Captive to a Pirate

by Lilith T. Bell

  She looked down at her hand and the ring that she had slipped on it four years before. It had been meant as a ruse, so she would be seen as a proper woman instead of a pirate’s plaything. There had been so many times she had wished it was Liam who had put the ring on her, with vows of love and devotion. Not cold practicality and all the feeling of asking what she planned on serving for dinner.

  “It sets nothing right.” Brigid gripped the ring and pulled on it, having to twist and fight to get it off. Once her finger was free, she flung the bit of gold at him. He caught it neatly in midair, only adding to her irritation. “It’s not just decency I want from you, you idiot.”

  With that, she turned to leave, shutting the door as hard behind her as she dared without waking up the entire inn. She had been a fool to think any looks of tenderness implied some deeper emotion. He had tricked her with that once before and she wasn’t going to fall for it again.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

  BANDRAUGHT

  THE night was not kind to Liam. He spent the majority of it lying in bed and trying to figure out where things had gone wrong with Brigid. By the time he finally fell asleep, it was close to dawn. That had led to oversleeping—something he very rarely did—and then finding only Ann and Donny remaining in their room when he went to break his fast with the O’Cullanes.

  “She’s gone to see if her friend Siobhan has arrived in the city or not,” Ann explained.

  He had a bit of bread with cured sausage and cheese, trying not to let his irritation show. He could remember being a lad and noticing when his parents were upset. The self-absorption of youth had invariably led to him assuming that their feelings were the result of something he had done. There was no sense in making Donny worry something similar. Once he had eaten, his mood had improved slightly and he lowered himself to sit on the floor beside where Donny was playing while Ann sewed.

  “This is Brian Bóroimhe,” Donny said as he held up his stuffed rabbit. “He keeps stuff in his pockets for me.”

  “Those are some fine pockets. Did your mam sew him for you?”

  The little boy nodded brightly. “Sometimes I sleep in his pockets. They’re nice.”

  A soft chuckle rose up inside Liam and he felt the last of his irritation evaporate. Though nothing had been resolved, he felt more hopeful. It was impossible not to feel that way while listening to his son talk about sleeping in the pockets of his stuffed animal. “Aye, I’m sure they are. I’ve always been fond of sleeping in pockets, too. Or a nice pile of torn up fabric.”

  Behind him, he heard Ann clear her throat discreetly. “Do you know why Brigid was so upset this morning?”

  He glanced back to her with a faint frown, then refocused on Donny and his collection of treasures. Hearing that Brigid had still been upset in the morning troubled him. “Not entirely.”

  Rather than drop it there, Ann continued. “Did the two of you have a fight last night?”

  “Ah. Well. In a way.” He fell quiet, debating whether or not to say more. When he could find no reason to stay quiet, he went on. “I asked her to marry me.”

  “You must have made a terrible job of it then.”

  The memory of Brigid flinging that ring at him came back to Liam and he snorted quietly, shaking his head. “Seems I always do when I go bringing up a delicate topic. Did she tell you about when I told her of ratkin?”

  Only silence met his question. He turned to look over at Ann again. She had set her hands down in her lap, crumpling the fabric she had been working with there. Her eyes were focused on her hands, as if seeing something far more distant. Suddenly, he felt like a fool for having brought the subject up. Ann was one of the people who had kept the secret from Brigid in the first place.

  “No,” Ann said at last. “Well, she told me she knew about her brothers. She never wanted to discuss it much and I didn’t want to pursue it.”

  She still didn’t look up after she spoke. He continued to stare at her, frowning. There had been a question that had come to him several times over the years, whenever Brigid’s anguish over learning the truth came back to him. His curiosity was too overwhelming to not ask now that the ideal opportunity had been presented to him.

  “Why?” Liam pressed. “Why keep something so important from her? You knew the risks of what could happen when she had children. Why not warn her?”

  Ann looked up at him, her eyes troubled. “We weren’t sure of those risks.”

