Captain Will Stokes appreciated a pretty turn of phrase, but not like this. Not fourteen at a time, eighty or so in a row, all rhyming and insipid and just a mite too clever for his tired brain. By four o’clock, when Peter rang the eight bells for morning watch, Will’s eyes were crossing and he had only trudged through half of Maggie’s book of sonnets.

The candle flame guttered in its puddle of wax, forcing a much-needed break. As he searched for another candle, he rolled his tight shoulders, grimacing. There had to be something in this warped little book that captured what he wanted to tell her. But the verses were so dismal! Was this Shakespeare fellow plagued by love or loathing? How many variations on the same dreary themes would he endure tonight? 

And yet, Maggie treasured this book, even though the pages stuck together, and the binding had been sewn and re-sewn, and white salt stains crusted the leather folio. Out of the stack of trunks and bags she brought aboard a twelvemonth ago, this was one of the few items she had kept. His new candle wick flared as an uncharitable thought sprang to mind: it was no wonder she suffered unworthy men. If her education joined love together with pain, convincing her that indulging the latter would sustain the former, then cruelty must have seemed to her the pinnacle of romance. 

How proud he had been when she told him she was free of Matthew Kent. And how desperately he had struggled to hide his glee, still struggled. But not for long. Somewhere in this book, he would discover the words he needed, words worthy of her, and at last she would know his heart was hers to take or leave. He would reach for happiness before it was too late.

He returned to his chore, but the more pages he turned, the more he despaired. By the increasingly histrionic language of farewelling and forsaking, the poet and his lover appeared to be in a mighty quarrel. Will had only to read the words “then hate me when thou wilt” to discard the next poem, and he flipped four pages in pique before regaining some sense. This wasn’t a task he could afford to leave unfinished.

The ninety-first sonnet began with an innocuous, even tedious, list: birth, skill, wealth, strength, an overview of the sorts of things men boast about possessing. He would have skimmed past the rest, but his gaze snagged on the middle line, the one that always sent the theme in a new direction.

“Thy love is better,” the poet wrote.

The force of it had him leaning back in his chair. Maggie constantly belittled herself, dismissing and redirecting compliments, assuring all who listened that she had no worth. Even the other day, when she went up against Bisset and emerged victorious, she refused to crow about it. To be loved by her would be a greater treasure than any in his hold, greater than his ship, his house, his reputation, and yet he was certain she would never believe it even if he told her every day. And by God’s teeth, he would, if given a chance.

Now, something to mark the page. There had to be a piece of string about. Wandering the room, he rifled through shelves and drawers until he uncovered a dirty stack of old sailcloth, folded in neat quarters. Had he truly kept it all this time? He shook it out and held it up in the candlelight: a section of the first sail his father had let him help replace. Even at eleven, he had been an insufferable braggart, begging the sailmaker to let him cut away a trophy to show his mother. He had trailed it in the air overhead like a flag.

Thy love is better.

With a knife, he sliced an untidy corner off the artifact and lodged it in the book’s gutter, then shut it quickly as if it could sense his apprehension. What if she didn’t guess who had stolen her sonnets? Worse yet, what if she didn’t understand? 

But she was Maggie. She was too wise not to guess.

Will rubbed his eyes, relieved it had only taken ninety-one tries. At fourteen stanzas each, how many lines was that altogether? He snickered to himself as he blew out the candle. That was Maggie’s domain.

That evening, he wrapped his hand around his beer mug and squeezed to dispel his agitation. The blessed noise of the Midsummer festivities distracted him from his thoughts at regular intervals. Otherwise, he would go mad dwelling on the book he had just returned to Maggie’s cabin. 

Was he a fool? Ellen had told him so last Christmas, and even though the reasoning had changed, he was still inclined to agree with her. Before, Maggie’s betrothal placed her beyond his reach. Now, she was his inferior officer on a ship where coupling was forbidden—a choice he had made. What did he think was going to happen if she miraculously reciprocated his feelings? Would they shake hands and carry on as mates? No, not when he could finally touch her, comb his fingers through her loosened hair, press his lips to her skin and breathe her. 

The realization washed over him in a cold wave. He had been thinking only of what he would gain, when he should have been considering how much he would lose.

