Page 19 of Maggie and the Pirate’s Son (Brides of Chattan #3)

Chapter Eighteen

I n the wee hours of the morning, before sunlight was even a suggestion, Maggie woke to a hand covering her mouth and soft lips against her brow. She startled awake, fighting off the shadow who loomed over her for only a second before she realized it was Bash. He had finally come to her.

“Gather everything you wish to take,” he breathed into her ear. “Quick as you can.”

It was then she noticed the difference in the ship’s movement. No longer flying swiftly forward—they almost wobbled, pummeled by surf as they had been when she first snuck aboard a lifetime ago. Had the navy finally caught up to them and anchored them with iron chains? Was Bash going to try and slip her overboard on some sort of raft?

He handed her a bundle, the skirts and earasaid she’d worn when she fled Orkney, folded and held fast by an old laundry peg decorated with chipping paint. Then he slipped a necklace of leather string over her head.

“What’s this?” she whispered.

“Nothing,” he replied, kissing her cheek and then lingering like he was smelling her, like he never wanted to step away .

Kes trilled softly at them, and Maggie gave her a piece of dried beef to quiet her.

“We must hurry,” Bash whispered, eyeing the bird skeptically when it flapped to Maggie’s shoulder.

“Shh, shh, shh,” she hushed the bird, and Bash led her out of the alcove and up to the deck.

Delicious warm air hit her face, and Maggie realized they were not moored in the middle of the ocean but in a secluded harbor near a beach lined with shadowy trees.

“Can you swim?” he whispered, hardly louder than a breath.

Maggie nodded once. She might be overselling her abilities, but her cousins had taught her to swim as a child in Loch Moy, while Ellen watched steadfastly from the shore.

Bash nodded back and put a finger to his lips, then pointed to a rope ladder folded at the port side railing.

Her hand felt safe and warm inside his calloused one before he dropped it to secure the ladder with a fancy knot, then he helped her up and over as Kes took flight. Bash watched her descend, and when she reached the cool water and slipped silently in almost up to her neck, her bundle of clothes piled on her head to stay dry, he followed her down with practiced ease.

Paddling together, the distance to the beach was much further than it looked, but Maggie couldn’t suppress her elation. The water was pleasantly refreshing, the exercise after being cooped up, divine. And best of all, free of the Revenge , Bash could do anything—be anything—with her!

When they finally straggled out onto the shore, she collapsed, breathing heavily and shaking with silent giggles at how they staggered as though the land pitched beneath them, but Bash wasn’t laughing.

“No time,” he whispered urgently as he dragged her to her feet and into the safety of the scrub.

His serious voice and eyes made the weight of their escape sink in. If they were found out, dozens of pirates could descend onto this beach to take them back in a heartbeat. Would they be flogged? Sweated? Garroted? She’d no interest in finding out.

They ran in silence until a cramp forced Maggie to slow down. Walking side by side with Kes following from tree to tree, she could almost pretend their situation wasn’t dire, pretend they owned this land, pretend they were Adam and Eve, the only two people in all the world.

Gradually, Bash stopped looking over his shoulder, though he still changed direction every few minutes. After two hours, the sun had long since risen, and it was clear they weren’t just wandering lost. The navigator had a perfect sense of direction. He obviously had a plan.

“Where are we? And where are we going?” she finally whispered.

“Welcome to Jamaica,” he said, with an air of reluctance. “When we reach Kingston, you can book passage back to England and on to Scotland.”

“We, you mean.”

But he looked away from her, facing forward, and a sick dread settled in her stomach. He couldn’t mean to stay behind, not after everything they’d shared. She couldn’t bring herself to ask.

After another hour they stopped at a stream and Maggie gulped the clean, fresh water like she’d never tasted it before. It was glorious. On her life, she would never take water for granted again.

Sitting back on her heels to catch her breath, she studied Bash. She didn’t want to take a single moment with him for granted either. He was unfailingly good and devilishly handsome, especially when he was concentrating.

