Page 4 of Maggie and the Pirate’s Son (Brides of Chattan #3)

Chapter Three

M aggie was the sort of child who, upon being scolded for misbehavior, would look her parents dead in the eye and misbehave again. If anything got her dander up faster than being bossed around, she couldn’t think what. This once, though, her sense of self-preservation, honed through marriage and a scant amount of maturity, outweighed any childish rancor.

Truthfully, the whole adventure seemed more and more like a very ill-conceived, impulsive mistake. Like every rash response to Jeremiah’s goading, whether it was burning his dinner or throwing it in his face, she had a feeling she was going to regret ever running away.

She eyed the whip her captor—Bash?—still held at his side. Did he earn his name by hitting people? The raw white knuckles of his clenched fist might indicate yes.

He heaved a sigh, and she allowed her gaze to travel up his taut, tawny forearm to his broad shoulder, and so what if it was broad? This young man was just another man, and one who’d been ordered to whip her, at that.

Swallowing her nerves, she forced herself to meet his gaze. He worked his square, stubbled jaw like he was chewing his thoughts, the muscle popped beneath a thin scar bisecting his left cheek, right along the ridge of chiseled bone. Maggie licked her lips and leaned back against the bulkhead, forcing herself to meet his gaze.

And his eyes? Mercy. They looked as fierce and turbulent as the storm she couldn’t quite believe they’d survived. And yet, there was a glint of something like lust until he caught her looking. Then they softened briefly, and he tossed the nine-tailed whip onto a tiny desk and turned away.

Her relief was short-lived, however, for he picked up a leather strop from a nearby shelf and turned back to face her. She licked her lips again, tasting bitter iron that threatened to make her heave, and she struggled to swallow it down.

Bash stepped closer again, close enough she could smell the scent of citrus and sea, so close there was definitely not room for the Holy Ghost between them.

With a glance towards the curtain he’d drawn at their arrival, he loosed the tie of his linen breeches.

Whatever Maggie might have been expecting, this wasn’t on the list. Perhaps it should have been. After Jeremiah, nothing should have surprised her. He’d seemed so timid and inexperienced, even shy, until they were alone as man and wife.

Stumbling backwards, she clunked her head against the wall hard enough to make her eyes sting and gave an involuntary yelp.

Jeremiah had shown her what men were like, but he’d never once touched her before their wedding night. This man, this Bash, and likely all his seafaring companions, offered little pretense at gentility or refinement as Jeremiah had. Mercy, but she was a fool. If she survived this misadventure long enough to share the story with Jory and Ellen, they would never let her live it down. Well, Ellen would, but Jory wouldn’t, not that Maggie deserved to.

He let his breeches fall to mid thigh, but his shirt hung down low enough Maggie couldn’t see the necessary bits, not that she was looking. Well. Not that she was meaning to look.

Jutting out her chin, she glared at him defiantly, and he glared right back as he raised the strop. She braced to absorb the blow. Where would he strike her? On the hand like a cruel governess? In the face like Jeremiah?

He brought the strop down hard on the bare skin of his upper thigh, and Maggie jumped, gasping her surprise as though it had been her own flesh he’d struck. He stepped even closer to her, and another loud crack made her flinch. She stared straight into his dark brown eyes, which held her own gaze captive, as surely as if she were tied to that post on the deck.

“Scream,” he demanded through clenched teeth, and the puff of his breath tickled her cheek right where the scar would be on his own. What had marked him that way? she wondered.

He brought the leather down for a third time on his own bare skin, and Maggie didn’t even mean to when she cried, “Stop!”

He nodded with an approving grimace and slapped himself again with even greater force.

“Stop, please,” she cried again, her eyes burning but dry.

Another blow, and Maggie moved her lips to form the word please, but no sound escaped.

Another, so hard he grunted when the leather made contact with his thigh, and when she stood in silence, her mouth hanging open, he whispered, “For Christ’s sake, cry,” and struck himself again.

Seldom one to be stunned into silence, Maggie willed the tears to come, but, though hot and aching, her eyes remained dry. Here he was, taking her beating for her, and she couldn’t even cry for him.

Ashamed and confused, Maggie bit her lip and held out her palm. He frowned at her, but she nodded fiercely.

