“Let’s go, mates,” another man said, nudging Drew with his foot. “We’ve a nice dungeon waiting for you.”
James had gotten to his feet the moment the rope fell away from his chest. Drew slid up the tree trunk to do the same. With his longer legs, both of which had fallen asleep, it was a bit slower going. He stamped some feeling back into them. Bixley got to his knees first and didn’t move further, so someone yanked him the rest of the way.
James shook his head back to toss his hair out of his face. That was when he was recognized.
“Don’t I know you?” one of the pirates said to James. The man was older than the others.
“Highly doubtful,” James replied, and turned around, dismissing the fellow.
The man persisted, came around so he could see James’s face again, and insisted, “You look damn familiar. I’m pretty good with faces. I never forget—”
“Senility changes that,” James cut in dryly. “So let me put it in terms even a child can understand. You don’t know me, you have never known me, and, most important, you don’twantto know me.”
That got some chuckles from the pirates’ friends and a taunt from one of them. “Thinks ’e’s too good for the likes o’ ye, Mort.”
Annoyed now, Mort stepped closer to peer up at James, and then his expression turned to one of surprise. “I’ll be damned. I told you I never forget a face. You’re Captain Hawke! I knew it! I sailed with you for a couple months, but you were too wild and dan…ger…” The word trailed off warily as Mort tried to step back, but he wasn’t quick enough.
“Should have remembered that as well, old chap,” James said as he slammed a fist into Mort’s face.
Drew was as surprised as the pirates were that James was free of his bonds. Another of them went down with an amazingly fast right to his cheek, before any of them even had a chance to move. The last four pirates still standing then tried to converge on James. Drew managed to trip two of them with one long leg. Bixley fell on one of them to keep him down, while Drew kicked the other squarely in the face, knocking him out. James had already dropped another, sent him flying several feet, actually. The last man standing panicked and tried to run. Drew tackled him, but with his own arms still bound, he was having trouble keeping him down. And James wasn’t coming immediately to give him a hand, as he had gone to dispatch the pirate that Bixley had a leg-lock on. But Drew was angry enough to head-butt the fellow. Not the preferred way to do it, but it worked.
Drew rolled over to see that all six pirates were no longer moving. The entire fight had taken less than a minute, but then James Malory always had been fast, and lethal, with his fists.
Getting to his feet, he told James, “Nice work, but you could have given me a little warning.”
“Didn’t I?” James replied. “Thought breaking Mort’s jaw would give you a clue.”
“The ropes?” Drew said impatiently. Now that the tables had been turned, so to speak, he didn’t want to waste another minute getting to Gabrielle.
James took a dagger from one of the pirates and came over to slice through his ropes. And in a moment of compassion that he rarely revealed to anyone other than his wife, he said, “She’s going to be all right, Drew.”
“I know. She has to be. But I’d rather see that for myself sooner than later.” He didn’t add “before he hurts her,” but it was there in his mind and added extra speed to his race to the fortress.
Chapter 50
“IF HE TOUCHES YOU,I’m going to have to kill you.”
It wasn’t just the words that told Gabrielle she had company other than Pierre. So did the blade pressing against her throat. Yet again? Did all of Pierre’s friends have a fixation with throat cutting?
Gabrielle had been lying on the bed where Pierre had told her to wait, but she’d been unable to bring herself to remove her clothes. She opened her eyes to see the woman with one knee on the bed, leaning toward her. The bright red hair was a dead giveaway.
She’d never met or seen Red before, and was surprised to find that she was a handsome woman, too pretty for someone like Pierre. She did have a few scars on her left cheek, but they weren’t very wide and were faded, barely noticeable. Somewhere in her middle thirties in age, she was wearing men’s clothes that fit her snugly. Too many of the buttons on her shirt were left open, showing off a pair of hefty breasts that were barely covered. A small black scarf was tied around her head to keep her wildly disarrayed hair out of her face, and so the linked gold loops on both ears dangled freely.
Her remark struck Gabrielle as bizarre. The woman must know that was Pierre’s plan.
“Why don’t you kill him instead?” Gabrielle asked curiously.
“Kill him? I love him, that bastard.”
“Then help us to escape.”
Gabrielle’s hopes shot up when Red actually appeared to give it some thought, but then she shook her head. “That isn’t one of my options, which are simple. I either kill you, or make you less appealing. You want the choice?”
It sounded like angry bravado, so she ignored the threat and asked, “How did you get in here without him seeing you?”
“He wasn’t watching my door. I just waited until he went outside to relieve himself.”
“If you’re not going to help me, then you might as well kill me. The man I love is, God, I don’t even know if he’s still alive!” Gabrielle cried.
