Page 7 of Maggie and the Pirate’s Son (Brides of Chattan #3)

Chapter Six

I t took Maggie the better part of a week to finish mending all the torn sails, and between filling her belly, drinking too much rum, and sleeping so deeply in a nest of tangled tartan that she habitually missed breakfast, one day pretty well bled into the next. But she relished the productive, useful work almost as much as the warm sun shining on her shoulders.

Though she felt his eyes on her constantly, Bash had said little over the past week, so it was a surprise when he roused her one morning by shoving a bowl of gruel across the floor. It wasn’t homemade parritch, but it looked and smelled almost edible, and was that?—?

“Is there milk in this?” she asked, her eyes flying to his and then flitting away from their intensity.

“Just a dash,” he growled. “It’s not much, but you’ve had enough hardtack for a lifetime, I’ll warrant. Loblolly’s about the only thing’ll keep you regularish.” He punctuated his statement by setting a tankard of the ever-present bumbo down as well.

“Never too early for rum,” she muttered, trying not to let her distaste for the drink dampen her spirits .

“Sure you’d prefer tea, but if you saw the state of the water, you’d not wish for anything but this.”

She wrinkled her nose, which he seemed to find incredibly amusing, but at least his laughter broke whatever dark cloud hung over him.

He leaned back against the bulkhead, crossing his arms. “You did a good job on the sails. Stick close this morning. May need you to run messages to the captain.”

Bash rifled a hand idly through his long, dark locks, a bit wild and curly, but thick and not matted like the few other sailors who hadn’t shaved their heads all together.

When he caught her looking, she fully intended to drop her gaze, but she didn’t, and it sizzled between them until his lips curved into a small, sheepish smile.

She wanted to tell him that a handsome smile wasn’t an apology for a week of grumpiness, but it did funny things to her stomach, so she tried to suppress her own tiny smile and look deeply intrigued by the bowl of gruel.

“Why—” She cut herself off, but Bash looked askance so she tried again. “In the hold Roo called the captain… Mad?”

Bash shrugged. “Well, a fella’d have to be a bit mad to keep choosing this life year after year, wouldn’t he?”

Being the youngest of the Mackintosh girls, Maggie knew when she was being given the brushoff, and she’d also perfected the art of the disbelieving glare.

He looked away, rubbing up and down on the back of his neck in a way that made the tiny hairs on her own neck stand up.

“When he first became a captain, he lost a bit of gold.”

“Lost?” Maggie asked.

“Aye. Some say he exaggerated the haul and drank it all in the tavern the same night. Others say he gambled it away. Dutch reckons he buried it and forgot where.”

“How careless,” Maggie said. She’d have thought pirates were a bit more scrupulous than that. If she had any amount of gold, she certainly wouldn’t lose it.

“Aye. The frustration of it has eaten away at his mind year after year, making him more than a little mad. That, and being hunted by the naval officer entrusted with guarding the gold—or so he says.”

“What do you say?”

He turned thoughtful for a moment. “The sea’s been my home more years than it hasn’t, but men were made to live near water, not on it. It can do funny things to a fella’s mind.”

“Has it done funny things to yours?” she asked without meaning to but desperate to know, though she couldn’t say why.

“I’m sure it has,” he said, brushing her off again, but still smiling. “S’pose I wouldn’t know the difference though, would I? Best eat up and get on deck.”

So Maggie finished her gruel and got to her feet. Running her fingers down her chest to ensure the cloth binding had stayed in place all night, she turned her back on Bash to adjust it. A large atlas sat open on the desk behind her. It was beautifully illustrated and covered in intersecting crisscrossed lines, as well as perfectly penned letters she recognized forming words she couldn’t read.

Had so much sunshine made her addlepated? Or perhaps it was the rum having an effect? She reached out a finger as though touching the words, tracing each letter in turn, might unscramble them in her brain.

“El grande rio de las Amazones,” Bash whispered, suddenly so much closer than she’d realized, his breath tickling the back of her neck. “The great river of the Amazon. ’Tis Spanish.”

“You speak Spanish?” she asked, a little awed.

“Aye. Spaniards make the best maps.”

“You learned Spanish so you could read maps?” she asked, turning to look over her shoulder, and his face was right there, his lips full and pink, only an inch or two away .

“Aye,” he breathed, and Maggie licked her own chapped lips. He swallowed, and she watched his throat go up and down.

She turned back to the book. “I was taught French,” she said, almost to remind herself that knowing a second language wasn’t so remarkable.

