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A woman surrounded by seven men, her arms swinging wildly, trying to escape them as they shoved her around in a circle between them and argued about who was going to take the first go at her.
Her bonnet had been ripped off her head, dangling down her back, and her dark hair had been yanked wild and covered her face. Her cerulean blue traveling habitwas too fine—gold buttons lining her chest, black lace trim dusting the bottom of the skirt—far too fine for a woman at the docks.
Almost his same height and pushing through the crowd behind him, Des saw it the same moment Roe did. “Don’t do it, Roe. We got to go.”
Roe shook Des’s grip from his arm, muscling his way past the last onlooker.
The woman spun with a screech as she was shoved to a short man across the circle. So slight in comparison to the brutes surrounding her, she looked like the petal of a flower in a whirlwind. She let out a scream as one of the men snatched her shoulders—a scream of anger, of fury—not fear. And with the squeal leaving her lips her hand went flying wildly across her face to clear the hair from her eyes. Pale green eyes with golden flecks.
Great Zeus.
Impossible. Not here. Not at the docks. Not hundreds of miles from London.
Roe sprang into action without a breath, his fist slamming into one of the brutes nearest him as his foot swung out and slammed up into the ballocks of the man across from him.
Two more swings, two more down before the brutes realized they were under attack.
A fist at his temple connected and Roe felt his skin split open, but it didn’t stop his progress forward. Straight to the woman.
With an open palm he grabbed the face of the man holding her and slammed it backward, smashing his head into the brick wall behind him.
The motion sent the brute backward and he spun with the pain, dragging the woman into the wall with him.
Her head knocked hard against the brick and her body instantly slackened. Dropping.
Roe’s arms clamped around her waist before she fell, wrapping her into his chest just as a blade came at him from the left. Not enough time to dodge and the edge of it sliced across his shoulder.
Pain he didn’t let himself feel.
He spun toward the docks.
The crowd of hyenas wanted a show and they weren’t going to easily give up their meat.
Out. Out before they were all killed.
“Bloody ballocks.” Des’s roar of a grumble shot through the air as he swung wide, knocking aside two of the men in the pathway between them and theFirehawk.
It was enough of a line.
Roe charged forward, gripping the woman to his front side even as he could feel hands clawing at his arms, at his neck, trying to get him to stop.
With his shoulder, Des rammed into three more men in front of him and the line was clear.
Roe set his left forearm under her backside and picked the woman up, running forward. Des paused to follow, protecting his back. The best of men, his first mate.
Boots thundering on the rough timbers of the dock, he dodged carts and barrels and goats and almost skidded past the sole gangplank still in place leading onto theFirehawk.
Five long strides and he jumped onto the main deck of the ship.
Des landed behind him, bumping into his back.
“Pull it.” Roe’s command thundered across the ship and the deckhands closest to the gangplank yanked it free from the dock.
He spun to Vally, his second mate, who was running across the deck to them. “We all aboard?”
“As much as we can tell, Cap’n Roe,” Vally said with a smirk on his face. It wasn’t the first time they’d made a dramatic exit from a port.
“And Weston?”
