Page 12 of Maggie and the Pirate’s Son (Brides of Chattan #3)

Chapter Eleven

T asting Maggie was better than Bash had ever imagined, and he’d imagined it plenty—first in theory, with nameless, faceless women from the docks, and then approximately fifty different times with Maggie since the moment he found her hiding in the hold.

It was amazing, but it was also a careless, stupid thing to do, especially so early in the night with the ship all in an uproar and the lantern still lit.

At first, he thought he heard the nosy cat coming to investigate, and he chuckled against Maggie’s bucking pelvis. Then his brain caught up to his ears, recognizing the tread of man-sized boots. Eager to bring the girl to her peak, he dismissed all caution and simply hoped the boots would pass on by.

When his curtain was yanked unceremoniously aside and a second lantern shoved in to blind him, he had blinked up into the disappointed face of his mentor. Thank Christ he’d had the foresight to throw his tartan over Maggie, or else Dutch would be in on the greater part of their secret, instead of merely disgusted by his lack of restraint.

After a painful moment in which he took in the scene and digested it, Dutch had whisked the curtain closed once more leaving Maggie none the wiser, and Bash had channeled all his adrenaline into finishing her off quite thoroughly. He was grateful she’d been too deep in the throes of passion to register the interruption, because apart from that, it was ecstasy made flesh.

He shifted her boneless form ninety degrees and joined her in the hammock, tucking his aching prick away from her and drawing her bottom into his lap, her naked, sweaty back against his chest. He’d never thought of himself as starved for touch, but he craved the contact with her and burrowed his face into her neck as she recovered her senses, reveling in the feel of skin on skin.

Guilt lapped at his conscience for lingering in bed with her when it was past time they planned tomorrow’s raid, but he would rather pretend it wasn’t happening for just a little while longer. Dutch wasn’t shy. If he felt strongly about it, he’d have stayed, no matter what Bash was doing.

“Thank you,” Maggie panted, and it made him smile all over. Even his toes were smiling.

“My pleasure,” he murmured, and she giggled. “What?”

“Mine actually, I think,” she said, arching her neck to kiss his shoulder.

“Ah, but your pleasure is my pleasure, darlin’,” he said.

If she wasn’t already a widow, he’d have liked to make her one, ending whatever worthless sot had failed to see the perfection lying next to him night after night for a year and a bit and failed to worship her with everything he had.

She snuggled against him, but he could sense her turmoil as though his own restless soul were drawn to hers like magnetite.

“What is it?” he whispered, nosing the back of her neck and running a hand over her belly.

“How did you learn to do that, if you never leave the ship?” she asked .

Oh, was that all? He kissed her neck again to make her shiver. “I’m a very good listener.”

“Oh, aye?” she teased.

“Aye. You’ve a sister called Ellen who wed the big Laird MacKenzie and has two mischievous bairns. And you’ve a cousin, Jory, who fell for the Shaw Wretch. No children those two, but you reckon they tup every chance they possibly get.”

He pinched her bottom and she wiggled it against him, setting him on fire anew, so he had to run a hand over her hip to still her.

“Jory studies medicine disguised as a man. The women in your family must enjoy wearing breeches.”

She shook with laughter and then said with a prim and proper air, “It was you who ordered me into the breeches. And I have more than one cousin.”

“None who matter,” he guessed. “While the breeches certainly suit you, I must confess I like you best out of them.” He gave her a light smack and she wiggled against him again. Christ.

“Cousin Lennox would’ve married me, if my father had let him.”

“Why’d he refuse?” Bash asked, not sure he wanted to hear the answer.

She was silent for a moment. “I suppose because he thinks he’s better than everyone else. My father, not Lennox. Well maybe Lennox too, I don’t know. Do you really never go ashore?” She stroked a lazy finger along his forearm, causing his mind to judder.

“Alone? Once. A decade back. Dutch will take me now and again if he needs help with something.”

“But the others all come and go freely?”

“Aye.”

“Then why?”

Bash sighed. “When I was a boy, I think Mad feared I’d find his lost gold.”

“Were you so good at solving puzzles? ”

“Suppose he thought I’d have beginner’s luck.”

“And now?”

“Now it’s about power. And the illusion of power.”

She paused her idle stroking, and he wondered if she saw similarities between their situations.

