Nathaniel sprang forward. His pistol spoke and one of the boarders fell to his knee, clutching his shoulder. Nathaniel had a knife in his hand now, and was in the midst of the group, slashing, kicking with deadly accuracy, whirling from side to side with the grace of a dancer and the savagery of a warrior.
Gabrielle fired her own pistol into the fray, reducing Nathaniel's opponents by one. She grabbed a broken spar from the deck and brought it down on the head of one of the men grappling with Nathaniel. But the two of them were vastly outnumbered and unable to reload their pistols.
Gabrielle struggled in the grip of two men, their faces blackened with cork. She kicked sideways, drove her elbows into the belly of the man holding her from behind, but it was futile. Her arms were wrenched behind her, twisted upward, and she screamed in pain.
Nathaniel with a cry of fury spun from his own deadly combat at the sound, and a man behind him brought the barrel of his musket down on his head with skull-shattering force.
Nathaniel dropped to the deck. The man kicked him in the belly, but he lay unmoving.
"Nathaniel!" Gabrielle surged forward against her captors' hold and screamed again at the agonizing jolt in her arms. She swore at them, calling them every vile name she could think of, heedless of nothing but her terror that Nathaniel, lying so still with a livid swelling on his forehead, was dead.
Someone silenced her with a brutal blow across her mouth, and she tasted blood from a split lip. Then she was being bundled below. They threw Nathaniel down the companionway behind her, and she gave another scream of outrage, struggling with renewed strength. But she could do nothing to save herself from the ropes. They bound her wrists behind her and tied her ankles and dumped her on the floor. She lay watching as they bound Nathaniel in the same way, and she took some comfort in the reflection that if he were dead, they wouldn't bother to bind him.
She listened to them talk as they completed their work. They were going to leave four men aboard the Curlewto bring her with the prisoners into Cherbourg harbor. Their own cutter, the Sainte Elise, would continue to sweep the sea along the French coast for any other vessels on their list.
Gabrielle kept very still and silent even when they kicked at Nathaniel's inert body on their way out of the cabin. Her head was now very clear. If there were only four of them, they'd have a chance to overpower them with the advantage of surprise. How many of Dan's men were alive? They'd be bound too, of course. But if she could just get free…
She was lying on her back against the table. Nathaniel lay some three feet away from her, on his side, his back to her. She could see the ropes around his wrists. They were thick and tight, tighter, she thought, than the ones at her own wrists. She had enough play to move her wrists against each other, although not a hope of sliding a hand free.
Nathaniel groaned and her heart leaped. He was still alive, but when she called his name softly, there was no response.
She turned her head gingerly on the hard floor and her eye caught a glint under the table. It took her a minute to realize what it was. The glass Nathaniel had swept from the table in his anger. The glass that had broken against the steel bolt of the table.
Her heart began to beat fast, the blood pounding in her temples as she thought what this meant. Broken glass, a jagged edge-a cutting edge. If she could reach it…
She stared at the glinting glass, fixing its position in her mind's eye; then she rolled awkwardly onto her side, so her back and her hands were toward the glass. The table legs prevented her reaching the glass with her whole body, but she stretched her joined hands as far as she could, ignoring the renewed pain in her wrenched arms.
She couldn't reach it. Her fingers scrabbled futilely in the dirt and dust under the table and made contact with nothing. Drawing her knees up tight against her chest, she pushed her curled body backward, edging between the table legs. Her fingers searched, encountered something sharp, and she gave a little cry of pain that turned rapidly into a crow of triumph.
Very, very gently her fingers closed around the jagged chunk of glass. She mustn't drop it, but she couldn't hold it too tightly without cutting her hands to ribbons, and she was going to need her hands.
She squirmed out from under the table, stretching her body with a sigh of relief, keeping on her side, holding her arms as far from her body as she could.
Now to reach Nathaniel. But she couldn't roll on her back without injuring herself with the glass. Drawing her knees up again, she levered herself across the cabin until she was lying beside Nathaniel. Now she would have to roll so that her back was against his.
Closing her eyes tightly, she inched over onto her back, raising her hips as far from the ground as she could, arching the small of her back away from her hands. One jerking heave, and she was over, lying back-to-back with Nathaniel.
Now. She ran a finger over the edge of the glass, finding the sharpest, most jagged point. Then she felt for the rope at Nathaniel's wrists. Sweat broke out on her forehead despite the dank chill in the cabin, and a wave of sickness broke over her, but it was anxiety rather than pregnancy this time.
An agonized scream came from on deck, and then another. She took a deep breath, trying not to imagine what was happening. She must concentrate.
Gently at first, she began to saw at the rope at Nathaniel's wrist. But gently took too long. Biting her swollen lip hard, she sawed faster. There was blood on her hands now; she could feel its stickiness, and her nausea increased. Was it Nathaniel's or hers? Impossible to tell.
She stopped, her breath rapid and shallow as she tried to master her terror.
"Keep going, Gabrielle." Nathaniel's voice was calm and steady but so startling in the intense silence of her own private world that she jumped in fear.
"I didn't want you to come to until I was finished," she managed to whisper through dry lips. "I'm afraid I'm hurting you."
"Keep going," he repeated steadily. "I'm holding my wrists as far apart as I can."
"But what if I cut a vein?"
"You won't."
He sounded so confident that she was able to continue despite the blood that now seemed to cover her hands.
"All right," Nathaniel said softly after a long silence when the only sound was the strange rasping of glass on rope. "You're almost there. I can feel it fraying."
"Oh, God," Gabrielle whispered. Her arms were a mass of aching muscle, her wrists cramping with the strain, her fingers so numb, she was afraid she'd drop the glass. She closed her eyes again; it helped her to concentrate, to see nothing but the rope fraying strand by strand beneath the glass.
And then it was done. The rope parted.
"That's my girl," Nathaniel said softly. He sat up. His hands were smothered in blood, but he took no notice, inching his way across to the portmanteau against the bulkhead. Gabrielle was too exhausted to roll over to see what he was doing. He withdrew a knife with a wicked rapier blade and sliced through the rope at his ankles in one stroke.
Then he was kneeling beside Gabrielle. "Hold still." Her wrists were freed and she gave a groan of relief, bringing her hands round, flexing her fingers, massaging her wrists.
"You're bleeding like a stuck pig," she said in horror as he cut the rope at her ankles.
"Bandage them for me," he said matter-of-factly. "There are cravats in the portmanteau."
She found the cravats and wrapped them tightly around his slashed wrists. "There are only four men. Here, put your finger on the knot."
"Only four, you're sure?"
"That's what I heard them say-the other one now-there, that'll do for the moment." She looked up from her handiwork. "They kicked you when you were unconscious."
"I can feel it," he said grimly. He went back to the portmanteau and took out the twin of the knife he still held.