Chapter 41
The meeting time was set. The Jubilee at six. Better to convene in public than in a back-alley duel, Mary figured. Besides, their private business was about as public as waving a flag to the whole of Nassau.
“I don’t want any guts or brains spilled on these new tables, you hear, Read?
” Huxley barked as he puttered around and stirred the bubbling contents of the cast-iron pot with more energy than Mary had ever known him to show.
He snatched a bottle of rum, paused, then took a swig before handing it over to Mary to deliver to the anticipated guests.
“It won’t come to that,” she said. For a moment, she contemplated poisoning Bonny’s drink. Not that she would. She had sworn off killing after the war, and this wasn’t her mess to clean up.
Fewer risks, she berated herself for the hundredth time in the past two days.
Stop intervening and get out fast. Her stomach swirled with mild nausea from the meaty fumes coming from the kitchen, but she tried to ignore it.
The sooner all this was behind her—with Anne and Rackham sailing into the sunset and away from her quiet life—the better.
Bonny arrived first, flanked with three other men not in uniform. “Rackham better show,” he growled. He slunk into a seat and flung an arm over the neighboring chair.
“He will,” Mary answered, straightening her posture to exude strength. She knew better than to ask the men to hand off their weapons. There was always a hidden dagger somewhere. It would only waste time to ask.
Bonny tossed Mary a coin, the payment for organizing a meeting after he accepted that she either did not know, or would not tell him, where Anne was hiding.
She passed the coin to Thomas, who pocketed it with more haste than needed.
A few onlookers eyed the scene while sipping their ale from a safe distance.
The door flew open, and in stormed Rackham. Alone. He balled his fists, then relaxed them. Huxley offered all his usual pleasantries and tried to put him at ease.
He needn’t have bothered. Rackham didn’t need directions to take the seat facing Bonny. Rackham glared hard enough to shatter glass. He leaned his elbows on the round oak table, his jaw glowing red in the hearth light.
“Settle this,” Mary said, infusing her voice with a confidence that she didn’t feel at the moment, the self-assuredness that projected male authority.
She hadn’t been at ease since talking with Anne the night before in the rowboat.
“For the sake of all of us in New Providence.” She shoved a bottle toward Bonny.
“You know better than to bring Governor Rogers into this part of town—if you value your life at all,” she said.
Then she pushed a decanter of Meridian toward Rackham.
“And you. You have a record to keep clean and the funds to put this right.”
The vein in Rackham’s throat twitched. “There’s nothing to make right. She divorced this blunderbuss well before meeting me.”
Bonny slammed his palm against the table. “Not that ‘Brehon law’ backwater nonsense again. It doesn’t hold here or anywhere else. You’ve been whoring around with my wife in plain sight!”
Rackham sprang, and Mary slammed her hand against the table. “Sort this out,” she said with a deafening whisper. “If you want Anne to go free.”
Rackham settled into his chair as a crooked smile stretched over Bonny’s face.
“No sense in arguing about whether or not Anne was or is married—it’s an impasse,” Mary continued.
“What matters now is whether or not she is still married by the end of the week. And that depends entirely on you.” It shouldn’t, Mary noted in the back of her mind.
Anne should have a say. Mary may have lost Bjorn to the grips of death and had the Three Horse-Shoes taken from under her when Bjorn’s property went to his family instead of his widow, but she had never felt like a pawn on a chessboard when it came to her heart.
She at least imagined she had some control over her life since the day she left Southwick’s crew.
“James Bonny. Under what conditions would you grant Anne a divorce?”
Bonny’s lip curled. “The governor doesn’t believe in divorce.”
“I’m not asking what that tyrant believes.” The other guests muttered at the mention of Governor Rogers. “I’m asking what it would take for you to give up Anne as your wife.”
As Bonny scratched his patchy beard, Rackham cursed and took a decisive, furious gulp of wine. He slammed it on the table, and liquid sloshed over the sides.
“A man’s property has value, does it not?” Bonny said at last. “To say nothing of the trouble it’s cost ’im. Anne has wreaked havoc on me, and on my reputation.”
“And what a fine, fine reputation that is!” Rackham growled, then turned to Mary. “How much longer do I have to endure this drivel? Anne should be sainted for staying with him as long as she did.”
Mary threw him a look so severe it silenced him.
“As I was saying before I was rudely interrupted by this esteemed … gentleman,” Bonny droned. “Not only do these damages have to be taken into account, but there is also the matter of the debt she pledged before our marriage. A dowry I never received.”
Rackham stood. “You lying, sniveling scum. She owes you nothing and you know it.”
Bonny rose and leaned into his opponent. “She lies,” he breathed. A strand of oily hair fell into his face.
