They hurried along a curving alley that cut through the lower reaches of the slum. It would eventually land them on the edge of the commercial district somewhere near the inn, but that outer bastion of civilization was still a considerable way ahead.
Aileen struggled to get her bearings as she shuffled and skipped along, but in the end, gave up. Robert Frobisher had come and rescued her. At the moment, that was more than enough for the part of her brain still able to reason to grapple with. The rest of her had to make do with impulse and instinct, both of which pushed her to simply pin her future to Robert’s mast and follow him wherever he led.
Now was not the time to question, much less quibble.
He’d been right about her limbs remembering how to function the farther they went—the more she used them. Gradually, full responsiveness returned, restoring her confidence.
She was almost back to normal, almost moving freely, when the first sounds of pursuit rose behind them.
Robert swore and glanced back, but the close-packed dwellings denied him any sight of their pursuers.
Benson fell in behind him. Without breaking their stride, they rapidly conferred. They were still in the slum, still had perhaps as much as half a mile to go before they could expect to find wider streets.
He and his men were accustomed to fighting in close quarters, but such circumstances usually meant one could find a useful wall to put at one’s back. In contrast, a slum was the sort of place where attack could come from any direction at any time. He couldn’t play a defensive hand. And they had to keep moving.
He sent Harris into the lead, with him and Aileen behind, and set Benson, Coleman, and Fuller in a staggered array at their backs.
Predictably, the first wave of pursuers fell on them from the rear. Benson, Coleman, and Fuller accounted for most; Harris took out one who’d thought to flank them, and Robert dealt with another.
They took no injuries beyond a scrape or two.
But the men they’d defeated hadn’t been the slavers they’d seen at the lair.
And that was by no means the end of it.
Robert had thought—had been led to believe—that the people of the slum wouldn’t rise to the slavers’ call. They hadn’t in Declan’s case, although that had been a different slum.
Whether the slavers had simply learned a thing or two and called in favors, or if the locals here did not share the general anathema for the breed, Robert didn’t know, but suddenly they found themselves facing wave after wave of attackers.
The only point in their favor was that the attackers—when pushed—would prefer not to die. They weren’t that committed to the slavers’ cause.
He and his men changed tactics—they no longer pulled their blows—and succeeded in beating those attacking back.
Despite the restrictive spaces, they were now shifting constantly in a fluid, protective constellation around Aileen. She’d kept up well. One glance at her face showed her usual stubborn determination in evidence. Robert caught a wink of light on steel and realized she was carrying a small dagger. He was surprised at his lack of surprise. He realized it hadn’t even occurred to him that she might cower rather than fight.
He’d barely had time to register that when a man rushed out of a side lane to engage him—and another man lunged at her from out of a window.
But she’d sensed the second man; quick as a flash, she slashed with her knife, and the man howled and drew back.
Robert’s men had seen; he hoped others had, too. That she would strike at them would make men like these hesitate, and that was all the opening he and his men needed.
The attackers had slowed them. They were still a hundred yards or more from the edge of the slum, and still the attackers came on, trying to pen them in, to hold them back from any chance of safety.
Where are the slavers?
Increasingly, Robert worried about that.
Dealing with the attackers had taken a toll on him and his men; luckily, they were accustomed to battles that raged for hours, if not days. Even doing this much running and regrouping wasn’t anything new to them.
But the slavers didn’t know that. This sort of prolonged fighting would have worn down most others to a far greater degree.
Finally, the end of the alley loomed ahead. Beyond lay a well-graded street, the space bathed in faint moonlight.
And—surprise!—the slavers suddenly appeared, filing in from the end of the alley and forming up in a solid wall of muscle bristling with steel.
A wall their rushing race forward was hurling them toward.
Their local assailants howled and fell in on their heels—a ragtag army pushing them forward into the slavers’ arms.
Twenty yards.
Robert realized he was grinning as he hadn’t in years. He reached for Aileen’s hand, gripped it hard.
Ten yards.
And he spied the opening he needed. “To me!”
He darted to the right into a tiny lane and towed Aileen behind him.
Harris, Benson, Fuller, and Coleman raced after them.
What followed... If the situation hadn’t been so fraught, it would have been hilarious. He hadn’t played a game like this in years—and the very real and immediate danger added an edge to the thrill.
The trick was to react unpredictably. To do what your opponent or pursuer least expected—or, better yet, didn’t expect at all.
They had nothing to lose and everything to gain.
Robert dropped all restraint and just...played.
To the top of his bent.
They raced in and out of alleys, up and down lanes, apparently randomly.
When they came upon three slavers hunting for them through a narrow alley, they fell on them and trounced them. His men were also now grinning from ear to ear.
As for Aileen, somewhere along the way, she’d acquired a long-handled cast-iron skillet. Her style with it was quite impressive.