With a glance over the heads of the rowdy crewmen to ensure he spotted her white coif among them, he mounted the quarter deck stairs and snuck into Maggie’s cabin for the second time in ten minutes. The cruel thing sat square in the center of the shelf-like table, the leather tie unbound, exactly as he had positioned it. He snatched it back and made his escape, still clutching his beer mug in his other hand.

The door had yet to latch behind him before he realized his error. Why steal the whole book when he could have retrieved just the sailcloth bookmark? Now he had landed back where he started. He groaned. It wasn’t like him to dash head-first into things without considering every angle. Then again, he had never experienced anything as terrifying as professing love, so he couldn’t be too hard on himself.

Before he could fix his mistake, footsteps thundered on the stairs and Padraig appeared. 

“Sunset,” he said. “Still wantin’ to make a speech for the lads?”

“Aye.” Will flourished the book. “I had a notion to look over Maggie’s ledger, but it can wait. Get a drink in each man’s hand while I put this by.” 

Padraig nodded, as if his captain always took a break from a feast to do clerical work, and returned to the main deck while Will collected himself in his cabin. 

The easy lie left him oddly shaken. If he couldn’t be honest with his first mate, did he even deserve to give a Midsummer speech to the crew? What could he say that would ring true? He thought of Maggie, of course, because that was all he had thought about for three days. When Sir Nicholas Seger of the English ship Vigilant conducted that unwelcome inspection, one false step would have seen them all hanged. But Maggie stood beside him throughout the ordeal, so willing to cast her lot with him that she offered to playact as his wife, and he understood something new. If life was as grim, unjust, and short as he knew it to be, he would rather live it with her. 

Stowing Maggie’s book on a shelf, he went out to face them all.

It was a brief speech, but poignant enough to rouse whoops and stomps from a crew already drunk on festival rations. The chief subject had been men of action seizing opportunities, with a bit about “fine food and finer company” that may have been the result of imbibing too much poetry recently. Hopefully, everyone would forget it after a few more drinks, himself included. He refilled his mug from the keg and swallowed the lot in a few huge gulps to blur the sharp edges of this… ill humor. He hesitated to assign it a poetical name, lest he become no better than a sentimental bard. Everyone knew love was agony without having to devote ten-score sonnets to the idea.

Love, for her part, sat with the musicians, her flute idle in her lap, swaying her shoulders in time to the beat. She looked happier than he had seen her of late, and he had missed the way that gentle smile warmed his belly. His own speech returned to him, a taunting, slurring echo: We are men of action. What if he asked her to dance? What if she agreed? 

What was the harm, really? It was a dance, not a proposal. 

Reckless with optimism, he crossed the deck to her and held out his hand. “Up you get, Bailey.”

For an eternal moment, she only stared at him, her expression vacant. 

Suddenly he regretted his decision. “I see you find me lacking.”

“Gramercy,” she said, “but I am not dancing. I have turned down every lad who asked.”

“And true to form, I took it as a challenge.” He glanced at the drunken dancers. “There’s the second set. Think you’ll make your choice in time for the final bow?”

“I have said I am not dancing. What makes you believe you will succeed where others have failed?”

“My good looks and shapely legs.”

“I am sore tempted.” 

Her tone sounded sincere, but he knew better: if she liked him less, she would have already ended this with a cold dismissal. So he pushed his luck. “Come. A bonny lass should dance on Midsummer. ’Tis writ in the Bible, methinks.”

“Aye, St. Paul’s letter to the Corinthians.”

Such wit and beauty in one person was hardly fair, and he hid an inane smile. “’Tis nearly the final set. Dance with me.”

“Do you command it?”

The merry twinkle in her eyes vanished, and his stomach dropped. How many men had imposed their will on her? He refused to be one of them. “Of course not,” he said.

“Then I thank you for your kind offer, but I decline.”

This was always how it would end, how it should end, but he hid his disappointment in the usual manner. “Mayhap that is the wise choice. I was like to confound you with my dancing prowess. I should hate to embarrass you.”

“Embarrass me? Do not forget, sir, I studied under a very expensive dance master for much of my childhood. I warrant I am your match, at the least.”

“Prove it.”

“You first. No doubt one of the lads will stand up with you.”

“I do not make a habit of dancing with my crew.”

She arched her brow. “You asked me.”