Rolling onto his back, he crooked an arm under his head and considered. “He’s afraid I’ll leave,” he explained, “and there won’t be anyone left to navigate this old wreck.”

“Why don’t you?” she whispered in a small voice. “Will he beat you with that whip if you try to go ashore?” She shivered, and he wrapped his arm around her once more.

“Possibly. But I submit so he thinks I accept his authority. That way, when the time is right, it’ll be easier to slip away. Keep your enemies close, as they say.”

She snuggled against him and murmured, “Maybe he’ll get struck by lightning.”

“Lightning?” he asked. What a very specific notion. But her breathing had changed to the soft, slow rhythm of sleep, so he kissed the top of her head and closed his eyes, determined to steal every last possible moment of peace until dawn.

By morning, he was antsy—not ready to leave the pleasant cocoon, but eager to have the next twelve hours over and done so he could return to it.

Maggie rested languorously in the hammock, still basking in last night’s glow as he performed his daily ablutions. When he caught her watching, he smiled warmly, and she slid down under his plaid, peeking out at him with a shy, smug expression that stirred his arousal.

The kestrel squawked at him, waking the cat, which had slunk in during the night and curled up under his desk as Maggie used to do. It watched the confounded bird with interest, sitting up on its hind legs for a better view.

“Now Mouser, that bird is the cabin boy’s pet, mind,” Bash scolded quietly, offering the cat a bit of dried beef instead. “You’d do well to leave it be.”

“Mrow,” the cat replied, snapping up the beef and washing its own face as he’d just done.

Then Bash sat on the edge of the hammock, still watching the kestrel and the cat instead of Maggie.

“His name is Custard,” she said, nodding to the cat.

“Custard? What kind of a name is that?”

What kind of a name is Bash? he half expected her to retort.

But she shook her head and said softly, “It’s just his name.” Then she hesitantly reached out to trace the old scars on his back like she had almost done the night before.

He grew very still under her touch, and she retracted her hand, but he said, “You can ask.”

“The captain?”

“Dutch. The captain rarely administers his own beatings.”

“What could you have possibly done to deserve such cruelty?” she asked, tears springing to her eyes.

“That,” he said, pulling his shirt over his head and letting it fall like a shroud over the past, “was the only time I ever snuck ashore.”

“You must have been a little boy,” she gasped, the tears finally wetting her cheeks. “You must have been so scared and lonely and betrayed.”

He’d felt all those things and more when Mad ordered Dutch to take the cat o’ nine to him, but he didn’t like to dwell.

Bash leaned over and kissed her cheek. “Don’t cry, Mags,” he said, wiping a tear away with his thumb. “?’Twas a long time ago. I’m all grown up now.”

He tried to smile as he searched her eyes, but they just clouded more, so he pulled her into his chest.

“It breaks my heart to think of you—of no one taking care of you.”

“Shh, don’t cry,” he said again, stroking her hair. “Don’t cry, else I shall have to go back on my knees, and we’ve neither of us time for that now.”

A little thrill ran down his belly and straight to his groin at the notion, but he meant what he said. There wasn’t time, not today. Such was life at sea, after all.

“Why are they all so excited about the ship with the whale?” she asked. “And why aren’t you?”

“Ah.” He rose from the hammock and paced the few steps back and forth to the porthole. “Mainly because they believe it will be our redemption, whereas I believe the captain is full of shite. Begging your pardon,” he added.

She nodded her pardon, and he continued.

“I told you about how Mad came into that gold.”

“Plundered it. And then lost it.”

“Aye. He was boasting in a tavern in Kingston that he buried it as his baby son’s inheritance.”

“He’s a father?”

“Of a sort, aye,” he said, feeling strangely gratified she didn’t notice any resemblance between them. “When Dutch and the lads found him passed out in his own piss, there was no sign of the chest, but the navy was hell bent on recovering the loot along with whoever stole it. So the men dragged him back to his ship and set sail. By the time he sobered up, he couldn’t remember what he’d done with it, and he’s been chasing that memory ever since.”

“Afraid you’d find it first?”

“Aye, well, afraid anyone would.”

“How long has it been?”

“Decades. Then a few years back someone told a tale of Willy Walsh, Mad’s old nemesis and captain of the Woebegone Whale . Legend has it they fought the night his treasure went missing, and there’s some who swear Walsh made off with the gold. But he hasn’t been seen for years now.”