“Ah! Je parle francais aussi,” he said. “And that is Latin,” he added, leaning over her shoulder to point out a calligraphed word on the map, near where she’d been touching.

“Show off,” she told his forearm.

He shrugged but tucked his arms safely behind his back.

“Are they similar? Spanish and French and Latin?”

“More than not.”

His eyes scanned her face and down her neck, and she could feel every bit of skin they lighted on, so she turned back towards the book of maps, flipping to the next page to see if he would stop her. “What else can you speak?”

“Bit of Yoruba. Jamaican. Gaelic. Portuguese. Some Italian. And Dutch.”

Now he really was showing off. “Did the quartermaster teach you?”

“Some.”

“Does he miss it?”

“Holland, you mean? He’s never been there. Dutch pirates attacked a slaving ship, and when they saw how quickly he picked up their language, they took him onto their crew for a time.”

Maggie’s face burned for having known so little of the world, but she appreciated the way Bash related the tale without the imperious grandstanding her father liked to employ as the smug keeper of the knowledge. Bash didn’t make her feel stupid for not knowing, merely uninformed, with no judgment in it.

“Does he miss his real home then?” she asked, wondering the same of Bash, with his warm, tawny skin.

“What good does missing it do?” he asked gruffly. “This ship is his home now. We are his country. ”

Sensing the conversation was over and Bash’s patience had worn thin, Maggie flipped the page back to where it started and turned to face him. He wasn’t much taller than she was, merely the distance between his lips and his eyes. She wondered, despite herself, what his lips would taste like—the same sweet spirits and citrus she could smell on him every time he stepped near?

Settle down.

Those were dangerous thoughts, best left to restless dreaming.

“So, messages?” she asked, swallowing a sudden dryness in her throat.

“Aye. And anything else I need done.”

“Just for you?”

He smiled, the one dimple popping out below his scar, like a special sort of punctuation mark for his emotions. “Were you looking to take orders from someone else?”

Maggie shook her head and followed him up to the deck.

For a time she stood idle, watching him use his spyglass to examine the water and the clouds as he’d done each day before. “Can you see all the way back to Scotland?” she asked, and he laughed.

“See for yourself,” he said, tossing her the glass.

Maggie caught it awkwardly and examined its length, an appealing blend of mahogany and brass, warm to the touch, smooth and sturdy.

“Hold it here,” he explained, stepping behind her and moving her left hand down the extended shaft. “Gently. And keep both eyes open.”

Hardly breathing, Maggie opened her left eye and relaxed it, peering through the narrow end with her right.

“What do you see?” he asked softly.

“A blur of blue and”—she flinched away from the eye piece—“blinding light.”

Taking her shoulders, Bash turned her more to the west so the sun bouncing off the surf would be less intense .

“To focus, expand the middle section.” He put his hand gently on hers, twisting the shaft with excruciating patience, and suddenly the wave crests clarified before her eyes along with one—no, two—no, three dolphins leaping out of the water so clearly they seemed close enough to touch. He took his hand away then, and she bobbled the scope, almost dropping it over the railing and into the churning wake below.

She glanced quickly at Bash who stared at her, wide-eyed, and puffed air out of his cheeks, but she couldn’t help a giddy laugh as she braced for the yelling and relinquished his precious spyglass.

“Have you never seen dolphins before?” he asked, surprise but no anger lacing his decidedly-not-yelling voice.

“Never so close or so many.” There was a whole family of them out there now that she knew where to look, splashing and twirling with glee. “I suppose it’s commonplace for you.”

He shrugged, smiling softly as he watched the creatures play. “Never gets tiresome though. Even seeing them in Lewis as a boy didn’t compare to the first time an entire pod joined us on the open sea.”

Maggie grinned at him, delighted to find a kindred spirit and relieved he wasn’t going to shout at her for the near miss with his spyglass. She leaned on the railing as far out as she dared, laughing with glee to see the dolphins frolic as if putting on a show just for her.

The sound of flapping canvas brought her attention back to the masts and sails, her sails, for they were hers now she’d mended them. They snapped and billowed in the breeze, her stitches holding tight as Bash had assured her they would. Maggie breathed in the mingled scents of citrus and brine and, realized she felt rather content. Perhaps she was born for piracy all along, with her mannish hands and uselessness at cooking.

“Cap should be at his loblolly by now,” Bash said, interrupting her thoughts. “Down one level, all the way aft. Run, fast as you can. Don’t stop for anyone else, and let him know the wind has shifted again. Then come straight back.”