Her bolt struck its mark. Last summer, she surprised him by demanding the chance to swear loyalty to the Merrow, behaving as a member of his crew even after he refused. Now, with her name writ in the roster, there was no denying her status. If she were anything other than what she was, he could fall in love with her.

So he conveniently forgot, because she was, and he had, and God be damned.

“If I cannot dance,” he said, plucking her empty mug from the table, “I may at least make myself useful.”

Old Mullins was next in line at the keg, but seeing Will, he touched his forelock and stepped aside. Will shook his head. “Be a good lad and taste it for me,” he teased, “lest it be spoilt.” Mullins chuckled and moved back to his position, and Will felt someone join the line behind him.

“Drinkin’ double, are you?” Padraig leaned over Will’s shoulder and peered at the empty mugs.

He lifted the one in his right hand. “For Maggie.”

“Is it, now?” 

His mate’s tone cooled, as it did when anyone mentioned Maggie, and Will compensated by donning a bright, innocent smile. “She wished not to dance, but ’tis no reason to go thirsty.”

“Seems she has more sense than you.”

Mullins finished his turn at the keg, and Will stepped forward. Padraig draped his arm over the curved barrel, facing him, and lowered his voice. “You’d best leave her be, Will. The talk is damnin’ enough. Get the lads worked up any more, and you’ll have yourself a mutiny.”

Will kept his eyes on the first mug as it filled with the brown liquid, its gentle effervescence developing a creamy film at the top. “’Twas but a dance I wanted. Am I to suffer all the trammels of a forbidden love affair, and none of the joys?”

“By all the saints…” 

“’Tis a jest, MacCraith. You remember jests?”

Padraig leveled him a weary glare, but Will staved off more ominous warnings by toasting him with both full mugs and walking away.

When he returned to her, Maggie accepted the mug with a smile. “I enjoyed your speech. ’Twas both grim and inspiring.”

“Just as I intended, then,” he replied, taking the chair beside hers.

“You were rather shaken by Sir Nicholas’s inspection, I suppose.”

“You were not?”

“I was shaken, but methinks I trusted we would survive.”

“You have more trust than I. Which of us is the fool?”

“’Tis I, certes,” she said, laughing. “I have not your experience to know I am a fool.”

“I have no experience swinging from the gallows, yet I know how easily I may find myself there. I could be hanged tomorrow.”

“Nay! You could not be hanged so early as tomorrow.” He cocked his head as she grinned over the mug’s rim. “You must suffer through a trial first. ‘Twould be the day after tomorrow, at the earliest.”

The laughter in her sea-green eyes, the creases beside her smiling mouth, her freckles like a dusting of precious spices, all etched themselves onto his mind. This was how he would remember her, he vowed, no matter what happened. If his crew turned on him, if a well-aimed cannonball sent the Merrow to the depths, if Sir Nicholas of the Vigilant marched him to the gallows… He would have this memory of Maggie to usher him beyond. Whichever direction his wicked soul was sent.

A tiny crease appeared between her brows. “What fault do you find in me?”

None, he wanted to say. None. But he sipped his beer and looked away.

Then she stood, told him “Up you get, captain,” and pulled him into the dance, and for five cruel minutes, while the other lads busied themselves with their steps and their squares, Will had Maggie all to himself. Long enough for the spell to trick him into believing this was right, this was safe, this was nobody’s business but theirs. 

At the end, when an unexpected swell tilted the ship away from her unpracticed feet, he caught her with more agility than he had any right to in his addled state. He would be there to catch her every day if she let him, but he would be a lieutenant, not a protector. Someone who wouldn’t hide her or hold her back, but who would right her when she stumbled. Because she deserved it, he reminded himself, not only because it felt so good to hold her.

She glanced down at his hand gripping her upper arm, and the mirth drained from her face. “We must make way for the next dance.”

He trailed her back to her seat, furious and frightened and desperate to right whatever wrong made her look at him like that. “Will you have another?”

“In faith, I should not have had this one.” She grumbled it under her voice as if it wasn’t for him to hear, which made it sting worse. With a bright smile, she added, “Your festival rations are too generous, and I am poor company when I am in my cups.”

