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Chapter 1

A Most Unromantic Proposal

Maggie

T he sharp little knife bit into her thumb deep enough to breach the callous.

It was an unusual slip for her, given the number of shellfish she shucked nightly in Brinehelm’s only tavern.

But this was an unusual night.

She’d just been proposed to in the least romantic way possible.

She ignored the sting and offered the fresh oyster to the small, orange beast needling its way up Kaspar’s sleeve.

It hissed at her and then sunk its tiny teeth into the delicacy, ripping it out of the shell with delightful ferocity before retreating to Kaspar’s shoulder.

“What do you say, Mags?” Kaspar drawled, already deep in his cups.

Perhaps he’d overindulged to gather the courage to approach her.

Two of his cronies stood behind him, smirking about the whole thing.

“Pretty sure I already said it.” Walk away , she urged him silently, as more and more of the tavern’s patrons took notice of them and the talk around them quieted.

“Come on, then. You don’t have to play the salty spinster anymore.” He leaned forward to brace his palms against the lip of the barrel, face inches from hers.

The creature slid off his shoulder and clung, mewling, from his shirtfront.

He cursed as he tried to free it from the fabric without getting scratched.

He finally succeeded, holding the whimpering kitten up between them by the tail.

Maggie frowned at him.

“Give it here. You’re hurting it.” He shrugged and passed it to her, where it curled up, shivering, on the shelf of her bosom, hiding its face in the ruffled edge of her chemise.

He took full advantage of the opportunity to peruse her cleavage.

“It was for you anyway. It’ll keep you busy while I’m out at sea since your womb’s likely dry.”

Maggie threw her head back and guffawed, cupping the kitten so she wouldn’t jiggle it right off her chest. “What’s that?”

“Don’t expect you to throw any brats at your age,” Kaspar said, sounding serious.

“You’ll be lonely.”

She was thirty-two, for goblin’s gold, not yet a shriveled-up husk of a woman!

“Hey Walther!” she called to the brawny tavernkeeper behind the bar.

He turned toward her with an eyebrow lifted, golden- furred forearms flexing as he dried a stoneware mug.

“Kaspar here thinks my womb’s dry. How did you find it?”

He shot her a cheeky grin that made him look half of his fifty years, no doubt recalling one of the times she’d bounced on his lap after a late night.

“Juicy as one of your oysters, I’d say. I’ll give it another taste this eve to be certain, if you like.”

The patrons at the bar guffawed, and Kaspar’s sea-weathered cheeks colored a dull red.

“You don’t have to make a joke of everything,” he muttered.

“It’s a serious offer.”

“So is Walther’s,” she cracked.

At his dour expression, she sighed and stroked the spiky ridge of fur along the kitten’s back.

It began kneading her flesh with chilled paws, stoking her usually dormant maternal instincts.

Dear little thing. Kaspar hadn’t been wrong to bring it along as a bribe.

“How serious can your offer be when we both know you just want the Wolfhunter ?”

He’d already bought the other two fishing boats in her father’s small fleet last season.

The sale of those ships had kept her family in medicine and bread and lamp oil for the whole year.

She was grateful to Kaspar for that, though it had been no favor.

The new wolf herring season was fast approaching, though, and her father’s lungs were still full of water.

All of Brinehelm knew it.

He had received generous offers for the Wolfhunter from a few parties, but he’d refused them all.

Kaspar apparently thought he could get around the old man’s reluctance to sell by marrying his daughter and becoming part of the family.

“Why are you so averse to marriage?” he demanded.

Maggie snorted. “I’m not averse to marriage. Only marriage to greedy bastards who don’t even like me.”

“You want love, is that it?” It was Kaspar’s turn to laugh, the sound brittle and ugly.

“You want me fawning and swooning over you?”

She tossed the empty oyster shells into a basket behind the barrel and began scrubbing roughly at the barrel lid with a wet rag, tongue protruding slightly with the effort.

“Not if you were the last man in all of Tael-Nost.”

He glanced over his shoulder, grimacing at the wicked delight on his companions’ faces at the repeated rejection.

He lowered his voice so only she could hear.

“Tell ’em you’re joking, Mags. Just say yes, and we’ll sort out the details later. You’re not bad to look at, and I’m not hard to live with so long as you cook and clean. Not like you have a surfeit of offers or you’d already be tied down by now.”

She slapped her rag down, irritated to her soul.

“All right, fine. I’ll marry you and mop your messes, but you won’t lay so much as one greasy finger on my father’s ship. It’s not yours, and it’ll never be yours. How’s that sound?”

Kaspar sputtered.

Apparently, marriage to Maggie was not so appealing without the ship as her dowry.

She gave a satisfied nod and tipped the empty oyster cask on its side so she could roll it out to her handcart. “Thought not.”