Page 10 of Maggie and the Pirate’s Son

Whatever Maggie might have been expecting, this wasn’t on the list. Perhaps it should have been. After Jeremiah, nothing should have surprised her. He’d seemed so timid and inexperienced, even shy, until they were alone as man and wife.

Stumbling backwards, she clunked her head against the wall hard enough to make her eyes sting and gave an involuntary yelp.

Jeremiah had shown her what men were like, but he’d never once touched her before their wedding night. This man, this Bash, and likely all his seafaring companions, offered little pretense at gentility or refinement as Jeremiah had. Mercy, but she was a fool. If she survived this misadventure long enough to share the story with Jory and Ellen, they would never let her live it down. Well, Ellen would, but Jory wouldn’t, not that Maggie deserved to.

He let his breeches fall to mid thigh, but his shirt hung down low enough Maggie couldn’t see the necessary bits, not that she was looking. Well. Not that she was meaning to look.

Jutting out her chin, she glared at him defiantly, and he glared right back as he raised the strop. She braced to absorb the blow. Where would he strike her? On the hand like a cruel governess? In the face like Jeremiah?

He brought the strop down hard on the bare skin of his upper thigh, and Maggie jumped, gasping her surprise as though it had been her own flesh he’d struck. He stepped even closer to her, and another loud crack made her flinch. She stared straight into his dark brown eyes, which held her own gaze captive, as surely as if she were tied to that post on the deck.

“Scream,” he demanded through clenched teeth, and the puff of his breath tickled her cheek right where the scar would be on his own. What had marked him that way? she wondered.

He brought the leather down for a third time on his own bare skin, and Maggie didn’t even mean to when she cried, “Stop!”

He nodded with an approving grimace and slapped himself again with even greater force.

“Stop, please,” she cried again, her eyes burning but dry.

Another blow, and Maggie moved her lips to form the word please, but no sound escaped.

Another, so hard he grunted when the leather made contact with his thigh, and when she stood in silence, her mouth hanging open, he whispered, “For Christ’s sake, cry,” and struck himself again.

Seldom one to be stunned into silence, Maggie willed the tears to come, but, though hot and aching, her eyes remained dry. Here he was, taking her beating for her, and she couldn’t even cry for him.

Ashamed and confused, Maggie bit her lip and held out her palm. He frowned at her, but she nodded fiercely.

Glowering, he let one strike fall across her palm with far less force than he’d used on himself, but enough to wrench a howl from her throat, and he looked away, breaking eye contact for the first time. She turned away too, staring down at his raw, red skin, even as he slapped himself again, and Maggie began to weep, loudly and openly, as though every ounce of bitterness and grief that she’d trapped inside herself since the day she turned eighteen was finally bursting free.

It was like that one, furious wail had uncorked an ocean and loosed a tempest all her own, face flushed and head pounding, though still her eyes stayed dry. Was she so broken, she could no longer even shed tears? Somehow the thought made her moan louder, as she wrapped her arms protectively around herself.

He was standing so close that even in the dim light she could see he’d broken the skin in places, that he’d done so for her, when none of this was his fault.

Bash tossed the strop aside, breathing heavily, and resecured his breeches before reaching out a hand to cup her cheek, running his thumb across the bone as though wiping away the absent tears.

“Good girl,” he whispered, his accent some lovely mix of faint Scots and who knew what else, the lilt of wind and wave. “You need to drink. Your body’s all dried out. Now listen carefully. A woman aboard is the worst of bad luck. There’s many a man would toss you overboard and not blink an eye. Maybe more of another mind,” he added soberly. “And when they got through with you, you’d wish you’d taken your chances in the sea.”

He didn’t need to elaborate. When he’d dropped his breeches, reality had finally set in. She’d seen the sailors practically salivating as they encircled her on deck.

“But I’m married,” she protested weakly, and when she noticed his brow crease for a split second, she felt the need to clarify. “Widowed.”

“And you think that’s some kind of protection?” he whispered.

Maggie could only shrug.

He turned away from her and rummaged in a cabinet cleverly concealed within the hull.

“Here,” he shoved another pair of breeches at her along with a sark that was definitely not clean, but it smelled like him, and she found she didn’t hate it. “Best I can do at the moment. What’s your name?”

“Maggie Mackintosh.” She paused, realizing she’d left off her married name. “Budge.”

“Now it’s just Budge,” he said.

She scrunched up her face in disgust and shook her head. “No. It isn’t.”

He tilted his own head at her refusal, but gave in. “Magnus then,” he said with a nod, and she nodded once back. “And you’re a lad of fourteen.”

“I’m twenty!”