Now, as he looked anywhere but at her, it seemed the thing he was concentrating hardest on was avoiding eye contact or conversation, and she couldn’t pretend the hard questions away any longer.

“So I’m to leave on my own and you’ll do what? Go back to pirating one step ahead of the navy, little better than a prisoner until the day you die?”

He didn’t answer at first, squinting into the distance. When he finally did, he said simply, “Aye.”

“Well, I don’t accept that.”

“You must.” His voice sounded so resigned. Not angry or cruel, just tired and sad and determined.

“Was it something I did?” she asked. “I was selfish, but I can do better. I will do better.”

“Selfish?” he asked, perplexed, and shook his head. “Never. But you’re too comfortable with the idea of being a pirate.”

Maggie laughed, sad and bitter. She didn’t want to be a pirate. But she would choose it again and again to keep her freedom and stay close to her favorite pirate navigator.

“?’Tisn’t a joke,” he said solemnly. “This is no kind of life.”

“We’re free now. Both of us. We could go anywhere.”

He shook his head. “Mags, I’m sorry. I only have enough saved to book one passage.”

Blinking back the tears that threatened to fall, she shook her head. She didn’t accept them, not any more than she accepted his words. “Then sign onto the crew in exchange for your passage. Isn’t that what men do?”

“Boys, maybe?—”

“Then I’ll do it. I can work hard and you can buy your own fare.”

“I’m a pirate, Mags. They’ll see me coming and shoot me dead before I so much as open my mouth.”

“Then I’ll stay.”

“No. You won’t. You deserve better than running and hiding, starving on hard tack and rum,” he said, standing up and heading off again, leaving Maggie to follow.

For a moment she considered just not following him. That would teach him, all right. If he was willing to let her go, then he might as well start right now. On her terms .

Except he paused to wait for her, leaning against a tree, and she’d rather be at his side now, fighting with the idiot, arguing some sense into him, than not be near him at all.

She’d been so stupid, allowing herself to get close to him, allowing herself to fall in love and be loved in return at last. Love was a fairytale for silly little girls whose fate fell to their fathers to give them away to the first willing man who came along.

“You’re angry with me,” he said, after they’d trudged in silence for another quarter hour.

“Does it matter?”

“Course.”

“Why?” He didn’t answer, so she asked it again. “Why? I didn’t want to marry Jeremiah, but that didn’t matter. I didn’t want to move to Orkney, but that didn’t matter, either. I wanted to have children, then I wanted to stay a widow—none of it mattered, Bash. All that ever seems to matter is what men want for me.”

“I just want you to be safe,” he said in a small voice.

“No,” Maggie said, and she sounded loud and strong, and not like someone who was about to shatter. “No, you want to feel comfortable believing you’ve made me safe.” Then she pushed forward into the bush without him, even though her sense of direction was more likely to send her circling back into the arms of the Revenge. Or right off a cliff.

“I have nothing to offer you,” he called in a piteous voice that brought her up short. “Nothing but the coin to book passage back to your home, and you deserve everything.”

“You are everything?—”

“No. I’m the pirate by-blow of pirate scum. You deserve better. My mother deserved better. Christ, maybe I deserved better, but this is the only life I’ve known since I was nine years old. I’ve no skills. Not a fool would employ me. My only hope is to find my sire’s fortune if it even exists. Then, I might escape and perhaps one day endeavor to deserve you. ”

Maggie’s brain was whirring so fast she didn’t know which piece of his declaration to focus on first. “Your sire?—”

Bash inclined his head in affirmation, and her heart turned to molten fury for all he’d suffered at the hands of the captain, Cornelius MacLeod. A father in name, perhaps, but in name only.

“Then I shall help you find it.”

“It’s too dangerous. If the navy hasn’t caught them yet, he’ll be searching for it even now.”

“I’m not afraid,” she lied.

“You should be. I’m a thief and a scoundrel, raised by men who measure human lives by how hard they can row or how fast they are with a knife.”

“Your mother raised you first,” she argued, and his face clouded over, nearly breaking her heart.

