Page 13 of Her Perfect Pirate (Northfield Hall Novellas #4)

W hen the captain asked for volunteers to row the slavers out to Pirate Island, a tiny spit of land hundreds of miles from any other spit of land, Chow didn’t hesitate to raise his hand.

Even though it was a job usually given one of the younger lads, and even though his time would be better spent updating the supply book with a current food inventory.

Chow wanted any excuse to get off the Ghost . She was never a big ship to begin with, and now that Rebecca stalked her decks, reminding Chow with each glare how deeply he had failed to redeem himself, there was no room for him on the ship.

He didn’t have anywhere to go, any hope of a life he could live away from the Ghost , but if Rebecca didn’t leave at the Azores, then he might have to.

She watched from the foredeck as he helped Jack Davies load the thirty prisoners into the longboat. When Chow—despite himself—raised his hand in farewell, she turned away. As she had done ever since the Whimsy . And as she had every right to do.

Chow had put his trust in Captain Boukman when he should have fought against a bad order. He had chosen the captain’s power over Rebecca’s safety. They would both be better off if she never looked his way again.

Their small, armed crew rowed the prisoners out to the rocky beach. As per the Ghost ’s custom, the prisoners were left chained together with a barrel of rum and some hunting knives. Some of them would live long enough to hail a passing vessel.

Most of them would die—or be murdered—waiting.

Such was the fate of a sailor.

“Rebecca has been in a right mood, hasn’t she?” Jack Davies said as they rowed back to the ship.

Chow’s heart missed a beat at the mention of her name. “She isn’t used to storms yet.”

“Aye, but before that. And after.” The coxswain spit over the side of the longboat to punctuate his observation. “She hasn’t been right since the Whimsy. ”

That Davies had the right of it made Chow that much more defensive. “Everyone needs to sort themselves out after the first time they kill a man.”

“Do they?” Jack Davies tilted his head back as if to look directly into the morning sun.

“I don’t know when I first killed a man.

It must have been in one of the battles when I was running gunpowder here, there, and everywhere.

I was nine when the press gang got me. Me and my da at the same time, only they put me on a ship going to Lisbon and my da on a ship going to America.

They hit my ma in the face when she put up a fight to try to stop them from taking me.

I always looked too old for my age, you see. ”

Chow had heard many a story of the press gangs, which roamed the British coast to find sailors for the Royal Navy. If a man was lucky, a mob would form to stop the gang from making away with him, but the truth was, many sailors in the British navy had been kidnapped and forced to sail.

“That’s terrible. They should have let you be.”

Davies shrugged and looked away from the sun. “Do you remember your first time, Sharkhead?”

He did—vividly. It was on his first pirate ship, the one that had rescued him from involuntary servitude to the East India Company.

They attacked a merchant vessel, and Chow had been one of the crew to swarm its decks.

Their aim hadn’t been to kill anyone, but the merchants’ guards fought back.

Chow had stabbed one man through the gut in self-defense.

Later, after the ship was won, he saw the man lying there still, slowly bleeding to death.

Chow’s crew members had raised a toast to him to celebrate his new status as a proper pirate.

Now, looking back, he saw it as the first rung in his descent to hell.

Not the fiery hell threatened by parsons, but a hell that condemned him to the swirling vortex of the Atlantic, that ensured that even after he died, his soul would still sail these winds, caught in repayment for the misery he had doled out in his lifetime.

“I only meant to injure,” he answered Davies, “but the man died anyhow.”

“Rebecca meant to kill. She was fierce. It was her or them. Did she tell you about how she seduced the captain away from the men?”

“Yes.” It sounded much better to think that she had seduced the man than to imagine it—as Chow had been doing for days now—as Rebecca trapped in an inescapable situation.

“She was brilliant.” Again, Davies spit into the ocean in a graceful arc. They were nearing the Ghost now, close enough to see Captain Boukman and old de la Cruz in a discussion on the quarterdeck. “She never should have been there, though. No one as green as she should have boarded the Whimsy. ”

Chow glanced behind them to see if the other men in the longboat could hear.

With the boat empty of prisoners, they had spread out: he and Davies toward the bow, and Fuego and Pip in the stern.

