Page 37 of Hooked by a Hero (Tales from the Brotherhood #4)
Nineteen
E lias’s heart would not stop beating like a drum after Caspian dashed down the path to the settlement, leaving him alone with Lady Adelaide and her maid.
He was perfectly capable of handling the man who had passed out when struck, should he awaken, and treating the women, who were beyond shaken, but being separated from Caspian even for a moment set him on edge.
“All will be well,” he reassured Lady Adelaide, which involved settling her without touching her, since the very last thing she wanted at that moment was a man anywhere near her. She clung to her maid instead, the two of them weeping together. “Those men will not hurt you again.”
“But there are others,” Lady Adelaide sobbed, trembling violently. “Tumbrill and his mutinous band of murderers. They all appeared as we were preparing to retire for the evening. They could still find us and…and….”
“You leave worrying about that to me,” Elias said, wishing he could provide greater reassurance.
In fact, he was not certain what he could do against that many men if they were to suddenly find them and attack. And with the four, seaworthy lifeboats anchored in the incoming tide, the chances of some of the men finding them on the beach was very high.
“You must summon the strength to defend yourself if those men attempt to escape via this beach,” Elias said, speaking seriously to the two women.
“Whatever you can use, sticks, stones, your fingernails, you must do everything to fight back. If they value their lives over your persons, they will deem two wildcats not worth the effort of kidnapping.”
Lady Adelaide and her maid wept even as they nodded. Elias left them to go to the fire pit, returning with two large sticks that had singed ends.
It was a good thing he’d thought to provide the women with weapons.
Shortly after he’d handed the sticks over and showed them how to wield them, shouts and screams came from the path.
A moment later, four of the mutineers burst out of the jungle, laden with packs that bulged with supplies.
One of the men carried a kicking and screaming Miss Winters with him.
“Get to the boats!” one of the mutineers shouted. “They’re waiting for us like gifts from heaven!”
The mutineers dashed down the moonlit beach toward the boats, reaching one of them and throwing their packs into it. The night had turned dark enough that they did not see Elias, Lady Adelaide, and Emily at first, but Miss Winters spotted them right away and shouted, “Dr. Pettigrew, help me!”
Elias cringed at the way Miss Winters exposed the other two women, but he did not hesitate for a moment to answer her call.
He leapt up, racing to her, and with what little skill for fighting that he had, he hurled himself at the man who gripped her around the waist and attempted to punch him the way he’d seen Caspian punch the other man earlier.
All Elias received for his efforts was a sore hand and an irritated mutineer.
“Get away!” the mutineer shouted, whirling Miss Winters around so he could attack Elias directly. “She’s mine!”
Elias managed to dodge the man’s blow, which was clumsy as Miss Winters fought back, but saving himself for a moment was one good move in a sea of bad.
Behind him, Lady Adelaide and Emily screamed.
When Elias whirled around to see what had happened, his eyes went wide.
Not only had two of the mutineers rushed over to snatch Lady Adelaide and Emily up, Dick and another of the mutineers had just spilled out of the jungle, carrying a heavy chest between them.
“You!” Dick growled as soon as he saw Elias. His face split into a wicked, toothy grin. “Not so brave when your little bum-mate isn’t around, are you.”
Dick gestured for one of the others to come take the chest, pointing to which boat he wanted it in. As he did, Elias attempted to run up the beach to save Lady Adelaide and Emily, but he could already see he was no match for the mutineers.
Still, he tried to intervene as one of the mutineers dragged a flailing Emily away from Lady Adelaide and hoisted her over his shoulder. He could do little to stop the man from carrying her to one of the boats, which the others had released from its anchor and piled into.
“Oh no you don’t,” Dick caught Elias’s arm as he was about to throw another punch and swung him around. “Those women are ours now. So are you.”
“Let them go,” Elias shouted, ignoring the threat to himself. “Only the very worst sort of devil kidnaps women.”
“You believe I care what names you call me?” Dick laughed at him. He pulled Elias’s arm hard, disorienting him for a moment. “I’ll take a man who knows how to heal a wound and suck a cock, too,” he said. “We might need you in the days to come at that.”