They encountered group after group of searchers, but as their pursuers had dispersed to look for them, the numbers were now on their side, and they dealt with the opposition with alacrity.
Ultimately, the opposition thinned.
They raced right, left, up, and down—and eventually, entirely by design, they raced unimpeded into the wider street bordering the slum via the alley they’d originally been on.
The slavers were now scattered, hunting for them through the narrow alleys.
Nevertheless, a call rang out. The slavers had left someone on watch.
Robert didn’t waste breath swearing, nor did he pause to let his men and Aileen catch their breaths; instead, he rushed straight on—into the maze of narrow streets between Water Street and the quay.
He’d wondered if the slavers would follow.
One group did, and he cursed. “Another group will try to outflank us via the quay.” He immediately changed direction, dragging Aileen, still manfully—womanfully?—keeping up, down a street that led directly to the relatively open expanse of the quay.
Dark water glimmered invitingly beyond.
They spilled onto the worn planking of the quay barely ahead of another group of slavers—as Robert had suspected, sent to cut them off.
The slavers were too close to simply run for it.
Robert swung Aileen behind him as he faced the latest threat. His men lined up alongside him, swords and knives in their hands.
The slavers—four of them—raised their cutlasses and charged.
“Miller!” Robert roared.
“Here, sir!”
Robert glanced swiftly to his left and saw Miller standing in the stern of the tender, steering it closer. He spared a glance for Aileen. “Go! Get into the boat.”
The tide was in, the tender riding high enough for an easy descent.
>
He swung back to face the slavers just in time to get his sword up to counter a swinging blow.
Nevertheless, he knew when Aileen was no longer behind him.
The fighting wasn’t elegant. No one wasted time with any rules.
The slavers were grimly determined. They pressed hard, but Robert and his men had decades’ worth of desperate fighting beneath their belts; they used their hilts, their fists, their boots. They had the four slavers bloodied and down in good order—but then the five who had tracked them through the warren attacked.
Robert head-butted one slaver. He seized a split second to confirm that Aileen had been helped down to the tender before swinging his full attention back to the fray and the next slaver trying to slice him open.
They would have won in the end, but Robert caught a glimpse of more men coming pounding along the quay. Where the devil were they all coming from?
“Break!” It was a signal his men understood. It didn’t mean fall back but push forward hard—and then run.
Coleman, Fuller, and Harris threw their opponents back, then ran and scrambled over the edge of the quay, dropping down to the tender Miller had brought close.
Robert would have followed, but Benson got trapped between two opponents—
Instead of backing away, Robert cut down his own opponent and threw himself against the second slaver pressing Benson.
Benson made the most of his help, tripped the slaver still facing him, then turned and ran for the tender.
Robert swung his long sword—longer than any cutlass—in a sweeping arc, forcing the onrushing slavers to jump back.
He whirled to follow Benson—and had to leap back himself from the shiny blade a leering slaver brandished far too close to his face. The man had crept around in the shadows and come up behind him.
The slaver grinned viciously. “Not so fast, me good sir.”
Crack!
The explosive percussion of a pistol shot—close, utterly unexpected—shocked everyone.
The leering slaver jerked and lost his grin. His blade tipped, then fell from suddenly nerveless fingers.
Everyone had frozen.
Robert’s pounding heart kicked, and he shoved the crumpling slaver toward the man’s fellows and dove for the edge of the quay.
He slapped his hand on the stone edging, vaulted over the side, and dropped into the tender. “Go!”
Miller, with help from Harris, was already swinging the tender away, out from the stone side of the quay.
Several slavers lined up along the edge, looking to join them, but a forest of blades made them think again.
The gap between the boat and the quay widened. Weighed down with so many on board, the tender moved sluggishly, but then Coleman and Fuller got two more oars into the locks and added their strength to that of the pair of midshipmen who had come out with Miller and were already rowing for all they were worth.
The slavers brandished their weapons—but then a shout from back along the quay drew their attention.
As the slavers cheered and ran off, Robert, still standing, searched the night... “Damn! They’ve found a boat. A smaller one.” He quickly scanned the harbor, then sat on the bench in front of Miller, next to Aileen, and pointed to where a flotilla of merchant vessels were anchored in what to an outsider would have appeared a haphazard and crowded conglomeration. “In among the hulls. And break out all the oars. It seems we’re not finished with tonight’s game of Catch Me Who Can.”
Grunts and snorted laughs greeted that, but the oars were quickly passed around, and soon there were three pairs of oars pulling them through the dark water.
Robert took the last set of oars passed back to him and Aileen. He bent to set them down.
“I can row.”
He glanced at her—and realized she was struggling to shove a small pistol into her reticule. The same black reticule that had bumped and swung from her wrist all the damned way.
He raised his gaze to her face. “It was you who shot that slaver.”
She succeeded in forcing the pistol inside, pulled the ties tight, then scowled at him. “Who else?”