Those two were talking between themselves, easy grins on their faces, no idea that Jack Davies was echoing Rebecca right to Chow’s face.

“It was Captain Boukman’s orders,” Chow hissed. “He wouldn’t hear differently.”

“That’s my point.” Davies lifted his eyes again, but this time, it was to where their captain waited, now leaning against the railing, watching them row. “You’ve always been loyal to the captain, Sharkhead, but has the captain been loyal to you?”

Chow didn’t think of loyalty as going in two directions.

At Northfield Hall, people were loyal to Lord Preston, based on his integrity in making people welcome and treating them fairly; therefore, he had decided what crops were grown, where their produce was sold, and when everyone was paid.

Now Chow’s loyalty was to Captain Boukman, based on his commitment to pirating against slave ships, and so the captain decided where they went, what they did, and who did what.

It had never occurred to Chow that either Lord Preston or Captain Boukman might owe him any loyalty in return.

“You claimed Rebecca, and I have no doubt you did it with the best intentions,” Davies said. “All I’m trying to say is Captain Boukman has it out for her because of it. You’d best think about who you will be loyal to when it comes down to it.”

The words settled ominously in the air as the longboat came within reach of the Ghost . Their conversation paused as they negotiated the ropes to hoist them up to the top deck. They were almost on the ship again when Chow asked Davies on the softest breath, “Where do your loyalties lie?”

Davies shook his head. “I don’t trust a man who gives orders to settle grudges, I can tell you that much.”

Which made Davies the second person on the ship to question Captain Boukman’s worthiness aloud. As they climbed off the longboat, greeted by the crew with three cheers, Chow couldn’t help but fear how many more of the pirates felt the same way.

R ebecca didn’t like being on the ship without Sharkhead. Suddenly she felt like an orphan again, waiting at the almshouse for someone, anyone, to come claim her. She kept glancing over her shoulder to find Sharkhead, only to remember he had deserted her in order to maroon the slave traders.

He hadn’t needed to go. Jack Davies could have handled the drop without Sharkhead’s supervision. Rebecca didn’t know if he had volunteered for the task because he wanted to avoid her or because he sympathized with the prisoners. She didn’t want to know. She didn’t want to care.

They hadn’t said much more than a word to each other since she had snapped at him those few days earlier, and now Rebecca wasn’t sure they ever would.

She didn’t want to desert the Ghost and certainly didn’t want to return to Rhode Island, where her life would be reduced once more to trading gossip to protect her place in a household.

But as time drew her closer to the Azores, neither could Rebecca imagine staying on the Ghost .

Not if she and Sharkhead remained in this silent battle.

One of them would have to go, and Rebecca was afraid it would be her.

She kept an eye on him as he rowed out to the beach. Anything could happen: the prisoners could revolt and drown him with their chains in the bay; a rogue wave could overturn the longboat; he could decide he would rather cast his lot with the slave traders than return to her on the Ghost .

They deposited the prisoners. Sharkhead said something to them as the younger pirates rolled the barrel of rum to the safety of some rocks. And then Sharkhead got back in the longboat and started rowing towards her.

Rebecca was aware—as she knotted and unknotted the same line five times—that the anger she felt so deeply in her body had nothing to do with Sharkhead.

He was not the one who had seen her as a whore.

He was not the one who had ordered her onto the Whimsy .

Nor was he the one who had sent her alone on a ship from Louisiana because it was too dangerous for her to exist in New Orleans.

Her anger was not for him, and yet she couldn’t help but target it at him. Even when he returned to the Ghost , instead of telling him she was glad he was back safely, she greeted him with fury. “I hate the name Sharkhead. It’s a terrible nickname. You should never have let anyone call you that.”

She finished tying the knot—for the seventh time—and turned away, casting about for some other task that would carry her far away from him.

“There’s nothing wrong with it,” he replied.

“Everything is wrong with it. It makes it sound like you have a shark head, which you don’t.

” She couldn’t help glancing up at his head, of which she had grown very fond, and seeing the frown etched into his face.

“And it is a terrible story. What were you doing swimming with sharks? Didn’t you know any better?

You should be ashamed of it, not boasting about it. ”

He stepped close, his body heat overwhelming her, and took the rope right out of her hands. “Come below with me. I need to talk to you.”