Page 77 of Maggie and the Pirate’s Son

He didn’t answer at first, squinting into the distance. When he finally did, he said simply, “Aye.”

“Well, I don’t accept that.”

“You must.” His voice sounded so resigned. Not angry or cruel, just tired and sad and determined.

“Was it something I did?” she asked. “I was selfish, but I can do better. I will do better.”

“Selfish?” he asked, perplexed, and shook his head. “Never. But you’re too comfortable with the idea of being a pirate.”

Maggie laughed, sad and bitter. She didn’t want to be a pirate. But she would choose it again and again to keep her freedom and stay close to her favorite pirate navigator.

“ ’Tisn’t a joke,” he said solemnly. “This is no kind of life.”

“We’re free now. Both of us. We could go anywhere.”

He shook his head. “Mags, I’m sorry. I only have enough saved to book one passage.”

Blinking back the tears that threatened to fall, she shook her head. She didn’t accept them, not any more than she accepted his words. “Then sign onto the crew in exchange for your passage. Isn’t that what men do?”

“Boys, maybe⁠—”

“Then I’ll do it. I can work hard and you can buy your own fare.”

“I’m a pirate, Mags. They’ll see me coming and shoot me dead before I so much as open my mouth.”

“Then I’ll stay.”

“No. You won’t. You deserve better than running and hiding, starving on hard tack and rum,” he said, standing up and heading off again, leaving Maggie to follow.

For a moment she considered just not following him. That would teach him, all right. If he was willing to let her go, then he might as well start right now. On her terms.

Except he paused to wait for her, leaning against a tree, and she’d rather be at his side now, fighting with the idiot, arguing some sense into him, than not be near him at all.

She’d been so stupid, allowing herself to get close to him, allowing herself to fall in love and be loved in return at last. Love was a fairytale for silly little girls whose fate fell to their fathers to give them away to the first willing man who came along.

“You’re angry with me,” he said, after they’d trudged in silence for another quarter hour.

“Does it matter?”

“Course.”

“Why?” He didn’t answer, so she asked it again. “Why? I didn’t want to marry Jeremiah, but that didn’t matter. I didn’t want to move to Orkney, but that didn’t matter, either. I wanted to have children, then I wanted to stay a widow—none of it mattered, Bash. All that ever seems to matter is what men want for me.”

“I just want you to be safe,” he said in a small voice.

“No,” Maggie said, and she sounded loud and strong, and not like someone who was about to shatter. “No, you want to feel comfortable believing you’ve made me safe.” Then she pushed forward into the bush without him, even though her sense of direction was more likely to send her circling back into the arms of the Revenge. Or right off a cliff.

“I have nothing to offer you,” he called in a piteous voice that brought her up short. “Nothing but the coin to book passage back to your home, and you deserve everything.”

“You are everything⁠—”

“No. I’m the pirate by-blow of pirate scum. You deserve better. My mother deserved better. Christ, maybe I deserved better, but this is the only life I’ve known since I was nine years old. I’ve no skills. Not a fool would employ me. My only hope is to find my sire’s fortune if it even exists. Then, I might escape and perhaps one day endeavor to deserve you.”

Maggie’s brain was whirring so fast she didn’t know which piece of his declaration to focus on first. “Your sire⁠—”

Bash inclined his head in affirmation, and her heart turned to molten fury for all he’d suffered at the hands of the captain, Cornelius MacLeod. A father in name, perhaps, but in name only.

“Then I shall help you find it.”