“I know you do.” He swept my black bangs back and tucked them behind my ear. “And I, my darling girl, love you.”
•
The days passed quickly and, under my care, Jack healed quickly. One morning, I eased myself down on our bunk with Jack’s breakfast in tow.
“Good morning,” he purred. “I smell salmagundi.”
I sat his plate on the small table that was built in beside the bunk. He was right, the scrambled meat bits, fish, vegetables and fruit did have quite the pungent smell. “Red Legs was the cook today. I expect we’ll have salmagundi whenever he decides to cook again.”
We shared a laugh.
“Are you feeling up to getting out of bed today?”
Jack propped up on his elbows. All the bruises were long healed and he seemed to suffer no ill effects from the beating China Joe had given him, despite being so close to death when I finally found him that he was more dead than alive. “I can’t get out of bed ‘till I have my daily dose of medicine.”
Lust lit Jack’s green eyes to a fiery twinkle.
I slid my blouse off my shoulders as I strode across the room. I turned to face Jack as I pushed shut the door. He flipped back the blankets and patted the bed next to him. With his busted ribs, we’d been careful in our lovemaking. Until now.
When we’d finished, Jack held me tighter than usual. “There’s something I have wanted to tell you, my love.”
My breathing was still coming fast from our morning romp and sweat dripped down my naked back. Jack’s fingers slid down my backbone and made me shudder a delicious shudder. My breasts swelled against his chiseled chest as his softening manhood slid from between my legs. “Tell me?”
“You asked before. About my father.”
I looked up into his face. He smiled down at me as I snuggled into his arms. “Yes I did.”
“Is this still a story, dreadful as it is, that you want to hear?”
At once, I was a child again. Nestled safe and warm in my nursery while my governess told a bedtime story. “I do, Jack. If you’re of a mind to share it with me.”
“Me mother died of consumption. So I took what money I’d stolen from the men who bought her and what little bit she’d left me.” His fingers strummed my slick back as he spoke. “The girls, as my mother had called them, did their best to look after me, but they weren’t my mother. I was not their affair and, quite frankly, my presence wasn’t good for business.”
I tightened my arms around him. His back was healing up nicely from the beatings China Joe had given him, and all that was left now that the scabs had fallen off, were white slashes here and there across his skin. I traced them nonchalantly with my fingertips as he spoke. “I understand, I suppose.”
Quite frankly, I hoped I would never have to understand the life Jack lived before coming to captain The Black Otter. I wasn’t a mother, at least not yet, but the thought of having to sell my body to men to make a living while my child hid in the closet—it made my stomach turn. My heart went out to Jack’s mother, and all the other mothers who had to live a life in such a manner. My thoughts began to swirl.
What would I be like as a mother—
Emotion burned in my throat as Jack continued.
“Once I came to see that I answered to nobody, belonged to nobody, and nobody was waiting for me to come home to them. That nobody cared if I ate, bathed, combed my hair, or had fresh clothes—or any clothes at all. . .” Jack shrugged. “The decision almost made itself for me. I had to go find my father—the only other kin that I knew of in this world.”
“So I claimed a dock as my own, down in the roughest part of town. Was no matter, I was a whore’s son and expected to be rough and wild.” Jack sat up and pulled a smoke out of his shirt pocket. I’d never seen him smoke before, not even when other pirates would. I didn’t say a word, and chose instead, to prop up on one elbow and listen to a story that I was sure had never been told before.
Jack struck the flint he produced from his shirt pocket and lit his smoke. He took a long drag with his eyes closed before he continued. “I already knew how to take a beating, and I was learning how to dish them out, too. Not bad for a lad who was not yet a man.”
“I learned all I could from anyone I could watch or from whoever would teach me. Fencing I picked up straight away. I would challenge drunk men to a duel and make it known people should place their bets. I earned quite a hefty sum since nobody ever bet on me.” He exhaled and turned and offered me a wink. “Hell. I wouldn’t have bet on me, either.”
I would have.
“One day a ship came through, a cargo ship of some sort. From the Orient. The men who disembarked spoke of a Russian pirate who boarded their vessel, took their rum, silk, and spices, and left them a mess of gold coins in trade. Of course, the men were to keep the gold for themselves—not pass it on to their masters, who would be sorely disappointed when they discovered they were robbed of their Oriental goods.” Jack flicked the ash of the smoke onto the floor. “That was the first time I saw Spanish gold, when the men went ashore with their pirate loot, much too rich to bother sailing the seas for someone else any longer.”
I cleared my throat. “The Russian pirate, it was your father, wasn’t it.”
“Aye, it was.” He took another long drag before continuing. “I figured it was Providence that a ship looted by my own dear father pulled into my port. Since I was rootless and burning for adventure, with a healthy dose of anger at my father, I sought out the man they hired as the new Captain and informed him that I was his newest hired hand.”
Jack laughed and stood. The sweat on his naked body had dried and I drank in the sight of him. So many scars, so many stories. And so beautiful, all the while. He made his way to the porthole nearest our bed, unlocked the tiny round window, and flicked the butt of his smoke out into the salty sea. “Of course, he thought me nothing but a young fool and called me such. So I swiped his dagger from his hip.”
My eyes widened and I pulled our thin blanket up to my chin. Stories of young Jack were so much more lively than those of young Redella.
“I told him that I could kill him with that dagger if I had a mind to, but killing wasn’t why I needed a job just then. Instead, I’d throw it wherever he pleased. Into an empty barrel, through a ratline square, wherever he pleased. If his dagger made it, then I came aboard. If not, I would leave.”
“Did he take you up on your challenge?”
“This sailor, a man by the name of Vane, was no ordinary Captain.”
Vane. Vane—where have I heard that name before? My eyebrows knitted together as I puzzled over the familiar name.
“He told me where I could stick that dagger, which was most ungentlemanly, and informed me that he would relieve me of my head before I had a place on his ship.”
I sat up and snapped my fingers. “Charles Vane!”
Jack sat back down next to me, his lips turned up in a knowing smile. “Ah, I see you’ve heard of him.”
“His wanted posters, I’ve seen them. They offered a handsome reward—called him an English-born pirate.”
“So you see where this story goes.” His hand came to rest on my knee as he continued. “I informed Mr. Vane that he would not have my head and that I was going to sail with him—with or without his blessing. Do you know what he did?”
