angry tugs the fabric jerked free so suddenly that she stumbled backward, loosing her footing in the mud. Her arms flailing, she scrambled on the slippery slope to regain her balance. As she did, a bolt of lightning illuminated the sky. In that single, fleeting moment—a moment that seemed to stretch into infinity—she appeared poised in midair, as helpless and fragile as a china doll that had been tossed from a balcony window. The lightning abruptly faded and the sky went black once again.
    Miss Alexander gave a scream of terror and tumbled over backward.
    Nicholas dove for her, hurling himself toward the spot where he had last seen her.
    As his last hope of reaching her in time plummeted, his fingers brushed against a sodden, kicking appendage. Recognizing it as her ankle, he immediately tightened his grip, holding on to her with both hands. But his relief at catching her vanished almost instantly. Propelled by the slushy mud beneath him, the momentum of his lunge, and the sheer force of Miss Alexander’s fall, he was about to be carried over the edge along with her. For instead of bringing them both to a stop, his body continued to skid toward the edge of the precipice.
    Nicholas frantically glanced around for a foothold in the torrent of mud and rain, searching desperately for some sort of anchor to stop their fall. Nothing.
    His arms slid over the cliff wall.
    He stuck out his legs, hoping to hit a root or a rock—anything to stop their deadly plunge. His head slid over the cliff wall. Refusing to let her go just to save himself, he dug his heels into the ground. But there was nothing to hold him. Nothing but mud and slush and tangled shrubs.
    His chest slid over the cliff wall.
    Muttering a vivid oath that fell somewhere between a swear and a prayer, he kicked out his legs one last time… and finally felt something connect with his boot. He immediately hooked both ankles around the unknown object as he and Miss Alexander jerked to an abrupt stop. Although he couldn’t see what had blocked their fall, it felt as though he had hooked his boots over a thorny bush.
    Letting out his breath in a gush of relief, he took a second to reassess their position. Despite the direness of the predicament, the absurdity of their situation didn’t fail to impress him. He could well imagine the collective and comic shock of his peers were they to see Nicholas Duvall, the Earl of Barrington, hanging upside down over the face of a cliff. Both his hands were firmly gripped around one of Miss Alexander’s ankles, while her opposite leg flailed about, coming back every four seconds or so to strike him somewhere about his shoulder, back, or head.
    While this was undoubtedly a nuisance, his attention was nonetheless diverted by the fascinating effect gravity had had on her skirts. Hanging upside down as she was, Miss Alexander’s skirt and petticoat had taken flight and were gathered inside out and upside down over her head. His position, hanging over the ledge with his head between her ankles, offered him an uninterrupted look at her legs—encased in serviceable black stockings—as well as her hips and belly—chastely covered by white cotton drawers edged with delicate pink ribbon.
    A decidedly interesting view, but one he was not at liberty to enjoy. That point was driven home most effectively when the shrub around which he had wrapped his ankles bent abruptly, sending him slipping another inch or so over the abyss. His heart slammed against his ribs and he heard Miss Alexander’s muffled cry of shock and distress as it echoed through her skirt and petticoat. Immediately returning his thoughts to the task at hand, he moved one hand up her leg,