Page 92 of Paid to the Pirate

And occasionally… I did.

It was never as harsh as the first time. For starters, I didn’t use my belt and I didn’t bare her bottom.

If I thought she’d be grateful for the mercy, she quickly disabused me of that notion. It riled her all the more that I did not treat her as I did the men.

“You think you’re an exemption from the rules?” I’d ask her. “That you’re allowed insubordination and to not expect punishment for it like any other man in this crew?”

“Then punish me like a man,” she’d insist. “I want the mast!”

“No.”

Dock my wages, she’d protest.Assign me an extra shift. Throw me in the brig.I’d rather the lash than your hand.

As if I’d mar her skin. But I took her over my knee. Knowing it made her hate me more didn’t stop me.She has the power to stop it herself if she would just be less obstinate,I reasoned.It’s almost like she seeks it, then hates me for it.

In the passing months, Charlie’s hair grew below her ears. Only once had she threatened to cut it and I’d threatened to belt her. She’d put down her dagger at my words, declared her hate for the thousandth time, and stormed off sulking.

The men who’d agreed to her presence aboard the ship grew to tolerate Charlie, and some to even like her. She was quick, clever, and never grumbled about her work. She even won over those men whose minds hadn’t yet been made.

But the few that held to Robert’s side grew to resent her all the more.

I decided I’d improve Charlie’s usefulness by teaching her to read. And then, when I’d better prepared her for a life outside our ship, somewhere back in the Carolinas perhaps… then I’d let her go.

I couldn’t release her to the world ignorant of even the basic ability to read a sign, I reasoned.

Yes, I’d let her go as soon as soon as we developed her reading skills.

Just a few more weeks. Or months.

Chapter 39

Charlotte, the past

At night, I slept in the galley with Miguel. Colt said it was the safest place for me, though I didn’t know why he cared. If he wanted me safe, he could simply let me go. Miguel slept in the galley to protect the food, and I slept with Miguel so that he could protect me.

“Only other option is the brig,” Colt had informed me.

I might as well have slept there, I was a prisoner either way. Whenever I did anything to displease Colt, he used it as an excuse to threaten to punish me in a way he did not punish the men aboard. It was always done under the guise of needing to prove that I wasn’t being shown any preferential treatment, to keep it fair. But any of the crew could vouch for the fact that I always pulled my weight and without complaint. The only area where I stepped even a toe out of line was with the captain himself.

I couldn’t help it. How could I obey the man who murdered my father? At night, while the others slept, I thought up ways to kill him. I imagined his screams. They were like food or air, sustaining me throughout the long months.

When my insubordination supposedly threatened his command, Colt swept me over his legs and attended my rear until he’dsmacked the defiance out of me.

I supposed I could have avoided those punishments if I bent more readily to his orders, but I couldn’t stomach it. I couldn’t stop my outbursts, even when I knew I was giving Colt the excuse he wanted, giving him just cause.

Especially during his required reading sessions.

Confined to his cabin, Colt would plop me down upon the chair and sit beside me or stand above me, pushing me to learn to read from one of the books in his small library. I resented that I found the skill an asset I’d appreciate once I escaped. Over the months, as the letters began to form words and the words turned into sentences, I resented that it would forever be Colt who’d given me this ability. He especially tempted me with etiquette books and lessons on manners I hoped to someday apply elsewhere, away from life at sea.

Conks, Johnson, and Miguel became my friends and my protectors, each looking after me like a father or a brother. Playing games and drinking with them beneath the moonlight was one of my favorite things to do. (Besides plotting my escape, of course.)

I had my first breakthrough after a raid like any other, when Captain Colt’s luck turned into my own. I’d learned from my mistakes and this time, I was stealthier when eavesdropping on his nightly talk with Maurice.

“A prize like this will change the fates for all of us,” the captain whispered in a low voice, tinged with excitement. “Our way of life changing; I can feel it. Maybe not tomorrow, maybe not for a number of years. But that tsunami signaled the beginning of the end for our kind.”

I chanced a peek around the doorframe to see Colt held within his hands the largest ruby I’d seen in my life. I clamped my lips against my gasp.

Such a prize had been aboard the ship we attacked? No wonder her men had put up so much of a fight. We’d lost several of our crew in the process.

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