Page 26 of Her Perfect Pirate
Sharkhead looked away again.Still as pale as a man who had foreseen his own death.
“He said something to you the day we took the slavers, too, something that shut you up.About second chances.Is he holding something over your head?”
Sharkhead stared at that horizon.Rebecca waited, watching the waves reflected in his eyes, sensing there were words building in him and that a confession would come crashing out if only she stayed silent.
She was right, in a way.He did speak, at last.Only it was to ask: “Do you believe in a god?”
“Yes.”The question transported her back to the steps of Trinity Church, which she had visited every Sunday as an orphan in New York City, sitting on the stone before and after the service in case one of the women proved to be her long-lost mother.
“I never did.Not the English god.But I do sense some greater force.Evil, I think.Evil swirls around us, and what we call good is only our desire to somehow live outside its clutches.”Nodding to himself, he added, “Evil is the ocean, and we are the whales and dolphins who are trying desperately to escape from its surface but can never completely break free.”
Rebecca had never known Sharkhead to be maudlin.She touched her fingers to his hand that gripped the rail.“If you’re coming up with theories like that, you haven’t enough to do.Time for you to mend some sails, pirate.”
“I can be evil, Rebecca, that’s what I am trying to tell you.It’s why I have ended up as a pirate.It’s why I can’t write to my family.It’s why I won’t go to China.You should leave me at your first opportunity.”
That was Captain Boukman’s poison.Forcing Sharkhead to face a warped looking glass—and making him hate himself rather than the man holding the mirror.The emotion filled the space between her and Sharkhead like a crate of gunpowder, and Rebecca didn’t know how to address it without lighting a fuse.“By your theory, we are all evil.I’d say you are one of the strongest dolphins who can leap the highest from the waves.”
He shook his head.“I am a shark pretending to be a dolphin.”
“Fine.”She slid closer and touched her hip to his.“I’m a helpless little fish for you to eat.”
The innuendo worked, returning some humor and color to his face.He looped an arm around her waist.“You are not helpless.”
“I am when it comes to you.”She said it as another flirtatious tease, even pouting her mouth, but her heart hammered in her chest at its truth.She couldn’t keep herself from rushing across the ship to aid him, not even when he darted poisonous words at her.If that wasn’t helpless—if that wasn’t losing her head to her heart—she didn’t know what was.“I’m not leaving you when we get to the Azores.If you want to leave theGhostbecause of Captain Boukman, fine.But I’m coming with you.”
Sharkhead held her tightly at the waist.“I’m not sure I will live to see the Azores.”
“Why not?”Her first thought was disease, and she reared backward to evaluate him for some terrible symptom.
“He used to trust us.He used to put the whole crew’s wellbeing at the front of every decision.All I wanted was to remind him of that.To try to get that captain back.”Sharkhead shook his head.“He feels I have challenged him.I’m lucky he didn’t shoot me for insubordination right then.He’ll have me strung from the yardarm in the next few days.He has to reclaim his authority.”
Rebecca didn’t know which was worse—this premonition, or the way Sharkhead delivered it, as if he were predicting the weather.“We can’t let that happen.”
“We?”
“You.Me.The crew.”Rebecca stepped out of his grasp to force him to look back at the ship where the pirates were all at work followinghisorders.“TheGhostis not a monarchy.Captain Boukman is not our king.If he orders your death, we won’t allow it.”
Sharkhead stared at her.“Are you suggesting a mutiny?”
Rebecca hadn’t gotten that far in her panicked thinking.Yet from the way Sharkhead said it—not with horror, not with surprise, but with a certain inflection of excitement—she could tell he had been contemplating it since long before Captain Boukman threatened his life.
And once he said it, it seemed the obvious solution.“How do we go about that?”
He held onto her ever tighter and replied, “We bide our time.”
Chapter Twelve
Chowreckonedtheywerenine days away from the Azores, assuming the winds remained fair.Nine days in which Boukman would claim his revenge on Chow.Nine days for Chow to make his case with the rest of the crew.
Nine days in which Boukman could unmask the true, terrible Chow to Rebecca.
Working in his favor were Boukman’s mood swings.When the captain emerged from his cabin hours after ordering Chow away, he was jolly from a bottle of rum and skipped straight to dancing a jig with the fiddler.Chow slipped below deck to stay out of the captain’s way.
And so it continued for the next few days.Boukman didn’t ask for Chow, and Chow did his best to remain invisible.It was a diseased relationship for a quartermaster and captain, one that would weaken theGhostif they allowed it to remain for long, but for the moment, it was keeping Chow alive.
He didn’t sleep anymore.When he lay in his hammock, fingers linked with Rebecca’s, he stared at the sturdy boards above him and tried to reconcile his present with his past.As a young man—younger than some of the boys climbing the topmasts—he had left Northfield Hall for London, his heart full of disgust for the mindless loyalty his parents displayed to Lord Preston.How he had ranted against the baron to anyone who would listen.Even now, thinking of Lord Preston filled Chow with an anger he felt he could never outrun.
But why?Lord Preston’s crime was hypocrisy, or at least accepting praise he wasn’t due; it was making everyone at Northfield Hall believe he was a saint when he still expected them to live as laborers in his service.
