“They fought back?”
“The storm did. I thought it had passed, but a surge unlike any I’ve seen followed in its wake. I lost my ship.” At my gasp, he pinched my chin and smiled. “I seized a new ship that night.”
“You did?”
“Aye. A Spanish galleon. She was neither broken nor sinking like the others in the surge.” His expression glowed with veneration. “She was spitting fire and laughing at the storm.”
He explained how he rallied his surviving crew and boarded the fifty-gun galleon, even as his own ship was swallowed by the king tide.
I committed the particulars of his ambush to memory, hoping one day I might have a need for such knowledge and become half the wise, courageous captain that he was.
“What did you name her?” I asked.
“Jade.” His gaze lowered to my necklace. “She’s a beauty, she is. When I saw her, I knew I had to take her. For you.”
“For me?”
“She’s yours, Bennett. I’ll captain her until you’re old enough to decide.”
“Oh, Father!” My heart burst from my chest and soared with savage joy. “There’s nothing to decide. I want to be a buccaneer like you.”
“You’re too young to know what you want.”
“I’m old enough.”
“But not too old to sit on your father’s lap, are you now?”
“Just so.” I wrapped my arms around his shoulders and burrowed into his hard chest.
“Someday you might wish to travel to England in your own right and follow your mother’s dream.” He chuckled. “God knows, you would make a meal out of the beau monde.”
“No, thank you. I wish to follow you.”
“I’m honored, lass, and should you choose the sea, you have a ship. But I fear that path might end with your neck bent on the gibbet.”
My breath stilled, and a metallic flavor rose beneath my tongue. “What about your neck? You could be captured or killed in battle. I can’t lose you.”
His gaze sank into mine. “Such big grown-up worries in your child’s eyes.” He ran a thumb across my cheekbone. “I’m careful. Which is why I cannot visit as often as I’d like.”
I didn’t remember the first time he came to me, but there wasn’t a day I didn’t know him. He’d always been a part of my life. My very own secret to cherish and protect.
When I was younger, he visited more frequently and stayed longer. Sometimes months. But as his reputation grew, so did the risks. Now I was lucky to steal a few hours with him each year.
“I have something for you.” I jumped up, retrieved the linen-wrapped package from the horse’s saddle, and proffered it to him.
Nervous energy flapped beneath my breast as he unfolded the cloth and removed the gift.
“The natives wear these on their feet.” Crouching beside him, I traced the deerskin coverings. “The women scrape and smoke the skin to make it feel soft like this.”
The shoes were gathered at the toe and sewn above and behind with a raised flap on either side. Colorfully dyed porcupine quills and white glass beads decorated the folded edges in artistic designs.
“Exquisite.” He removed his jackboots and slipped the shoes onto his bare feet. “A comfortable fit. I shall wear them every night and think of you.”
My heart turned over so hard I felt it in my throat.
“How did you acquire such a thoughtful gift?” He guided me back onto his lap and stroked my hair.
“The servants make them. The cook maid is always kind to me, and she traded them for a spool of ribbon. I was discreet.”
“You did good.”
I snuggled into the warmth of his embrace, perfectly content and blissfully happy. I loved him so deeply and so completely. It went against logic that my mother could not.
“I’ve been stowing my prizes in a safe place over the years.” He kissed my forehead. “Enough riches for you, your children, and your grandchildren.”
“I don’t care about that.”
“You will. I want you to have this.” He removed the compass that hung from a chain on his belt. “It’s a map. When you’re ready, you will follow it and claim what’s rightfully yours.”
“A map?” I cupped the gold casing and lifted the lid to reveal the navigational needle within. “I don’t see a chart.”
“It’s there if you know how to unlock it.”
I turned it over in my hands, rubbing the polished surface. “Is there a key?”
“You already have it. Start and end north. When you’re ready, you’ll know what to do.”
“I don’t know how to decipher riddles.” I handed it back to him. “You could just take me there now. Kidnap the countess. You love her. We could be a real family and live off your treasure.”
“A child’s fairytale. Life isn’t so simple.”
“It could be.”
“Not for us.” He threaded the chain of the compass around the sash on my gown, securing the instrument to my waist. “When Abigail was exiled from English society, it destroyed something inside her. We’re from different worlds, she and I. Imagine her living with a criminal, always on the run and in fear of capture. It would suck the life out of her.” He wet his lips. “If I could, I would give up the sea and stand beside her in society. But I’m neither a nobleman nor a law-abiding man. That path was never an option.”
“But she was with you once.”
“In secret.” He grunted. “When she was young and blinded by love.”
Blinded by love.
The sound of that made me feel warm all over, and I smiled against his shoulder. “If I ever marry, he will be a man of your fortitude and spirit. A man who loves me above all else. Only me. And we shall be blinded by our love for life and beyond the ends of the sea.”
“Accept nothing less, Bennett.” He lifted my chin with a knuckle. “Promise me.”
“I promise.”
His eyes glittered with approval, his voice a deep well of affection. “That’s my girl.”
A few paces away, the hounds lounged in the shade. Seagulls cawed overhead, and late afternoon sunlight sparkled on white-crested waves.
He would be leaving soon, and his impending absence built a burning ache behind my eyes. Anguish coursed through me, so internal, so deep, it embedded itself before rising to the surface.
After a lifetime of goodbyes, I’d learned how to cope. To smother the hurt. Crying never took the pain away.
“Tell me another story about her.” I lay my cheek on his chest, relishing his scent of leather and salt. “Like the day you met.”
“You’ve heard that one many times.”
“I wish to hear it many more.”
“Very well.” He settled into a sprawl with a tree at his back and his arms holding me tight. “I spotted her from the ship deck I was scrubbing. The sun was so bright that day, high in the sky and heavy with heat. But it wasn’t worthy in the light of her radiance. She stood on the dock, glowing in ivory silk, so fair and arresting I couldn’t feel my legs.”
I devoured every word as he told me how he approached the noble maiden, whisked her away from her chaperon, and fell hopelessly in love with the Lady Abigail Leighton.