  That answer made him scoff and shake his head in scorn. It had been Brigid’s own father who had taught him nearly everything he knew about ratkin. Most especially the bits about having children and how any ratkin doe or half-breed female ran the risk of having kits, regardless of who the father was. “You weren’t?”

  “Did anyone ever tell you about the bandraught?”

  The abrupt change of subject earned a dry arch of one of his brows. “No. What’s that?”

  Ann stood up from her chair and began gathering the sewing materials together as she spoke. “It’s the harshest punishment you can inflict on someone in a ratkin colony. The bandraught takes away their ability to shift for life. Someone who has committed some terrible crime is forced to drink it, then banished from the colony. They can never rejoin their own kind.”

  Vague memories of banishment came back to him as she spoke. No one had been banished during his childhood that he could recall, but it was a vague idea that was occasionally alluded to in histories. The memories were hazy and unclear, in large part because Donovan had never spoken of such things. Now that he had been reminded that such a punishment existed, the oversight was glaring. Had guilt held Donovan’s tongue?

  It was impossible to hide the horror in his face or voice. “You did that to Brigid?”

  Ann turned her head, avoiding his eyes. “Not exactly. I don’t think you can grasp the sort of situation Don and I found ourselves in. All of my sweet baby boys died because they shifted too young.” She set the fabric down on a basket, then raised one hand to press over her heart, as if trying to rub away an old ache. “I wanted a child who would live. The bandraught was supposed to grow weaker if passed from mother to babe, to just delay shifting instead of halting it for life. I’m only half anyway, so there was no risk to me. Don went to your colony for some of the draught and I drank it about two months before Brigid was born.”

  Puzzle pieces began to fall into place in Liam’s mind. Every child born to a half-breed mother and a full ratkin father had always been ratkin. Their shifting was an incredibly dominant magic when it came to inheritance. In many ways, the survival of their species was dependent upon them having such an easy time at passing on their ability. They would have died out quickly otherwise, as the lives of rats—especially the young ones—were far more dangerous than those of most shifter breeds. That Brigid had been born without being able to shift had never made sense.

  “And?” Liam prompted.

  “And she never shifted.” Ann glanced over at him with a faint frown, then shook her head and looked to the window, sighing. “Don said she smelled like ratkin, but his family had always shifted young and she showed no sign of it. He didn’t want to worry her and so kept what she should be from her, deciding when she began to shift, then he could tell her. By the time she was eight and still hadn’t begun shifting, we started thinking the bandraught had been too strong after all. He went back to your colony to ask for assistance from the wisewoman who prepared the draught, but that was when he discovered the attack and you.”

  Liam swallowed hard, automatically reaching out to touch Donny’s soft curls. Only having known the boy a day, he already knew he couldn’t leave him. Not for any real length of time. The thought of turning his back on an orphan just six years older than Donny, of finding work for a grief-stricken child and leaving him to fend for himself among privateers seemed obscene.

  “I see.”

  Ann leaned down to catch his eye, her hands set on her knees through her skirt. “Oh, lad. Don’t look like that. You don�
��t know the burden Don held in his soul for not being able to help you more. Without any hope for Brigid, he had to make a choice. Maybe it wasn’t the right one and it’s one that haunted us both. He wanted a son so badly and would have happily brought you home and cared for you properly, if it hadn’t been for my own selfishness and worry crippling Brigid.”

  “She’s not crippled.” The retort came quickly, with the heat of anger behind it. He glanced toward Donny, then take a deep breath to steady his temper before continuing. His words were polite, but firm. “She’s the strongest woman I’ve ever known. She would have been plenty strong to take the truth if you’d just given her the chance. Not being able to shift is…that’s just a small thing. It’s nothing. Ol’ Donny told me there’re women who’ve been shifting since they were five years old who couldn’t care for a young shifter like Donny. His own mam lost kits, too, and she had a colony. And here Brigid’s raised a healthy lad all by herself.”