Bash ran a hand through his hair, trying to put into words just exactly why he didn’t believe the story. Walsh was a rabbity little man, brave enough to plunder fishermen or unguarded merchants, but far too skittish to consider crossing the likes of Madman Neil MacLeod.

Before Bash could put his feelings into words, however, Maggie chewed her bottom lip in a seductively distracting sort of way, and he completely lost his train of thought, leaning over to kiss that lush lip instead.

“You don’t believe the rumors?” she asked when he stepped back again. “About Walsh?”

Ah. Right. Walsh.

“No. I thought he was out of the game completely. But the lads were growing restless. So Mad told them he’d heard Walsh went home to Scotland, and we chased the figment all the way there and back again. He’s no reason to be out here in the great wide middle, but unless someone else is flying his standard, we’ll have to fight. And when he doesn’t have the gold…” Bash trailed off, but he didn’t want to frighten her with dire predictions of mutiny.

“Our ship’s bigger than his. If we fight, will we win?” she asked.

Something about the way she said our and we tugged him in two different directions at once, just like memories of his mother did.

“The brig is fast,” he said. “We’re sneaky and we probably out-gun them. But I don’t like it. There’s nowhere to hide out here. Why’s he even here? We’re only here because of Mad’s last-ditch charade.”

“Could he be up to his old tricks?”

Bash shrugged. “I always heard Walsh took the pardon back in 1717 and retired, as we all should’ve done.” Then again, Calico Jack took the pardon too, until he got bored or hungry or both. “Once a pirate, always a pirate, I suppose,” he added .

“The ocean seems to feature more drama and changes of fortune than a Greek tragedy.”

Bash laughed sadly. He doubted she could really comprehend the danger.

“You mustn’t join the raid,” he said, stroking her face and hair. “Even if ordered, you must slip away in the chaos and hide. Promise me.”

“Wouldn’t such cowardice see me flogged? And exposed?”

She wasn’t wrong, but he could only cross one bridge at a time. “On my life, I’ll protect you. Do you promise?”

Maggie nodded, and his chest eased the tiniest bit.

“Good girl,” he whispered. “If we’re boarded by Walsh’s crew, you must continue the ruse—you’re Mark Magnus of Orkney.”

“Mark?” she laughed.

Bash shrugged. “Whatever name you like. But if the navy ever catches us, you must reveal yourself at once and beg saving, else you’ll be hanged.”

“The navy?” she asked, confused.

“Repeat it back,” he ordered, and heat flared in her cheeks.

“Keep playing the game unless we’re taken by the navy, in which case, I should become a damsel in distress.”

“Aye,” he agreed, though he doubted she could ever allow herself to be that.

“You think it’s a trap,” she said, suddenly understanding his reticence.

He shrugged, but it was the only justification for Walsh’s being out here that made any sense. “Perhaps I’m no more sound than Mad, but he swears the same navy man who pursued him to Kingston after the heist has never given up the chase.”

She licked her lips, doing an almost passible job of hiding her nerves. Anyone who spent less time studying her mouth might not have noticed. He was scaring her, but on his life, he would die to keep her safe. She may not think she needed him to, but he’d do it all the same .

“And if Walsh does have the gold? What would you do with that much coin?” she asked with a sultry smirk.

He’d never allowed himself to ponder overmuch. When he did, something like hope flared within his chest and he couldn’t bear it. Today that hope looked very much like him and Maggie sailing off with their fair share to make their own way in the world together.

It was a preposterous notion. She was a scholar’s daughter, ken to clan lairds by blood and by marriage. He was no more than the bastard of a bastard, living his life one step ahead of the hangman.

What did it matter if she could make him laugh? What did it matter if her smile made his fractured parts feel whole?

“Would you buy your own private island? Build a castle on the beach and call yourself laird?” she pressed in a teasing tone.

Bash leaned against the bulkhead. Her enthusiasm was contagious, but it was also dangerous, this game of pretend. “He doesn’t have it,” he said. When her smile faltered he added, “Why, what would you do?”

“I’d finally be independent,” she said firmly. “Isn’t that all any of us wants?”

