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He refused to allow himself to dwell on the fact that her lips had just encompassed its rim as he took his own sip. He would not touch her again, not now that he had marked her as safe from Captain Boukman.

Which reminded him of that moment a few hours ago when the captain had cornered her at the railing. She had only glanced at Chow, yet that one look had been so full of meaning.

Whatever the captain had been saying, it had made her desperate.

“The captain leaving you alone?”

Rebecca took the rum back, but she didn’t drink from it. “He isn’t what I expected.”

“You’ve heard a lot about him, then?” It didn’t surprise Chow.

Even when he had joined the crew nine years ago, the captain had a reputation of equal parts mercy and conviction.

In the intervening years, they had done so much: stopped dozens of slave ships headed for Africa, marooned the slavers on deserted islands, even set fire to empty barracoons on the Guinea Coast to demolish the African slave traders’ warehouses.

Every pirate captain encouraged stories about his reputation, especially to incite fear in his enemies’ hearts. Chow could only imagine what was said about Captain Boukman.

“I suppose I expected something like a god. A captain above vice.” She laughed softly at herself. “Come to find he is only a man, like all others.”

Chow wasn’t quite sure what she meant by this—except that it didn’t seem favorable. “And what is a man?”

“A man is ego. A man is desire. A man is…” Rebecca lifted her hands in the air as if to say she had no further words. “A man has vices.”

By the mainmast, Jack Davies started playing away on his violin, and Captain Boukman boomed out the start of a song. The sounds of a perfect pirate night.

Chow barely heard it. His mind was captured by all that Rebecca wasn’t saying.

He wondered how many men she had encountered and what they had done to make her say such things.

At the same time, he didn’t want to know anything bad that had ever happened to her.

He couldn’t stand to bear witness to another woman hurt, even if all the hurt was buried in the past.

“The captain’s vices shouldn’t be a problem for you now. We put paid to all of that this afternoon.”

She let out a little snort. “The captain is no fool. He smells a lie, and as soon as he can prove it, we’ll both pay.”

In the fiery haze of the red sky, Captain Boukman looked as black as coal as he cut a jig around the deck. He was all merriment and jokes, the best of his moods, and Chow would normally be letting free his own good humor on a night like this.

Rebecca’s words kept the rum from flowing through his veins. He promised, “I won’t let you pay for my mistakes.”

“Then you had better be true to your word, husband , and keep me as yours.” She threaded her fingers through his. They were warm, light, and so very slender.

Chow could just as easily break them as he could hold them.

“You are mine.” The words made his cock stand as tall as a mast.

She smiled, which made him realize he was looking at her lips again. “Then tell me something more about yourself. Why haven’t you seen your parents in a decade? Don’t pirates ever get shore leave?”

He blinked away the fantasy of showing up at Northfield Hall with his tattoos on display. The Ghost had approached the coast of England now and then in the past nine years, but Chow had never asked the captain for permission to visit—nor had it even crossed his mind.

As far as his parents knew, he was happily building a life for himself in China, and Chow had no desire to see their reaction should they find out he was instead marauding the Atlantic Ocean.

He answered Rebecca: “We said our goodbyes. No need to put them through that again.”

A frown replaced her smile. “Do you write to them?”

“No.” He had intended to send letters as he reached the major ports on his voyage back to Kwangchow, but he had never had the chance.

Why should he want to worry his mother by disclosing he had been forced into labor and then kidnapped by pirates?

Even worse was the news that came after: that he himself was a pirate. That he participated in raids of merchant ships. That he stood by and watched as his crewmates took every treasure for themselves.

Chow could barely admit that to himself. He wouldn’t write his family to share it with them.

“And you?” he asked, to change the subject. “Will you write to anyone to let them know you did not perish in that shipwreck?”

An emotion as fierce as the sunset glimmered in her eyes. She looked down at her hand, which closed in a fist around the loose, rough cotton of her gown. “I told you, I haven’t any family.”

“You haven’t any parents. That’s not the same as not having family.”

Nastily, she bit back: “Oh, and what would you know about it?”

Chow didn’t mean to poke at an open wound.

He simply couldn’t believe that she—this strange, magnificent creature who had already charmed the entire ship in a matter of days—did not have a coterie of devoted friends waiting for her in each of her deserted American posts.

“Have you ever heard of Northfield Hall?”

She shook her head.

“I grew up there. It is in Berkshire.” He had learned over the years that didn’t mean much to people this side of the Atlantic.

“That’s in England. We’ve still got a king and aristocrats there, you know, and all the land is owned by the gentry and the rest of us have to pay taxes and tithes and rent in order to live.

Lord Preston is the one who owns Northfield Hall.

” Strangely, he found himself amending that to, “Lord Martin Preston. He’s a baron.

He decided to do things differently. He still owns Northfield Hall—there’s a law that keeps him from selling it—but he splits the profits with everyone who works there.

And he invites anyone to come live there if they need a safe haven.

Like my parents, who were stranded in England after following some other lord there from China. ”

“What does that have to do with the price of bread?” There was curiosity in her voice despite the dismissiveness of her words.

“A lot of strangers show up. Strangers who don’t have parents or whose children all died or whose family forsook them.

So they come to Northfield Hall, and we become their family.

” He was making it sound so simple when he was the first to say that it wasn’t.

Northfield Hall was complicated, and when everyone was your friend, no one was your close friend.

Still, he didn’t believe that Rebecca had never had someone in her life to whom she would want to write a letter.

“Haven’t you ever felt as if you made a family for yourself? ”

She frowned at the horizon, considering his words. Chow waited, anticipating a small revelation of her heart.

When at last she spoke, she asked, “And you’ve never been married before?”

“No. I don’t have any women waiting for me in any port, married or not.”

Rebecca looked at him with soft, teasing eyes. “Why not? You’re a pirate, after all. Doesn’t everyone else?”

He had seen plenty of his crewmates fall in love while they sat in one port or another, most often with some prostitute who was happy to take their money again the next time they anchored there.

Julio de la Cruz had a wife in Fuego’s mother, as well as a few happy mistresses on either side of the Atlantic.

And most everyone visited a brothel when it was safe enough to go ashore.

Chow hadn’t allowed himself that luxury for the entire time he had been on the Ghost . But he didn’t quite know how to explain his reason to Rebecca. Not without confessing his soul to her—and he wasn’t ready to do that.

“I’ve never been interested in what everyone else does,” he replied. Then, taking up her hand, he kissed the knuckles curling around his fingers. “Now, Ave Rebecca, it is your turn to tell me about yourself.”

Her mouth opened, as if to spill forth all her secrets, when old de la Cruz called out, “Come dance, lovebirds!”

Rebecca sprang to her feet, tugging him along with her. “Here’s one thing: I love to dance.”

Chow didn’t have it in him to object. He followed her, never letting free her fingers, and they moved into each other’s arms for an Irish-style jig. The men around them cheered—or jeered—before joining in, hopping this way and that to the rhythm of the fiddle and the sway of the ship.

Perhaps it was better he didn’t know anything real about her. This way, she would remain a strange woman who signed on to pirate ships without reason.

This way, he wouldn’t fall in love with her.