“We have to keep going,” he said in a raspy voice. “We’ve at least another two hours.”

“It’s starting to get dark,” Maggie pointed out, as a cool breeze made her shiver.

Bash looked at the sky in surprise and in the distance, thunder sounded like a rumble of cannon fire. “Come,” he said, putting his arm around her and tucking her under his shoulder before setting a faster pace in the direction they needed to go.

It was torture, leading Maggie towards Kingston, but it would be an even greater torture putting her on a ship in the morning. Bash kept track of the transit schedules as best he could, and if he was right, there should be a ship departing for England—so long as it hadn’t been delayed or its captain hadn’t set sail early to capitalize on more favorable winds.

Deep in his heart, he’d secretly hoped stopping in Tortuga would cause them to miss the outbound vessel by a few days, allowing him to revel in Maggie’s company a bit longer. When the navy beat them to Tortuga, forcing them on to Jamaica right away, he knew better than to question Providence. It was time for her to go.

But walking towards that fate, on legs that already felt like a newborn fawn’s after so long at sea, made every footstep heavier, like marching to his own execution. He sometimes thought he’d sooner survive being drawn and quartered than watching her sail away, taking a piece of his heart and all the good parts of his soul with her.

Maggie hadn’t spoken since they’d fought about the journey, which he hoped and feared meant she’d accepted his plan. They were probably an hour from Kingston still, both of them covered in mud from the heavy downpour, and she was beginning to tremble. When she sniffed, he asked softly, “Are you crying?”

“No,” she snapped, and who was he to argue, when the heavens themselves seemed to weep for their plight.

“Then you’re catching a chill,” he reasoned, scanning the forest around them. “We must get out of the rain.”

“Perhaps a nearby kirk will grant us sanctuary,” she quipped, and he chuckled. Even when she was angry with him, she could tease. It was one of the myriad little things he loved about her.

“Come.” He led her under the wide, sheltering leaves of a banana tree. “Wait here. Promise?”

“Will you bring the ship to me now, anchored on your back like the rest of the weight of the world?” she asked, catching his sleeve, and he laughed again.

“I go in search of a kirk.” He grinned, delighting in her perplexed little frown. Then he took the liberty of kissing her cheek, and she didn’t pull away. In fact, he felt her eyes on him as he wandered off in the direction his gut told him to go.

He was only delaying the inevitable of course, latching on to any excuse to stop time before they had to say goodbye. If a ship were leaving today, it would have already done so, and if not, it could wait until the morrow. Soon he found what he sought—a small cave, empty and dry.

Bash held his breath all the way back to the banana tree, half expecting Maggie to have plunged off into the wilderness on her own without looking back. But there she was, sitting at the base of the tree, small and vulnerable, with her knees tucked up and her head resting on the bundle of clothes he’d first met her in. She looked tired, thirsty, and achingly sad.

“Come,” he said, helping her to her feet, and then sweeping her up into his arms so her head rested against his shoulder, her damp hair tickling his nose.

“I can walk,” she murmured sleepily. “You needn’t carry me.”

“I know,” he agreed, his heart beating so wildly at the nearness of her that he dared not set her down.

“A cave,” she said with wonder when she spotted it.

“We can dry off, at least,” he said, setting her gently on the ground inside. “I’ll have to find some chert to start a fire.”

When he turned to go back out into the rain, Maggie called, “Wait!”

Unfurling her bundle of clothes, she dug in the pockets, finally fishing out a piece of flint and grinning angelically. The little wonder.

Bash gathered some twigs and branches which had been mostly protected from the rain, and he took them deep into the cave to build a fire. Then he spread out Maggie’s old clothes nearby to dry, and he laid his own plaid a bit closer to the entrance, cheeks burning at Maggie’s little gasp when she realized he’d hidden the cloth amongst her things. He’d meant her to discover the gift only after she was long gone.

“I’m filthy,” Maggie announced, breaking the awkward silence and looking down at her mud-spattered legs. “I’ll get it dirty.”

