Page 19 of Maggie and the Pirate’s Son

“I can’t bed down on the floor,” he said softly. “If I’m needed, they’ll come to wake me and know something’s amiss.”

Maggie suddenly missed her straw bed on Orkney as much as she had the feather mattress of her youth, but she knew better than to suggest a hammock in amongst the rest of the crew. “I’m happy to sleep on the floor,” she lied, and he pursed his lips but nodded once.

From the same cabinet which had produced her new clothes hours earlier, he withdrew a yellow-and-black length of tartan, which rather caught her by surprise. His accent wasn’t pure Scots, and it was such a sentimental thing for a pirate to carry around. Though, as he was a pirate, she supposed it might have been taken off anyone.

“Which clan did you steal that from?” she teased.

His brow furrowed. “D’you want it or not?”

A flash of regret nipped her conscience when she saw he wasn’t laughing. “I want it,” she said, and tugged it gently from his fists.

The borrowed plaid together with her own earasaid made a cozy nest beneath his fold-down desk, and Maggie lay down to go to sleep, afraid to ask the question she couldn’t stop thinking. How long would this ocean voyage take?

She was delighted when Custard, the tattletale cat, padded into the alcove, completely ignoring their privacy curtain, and curled up against her belly purring loudly. Snuggling into the cat’s soft fur, Maggie decided she didn’t mind the journey lasting a bit longer.

Another forty days at least. How was Bash going to survive another forty days in such close quarters with this beautiful, maddening, ocean-eyed girl? Bad enough lying to Dutch, who could read him better than Bash could read the stars, knew him better than Bash knew himself. The quartermaster hadn’t pressed him because Mad interrupted, and for once Bash was glad of the interruption. Dutch would have kept their secret, but Bash didn’t want his friend and mentor held to account if it all came crashing down. When it all came crashing down, more like.

And it would do. Sure as the sun would rise, someone would find out the truth. What man alive could look upon Maggie Mackintosh Budge and not see the feminine curve of her hips sashaying across the deck in his old breeches? He’d never thought of breeches as erotic until now. What man could dwell on her soft, delicate hands and not imagine those hands cupping his face or unfastening his own buttons? Hell, imagining her shaving him made him hard.

He took hold of himself and then thought better of it—not with her lying there an arm’s breadth away.

Staring at the ceiling, he dwelled instead on the terrible realization that she’d hidden in the cargo hold for three whole days without food or water. If the cat hadn’t brought him to her, they’d have likely found her dead before long, her pelagic eyes lifeless and cloudy grey rather than flashing cobalt as they had when he’d struck his thigh instead of her.

Shame flooded his belly, shriveling the last of his erection at the memory of her hand, outstretched, demanding a blow, and the scream that had wrenched from her throat as a result. She’d been thirsting away for so long she cried without tears. He’d only seen such a thing once before, when they’d come across a man marooned by his crew so long he was barely a sack of bones when the Revenge had found him.

On his honor, Bash would do anything to ensure no such danger ever threatened her, nor any such sound ever escaped her lips again. Not while he was living. Calico Jack once told him the Chinese believed if you saved a person’s life, you were responsible for them forever. Bash may not be Chinese, but he was surely responsible for Maggie now, as if she were his own.

But Christ in the desert, it was going to be a long forty days, longer if Mad kept dithering about their direction. Even longer if rumors of the naval ship were true.

There were always rumors, of course. And Bash remained undecided whether it was wise to believe in the eternal threat of Constantin and his HMS Pursuit.

He thought back to Mad’s twitching eyebrow and tapping spyglass. The old man was scared of Constantin, good and proper, and not just afraid he’d recover the gold before Mad did. Nothing else got the captain’s hackles up, not ever, and the fact he was rattled this time set off alarm bells deep inside Bash.

Why would the Pursuit show up now? Had Bash willed her into being with his petulant teasing? Mad was an easy mark, but Bash knew better than to give in to his instinct for deviling the old bastard.

If indeed the Pursuit was out there, could it simply be bad luck and timing? They were both sailing away from the British coast, both caught in the same awful storm? Or had the navy caught wind of the tales Bash would swear on his mother’s grave had been started by none other than Cornelius MacLeod himself, tales of old Willy Walsh absconding with the missing wealth of some baron or other, stolen from the Annabel Grace two decades back as the baron made his way west to govern the rambunctious colonies in America?

The navy had been escorting the Annabel Grace, yet somehow Mad distracted them and slipped aboard. They chased him all the way to Port Royal, where he got very drunk, evaded capture by the skin of his teeth, and managed to misplace a hundred-pound chest filled with gold.

Despite Bash not even being born yet, the captain blamed him for the loss, and blamed him still twenty-two years later for not having found it. But the navy didn’t know the gold was lost. Had Constantin pursued them for decades, hoping to recover the stolen coins and bring the pirate thief to justice as Mad had always claimed? Hell, they actually christened a newly refitted galleon as HMS Pursuit. Why, if not in Mad’s honor?

They even came looking for him on Lewis once, missing him by about two years.

Bastian had been out fishing for brown trout all day. Having caught enough to feed his ailing grandparents and Aunt Jenny’s brood, he was hurrying home with a basket almost too heavy to carry when a stranger came strolling down the lane. The man wore a fine coat of dark blue serge with shiny buttons and gold braid, and they stopped to study each other.

After setting down the heavy basket of fish, Bastian doffed his cap with a polite, “Feasgar math.” The navy man nodded back, then picked up the basket for him and carried it all the way to Granda’s house before taking his leave.

“Thig a-steach,” Bastian had invited, and on the man’s blank expression he switched to English. “Want to come in?” Then he tried his mother’s, “Wa fi cum inna?” just for fun.

The man had smiled at him, but patted his shoulder and shook his head, and that was the last Bastian had seen of him, though he painted his laundry peg sailors dark blue, matching the young officer’s uniform as best he could.

The next day Bastian heard murmurs among the adults about a naval officer sniffing round the MacLeods’ place. Many years later, Bash realized the officer must have been looking for his sire, the infamous pirate of Lewis, bogeyman of bedtime stories and embarrassment to his clan.

Had the officer realized Bastian’s lineage, would he have helped to carry his fish? Or would the navy have kidnapped him as bait for a fishing expedition of their own, supposing the pirate captain might possess an ounce of parental instinct which could be turned against him? More fool them.

Maybe it was their proximity to Scotland after so many years making him melancholy, but Bash had the urgent sense his life was all building to its inevitable conclusion. A week ago, he would have said fine. He was tired—of running, of fighting, of thieving—of loneliness stretching out before him like the endless ocean waves.

He loved the waggoner with its pages of colorful maps, loved the sun shining warm upon his face, and the vast night sky. There had even been a time when he embraced the constant movement, the pitch and roll, the never-ending journey, as though each moment were propelling him forward to whatever adventure came next.