“Certainly can’t disagree. Come,” he said, squeezing her hand and nodding to the deck above. “I’ll see you up there.”

A deep, sick dread roiled in his gut as Bash climbed to the upper deck. He’d thought he was doing a decent job of burying it, but Maggie had seen right through him. The Whale wasn’t the only reason he dragged his feet this morning, however. At some point, he would have to face Dutch. If there was to be a skirmish, there could be no mistrust between them, and the quartermaster was already awaiting his arrival at the forecastle.

“So we engage the Whale today,” Bash said, gazing out at some distant storm clouds and calculating their progression in his head.

“We do. Hopefully Walsh has the sense to surrender.”

“And if he doesn’t?”

“Then we force him. ”

“He doesn’t have the gold,” Bash muttered.

“Then we can finally put this fiction behind us for good,” Dutch replied, ever sensible.

Bash nodded, but the truth of another fiction still hung, palpably, between them.

“Last night,” he began.

Dutch pierced him with a rapier glare, and Bash rubbed his ear, the traitorous words sticking in his throat.

“You pledged your protection—the same protection I once swore to you.”

“There was consent,” he protested feebly.

“How can there be? You are the sailing master. Magnus is a cabin boy. You hold all the power,” Dutch growled, and Bash’s very soul shriveled. “Was it the same when you stepped in for Langley?” Dutch asked, his voice ice cold.

“No!” Bash exclaimed, shaking his head emphatically. “No,” he said again, and Dutch held his gaze a long while before he was satisfied.

But the quartermaster was right. Bash was scum. Even if Maggie had wanted him, he didn’t deserve her—could never deserve her.

Had he been in her position, he might have said yes to avoid the repercussions of saying no. He’d allowed himself to pretend they were equal, because the plain fact was she held his heart in her two lovely, capable hands, and along with it, the power to destroy him. But he was still her superior according to the chain of command. He barked orders and she obeyed them.

Dutch cupped the back of Bash’s neck, forcing him to meet the older man’s gaze.

“You’re better than this, Bastian. You are not your father. Remember that and treat the child as I treated you.”

When Bash had been brought aboard Auldfarrand’s Revenge at the age of nine and a half, the captain had waited two hours after setting sail, just long enough to be certain his son wouldn’t risk swimming back to Lewis. Then, before the entire crew, he ordered Bash to drop his trousers, and he whipped him with his own belt, proclaiming that after nine years growing up coddled, he had it coming.

Because Bash had cried, he did it again the next day, and the next—every day for a week—until Bash learned how to take it stoically like a man . It had been Dutch who quietly comforted him, teaching him to dissociate and making it clear to all aboard that he’d slit the throat of any sailor who laid a finger on Bash. After that first week, Bash became very good at doing as he was told and otherwise keeping out of sight. He also never shed another tear.

It had been Dutch who looked out for him and saw he was fed. Dutch who found out he could read and asked the previous sailing master to tutor him in navigation. Dutch took care of him when his sire didn’t seem concerned whether he were beaten or buggered or starved.

“I’ve never properly thanked you,” Bash rasped, and Dutch shoved him away.

“Fuck off, son. It’s time to ready the cannons.”

He pointed to the specter of the Woebegone Whale coming into firing range on the starboard side.

“We’ll speak no more of this,” Dutch added, granting a sort of absolution which Bash didn’t deserve—one only she could offer.

And now he was leading her into war.

He’d been ten the first time he’d seen battle, and he spent its entirety cowering in a secret hiding place below deck. That was where she needed to be right now.

By eleven, the captain insisted he run gun powder from the magazine to each artillery station, and when his pace slowed after what felt like hours, Mad had come at him with a belaying pin, bestowing his first battle scar upon his left cheek.

Weeks later, Dutch began teaching him the sword.

There had been many fights in the intervening years, and Bash was hardened to them now. He did the job by rote, his training taking over, but his stomach never felt easy before or after, and this time there was an extra layer of dread, like that same ill wind blowing from the south.

He glared up to make sure false colors had been raised and saw a Dutch flag snapping in the breeze.

Beside him, the quartermaster who acknowledged no flag nodded with a smirk.

“Ready the grappling,” Bash ordered young Langley. “Every man to his post,” he bellowed.

The men sprang into action at once, eager to take their stations and unleash a bloodthirsty hell.