He glanced back at Miller, who met his gaze and shrugged. He’d assumed his quartermaster had, for some reason, brought a pistol with him.
“Now.” She resettled her bonnet, then waved at the oars Robert still clutched in his hand. “Give one here.”
He blinked, considered arguing—dismissed the notion. She might not be able to pull as strongly as he could, but he could adjust, and they would get just that bit more speed...and that might prove crucial.
And she had shot a man for him.
She took the oar he handed her and quickly and efficiently set it into the oarlock. Once he’d done the same with the oar he still held, she nodded at him; she let him set the beat, then she bent and matched her stroke to his, as far as she was able.
Once the tender was steadily arrowing through the waves, and the mammoth black shapes of the merchant hulls loomed ahead of them, Robert glanced back at their pursuers.
“They’re gaining, but they won’t be fast enough.” Facing forward, he nodded toward a dark passage between two of the large ships. “Through there, Miller, and keep tacking. I want to lose them in the maze. But let’s make them think we’re doubling back toward some ship in the pack, and meanwhile, we’ll slip out of the harbor to The Trident.”
“Aye, aye, sir.”
They rowed steadily on.
The repetitive action soothed Aileen—quietened the sudden panic that had flared and let her heart slow to a more normal rhythm.
She’d never been so frantically fearful in her life.
Not while they’d been ducking in and out of slum alleys being chased by slavers and, it had seemed, a good portion of the denizens of the slum besides. Her blood had been up, and although danger had plainly lurked, fear hadn’t claimed her...
Until she’d seen the slaver wave his sword in Robert’s face.
She’d already had her pistol in her hand. She’d aimed and fired without a thought—no conscious decision had been required.
He’d come for her. He’d forsaken his mission—or at least his best chance of completing it—in order to rescue her.
He’d broken his own orders.
She didn’t need anyone to tell her he wasn’t the sort of commander who did that, not without some compelling reason.
He’d been willing to act in a way that didn’t just show but proclaimed—to himself, to her, to his men—that she meant enough to him to be a compelling reason.
That was both a humbling and a somewhat scarifying thought.
She hadn’t allowed herself to think too much about him—not in relation to her—because...
Because...
Because she was something of a coward. Because she hadn’t been sure if he felt anything for her, and they’d known each other for only two days—forty-eight hours, that was all. How on earth could they possibly feel like this? As if they’d known each other for half their lives and had simply been waiting for the other to appear...
The rational, sensible part of her scoffed that it was nonsense—that it had to be. But most of her—the true her—knew it was real. That those three kisses they’d shared—those hadn’t been any accident.
Not on his part, and not on hers, either.
Well, possibly the first, but certainly not the second or the third.
It wasn’t that something was happening between them—something had happened, and both of them knew that. Recognized and understood that.
That they were still coming to terms with that, each in their own way, was hardly surprising.
Circumstances hadn’t given them much time to think.
She glanced along her shoulder at him. His gaze was fixed ahead;
he’d murmured directions to Miller several times, but otherwise he and his men seemed to be concentrating on navigating swiftly in between the looming vessels.
There was very little light on the water between the ships. She could barely make out his face as, sensing her gaze, he glanced her way.
After a second of looking at her, he murmured, “Are you all right?”
She nodded, then whispered, “Thank you for coming after me.”
He held her gaze for a moment, then despite the dimness, she saw the ends of his lips lift in a smile both cynical and self-deprecatory before he faced forward. “I’ll always come after you.”
The words hovered between them.
Because you’re mine was the bit he left unsaid.
But the implication was unmistakable. Unmissable.
Aileen wasn’t sure whether to frown or shiver.
Behind them, the slavers were a great deal less quiet than they were, allowing them to know which way to go to put more distance between them and their pursuers.
Eventually, the curses faded altogether, and the tender nosed quietly out of the harbor and into the estuary.
Aileen scanned the waters ahead of them. Miller seemed to know where he was going; she presumed Robert’s ship, The Trident, lay more or less directly ahead, somewhere in the dark.
Ships in harbor or even on the sea normally had small lamps burning along the rails.
The Trident was a black mass that suddenly loomed up out of the night beside them, no lamp in sight.
Quiet words were exchanged, then a rope ladder came tumbling down. Robert sent his men up, until only she, he, and Miller remained. The other man was lashing lifting ropes to the tender’s heavy rings fore and aft.
Robert turned to her. “Can you manage the ladder? Or you can sit and be winched up with the tender.”
She knew from her brothers that the latter was considered weak—the province of helpless females. “I can manage the ladder.”
A quirk of a smile played about his lips—as if he could read her mind—but he nodded. He sent Miller up, then he held the ladder for her. Once she was on it and climbing, he came up after her, keeping only a rung or so below her—no doubt so he could catch her if she fell.
A Buccaneer at Heart Page 25