  Ann nodded, her eyes moving to Donny. The lad had lost interest in the adults and was now stretched out on his belly, carefully arranging a line of pebbles from his collection. “Aye, she’s done well.”

  Liam went quiet, silently wishing the older woman would leave or find something else to focus herself on. That she loved Brigid was clear enough, but he found it difficult to forgive her for the lies she had allowed Brigid to believe. Though he knew he had failed Brigid in countless ways, he could at least comfort himself with the knowledge that he had done so by overestimating her. He had assumed she was too independent, too strong, too wonderful to be with him. He had been wrong, but it hadn’t lowered her in his eyes at all. Instead, it made him wonder if perhaps there had been something worthwhile in himself that she had seen that he had never noticed.

  There was no such comfort in Ann and Donovan’s lies. They had coddled Brigid and assumed she was weak and easily hurt. It had been done in love, but it had also been done on the assumption that everything about Brigid that had ever amazed him wasn’t true.

  When Ann returned to her chair, Liam glanced up to watch her. “How did she manage? She said he started shifting at three months.”

  Ann clasped her hands loosely in her lap, pressing her lips together as her eyes looked toward the ceiling, as if that held the answer to Liam’s question. “She began preparing as soon as she was sure she was carrying. She knitted tiny little pouches to hold a kit close to her body so she could keep him warm and collected glass straws from distilling to use for feeding him. His every moment was spent in her arms until he started walking. He never even had a chance to crawl. I suppose that’s why she gives him such freedom now, since she couldn’t give him a breath of it before.”

  “That’s remarkable.”

  “Aye, it is.”

  For the first time, Liam noticed just how much Ann was fidgeting. Her fingers were fiddling with her overskirt and she had barely stayed in one spot for longer than a minute since he had begun questioning her. He wondered if, perhaps, he wasn’t the only one uncomfortable in having to make conversation.

  She looked up from her hands and caught his eye. “Now why is it you asked her to marry you?”

  The answer was easy. “Because I don’t ever want to lose her again.”

  “And did you tell her that was why?”

  He paused, then felt a wave of hot embarrassment crawl up his cheeks. No, he hadn’t said a thing about how he felt or what he wanted. He had spoken of Donny and societal expectations. Had that been what had made her so angry?

  “Not exactly.”

  CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

  SUBMISSION AND LOVE

  “WE arrived late last night and haven’t had much of a chance to settle, but I can get the guest rooms set up for you and your family.”

  Brigid followed the small dark-haired woman through the three-story stone house, set at the heart of the city. The house seemed quite large for two people without any children, making her wonder if Siobhan and her husband planned on filling it. Such a question was beyond rude to ask, though. For all she knew, they were trying or had suffered miscarriages. There were many things that the friends had shared over the years, but some personal matters were best left alone.

  The wealth of the port had lent itself toward a number of large homes. There was poverty, as there is anywhere with wealth, but all who relied on the sea for their living tended to do relatively well. Most of the poverty was restricted to women and children without a man’s support, or else those who had been freed from slavery. Many former slaves as well as those who ran away from their masters moved inland, to join the communities there of Jamaican Maroons. The communities had begun when the English took Jamaica from the Spanish. As the Spanish fled, they left behind large numbers of their African slaves. Those who had been abandoned—or marooned—had moved away from the English and into the island’s interior.

  The diversity of the island was remarkable, particularly to those who had come from far more homogenous communities in England. That diversity was still largely segregated outside of port cities like Port Royal, but in the ports French buccaneers, former slaves who had taken to sail and others all interacted freely.

  Brigid caught the other woman’s arm before she could lead the way upstairs. “Oh no, please, Siobhan. Don’t trouble yourself. I think we’ll be staying at the inn.”

  That made Siobhan turn with shock. There was a faint hint of hurt in her eyes as well. “You will? Why?”