Glowering, he let one strike fall across her palm with far less force than he’d used on himself, but enough to wrench a howl from her throat, and he looked away, breaking eye contact for the first time. She turned away too, staring down at his raw, red skin, even as he slapped himself again, and Maggie began to weep, loudly and openly, as though every ounce of bitterness and grief that she’d trapped inside herself since the day she turned eighteen was finally bursting free.

It was like that one, furious wail had uncorked an ocean and loosed a tempest all her own, face flushed and head pounding, though still her eyes stayed dry. Was she so broken, she could no longer even shed tears? Somehow the thought made her moan louder, as she wrapped her arms protectively around herself.

He was standing so close that even in the dim light she could see he’d broken the skin in places, that he’d done so for her, when none of this was his fault.

Bash tossed the strop aside, breathing heavily, and resecured his breeches before reaching out a hand to cup her cheek, running his thumb across the bone as though wiping away the absent tears.

“Good girl,” he whispered, his accent some lovely mix of faint Scots and who knew what else, the lilt of wind and wave. “You need to drink. Your body’s all dried out. Now listen carefully. A woman aboard is the worst of bad luck. There’s many a man would toss you overboard and not blink an eye. Maybe more of another mind,” he added soberly. “And when they got through with you, you’d wish you’d taken your chances in the sea.”

He didn’t need to elaborate. When he’d dropped his breeches, reality had finally set in. She’d seen the sailors practically salivating as they encircled her on deck.

“But I’m married,” she protested weakly, and when she noticed his brow crease for a split second, she felt the need to clarify. “Widowed.”

“And you think that’s some kind of protection?” he whispered.

Maggie could only shrug .

He turned away from her and rummaged in a cabinet cleverly concealed within the hull.

“Here,” he shoved another pair of breeches at her along with a sark that was definitely not clean, but it smelled like him, and she found she didn’t hate it. “Best I can do at the moment. What’s your name?”

“Maggie Mackintosh.” She paused, realizing she’d left off her married name. “Budge.”

“Now it’s just Budge,” he said.

She scrunched up her face in disgust and shook her head. “No. It isn’t.”

He tilted his own head at her refusal, but gave in. “Magnus then,” he said with a nod, and she nodded once back. “And you’re a lad of fourteen.”

“I’m twenty!”

He grinned a cheeky, dimpled smile that made her stomach flutter. “That’s the bit you take issue with? You’re fourteen, and I discovered you were disguised as a woman when I lifted your skirts to tan your hide.”

He stared openly at her bosom for a moment and frowned—not the reaction she was used to, though they’d diminished a bit as she’d grown thinner the last two years, wasting away on that blasted island. Bash rummaged around the alcove some more and handed her an old cream-colored neck cloth. “Will that be long enough to bind them down?”

Heat flared across her cheeks as she both nodded and shrugged, then he turned his back, waiting for her to disrobe.

“You’ll be taken on as part of the crew, a cabin boy, mostly fetch and carry, and mind you behave yourself because next time”—he fingered the brutal whip—“it won’t be private and neither of us will survive.”

“It’s barbaric,” she murmured, getting down to the business of undressing in the tight space. “Could you…?” she asked, turning to give him access to her buttons .

He obliged with quick, nimble fingers, chuckling soft puffs of breath on the back of her neck that made her shiver all the way to her toes.

“Barbaric,” he repeated. “Aye, darlin’.”

Something about the way he said it made Maggie instantly hot between her legs, even as she wanted to want to roll her eyes at him.

“Aye. You’re among pirates now.”

She froze, halfway through wrapping his cravat around her chest. Pirates? Were they not as fictitious as dragons and fairies?

He glanced back at her, and then spun immediately away again, clearing his throat, and she finished pinning the wrap in place. She’d have to come up with something better for the long term. How long would this dreadful voyage last?

“I’ll make it clear you’re under my protection and not to be touched.” He cleared his throat again, trying to dislodge the rasp. “None will dare harm you when I’m around.”

“Because you’re so big and fearsome?” she teased, knotting the linen trousers tight around her waist.

He drew himself up straight. “I’m the boatswain and sailing master of this ship.”

She’d insulted him.

Maggie reached out to touch his arm in apology. Something like lighting sparked from her fingers, and she looked at them in wonder.