Excitement surged in her stomach at being given such an errand. “Me?”

“Aye,” he answered gravely. “?’Tis what cabin boys do, Magnus.”

She nodded at his warning and headed down below.

Already she’d forgotten how dark it was inside the ship, and she stood awkwardly beside the ladder, blinking to make her eyes adjust. Then she tiptoed past rows of hammocks, many of which still held sleeping, farting, snoring, naked sailors, and she realized how much better she’d had it curled up on the floor of Bash’s alcove.

“Well hello, cabin boy,” said Balthasar, the instigator from the canteen her first night. He stepped out of the shadows to block her path. “Lose your way? It can be tricky hereabouts.”

When he put a hand on her arm, it made her bowels loosen, and she took a step back, bumping into another sailor who grinned down at her with fetid breath.

She opened and closed her mouth and then forced out her haughtiest tone. “I’ve an important message for the captain.”

“Oh, beg pardon, beg pardon,” Balthasar said, bowing but not moving out of her way.

She licked her lips. “Bash says I’m to come straight back.”

“Well, we don’t want to make Nav unhappy, now do we?”

The other pirate snickered, so Maggie tried another tack, rubbing her backside absently. “I certainly don’t,” she confided.

“Gave you a good hiding, did he? Must have done, and you still feeling it a week later.”

“No more’n the brat deserved.” The other pirate spit on the floor. “We run out of drink, it’s on your head, younker.”

“Well get on ’afore ye earn another,” Balthasar said with a little too much glee like he’d enjoy watching her be whipped. Finally, he stepped out of her way, and she scurried off to rap on the captain’s door, gulping to try and steady her breathing.

She’d been gone too long. Of course, Bash had to let her out of his sight at some point. What use was a cabin boy who didn’t run messages to the captain in his cabin? But it made him nervous, which infuriated him. He was accustomed to worrying about the whole ship and her crew as an entity, a living, breathing organism, one he understood and had the where-with-all to tend. He couldn’t afford to be constantly fearful about the wellbeing of an individual.

How would it look?

The crew believed the girl was a lad called Magnus. Would a boy be in danger, caught alone in the wrong dark corner with the wrong disreputable sailor? Of course. Would Bash hover and nursemaid a young lad? Or would he trust the men to either respect or fear him enough none would interfere with what he’d claimed and leave the rest to the lad to take care of himself?

Hypotheticals had always made Bash feel stupid. Give him facts and figures, maps and charts, stars and wind. Maybes and what ifs were as useless as chasing hopes and dreams.

“You’re a right grumpy bugger today,” Dutch observed when Bash glowered towards the hatch for the hundredth time.

He tried to smooth his furious brow before responding. “Hmph,” he grunted, and Dutch studied him harder.

“Bit crowded in your berth these days?”

He shot Dutch a look, but the quartermaster was studiously intent on the horizon, unable or unwilling to meet Bash’s eye. Time to change the subject.

“Is it a mind game the old man’s playing? Veering off course to fuck with me?”

Now Dutch did turn his attention.

“He rejected my plan for the colonies,” Bash explained. “ Ordered us back to Jamaica, then deliberately sabotaged our course so we’re too far north. Does he want to go to Boston but just can’t let me be right?”

“He doesn’t know what he wants,” Dutch muttered under his breath before turning around and leaning against the railing. “Ahoy, Captain!” he called. “Young Magnus.”

Bash took a breath before turning around.

“Cabin boy says you’re afraid of the wind.”

Maggie seemed nervous, but still in one piece. Her expression turned stricken at the captain’s words, but she didn’t contradict him. Good girl.

“Southerly,” Bash explained with a practiced shrug. “Won’t carry us to Port Royal, but as you know, I’m happy to see Boston, myself…”

The captain sneered. “We won’t find Willy Walsh in Boston.”

“Perhaps we’ll find he’s taken Tew’s route from Africa to Yemen,” Bash argued sarcastically. A possibility, but they both knew Walsh didn’t have Tew’s stones.

Mad’s wicked grin broadened. “Perhaps I should let you take us there just to prove he hasn’t.”

“It’s no difference to me, sir. Only reporting facts. We’re not on course for the Caribbean.”

“Well, you’re the sailing master, boy. Wear the fucking sails.”

“Aye, Captain,” Bash said with a curt nod. Then he bellowed, “Ready about,” and the men sprang to action like well-oiled cogs.

They swarmed the sails, preparing to turn the tail of the brig into the wind. Bash loved to stand back and watch them in action. He took pride in how smoothly the men worked together.