“Doesn’t matter.”

“It matters to me,” she said, and then with an impish smile, she pulled her sark over her head and tossed it to him. She was completely bare from the waist up, having unbound her breasts last night to sleep.

Bash stared at them a moment, beautifully round and freckled, before she turned her back to him, stripped off her trousers and skipped out into the rain wearing nothing but her smalls.

“What are you doing?” he laughed.

“Washing. In freedom, if this is my last night to be free!”

She danced and splashed, turning her face up to the rain like a wildflower before scrubbing the mud from her legs. After a moment, Bash joined her, though his hardness would be immediately evident, since he was not wearing any smalls.

“You’re the wildest woman I ever saw,” he confessed, scraping the mud from his leg hair with his fingernails.

Maggie laughed again. “You’ve spent your whole life on a ship. You haven’t had the luxury of meeting many women.”

He caught her wrist, pausing her frolic. “Not one of them could have measured up to you.”

Her lips parted, quirking up to the side in wonder more than laughter as the rain grew heavier until they ran hand in hand back into the cave, breathless and giggling.

“Oh no!” she exclaimed with a hand to her throat, realizing the gifted necklace had been soaked.

Bashed waved it away. “It’s survived worse,” he said, but she took it off and nestled it, as well as her smalls, to dry by the fire.

“Was it your mother’s?”

“Aye. But I want you to have it now.”

She turned back to him, suddenly shy about her nudity.

“Don’t be ashamed,” he whispered, gazing at her in rapture. “You’re so beautiful.”

She studied him, the full length of him, lit by the jumping shadows of firelight, and he swallowed. Christ but her very glance seemed to singe his leathered skin.

“You should lie down and get some rest.” Useless words to fill the moment. After all, what would he do? Stand all night, a naked sentinel, prick at attention, until his breeches were dry enough to try and subdue his arousal?

Maggie took his hand and led him back to the tartan, the one which had been his grandfather’s back on Lewis. They lay down together, facing each other, and she pressed her head into his chest in a way that could almost crack it open.

“Tomorrow I must sail away,” she whispered.

“Aye,” he agreed, his voice breaking a little. “Aye, you must.”

“And you must stay to seek your fortune.”

“Aye. ’Tis the only way. When I do, I shall come and find you, be you in Orkney or Inverness, or any other place in all the world. I’ll find you.”

“Then I shall wait,” she said, kissing his throat, and he swallowed again but the lump lodged there wouldn’t budge.

“No.” He closed his eyes to everything he wanted and forced himself to say, “You mustn’t wait. If you find a good man—a kind man who loves you and knows how to let you fly free—you must marry him for me, with no regrets, and have eleven children.” He kissed her forehead.

“Eleven!” she gasped.

“Aye, and name one of them for me.”

“My bravest, most favorite child,” she agreed. “To remind me of my love for the sea,” she added, and his heart began to splinter.

She nudged him onto his back and climbed up to straddle him, kissing him fiercely, urgently, as tears ran down her cheeks which this time neither of them could pretend was only rain, but he wiped them away under the guise of pushing back her hair all the same.

I love you , his heart screamed to hers, but he swallowed it down and kissed her harder, because if he let those words out, he knew she’d never leave. And more than likely, before the week was out, he’d swing .

“You have to go back,” he whispered. “So somebody remembers me.”

She swiped his hair out of his eyes as she’d done so many times while nursing his ear, studying him hard like she was trying to memorize every detail.

“Remember you? Don’t you know you’ve become a part of me?”

He nodded, tears stinging his own eyes now, and she lifted up and eased onto him, taking him all, and gasping just as he did. She rode him slowly, deliciously, setting his scalp on fire as he drifted towards oblivion.

Maggie gasped his name over and over, not Bash, but Bastian, as though he alone could protect her from all the ills of the world. It occurred to him in the moment when she threw back her head and cried out as his seed spilled into her that perhaps if he was very lucky, more than just his memory and name would live on.