Page 21 of Her Perfect Pirate
Internally, Rebecca’s body revolted.A sharp spike of anger displaced her stomach and heart and mind so that all she could see was red.
Externally, she skewered this supposed husband with a glare.“Why would I want to leave theGhost?”
“If you don’t want to be a pirate anymore—”
Rebecca cut him off before anyone could hear him.“Iam not the one making apologies for slavers.Iam the one who boarded theWhimsyand disabled the captain before battle even started.”Her stomach turned at the memory.“Ifyoudon’t want to be a pirate anymore, then by all means, disembark at the Azores and find yourself a ship back to your precious Northfield Hall.”
He raised his hands, palms facing her, as if in surrender, and backed up a step.“Swab the deck, then.”
“I will, if you would only stop bothering me.”She nudged the bucket with her foot so forcefully that water sloshed over its edge.Sharkhead stepped even farther away, avoiding the puddle.
Avoiding her.
“Your captain needs you,” she snarled, as if she hadn’t bitten his hand hard enough.
Sharkhead turned away, but not before delivering his own punch, the kind that had earned him his nickname in the first place: “He is your captain, too.”
Chapter Ten
Whenthecaptainaskedfor volunteers to row the slavers out to Pirate Island, a tiny spit of land hundreds of miles from any other spit of land, Chow didn’t hesitate to raise his hand.
Even though it was a job usually given one of the younger lads, and even though his time would be better spent updating the supply book with a current food inventory.
Chow wanted any excuse to get off theGhost.She was never a big ship to begin with, and now that Rebecca stalked her decks, reminding Chow with each glare how deeply he had failed to redeem himself, there was no room for him on the ship.
He didn’t have anywhere to go, any hope of a life he could live away from theGhost, but if Rebecca didn’t leave at the Azores, then he might have to.
She watched from the foredeck as he helped Jack Davies load the thirty prisoners into the longboat.When Chow—despite himself—raised his hand in farewell, she turned away.As she had done ever since theWhimsy.And as she had every right to do.
Chow had put his trust in Captain Boukman when he should have fought against a bad order.He had chosen the captain’s power over Rebecca’s safety.They would both be better off if she never looked his way again.
Their small, armed crew rowed the prisoners out to the rocky beach.As per theGhost’s custom, the prisoners were left chained together with a barrel of rum and some hunting knives.Some of them would live long enough to hail a passing vessel.
Most of them would die—or be murdered—waiting.
Such was the fate of a sailor.
“Rebecca has been in a right mood, hasn’t she?”Jack Davies said as they rowed back to the ship.
Chow’s heart missed a beat at the mention of her name.“She isn’t used to storms yet.”
“Aye, but before that.And after.”The coxswain spit over the side of the longboat to punctuate his observation.“She hasn’t been right since theWhimsy.”
That Davies had the right of it made Chow that much more defensive.“Everyone needs to sort themselves out after the first time they kill a man.”
“Do they?”Jack Davies tilted his head back as if to look directly into the morning sun.“I don’t know when I first killed a man.It must have been in one of the battles when I was running gunpowder here, there, and everywhere.I was nine when the press gang got me.Me and my da at the same time, only they put me on a ship going to Lisbon and my da on a ship going to America.They hit my ma in the face when she put up a fight to try to stop them from taking me.I always looked too old for my age, you see.”
Chow had heard many a story of the press gangs, which roamed the British coast to find sailors for the Royal Navy.If a man was lucky, a mob would form to stop the gang from making away with him, but the truth was, many sailors in the British navy had been kidnapped and forced to sail.
“That’s terrible.They should have let you be.”
Davies shrugged and looked away from the sun.“Do you remember your first time, Sharkhead?”
He did—vividly.It was on his first pirate ship, the one that had rescued him from involuntary servitude to the East India Company.They attacked a merchant vessel, and Chow had been one of the crew to swarm its decks.Their aim hadn’t been to kill anyone, but the merchants’ guards fought back.Chow had stabbed one man through the gut in self-defense.Later, after the ship was won, he saw the man lying there still, slowly bleeding to death.
Chow’s crew members had raised a toast to him to celebrate his new status as a proper pirate.
Now, looking back, he saw it as the first rung in his descent to hell.Not the fiery hell threatened by parsons, but a hell that condemned him to the swirling vortex of the Atlantic, that ensured that even after he died, his soul would still sail these winds, caught in repayment for the misery he had doled out in his lifetime.