“Lines are fouled,” Duffy called, peering up at the foremast.

And just like that, the magic was spoiled.

Bash’s head snapped around to follow Duffy’s gaze. Sure enough, the lines were tangled, the sail too tight to make the turn.

“I’ll get it,” Langley grumbled, starting forward .

“Good lad.” Bash cuffed him affectionally, but the captain put out his arm.

“Why not let the new recruit have a go,” he asked laconically.

Langley stopped, one hand on the ratline, looking from Mad to Bash unsure who he’d rather please.

“Captain?” Bash glanced at Maggie, expecting her face to have drained of color, but she was simply staring up at the tops, half biting her bottom lip like she was assessing the challenge.

“We each must pull our weight, must we not?” Mad asked, conveniently ignoring Maggie’s work repairing the sails.

There was no clean way to argue without Bash showing unwarranted favoritism.

He sidled up to Maggie. “The ropes are all a mess,” he explained. “See up at the top there?” he asked, standing a little too close to her, close enough to smell her hair, to catch the faintest notes of rosewater beneath the brine.

She smiled. “Like the tangled-up ribbons of a lady’s stays,” she muttered.

Bash cleared his throat. If she kept talking like that, their secret would be out in no time. She must have realized it too, for her posture stiffened. “How are they to be untangled, sir?” she asked more loudly.

“Very carefully. Do you know how to climb?”

“Like breathing, isn’t it? You just do it?”

A soft laugh escaped before Bash thought to hide it, and she turned with questions in her luminous lapis eyes.

“Hold on to the shrouds,” he said, pointing to the angled vertical ropes, “and step on the rat lines. One foot at a time. The wind is stronger than you think.”

Completely unperturbed, the girl grabbed hold of the nearest rope and tested her weight on the first rung, then began to climb with an unsuppressed joy that caught Bash by surprise.

“Slow down,” he called after her, and she cast an annoyed look over her shoulder at him. She was only about ten feet off the ground, but when she did it, her fists clenched tighter around the rigging, and she tried to grip the rat line with her toes, her face blanching. “Best you don’t look down either,” Bash cautioned.

Still pale, she rolled her eyes at him before facing forward again as he’d bidden.

Maggie Mackintosh Budge did not like being ordered about. Bash shook his head. She’d make a terrible sailor, whipped constantly for insubordination. What a handful she must have been for her late husband, the lucky bastard.

“Good climber at least,” Dutch said, stepping closer as they both gazed up at the rather appealing backside shimmying up the ropes.

“We’ll see,” Bash huffed, which only amused Dutch all the more.

“Do you remember the first time I sent you up the rigging?”

“Wasn’t you who sent me,” Bash argued petulantly under his breath.

“I gave the order. And you flew up there like a monkey in a tree.”

“Made it to the top, took one look down and lost my footing. Would’ve fallen the whole way and cracked my skull if I hadn’t tangled myself in the lines.”

Dutch laughed. “Your face was as red as a radish, time we got you down.”

“And my arse soon matched, compliments of the captain.”

Dutch stopped laughing then. He’d felt guilty for not arguing when Mad suggested sending a child up the rigging, but Bash had never blamed Dutch for any of it. He knew better than most which way the wind blew on board the Revenge.

The girl had reached the topmast, and she paused, looking out at the vast, impregnable vista. Bash well remembered his first time taking in that view. Even the whipping hadn’t soured it.

After a moment’s pause, she wrapped her arm around the line and peered down at him again. She looked ill but didn’t sway. “Now what?” she yelled.

Now what indeed?

“Has the lad been sailing before?” Dutch asked.

“I rather doubt it.”

“Then what are you waiting for?”

Not usually one to require permission, it was all the encouragement Bash needed to climb up after her. It was no more than he’d do for any new recruit not yet dry behind the ears. Proper instruction could mean the difference between life and death, and besides, four hands were better than two when it came to fouled lines.

“You climb very well for a beginner,” he said when she and her dangerously round bottom were well within earshot.

“For a—” she started crossly but cut herself off.

“For a beginner,” he repeated, close to her ear after grasping the boom on either side of her and pulling himself up to stand behind.

“I don’t need help,” she snapped, and he was ashamed of how his body responded, rising to follow even as she leaned away. He swung himself to the left of her, as she scooted further to the right.

“You requested it.”

“Merely instruction. Up close, I’ve lost track of the tangle.”

She scowled, and Bash doubted she really wanted instructions either. What had it cost her, to call down to him when she’d clearly prefer to muddle about on her own and figure things out?

