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“Be the Marauder, Drake,” Jake urged by his side.
In spite of the seriousness of their situation, Morgan laughed. “Would you stop? You sound like an old nag.”
Did he have any other choice?
Not bloody likely.
Reconciled to his fate, Morgan mumbled, “I think we should resurrect Black Jack and let the Marauder rest in peace.”
Jake laughed. “If you remember, it’s said the Marauder killed Black Jack.”
“For aggravating him, as I recall,” Morgan said before crossing the deck.
For what seemed the hundredth time that morning, Morgan headed back to his cabin. He opened the door and stopped short.
He’d left his flag trunk open.
And Serenity sat on the floor with an ashen face as she held the flag he’d come for.
Kit had been speaking, and stopped midsentence when he saw the captain.
His face reddened. “I didn’t know you still had it, Captain,” he said by way of an apology.
Serenity ran her hand over the black flag that bore the image of a grim reaper holding a sickle in one hand and a heart in the other.
“Tell me,” she said, her tone icy as she rose slowly to her feet, “that you killed the Marauder and kept this as a souvenir.”
It would do no good to lie. Government officials had plastered that flag all over the Colonies in an effort to locate its owner. That flag belonged to one of the fiercest pirates known.
The Marauder. Second only to Black Jack Rhys when it came to the reputation of ruthlessness, it was a past Morgan had done his best to bury.
But that was the thing about the past—sooner or later it always came back to haunt him.
Without explaining himself to her, he gently took the flag from her grasp.
“What are you going to do withthat?” she asked.
“I’m saving our necks.” And with that simple phrase, he headed back to the deck.
Serenity’s heart seemed to crumble as reality set in. Her Sea Wolf wasn’t some noble hero out to right all the wrongs of the world.
Morgan was…
Was…
Morgan was a pirate! A real-life, cold-blooded, take-no-survivors, heave-ho and kill-all pirate!
She reached out for the bunk, her legs suddenly weak. “He’s the Marauder,” she breathed, her vision dulling.
“It’s all right, ma’am,” Kit assured her, moving to help her sit down before she fell.
“All right,” she repeated in disbelief. “All right! He’s a pirate.” Her eyes widened in sudden realization. “You’re a pirate, too!”
At least Kit had the decency to blush. “It’s not what you think.”
Oh, it most certainly was! She wasn’t on board the ship of some romantic buccaneer who saved men’s lives and acted nobly. She was on the ship of a cold-blooded killer, of a man renowned for his fierce temper and quick saber.
On more than one occasion, she’d listened to men talk about the Marauder in fearful whispers, as if by mentioning his name some horrible misfortune would befall them.
