Page 20 of Her Perfect Pirate (Northfield Hall Novellas #4)

I t took all afternoon to clear up the matter, but clear it up they did.

Captain Pembury entertained Chow and Rebecca like guests of honor in his cabin while they waited for his lieutenant to inspect the Ghost .

Over a bottle of wine, they spoke of the weather, swapped superstitions for avoiding African fevers, and shared news from their most recent ports.

Pembury volunteered news of the Preston family: Nate had been court-martialed for being too free with his command of the West African Squadron and Lord Preston was still fighting in Parliament to abolish slavery.

“The big scandal a year or so ago was that the youngest daughter married a Chinaman. A glazier, I think. Do you know him?”

Chow couldn’t say for sure. But he did remember his little brother Eddie following Caroline Preston around and the occasional worried whisper between his parents that someone would have to put an end to that friendship.

He grinned at the idea that Eddie had managed to marry Caroline after all.

The joy surprised him: for so long, if he thought of his family, it was to be grateful they didn’t know what he had become.

He hadn’t spent much time imagining their lives continuing onward after the day he had left Northfield Hall for the last time, his stomach full of his mother’s clear soup and steamed buns.

Yet it had been a decade. Eddie had grown up.

Spencer and Oliver, too, might well be married—might even have children wreaking havoc at Northfield Hall.

His parents would be ten years older, that much frailer, and Chow realized with a pang there was even a chance they might no longer be alive.

The emotions swept over him in an instant like a hurricane wave. When Captain Pembury asked, “Would you like to send a letter to Northfield Hall?” Chow didn’t hesitate to say yes.

And so while the navy searched the Ghost , Chow composed a letter to his parents on borrowed paper.

He told them he was alive, he was in the Atlantic, he still thought one day he might make it to China, and that he thought of them with love in his heart.

Then, with space for only a few remaining lines, he asked Rebecca, “May I tell them about our marriage?”

A marriage that had never happened in the eyes of Britain’s god or man’s laws. Yet a marriage that had already been tested and stretched and aged. He watched Rebecca’s serene black eyes as she considered the question, then smiled. For a woman who might be arrested in the next hour, she was radiant.

“Nothing would make me happier.”

So he did:

I have found a woman I love, Rebecca, and we live as husband and wife on our ship.

And then, at the end, he signed it with the name he had for so long tried to reject:

Martin

By the time he finished the letter, the naval crew had returned from the Ghost with one barrel of gunpowder, one barrel of rum, and Fearsome Fred’s blunderbuss. “This was all that was worth anything,” the lieutenant reported to Captain Pembury. “No evidence of piracy other than the Jolly Roger.”

“Which you fly to protect yourself from other pirates, no doubt,” Pembury said with a wry smile. He walked them to the longboat, the redcoat marines now nowhere to be found. “Do not make me regret showing mercy this afternoon, Martin Chow.”

He didn’t flinch at the name, even as a silent part of him objected he was no longer that man.

He wasn’t the Martin who had left London full of resentment and righteousness and plans.

Neither was he Sharkhead any longer, a man so ashamed of his past that he could not think for himself in the present.

Sometime in the last few weeks, in the presence of Rebecca, he had been reborn, and he was now Martin and Sharkhead and someone new entirely. Someone who loved and was loved in return.

He kissed Rebecca when the longboat landed in the water and once more when they reached the Ghost. Now, back on the ship, they joined the crew in watching the frigate catch a wind back towards the African coast. Rebecca leaned into him. “What next, Captain Chow?”

He surveyed the crew waiting for his next words. Jack Davies had as much claim to the captaincy as he did, yet he looked to Chow, eager for their next adventure. And Fearsome Fred, who had been with Boukman since before the Ghost , stood at the ready, too. Chow, apparently, was captain.

But this was the Ghost , and therefore the next decision belonged to all of them.

“We could go to China,” he ventured. “Or see what we could get from the spice routes. Or we could keep hassling the slavers until slavery is finally no more.” He watched interest in each option play out on his crew’s faces.

Some of the options were more appealing to him than others.

Yet he found that he didn’t care much where they went, so long as he was surrounded by these people.

The ones who were both good and bad but tried to make a difference anyway.

The ones who could survive a storm and dance a jig as soon as the sun broke through the clouds.

The ones who knew him as a mate, a quartermaster, a traitor, and still wanted him to lead them across the oceans.

And most of all, Rebecca, the impetuous whirlwind that loved him. So long as he had her, he would be happy.

Smiling—beaming, perhaps—he finished his speech. It was time to determine their fate. “Shall we take a vote?”