Page 46 of Maggie and the Pirate’s Son

By morning, he was antsy—not ready to leave the pleasant cocoon, but eager to have the next twelve hours over and done so he could return to it.

Maggie rested languorously in the hammock, still basking in last night’s glow as he performed his daily ablutions. When he caught her watching, he smiled warmly, and she slid down under his plaid, peeking out at him with a shy, smug expression that stirred his arousal.

The kestrel squawked at him, waking the cat, which had slunk in during the night and curled up under his desk as Maggie used to do. It watched the confounded bird with interest, sitting up on its hind legs for a better view.

“Now Mouser, that bird is the cabin boy’s pet, mind,” Bash scolded quietly, offering the cat a bit of dried beef instead. “You’d do well to leave it be.”

“Mrow,” the cat replied, snapping up the beef and washing its own face as he’d just done.

Then Bash sat on the edge of the hammock, still watching the kestrel and the cat instead of Maggie.

“His name is Custard,” she said, nodding to the cat.

“Custard? What kind of a name is that?”

What kind of a name is Bash? he half expected her to retort.

But she shook her head and said softly, “It’s just his name.” Then she hesitantly reached out to trace the old scars on his back like she had almost done the night before.

He grew very still under her touch, and she retracted her hand, but he said, “You can ask.”

“The captain?”

“Dutch. The captain rarely administers his own beatings.”

“What could you have possibly done to deserve such cruelty?” she asked, tears springing to her eyes.

“That,” he said, pulling his shirt over his head and letting it fall like a shroud over the past, “was the only time I ever snuck ashore.”

“You must have been a little boy,” she gasped, the tears finally wetting her cheeks. “You must have been so scared and lonely and betrayed.”

He’d felt all those things and more when Mad ordered Dutch to take the cat o’ nine to him, but he didn’t like to dwell.

Bash leaned over and kissed her cheek. “Don’t cry, Mags,” he said, wiping a tear away with his thumb. “ ’Twas a long time ago. I’m all grown up now.”

He tried to smile as he searched her eyes, but they just clouded more, so he pulled her into his chest.

“It breaks my heart to think of you—of no one taking care of you.”

“Shh, don’t cry,” he said again, stroking her hair. “Don’t cry, else I shall have to go back on my knees, and we’ve neither of us time for that now.”

A little thrill ran down his belly and straight to his groin at the notion, but he meant what he said. There wasn’t time, not today. Such was life at sea, after all.

“Why are they all so excited about the ship with the whale?” she asked. “And why aren’t you?”

“Ah.” He rose from the hammock and paced the few steps back and forth to the porthole. “Mainly because they believe it will be our redemption, whereas I believe the captain is full of shite. Begging your pardon,” he added.

She nodded her pardon, and he continued.

“I told you about how Mad came into that gold.”

“Plundered it. And then lost it.”

“Aye. He was boasting in a tavern in Kingston that he buried it as his baby son’s inheritance.”

“He’s a father?”

“Of a sort, aye,” he said, feeling strangely gratified she didn’t notice any resemblance between them. “When Dutch and the lads found him passed out in his own piss, there was no sign of the chest, but the navy was hell bent on recovering the loot along with whoever stole it. So the men dragged him back to his ship and set sail. By the time he sobered up, he couldn’t remember what he’d done with it, and he’s been chasing that memory ever since.”