Christ, the girl had fairly branded him. He turned to assess her disguise. She had a sweet round face with luminous eyes as deep and blue as the Atlantic. It would be a damn miracle if they pulled off this ruse, but it was the only thing he could think of in the moment. At least the men were drunk most of the time. They’d see what they expected to. If they could mistake a sea cow for a maiden then surely the power of suggestion could turn even a lovely young woman into an untried boy.

“This is a stroke of luck,” he said, reaching out to tug one of her haphazard, short-cropped curls, not at all the locks of a fashionable lady. More electricity jumped between them, and he grinned.

“What?” she asked, touching her neck where the shock must have scorched her.

“St. Elmo’s fire,” he explained. “Once means bad weather. Two times, and it’ll be fine.”

“Thank heavens for that,” she murmured. “Another week of those storms, and I’d be done for.”

“A week?” he laughed. “We’ve been at sea three days, darlin’.”

Her eyes widened in disbelief, and he allowed himself the luxury of cupping her cheek once more under the auspices of pulling down the eyelid with his thumb.

“When did you last drink?”

“Orkney.”

No wonder she looked half dead and couldn’t cry.

“We’ll get you some rum. Drink every drop, understand?”

She nodded.

“And… try and act like your arse has been skelped within an inch of your life?”

She nodded again, with only a slight look of annoyance crossing those eyes, and Christ but this was never going to work. She was too feisty and too beautiful. He was half hard just standing next to her. No one would believe she was a lad for long. He’d have to keep a constant vigilance. Even pretending she was a boy wouldn’t keep her safe. There were some among their ranks who’d be just as happy to take a boy as a woman.

“What should I call you? Sailing master, you said? ”

“No such ceremony here. Just Bash’ll do. Come on, we’d best get back before they think I’ve… that is…”

She turned her face away to hide a smirk, catching his meaning . She didn’t know the half of it.

The sooner they reached Jamaica and he could toss her on a ship back to Scotland, the better.

“This way, Magnus,” he said, overly loud, pulling back his curtain and leading her to the galley where he wiped a tankard clean with his shirttail and filled it with spirits.

When he handed it over, she took a tentative sniff and grimaced.

“It was so watered down Roo had to doctor it up with spices and the like. Calls it bumbo, though it barely passes for that.”

She took a sip and shook her head in disgust.

“Every drop,” he reminded her. She looked up at him like she had stopped herself mid eye roll. “When you finish that, you come back down here and fill it again. You’ll get used to the taste. Cheer up. We’ll soon run out of rum and you can choke down watery ale instead.”

She huffed but drank a little more. A lady’s throat moved in an awfully delicate way when she swallowed, didn’t it? Her eyelashes were fine, too, like the fraying edges of softest linen or the downy feathers of a newly hatched chick.

He shook his head to clear such thoughts away and handed her a fistful of dried beef and a hardtack biscuit. “Ready?”

For a moment she scrunched her face as though she might cry again, but then she took a deep breath and swallowed it down with a nod, and he led the way back to the hatch. God help them, it was either going to work or it wasn’t, and then they would both sink or swim.

Too late, he realized he should’ve told her what to do if they were thrown overboard, to flip on to her back and float for as long as she could and hope the tide would carry her someplace dry.

It was the plan he’d concocted as a boy, swaying in his hammock or keeping watch across a blackened sea. He would run calculations in his head: how long it might take to reach inhabited land or a deserted island, how likely to meet another vessel and what sort of ship it might be. It passed the time, and, though grim, he liked the security of having a plan. Sometimes he imagined a friendly dolphin taking pity and allowing him to hold tight to its dorsal fin as it scurried with the current to safety on a remote Jamaican beach.

This time, he ascended the ladder first, which would hopefully support the narrative that Maggie was a chastened boy but would also save him from having every detail of her arse outlined in linen a foot before his face as he climbed.

For both their sakes, he resisted the urge to turn and help her out of the hatch, leaving her to struggle to her feet, sloshing her rum. In the sunlight, her pale face looked red and almost tear-stained, despite being too dried out for actual tears.

The nearest men stopped pretending to work and openly stared at her once more.

“Meet the newest member of the crew, lads,” he announced, putting on his boatswain persona and swaggering toward the middle of the deck.

“Say again?” Dutch asked.

Bash pretended not to notice the captain watching them both shrewdly, but he couldn’t pretend away the sweat beginning to bead on the back of his neck.