“It’s here,” he said, pointing out the loose line which had wound itself around the mast and rigging like the warp and weft of a loom. “Night watch will have to answer for not keeping the lines tighter after you went to such trouble patching the sails.”

“What’s to be done? Cut it?”

“No, no,” he said, showing her how to gently twist the rope back around to where it belonged .

They worked in silence, as the wind whipped their shirts and ruffled her short-cropped hair. Standing close enough to count her freckles in the bright sunshine, he was suddenly conscious of the grotesque scar adorning his own left cheek. She must think him a hideous ogre, and he couldn’t blame her. She was like the heroine of a fairy story, trapped aboard a monster’s ship.

“I didn’t say you were afraid of the wind. Only relayed the message as you told it to me,” she finally confessed, drawing him back from his wallowing and perking him right up. Bash knew the captain well enough to guess he’d put words in Maggie’s mouth, but for some reason he also liked knowing she cared what he thought.

“?’Tis no matter,” he said.

“Was he testing you? Ought you have shouted at me? Or,” she swallowed, “or taken me below again? You could have. I wouldn’t mind.”

“I’m not sure testing is the word. In any event, I don’t shout at my crew or punish them when I know they’ve done no wrong.”

“Is that what I am? Part of your crew?” She seemed to hold her breath, anxiously awaiting his reply.

How could he explain that she was and she wasn’t? That he protected the crew as a whole but kept himself apart from individuals aside from Dutch? That he didn’t care to know most of them in the way he felt drawn to her, or care what they thought of him in the way he desired her good opinion? How could he explain that his crew never drove him to distraction, never made his heart beat too fast, never gave his prick a mind of its own?

“Of course you are. I’m giving orders and you’re following them, aren’t you?” he asked gruffly, and she bristled—a good thing, because a rough-edged wench was far safer than a soft one.

“Aren’t you?” he couldn’t help goading, and she set her jaw and turned her face away towards the ocean.

“Look!” she gasped, letting go of the rigging to point but Bash saw only her, as he reflexively leaned out to grab the line she’d released, just in time to catch her when she lost her balance and stumbled.

Her back fit perfectly into his chest, her bottom against his groin, and he was instantly hard once more.

Now she gasped for a whole different reason, and his left hand went to her waist to steady her as she resecured her hold and her footing.

“No,” she said.

“My apologies,” he murmured, removing his hand from her person and easing back just a little.

“No,” she repeated. “I’m not very practiced at following orders, it would seem.”

“We’ll have to remedy that,” he growled, and she swallowed hard.

“Yes,” she whispered. “It is I who should apologize. Though I’m not very skilled at that either. I was just overcome by…” She trailed off, scanning the water with a furrowed brow, then pointing more sedately, she sighed, “There.”

This time Bash turned to follow her finger, but there was nothing, only the telltale frothy surf.

“What was it?” he asked, studying her rather than the ocean.

“Dinnae ken,” she whispered, childlike excitement dancing in her bright eyes. He could happily watch her study his ocean for hours, but he forced himself to turn his attention outward.

Together they held their breaths until a nose breached the surface, and then the biggest fish Bash had ever seen thrust its way out of the water, rolling like a wave on the beach before crashing back to disappear below the surf.

The ship rocked, the crew below equally silent, as though Bash and Maggie were the only two humans in all the world to have witnessed such a remarkable thing, and he was glad she was there to see it.

“Was that a sea monster?” she whispered.

“Some kind of whale, innit? ”

The beast breached the surface once more, slapping back down in a spray that reached them all the way in the tops, settling on Maggie’s eyelashes like a fine mist of pearls.

“Is it trying to scare us away?” she asked, in a voice that said it wasn’t working.

“Nah,” Bash explained. “It wants to play.”

“Play?” she giggled, leaning forward to watch as the whale leaped and splashed once more, and the men below clapped and cheered it on.

“Mercy,” she breathed. “How do you ever grow accustomed to it?”

“Many a fine sailor forgets himself when gazing upon the wonders of the water.”

“Not you, I imagine.”

Had she heard Dutch reference his ignominious first assent? Impossible, unless she was some kind of witch. She was only teasing, surely. “Ah, but I’m an exception, darlin’, born scarred and sea weary from the loins of a mermaid herself.”

She laughed, and the sound was something like the tinkling of tiny shells and sea glass.

“Bash?” she asked.

“Yes?” he replied too quickly, desperate to hear her question, even if it was about his past.

“How do we get down?”