Page 9 of Maggie and the Pirate’s Son

“Seems reasonable,” Dutch murmured to the captain.

After decades sailing under Mad, the quartermaster was skilled at whipping so as to inflict the least damage possible. He wouldn’t kill her, but it would be a torture right enough, for her and for anyone decent who watched.

“Shall we vote?” Dutch called to the rest, before Mad could order elsewise.

Bash hazarded a glance around at the crew, all of them nodding and shouting their approval. Even the most bloodthirsty, eager as they were to see him thrashed, would rather see the girl stripped bare for whipping and nodded their eager assent.

“Fine,” Mad agreed, and the girl nodded, though her face was all scrunched up with worry, and even more pale than before.

Dutch waved her forward, and Bash slipped his shirt back on.

“No.” Mad held a palm out towards Dutch, whose eyes widened, but he handed over the cat, unwilling to openly defy the captain.

Bash froze. If Mad meant to do it himself… but then the captain gleefully shoved the whip at Bash. “You found her. You do it.”

“ ’Tis the job of the quartermaster, not the sailing master,” Bash protested, but his words were drowned out by the cheering of the horde, and the captain pressed the whip into his hands. There would be no getting out of it. Mad would torment him one way or the other. He knew whipping the girl himself would be worse than having Bash’s own back flayed open yet again.

Mad tilted his head and growled, “You or me, boy,” forcing Bash to take the whip.

He hated touching the thing. It was all he could do not to drop it on the deck like it was on fire. He glanced at Dutch for guidance, and the quartermaster’s eyes darted toward the ladder and the deck below. It might work. Anyway, what was there to lose?

“Fine,” Bash said, thinking quickly. “But she’s a lady, not some common whore. I’ll not do it up here.” And before there could be any argument, he grabbed her roughly above the elbow and shoved her towards the hatch, weaving through the men who hooted and hollered and refused to step out of their way, each one salivating for a chance at a poke, as they realized they were being deprived of the best entertainment they were likely to get all year.

Bash stared them down one by one as he forced his way through. With his lips so close they brushed the soft shell of her ear, he whispered, “Don’t try to run. Do exactly as I say. You’ve no idea how much danger you’re in. Bloody fool.”

He hadn’t meant to say the last part out loud, squeezing her arm a little as he murmured it. The girl shot him an angry look, but she scrambled down the ladder and waited for him at the bottom, glancing nervously at the cat o’ nine tails still clenched in his fist. Not pausing to flip the patch off his left eye so he could better see her in the dim light, he took her arm once again to guide her away from the leering sailors above.

Not yet accustomed to the sway of the ship, she tripped along the narrow passage to the almost-private alcove where he hung his hammock, and he shoved her inside, releasing her arm to draw the curtain closed.

The two of them certainly filled up the tiny space in an intoxicating sort of way. Even the ceiling seemed suddenly too low, though there was normally space aplenty.

“Don’t say a word,” he breathed harshly when she opened her mouth, and jerked his head to remind her of their audience. At best, the men would be crowded around the hatch to hear her screams.

She snapped her lips closed and then opened them again and drew a breath.

“Not a word,” he whispered once more, close enough to take in the heady scent of her hair, then he stepped back, putting some distance between them.

How in Christ’s name did he end up here? The whipping wouldn’t be the end of it. She was a woman, after all. Mad wouldn’t keep her aboard. If she wasn’t a specter when he’d found her, she’d be one soon enough, haunting him and the Revenge until their final days, more efficiently than the navy had ever done. Even if it wasn’t by Bash’s own hand, the stain of her death would forever taint his soul for having found her and failing to prevent it. What the hell was he going to do?

Chapter Three

Maggie was the sort of child who, upon being scolded for misbehavior, would look her parents dead in the eye and misbehave again. If anything got her dander up faster than being bossed around, she couldn’t think what. This once, though, her sense of self-preservation, honed through marriage and a scant amount of maturity, outweighed any childish rancor.

Truthfully, the whole adventure seemed more and more like a very ill-conceived, impulsive mistake. Like every rash response to Jeremiah’s goading, whether it was burning his dinner or throwing it in his face, she had a feeling she was going to regret ever running away.

She eyed the whip her captor—Bash?—still held at his side. Did he earn his name by hitting people? The raw white knuckles of his clenched fist might indicate yes.

He heaved a sigh, and she allowed her gaze to travel up his taut, tawny forearm to his broad shoulder, and so what if it was broad? This young man was just another man, and one who’d been ordered to whip her, at that.

Swallowing her nerves, she forced herself to meet his gaze. He worked his square, stubbled jaw like he was chewing his thoughts, the muscle popped beneath a thin scar bisecting his left cheek, right along the ridge of chiseled bone. Maggie licked her lips and leaned back against the bulkhead, forcing herself to meet his gaze.

And his eyes? Mercy. They looked as fierce and turbulent as the storm she couldn’t quite believe they’d survived. And yet, there was a glint of something like lust until he caught her looking. Then they softened briefly, and he tossed the nine-tailed whip onto a tiny desk and turned away.

Her relief was short-lived, however, for he picked up a leather strop from a nearby shelf and turned back to face her. She licked her lips again, tasting bitter iron that threatened to make her heave, and she struggled to swallow it down.

Bash stepped closer again, close enough she could smell the scent of citrus and sea, so close there was definitely not room for the Holy Ghost between them.

With a glance towards the curtain he’d drawn at their arrival, he loosed the tie of his linen breeches.