“Quite the thing,” he boasted loudly for all to hear. “I take the lady in hand and lift her skirts, and what do I find but a tiny prick and two balls staring back at me. Not a lady at all, but a lad of fourteen. Seems young Langley ain’t the babe of the crew anymore.”

Samson and Duffy cheered and jostled Langley, who grinned a sheepish gap-toothed smile.

“I wore him out good and proper anyway, on account of the ruse,” Bash went on .

The girl did a fair job of looking chastened and focusing on her rum, but Dutch narrowed his eyes and studied the pair of them just as the captain had.

“What’s your name, son?” Dutch asked.

She glanced quickly at Bash before answering. “Mag—Magnus, sir,” she said, that raspy voice even lower and more sultry than it had been before. Christ.

“D’you have any skills, Magnus?”

Another glance at Bash, which he supposed was helping to sell that he’d thoroughly blistered her. “He says I’m to fetch and carry.” Then she nodded towards a ripped sail flapping in the breeze. “I could mend that. Wouldn’t look pretty, but it would hold.”

Dutch nodded. “I’m quartermaster of this ship. You do as Bash tells you, and we’ll be square. You need anything, come and find me.”

She nodded solemnly, but Bash didn’t allow himself to draw a relieved breath yet. The older man cast another suspicious glance his way. Dutch wouldn’t call her out publicly, but he might not be easily convinced.

The captain wasn’t either. “Magnus, was it?” he asked.

She nodded.

“I didn’t catch that.”

“Yes, sir,” she said in that same low voice.

“Are you in the habit of trespassing, Magnus?”

She shook her head once. “No, sir.”

“And yet. You invaded our privacy. Threatened our property. Infiltrated our home.”

“And I whipped him for it,” Bash interjected. “He’ll not sit comfortably for a week, I assure you, or I’ll take him in hand again.”

The captain nodded. “I, of all men, understand the lure of the sea, the irrepressible desire, the drive, that once your mind is made up to take action, nothing can stop. ”

The girl nodded her head as though he had perfectly understood.

“But why did you do it in a dress?”

Bash’s stomach dropped. He hadn’t thought up that particular part of the fiction.

The girl merely shrugged. “It was the only way I could slip down to the beach. I was supposed to be doing my chores while my sister was allowed off to the market. Only I tore my britches scrabbling with another lad, and my mam would’ve tanned me good for it. So I pinched my sister’s clothes right off the washing line and slipped away down to see your ship.” She shrugged again. “And then I decided, why not come aboard?”

The captain threw back his head to laugh, and then tsked his tongue, and Bash finally allowed himself to breathe. “Subterfuge and petty theft—he’ll fit in better than you, boy. Perhaps you should whip him again for his mother’s sake.”

“I’m fairly tempted,” Bash agreed, pretending to frown at Maggie’s quick, if rambling lie. “And lest anyone gets any ideas,” he added, raising his voice for the whole company to hear, “It’ll be me alone who whips him. He’s mine, understand? My responsibility.”

A few guffawed lecherously, while others cast knowing winks and smirks his way. Most of all, the captain seemed pleased. It was enough to turn Bash’s stomach, but better to be assumed a pederast than the alternative consequences.

Only Dutch’s look of deep disapproval really cut him. He would laugh, though, when Bash explained it all someday. For now, at least, the girl was safe.

“Sometimes my sailing master forgets he’s not in charge,” the captain said, stepping closer and clapping a hand on Maggie’s shoulder with a meaningful glance tossed over her head at Bash. “As it seems you’ll be staying awhile, I’m Cornelius MacLeod. You may address me as Captain. Welcome aboard Auldfarrand’s Revenge. ”

“Thank you, sir,” she whispered.

“Bring the axe,” he called, and then Maggie turned a bit green. Mad was loving it.

“Aye, you must sign the articles over the axe to be official,” Bash rushed to explain. “Can you write?”

Maggie nodded and licked her lips, watching nervously as the boarding axe was brought forward and the ship’s rules laid over it for signing. Looking to Bash for approval once more, she accepted the quill Samson offered her and only faltered a little over signing her assumed name.

“I’ll get you a needle and twine,” Dutch told her when it was done, heading off to round up the supplies.

Nodding to herself, Maggie sat down on the deck to wait, but immediately sprang to her feet, rubbing her backside while the nearest men snickered, and Bash’s heart rather burst with pride.