Read Online The Pirate Bride by Shannon Drake - Free Book Online Page B

come down in buckets, but as yet, it was just an annoying and continual fall, darkening the world and making it hard for her to listen. She couldn’t tell how many were following. She had assumed it would be just one man. Maybe two. But there were more than that behind her, she knew.
    Blair Colm did not know who she was. He knew only that the pirate Red Robert had a reputation for horrible ferocity.
    And that Red Robert was looking for him.
    And she knew that despite his cruelty, Blair Colm had always been a coward.
    When she left Teach, she had seen Sonya taking a coin from a man. She’d tested it, but Sonya was a businesswoman—she knew real gold when she saw it. Red didn’t even hate Sonya for the betrayal. The woman’s life was hard. She hated most men. She’d crawled her way to the top of the heap by lifting her skirts for sex in dark corners, turning her face from the putrid breath of unwashed men. Red couldn’t hate her.
    Maybe she had grown too complacent in her own skills, Red thought now. A sad miscalculation, since she had lost to Logan Haggerty. But he had been different. There was—or usually was—little to fear from other pirates. They passed at sea and saluted one another. They shared dens of iniquity, like the one she had just left. They brawled and wenched and drank, but they seldom picked battles with one another. They shared one bond, the ever-present image of the hangman’s noose. No need to battle one another.
    But Red had wanted to be followed, for there could have been only one reason for it. And now she knew. Blair Colm had spent a great deal of money to send men out to murder Captain Red Robert.
    But now she began to count the footsteps and lament her own reckless determination to see Blair Colm dead. There were at least six men behind her. They would have to be the most drunken, poorest swordsmen in the world to fall victim to her alone. She damned her own stupidity and confidence—her belief that she could best her pursuers in any duel and demand to know from them where Colm was headed now, where he might be found.
    She hadn’t asked Brendan or any of the men to go with her, for a coward who had taken money to kill would not have followed her if she had been accompanied.
    She simply hadn’t believed there would be so many.
    Ahead, a white sheet billowed as the alley widened, and she hurried beyond it, knowing she had to pick a place to make her stand.
    And so she did, checking the line that held the laundry as she held her position, barely daring to breathe, and waited.
    She heard the footsteps, coming closer now, moving faster.
    “Where’s he gone?” came a whisper, just audible in the night.
    A flash of lightning illuminated the sky for a split second.
    From her vantage point atop a step just beyond the line, Red saw the men. Eight. Two were leaning upon one another, and one of those two carried a bottle of rum. They weren’t there to fight; they were just waiting for the kill.
    None of them was well-armed. They were debris, she determined. Refuse that had found its way to the island. There was only one—a tall, muscular man, wearing a brace of pistols, his cutlass at the ready—who appeared to offer any real danger. He was bald beneath his sweeping hat, and one of his eyes was made of glass. Though the alley was dark, she could see that; slivers of moonlight caught on it, casting a glint of reflection. That was good. She would attack from the left.
    Full darkness seemed to fall when the lightning dimmed. It was time.
    With a violent thrust, she set the line of sheets flying. Several of the fellows were toppled immediately. She leapt from the step, her cutlass waving as she strode through the confusion. Easiest first to wind the men into the sheet. More of them fell. But then she discovered a man at her back, ready to skewer her, and when she turned to parry his attack, she saw the bald fellow moving toward her, as well.
    From a window above, there was the sound of life at