“Be easy, Jack. I’m just helping.”

He didn’t look up as he spoke, and she felt the rope fall away. Then he looked up at her smiling, even though her pistol was aimed at his face only inches away. Those eyes, such a starkly bright turquoise with that dark ring circling the outer edge of the irises, were mesmerizing, but especially so with that face.

A villain such as him shouldn’t have eyes like that. Or smiles that were genuinely amused rather than sneering or mocking. Too many times she’d gotten distracted by his face and how handsome he was. Such as now. In that brief, arrested moment, he could have grabbed the pistol from her hand and she wouldn’t even have noticed!

He didn’t even try. “I’ve risked a bullet to show you that you can trust me.”

She leaned back to put some distance between them and slow her heartbeat. He stood up, towering over her, and simply offered her his hand.

“Shall we?”

Thoughts, where did they go!? She stared at the hand and leaned back even more until she was touching the bulkhead behind her. Shall we what?

She meant to say that aloud. He shook his head, probably because she was ignoring his proffered hand. “I could have reached for your weapon instead of the ropes and easily taken it from you. Does that tell you nothing?”

“That you missed your chance?”

“That this voyage will be different.”

He started to walk away, back toward his desk. She shot off the cot and jammed the pistol against his back. “We’re going this way, out the door. Make that happen.”

“And if I don’t?”

She glanced up at the back of his head, so far above her. Hitting him with the pistol might do what she hoped if they were the same height, but they weren’t. If she tried it now, it might not knock him out or even daze him.

Why the devil wasn’t he more concerned about being shot? And why hadn’t he taken her pistol when he’d had the chance?

The man wasn’t taking her at all seriously!

He only sighed as he turned carefully and slowly walked to the door, giving her time to maintain her position behind him. Still, she bumped into his arse when he bent over from the waist to pick up the key from the floor. She hissed through her teeth and was surprised he didn’t laugh about it.

But he opened the door and walked up the few steps that led to the quarterdeck. It was dark, except for the light from the two lanterns on either side of his cabin door. Bastard didn’t move any farther. It wasn’t difficult to see why. She might not be able to see over his shoulders, but she could see on either side of him that his men stood in a tight half circle at the top of the steps, forming a solid barrier, undoubtedly put in place by the blond crewman.

She pressed her pistol harder into Bastard’s back. “Tell them to back off.”

“No. This is what can loosely be termed a standoff. You might as well give up graciously, Jack.”

Her mind churned frantically. Among the mostly brawny men who formed that blockade, she saw only one skinny fellow to her right and a nervous-looking boy next to him. She would have given anything right then for her rapier instead of a damned one-shot pistol. With two arm’s lengths of sharp metal in hand, she could have slashed an opening to get past them.

She leapt toward the boy, but socked the man next to him first before pushing the boy out of the way, clearing a path to the railing. She almost made it, was only three feet from it, about to leap into the water, when an arm went about her waist, lifting her off her feet, and the pistol was yanked out of her hand. She should never have turned her back on Bastard! She screamed in fury, but she was facing nothing but an empty deck now, his men having scattered to get out of the way of any gunshots.

She was let go inside the cabin and then pushed forward into the room, just far enough for Bastard to close the door and lock it—with him on the other side of it before she could even turn around. But she didn’t pause to bemoan what had just happened. She ran straight for the long row of drapes covering the bank of windows she’d escaped from once before.

Chapter Twelve

DAMON REEVES GRIPPED THE rail, trying to calm his breathing. That had been too close, she’d almost made it over the side. He would have jumped in after her, of course, but the Thames definitely wasn’t the clear aqua waters of the Caribbean. If she’d dived into its murky depths, he might not have found her. And if she’d drowned, her father would have been after him before the night was done, instead of a week from now per Damon’s plan, which was to make sure Malory didn’t follow too quickly this time.

“What were you thinking, letting her keep that weapon?” Mortimer Bower said angrily as he joined Damon.

“I don’t want to fight with her for the duration of this voyage.”

“You’d rather take a bullet?”

“No danger of that now.” Damon showed Mort that he had the weapon.

Mortimer snorted. “You shouldn’t have gambled that she would come or wasted all that blunt hiring that small army in case she did. I know those four bruisers who escort her stayed your hand in the park that day, but did you really think you’d need so many to deal with them tonight?”

“No, I actually hoped her father would be escorting her. We definitely needed those numbers for James Malory, as we learned firsthand on the last trip.”

“So you would have taken him and not her?”

“No. I want his cooperation. I won’t get it without leverage, so having them both would have been ideal.”

“I still can’t believe she even showed up, young lady like her.”

“And I was sure she would. I piqued her interest just enough. And by all accounts, she’s recklessly daring. Probably gets it from her father.”

“Well, she came prepared, if you didn’t notice,” Mort grumbled. “As if she expected you to be waiting for her here. So I’ll allow it was a good thing you overdid it. But if even one of her men escapes, you will have lost your advantage.”

Damon laughed. “When did you become such a doomsayer? We picked that location because it’s a street with hardly any traffic in the evening and it’s secluded due to the high walls of the London Docks. We were successful, Mort. Johnny signaled that by waving the lantern from shore. The street will be cleaned. Her family will waste time looking for her in London.”