Page 48 of Maggie and the Pirate’s Son

“And if Walsh does have the gold? What would you do with that much coin?” she asked with a sultry smirk.

He’d never allowed himself to ponder overmuch. When he did, something like hope flared within his chest and he couldn’t bear it. Today that hope looked very much like him and Maggie sailing off with their fair share to make their own way in the world together.

It was a preposterous notion. She was a scholar’s daughter, ken to clan lairds by blood and by marriage. He was no more than the bastard of a bastard, living his life one step ahead of the hangman.

What did it matter if she could make him laugh? What did it matter if her smile made his fractured parts feel whole?

“Would you buy your own private island? Build a castle on the beach and call yourself laird?” she pressed in a teasing tone.

Bash leaned against the bulkhead. Her enthusiasm was contagious, but it was also dangerous, this game of pretend. “He doesn’t have it,” he said. When her smile faltered he added, “Why, what would you do?”

“I’d finally be independent,” she said firmly. “Isn’t that all any of us wants?”

“Certainly can’t disagree. Come,” he said, squeezing her hand and nodding to the deck above. “I’ll see you up there.”

A deep, sick dread roiled in his gut as Bash climbed to the upper deck. He’d thought he was doing a decent job of burying it, but Maggie had seen right through him. The Whale wasn’t the only reason he dragged his feet this morning, however. At some point, he would have to face Dutch. If there was to be a skirmish, there could be no mistrust between them, and the quartermaster was already awaiting his arrival at the forecastle.

“So we engage the Whale today,” Bash said, gazing out at some distant storm clouds and calculating their progression in his head.

“We do. Hopefully Walsh has the sense to surrender.”

“And if he doesn’t?”

“Then we force him.”

“He doesn’t have the gold,” Bash muttered.

“Then we can finally put this fiction behind us for good,” Dutch replied, ever sensible.

Bash nodded, but the truth of another fiction still hung, palpably, between them.

“Last night,” he began.

Dutch pierced him with a rapier glare, and Bash rubbed his ear, the traitorous words sticking in his throat.

“You pledged your protection—the same protection I once swore to you.”

“There was consent,” he protested feebly.

“How can there be? You are the sailing master. Magnus is a cabin boy. You hold all the power,” Dutch growled, and Bash’s very soul shriveled. “Was it the same when you stepped in for Langley?” Dutch asked, his voice ice cold.

“No!” Bash exclaimed, shaking his head emphatically. “No,” he said again, and Dutch held his gaze a long while before he was satisfied.

But the quartermaster was right. Bash was scum. Even if Maggie had wanted him, he didn’t deserve her—could never deserve her.

Had he been in her position, he might have said yes to avoid the repercussions of saying no. He’d allowed himself to pretend they were equal, because the plain fact was she held his heart in her two lovely, capable hands, and along with it, the power to destroy him. But he was still her superior according to the chain of command. He barked orders and she obeyed them.

Dutch cupped the back of Bash’s neck, forcing him to meet the older man’s gaze.

“You’re better than this, Bastian. You are not your father. Remember that and treat the child as I treated you.”

When Bash had been brought aboard Auldfarrand’s Revenge at the age of nine and a half, the captain had waited two hours after setting sail, just long enough to be certain his son wouldn’t risk swimming back to Lewis. Then, before the entire crew, he ordered Bash to drop his trousers, and he whipped him with his own belt, proclaiming that after nine years growing up coddled, he had it coming.

Because Bash had cried, he did it again the next day, and the next—every day for a week—until Bash learned how to take it stoically like a man. It had been Dutch who quietly comforted him, teaching him to dissociate and making it clear to all aboard that he’d slit the throat of any sailor who laid a finger on Bash. After that first week, Bash became very good at doing as he was told and otherwise keeping out of sight. He also never shed another tear.

It had been Dutch who looked out for him and saw he was fed. Dutch who found out he could read and asked the previous sailing master to tutor him in navigation. Dutch took care of him when his sire didn’t seem concerned whether he were beaten or buggered or starved.

“I’ve never properly thanked you,” Bash rasped, and Dutch shoved him away.