“I could crush you with a single blow like a cockroach,” Rackham snarled. “That might make things easier.”
“But hardly legal,” Bonny taunted. “And you so dearly want to avoid the noose a second time, no doubt.”
Before someone threw a punch, Mary stepped between them and calmly pulled out her pistol as a warning.
The two backed down, and she lowered her gun.
Her pulse hammered as she fought for balance.
Sweat beaded on her forehead. She felt like she’d swallowed an entire swamp.
The room spun, but she blinked to force the spell aside.
“Your price, Bonny. We all grow impatient.”
Bonny puffed his chest. He looked around at what Mary could only assume he mistook as admirers.
“I have a number in mind. But to make this a little more lawful—being the only one here who thinks that matters—we have to go about it in a proper way. An uncommon method but, nonetheless, a vetted tradition.”
All attention snapped on Bonny. His gray eyes lit anew, as if relishing the dramatic pause and power.
“Go on …” Mary said. Her stomach seized. She tasted bile. This development she hadn’t foreseen. Why couldn’t he take the payment and run?
“Tomorrow in the main square, I propose a wife sale.”
A collective gasp came from around the room as Bonny spun on Rackham, whose jaw hung open in horror.
No. Mary gagged. Her hand clamped over her mouth.
“Read?” she heard Thomas whisper.
“Pay me my sum,” Bonny continued, “and you—or anyone else—can buy her through a proper sale.”
No, no, no …
Without another warning, up came the contents of Mary’s stomach—all over James Bonny.
“What happened?” Thomas asked the moment they returned home.
Mary set aside her pistol and tugged off her shirt. Her breasts felt sore. She sat on the bed and unwound the tight wrap over her chest while avoiding Thomas’s gaze. She did not like the worried way he looked at her since Anne had insinuated the impossible.
An impossibility that was feeling more and more possible.
Thomas sat on the edge of the cot and took her hand.
“It’s just not like you,” he said gently. “What’s going on?”
Mary coiled the fabric of the brace and tossed it on top of a trunk. “Must have eaten some bad meat. I admit I found it satisfying, taking Bonny’s arrogance down a notch before he ran out.”
“People were shocked.”
“It’s hardly surprising to find vomit in a tavern. I’ve cleaned up my share of it.”
“Not surprising? When everyone knows you well as the only person in Nassau who doesn’t drink?
” He paused. “It’s not just that either,” Thomas said.
He drummed a thumb against his leg. “All of this—it’s so out of character.
Taking in a stranger. Compromising our position—your job, our … arrangement.”
Mary leaned forward and buried her head in her hands.
She’d always been clear with Thomas about her feelings.
She cared for him and valued his friendship, but she knew what love was.
She’d drunken deeply from that infinite well.
Mary would not disgrace its sweetness by calling something else by the same name.
Thomas, in turn, took what she could give.
They had a mutual understanding and basic respect.
Sharing expenses helped them both get by.
She overlooked his history as a thief. And the comfort of a warm body in the depth of night kept the ghosts away.
In those moments of lust, throwing down her many cares and pent up fears, a storm burst in her.
She could almost pretend she was still alive then.
That there was something left of her body, even if her soul had gone with Bjorn.
Thomas was not Bjorn, and he knew it. But he gave her a lot, and she did not want to lose him.
“You are usually so careful. So cautious.”
“I know,” Mary said, wincing at the thought of having to tell Anne about the wife sale. This was about Anne, and it also wasn’t about Anne. “I just couldn’t step aside this time. It wasn’t right.” At last she found his dark eyes. “I’m sorry.”
He stilled for a moment, then placed his head on her shoulder. She put her arms around him. The single bed in that single plain room felt like a raft in a big, bitter sea.
“I imagine it wasn’t pleasant, approaching Rackham,” Mary said.
“I can’t say it was a pleasure.” She felt him laugh. “But at least we’ve earned a few coins by arranging this. Maybe we can make a business of meddling in our neighbors’ affairs?”
Thomas nuzzled into her, and they tumbled onto their backs. She thought he might start kissing her, but instead, he leveled a look at her that made her uneasy, that strange look like she might be fragile or something worse. “Is it … possible? What Anne suggested?”
Mary shook her head as if to push away the truth settling in her veins.
But could it be true?
A child?
Her child?
“I don’t know anymore,” she said. A wave of lightness rose in her chest.
“Is there a way to know?” he asked. “Something that can be done? It’s hard to imagine how we’d manage it. This would change everything.”
Mary breathed. She heard his fretting, his fear. An oceanic pain swelled in her heart, and she rose.
It should be Bjorn’s, too.
“Mary?”
“Which one of us is going to fetch Anne and tell her what awaits her?” Mary said. “That is the only question we can answer for certain tonight.”