It took Elias a moment to realize what Dick meant as he fought against the iron grip the man had on his arm.
He was not as frail or hungry as he’d made out earlier.
In fact, he still had a great deal of strength in him.
He pulled and pushed Elias down the beach in a similar way that the others were abducting the women.
Elias fought back as best he could, but when Dick lost patience with his efforts as they splashed into the surf, he wheeled around and struck Elias’s jaw so hard that Elias went limp with the impact.
The next few minutes were a swimmy nightmare.
In the very back of Elias’s head, the physician in him reasoned that a well-placed blow to the jaw was known to have enough impact to knock a man unconscious, and Dick must have known that.
Another part of him was vaguely aware of seeing the heavy chest hauled into one of the boats, the boat Dick was carrying him toward, and the ladies and most of the mutineers were being forced into the other.
The ladies were putting up a fight, which filled Elias with a vague sense of pride.
He did not fully emerge from the haze of pain Dick had thrust him into until he was pushed over the edge of the boat with the chest and crashed onto the boards inside it.
The impact of his fall did enough to improve his awareness so that he could scramble to right himself.
He was still slow, and his head and body screamed with pain.
“Get gone!” Dick shouted to his friend as he climbed into the boat, swinging around until he sat on the bench beside the other man, taking the oar on that side. “Get out of here quickly! They’re coming.”
“What about the others?” the mutineer asked, rowing, but glancing toward the other boat as he did.
Elias swung his head around, though it made his stomach heave to do so, and sought out the second boat. The mutineers were still fighting to push or pull the ladies into it, and just as Elias had told him, Lady Adelaide and the others were kicking, screaming, and biting to stop them.
That was not what put a smile on Elias’s battered face, though.
Though night had fallen, the moon was nearly full and the signal fire still blazed, which meant he was able to see Caspian in all his pale glory charging out of the jungle and down to the water’s edge.
Nearly half a dozen of the settlers raced out behind him, all of them heading straight for the mutineers who were attempting to abduct the women.
Caspian, however, seemed to only see Elias’s boat. Even as Dick and his mate rowed hard, taking the boat out toward the breakers, then beyond them to the open sea, Caspian chased after them.
“Move! Move!” Dick shouted. “He won’t be able to do a damn thing once we’re out far enough.”
Elias burst into a smile and slumped against the boat’s stern.
Dick could not have been more wrong if he’d tried.
As mad as it would have sounded to some, Elias prayed for the boat to go faster and for Dick to row as far from the shore as he could.
The deeper the water around them when Caspian reached them, the more danger Dick would be in.
“What is that madman doing?” Dick’s companion asked, sitting up as he rowed and watching as Caspian dove into the waves. “Does he think he can swim out here and fight us?”
“You’ve lost,” Elias said, laughing despite his pain. “If you give up now, he may spare your lives.”
Dick sneered at him and pulled harder on his oar.
“I’ll be damned if anyone will take this treasure from me,” he said.
“I planned how to steal it, I endured prison and months at sea in my efforts to take it, and nothing or no one is going to stop me from finding my way to Hindustan to live like a king with it.”
No sooner had Dick finished those words when there was a bump on the bottom of the boat. Elias burst into a smile, knowing it was Caspian and that he was likely playing with Dick before attacking.
“What was that?” the other man gasped, losing his grip on his oar for a moment.
“Nothing,” Dick snarled. “Keep rowing.”
The other man nervously did as he was ordered, but only for a moment. After a few seconds of suspicious calm, Caspian leapt up from the water and heaved himself over the side of the boat.
Both Dick and his friend shouted. Their shouts grew when, instead of attempting to climb inside the boat, Caspian pushed down on the side hard enough to tip the boat to such an angle that water rushed into the bottom.
When it rocked back to the other side, the mutineer jumped out and scrambled to swim back toward the island, though he did not appear to be a strong swimmer.
Caspian pushed hard on the boat’s side again, rocking it steeply back in the other direction.
“You won’t take it!” Dick shouted, lunging for the treasure chest.
His efforts were futile. Caspian put enough weight on the side of the boat, which was already flooded with water and weighted down by the chest, that the whole thing sank and capsized, spilling Dick and Elias into the ocean.