  “Liam is there.” She hadn’t intended on blurting it out quite like that, but once it was said there was no bringing it back in again. At the very least, it helped guard against hurting Siobhan’s feelings.

  Any hint of offense vanished from Siobhan’s face. She took hold of Brigid’s hands and tugged her in to the parlour. The two women had exchanged information to call on one another after they had met four years previously. When Siobhan came calling at the farm, Brigid had confessed that she and Liam had been lying and had never been married. Siobhan had confessed to being a pirate. The mutual lies had formed an odd bond between them.

  “Your Liam? And you want to stay near him?”

  Brigid frowned as she settled into a chair, thinking for a moment on how best to answer that question. “It’s not about what I want. Donny needs to get to know his father.”

  “It’s always about what you want,” Siobhan countered defiantly as she took the chair opposite Brigid. “A happy mother is a better mother. You can’t martyr yourself without making everyone around yourself miserable. Believe me; there were good reasons I didn’t want to follow in my mam’s footsteps.”

  “I do want to be with him.” Brigid shook her head in annoyance. “I shared his bed last night.”

  Siobhan leaned back in her chair with a beaming smile. “There! See? Isn’t that better than laying the burden of your decisions at your son’s feet?”

  The questions were beginning to make Brigid feel claustrophobic. There had been no way around telling Siobhan that Liam had returned to their lives, yet she didn’t feel at all ready to discuss this new turn of events. “I don’t know. Liam asked me to marry him.”

  “Is he happy about Donny?”

  Brows drawn together, Brigid nodded slowly. She had often wondered what Liam would think of Donny. His response hadn’t matched any of her expectations. A few fantasies she had dismissed as hopelessly childish, aye, but no honest expectations. “Aye, he seems thrilled.”

  “Is he still good to you?”

  “As good as a man can be in one day and night.”

  Siobhan leaned forward with a frown. “But there’s something troubling you.”

  There had been so few girls for Brigid to befriend when she was a child. Having Siobhan as a friend—even if it was primarily through letters and a few visits a year—was a great source of pleasure. However, Siobhan’s remarkable gift at always seeing through what Brigid wanted to keep to herself could be trying at times.

  “I’d lose all of my freedom,” Brigid blurted out. “All of my property, all
of my earnings, it would all become his. If I didn’t want to stay with him, I’d have no choice. I couldn’t leave without being tracked down like a runaway slave. He could beat me or sell off everything I own and there wouldn’t be a thing I could do.”

  Siobhan cocked her head slightly; her expression betrayed nothing of her thoughts. “And is Liam likely to do all of that?”

  “No. At least, I don’t think so.” Brigid shook her head with a sigh. “I know him as a crewmate and a lover, not as a husband. And it’s been four years, besides.”

  There was silence between them for a moment, before Siobhan clapped her hands together with finality. “Then don’t marry him.”

  Brigid stared at Siobhan for a moment as she digested that. “What?”

  “Don’t marry him,” said Siobhan slowly. “You value your freedom more than the security of having a husband, so don’t give that freedom up. I enjoy being Sebastian’s property and being entirely under his will, but you’ve seemed conflicted about giving power to a man from the first time I spoke to you. So don’t marry him. Be his mistress, or be nothing to him at all.”

  The explanation seemed almost obscene. Brigid raised a hand to rub at the worry wrinkle she could feel forming between her eyes. “Did you really marry Sebastian because you wanted to give up freedom?”

  “Not exactly. I still have freedom, but my freedom is shared with him.” Siobhan gestured vaguely, looking off into the air for a moment as though lost in memories. “What we do, we do together. Our decisions are his decisions to make, but I trust him. I can tell him what I’d prefer or if I have a concern about something, but the decision is ultimately his. I like it that way, but if I was unhappy with our situation, I know that he’d do his best to change things to make me happy. So I don’t see it as a loss of freedom, because I’m doing exactly what I want. If you don’t think you could have that with Liam or it wouldn’t make you happy, then don’t marry him.”