Page 24 of Her Perfect Pirate
But they did.
Foreheads together, sweat mingling, breaths huffing, Rebecca admitted: “I have missed you.”
His palm cupped the back of her neck, as if she were precious.“I never went anywhere.”
Someone clattered down the ladder.Rebecca hopped off his lap, throwing her skirts down.He stood and turned, still buttoning his trousers as Fuego found them.
The youth smirked.“Captain is looking for you, Sharkhead.”
“I’ll come up, then.”He said it coolly, as if he hadn’t heard any of the captain’s earlier summonses.To Rebecca, he said in his quartermaster’s voice, “See to the goat, won’t you?She is bleating something awful.”
His eyes told a different story.They connected with hers for just a moment and were so soft, so sweet, that she felt all the unspoken words between them swell like a rose about to bloom.
“I’ll be good,” she promised.And he smiled.
Chapter Eleven
Adayorsolater,when the wind was strong and the sun high, Chow forced himself to seek out Captain Boukman.It was not for his own sake, he told himself.It was for the captain’s good that they have a talk.A good, honest one, like they used to have years ago, when the war with Napoleon had distracted all the navies and theGhosthad easily struck fear into every slaver’s heart.Before these strange moods had started overtaking the captain and nothing the crew said could please him.
Captain Boukman was in his cabin, eating a ration of salt pork, hard biscuit, and a bruised apple as he wrote in the logbook.He greeted Chow with a distracted wave.“We’ll need more supplies when we put in at Ponta Delgada.”
“Aye,” Chow agreed.“Fruit especially.Last time, I found a man who sold me barrels of the sweetest oranges.I’m hoping he’ll be amenable again.”The truth was that Chow had paid a premium for those oranges, but they had lasted weeks and put a smile on the lips of every man who had tasted them.
“Gunpowder especially,” Captain Boukman corrected.“We have only a quarter of the supply we should.”
A good entrée into what Chow had wanted to discuss.He found himself waiting, anyhow, because the truth was he didn’t want to find out how the captain was going to react.
But this was all for the captain’s good.For the crew’s good.Someone had to have this conversation, and it might as well be Chow.“The Trojan Horse always uses up our supply.This one, in particular.Took us a while to subdue that flagship.”
Boukman looked up, danger lurking in his eyes.“We took it, didn’t we?”
“Fearsome Fred wishes he had been on the longboat.He wanted to see the whites of the eyes of the men he was fighting.”
“Did he now?”Captain Boukman took a swig from his bottle of rum.“Who has he been talking to about this?”
Chow regretted this angle immediately.He should have led with his own regrets about the battle—namely, that he hadn’t better protected Rebecca—instead of relying on the grumblings of the rest of the crew.“It is more of a general conversation.”
“A general conversation about how they are going to vote me out?Throw me overboard and elect a new captain?Who is it they think is so glorious?”Captain Boukman rose out of his seat and glared out the window.“It’s that Jack Davies, isn’t it?Even though he can barely grow a beard, he thinks he has the run of the sea.”
“There are no plots.You are our captain.”Chow kept his voice firm yet gentle.
“That’s right.Iamthe captain, and theGhostis my ship, and anyone who forgets that will find themselves dead or deserted.I’m not picky about which.”
“No one has forgotten.”He wanted to retreat, yet he remembered Rebecca, huddled against the goat pen.And Jack Davies rowing back from Pirate Island, whispering what Chow hadn’t wanted to hear.He was not here for himself.“We don’t understand some of the decisions you made in that battle.Why it took so long to attack theWhimsywhen normally we fire the cannons as soon as the crew is on board.”Seeing fire in the captain’s eyes, he quickly added, “I want to learn from you, sir, nothing more.”
“Learn from me?”Captain Boukman advanced around the desk to loom directly above Chow.“Who am I?”
“The captain.”
“What is my name?”
“Dutty Boukman.”
“How did I get that name?”
Chow had been on theGhostfor a few years before he learned about the captain’s name.That it was not the name given him by his mother nor a surname like everyone else had.It referred to a specific man, a specific event, a specific fate.“You seized it,” Chow answered, as he knew the captain preferred to tell the story.“When you broke free from slavery, you decided to take a new name, and you reached into history to take the name of the voodoo priest who started the great slave revolt in Haiti.”
“And what have I been doing ever since?”
