Chapter 35
New Providence, Nassau
“Read, did you hear? The Ranger’s pulling into harbor,” Huxley grumbled when Mary entered the Jubilee’s smoky kitchen. “Spotted not thirty minutes ago.”
“Mmm,” she said without surprise, hanging up her jacket and tucking a rag into her belt. Rackham always returned after making stops to his mistresses at every port. Rumor said he had four in Havana alone. What had it been, a year? He was overdue.
“I figured you’d be interested in that morsel of news,” the cook said, his tongue peeking out of the corner of his mouth as he chopped an onion. “I thought you were fond of the girl. You sure fussed after her enough.”
“Assuming she’s still with him,” Mary said.
“But yes, I am fond of her. Like an older brother would be,” she emphasized, taking a place beside Huxley to dice the remaining heap of vegetables for the stew.
The smell left her slightly nauseous. Was there rot in the potatoes?
“But she’s capable of making her own choices.
” In truth, Mary wasn’t sure at all whether that fluff of red hair knew her way around the world—not with that tiny knife she wielded.
But voicing her concerns with Anne seemed to do little by way of impressions.
And didn’t the young deserve to learn their own lessons? She certainly had.
Besides, maybe her unflattering views of Rackham weren’t fair—he’d taken up the king’s plea, and perhaps other pardons, to reform and turn the Ranger into a standard merchant ship.
Given up his womanizing? Doubtful, but possible.
Since losing Bjorn and the inn when his father, Lord Van Acker, sold it away, Mary’s shadowed view of the world clouded her judgments.
She felt like a crystal decanter that had fallen off a shelf.
Someone might try to reforge the glass—and it may still hold wine—but it would never reflect light the same way again.
There she went again. Bjorn, God rest his soul, might have appreciated the poetics. But Mary’s own sadness bored her.
“And what of Bonny?” Huxley asked.
“What of him?” Though men might complain about gossiping wenches, Huxley—among many others Mary had known—delighted in hearsay. Two years of living in a pirates’ den had taught her that much.
“You didn’t hear?”
Mary, exasperated, pressed her palms to the table.
Her silver wedding ring clanked against the wood.
Thomas, whatever he was to her, disapproved of her continuing to wear it—especially when it could fetch some coin.
But she’d be dead before it came off her finger, and he’d stopped bringing up the issue as they lay in bed.
“Hear what?” she asked.
“Bonny’s waiting to intercept them and take back his wife,” Huxley said.
At this, Mary turned. “Does Anne know?” How did Huxley know, for that matter?
“Seein’ as he has the governor involved? I think not. Rackham won’t like that a bit—having his woman snatched away, with Rogers sniffing around his ship.”
She swiveled to face Huxley. “Has anyone tried to warn her?”
He shrugged.
Mary threw her head back and groaned. She was far too tired for this. But by the time Huxley could respond, she was halfway out the door.
Mary tore through the streets. She nearly knocked over a merchant leading a goat by a halter, then narrowly darted out of the way to escape the collision. Her heart pounded. It was odd to feel it pound like that again.
Don’t be too late, an old instinct scolded.
Don’t do anything impulsive.
Don’t draw attention to yourself.
Her stomach sank when she saw the lowered sails of the Ranger already anchored in port. She ran the length of the pier, chest heaving. A crowd had gathered, blocking her view. She craned her neck and glimpsed a snatch of unruly red hair.
“Take your disgusting hands off me!” the familiar voice screamed.
It ripped through the air like rent canvas.
A soldier pinned down her flailing arms. Behind Anne stood James Bonny and Governor Rogers himself—looking grave in his red uniform.
His left cheek bore that famed musket-ball scar from his privateering days.
Or was it from his years as a slaver with the East India Trade Company?
Vile man. Rogers had two dozen soldiers with him, the only way he’d dare to show his face on this side of Nassau.
He’d gotten bolder since shutting down the uprising two years ago.
This town of buccaneers, rebels, rogues, renegades, and freed men and women who’d escaped the horrors of slavery, all depended on the governor’s absence and fear of them.
The people had ruled themselves before Rogers arrived with orders to rid the town of piracy.
“What’s the meaning of this?” Rackham shouted, his teeth bared. “By what right?”
“By the right of being her husband,” Bonny spat, daring a step forward now that three soldiers stood guard around Rackham.
Rackham lunged and one of the guards caught his fist.
“You are not my husband,” Anne said to Bonny.
The gawkers seemed to be enjoying the spectacle, Mary observed with distaste.
Better someone else than them, especially a woman.
They called New Providence a “free place” for all, but talk proved cheap.
That phrase never gave Mary the confidence to give up her disguise as a man, which she’d taken up the year following Bjorn’s death.
It was a fearful decision, a retreat into a past she wasn’t fond of.
But she had been Mark before she’d learned to be Mary, and Mark paid the bills.
Only the crew that had brought her here two years ago knew her true sex, before she’d gone back into hiding upon reaching Nassau.
Anne clawed and screamed as a soldier locked her elbow behind her back and led her away to a carriage. Mary tried to catch her eye, but Anne never stopped searching for Rackham.
“It’ll be all right, Bon,” Rackham yelled after her, his voice betraying his own despair.
And it was, Mary saw, genuine despair. The raw anguish on his face stirred something in Mary.
Memories. Bjorn’s expression when he’d taught her how to read by drawing in the mud with a stick.
The intensity of his look when he’d chased her to the outskirts of camp.
The softness of his touch when his fingers curled around hers all those nights in their marriage bed.
Those same kind eyes shifting to deadly daggers if any patrons of the Three Horse-Shoes so much as hinted at a sign of disrespect against Mary.
She knew, oh how she knew—over the course of ten extraordinary years—what it was to be loved.
Perhaps Captain Rackham was a reformed man. Maybe he cared for Anne after all.
The crowd parted to make way for the procession of soldiers with Governor Rogers at the center. Bonny had the nerve to stay behind, flanked by guards. “Next time, whore about with someone else’s wife.”
Rackham’s face reddened as the soldiers raised their bayonets to his throat. “Name. Your. Price,” he growled.
The onlookers gasped. Bonny appeared small and lanky in the presence of a man with a reputation and build like Rackham’s. Bonny seemed drunk on the reversal of power. He huffed with satisfaction, then stalked off, leaving Rackham shaking with rage on the pier.
“It’s all right, Captain,” one of his men tried to say. “We’ll get her back. We’ll—”
Rackham swung around and tore at his hair.
Mary gauged the crowd, which had once again pressed together to watch the dramatic scene. It was, Mary admitted, one of the more exciting events of the summer. But she’d gotten distracted.
Don’t do anything impulsive.
Don’t draw attention to yourself.
And yet, her feet moved. Mary slipped away to be nearer to the carriage. To overhear, if she could, where Bonny was taking Anne.