Making glib excuses to diffuse uncomfortable situations was his specialty, and he was eager to follow her lead. He could still salvage this if he chose the right words. “I do not agree. The more you drink, the more charming I appear.”

They were the wrong words. Her face hardened, and as the lads lit the lamps to continue the merrymaking, the gold flames glistened in her tearful eyes. “Methinks I have endured enough teasing for one night.”

Teasing? 

How could she think it? He had tracked her down, begged for a dance, nearly slavered over her like a besotted hound, and she believed it all a game? He wanted to hold her face in his hands and make her look into his eyes, make her see there was no lie there, but it would do no good. She thought too little of him to believe him sincere.

Padraig was right; he should have taken better care. He pulled too hard on the line, and it snapped. There was nothing to do but retreat.

Men’s faces tilted up in interest as he passed them, but he ignored them until he made it to his cabin, latched the door, and had a bottle of strong ale in his hand.

The book of sonnets fell to the floor with a dull smack. 

He had forgotten he had wedged it up there, and the violent reminder of it made him more determined than ever to be rid of it. He tossed it on the table, and for a few long moments, he only stared at the space above its blurry shape. Then he sat and opened it to the marked page. 

The words he chose in the dark before dawn were dreamlike, and he read them anew, line by line, matching up the rhyming couplets. He studied it, pulled it apart, found himself memorizing it. But why? He planned to return the unmarked book and forget the whole business. 

Still, if the need to recite some sentimental drivel ever arose… 

The first quatrain he would murmur like a prayer, he decided, matching the rise and fall of his voice to the hilly cadence of the poetry. Then, perhaps, to emphasize the five strong beats, he would take her hand and press his lips to each fingertip. Five fingers, two hands… That would carry him through another couplet. 

For the third quatrain, he would have to go more broadly, charting a course over the surface of her skin. He would begin with the arch of her foot and yaw around the curve of her heel for the first beat. The second would begin at her ankle and end at her calf, then continue through the soft valley behind her knee to the supple swell of her hip for the third. He would fall at her waist, rise at her breast, traverse the hollow at the base of her throat, and crest her chin to end the stanza at her lips. 

From here, the fantasy devolved, and potent images as tangible as memories shook off the poem’s tenuous hold. A kiss could never remain just a kiss, not when he dreamed of Maggie. At first, he imagined her bold and unrestrained, guiding his hands to where she needed him, showing him how to love her. Then, because he couldn’t guess how it would be, he began again with a Maggie who was bashful and naïve, wonder in her eyes with each new caress, her gentle sounds acting as his way posts on the path to her fulfillment. 

He lost himself in designing fancies, envisioning how she would react, anticipating what she would need. No man in her past could have devoted himself to her as utterly as he vowed to do. Matthew Kent, for one, seemed uninterested in anyone’s pleasure but his own, and none of her lovers had had the benefit of Ellen’s expert tutelage. With Will, Maggie would be worthy of worship.

A quiet knock brought the book of sonnets back into sharp focus. He stuffed it in the front of his doublet as he got up to open the door.

There she stood, direct from his fantasies: red hair unbound and mussed, as if he had tangled it in his phantom fingers. 

And… wet for some reason.

“Forgive me for disturbing you,” she said, stepping past him into the room at his invitation.

Checking the corridor for witnesses, he swung the door closed, then latched it in a sudden burst of wild hope. He breathed to calm his racing heart and leaned carelessly against the closed door. “How may I be of service?”

She hesitated. “The day we encountered the Vigilant… I suggested we masquerade as husband and wife…”

“Aye.”

“So I asked Lloyd to move my things in here…”

“I remember as if ‘twere only days ago.”

“Have you seen my coif?”

He made himself blink as if he hadn’t heard her right. “Your coif?” It came out too bewildered, as if he had never heard the word. 

“My second one,” she explained. “Leigh spilled his beer, and I was obliged to change caps, but I cannot find it.”

“He spilled beer on your head?”

“’Tis difficult to explain. I do not doubt the lads will leap at the chance to describe my ignominy on the morrow.” Her speech was rushed, stumbling, adorably nervous. What did she have to be nervous about? He was the criminal about to be found out. “Have you seen it? I cannot go back out there with my head uncovered.”

The idea of his lecherous lads leering at her made his blood rise. Of course she couldn’t go back out there, cap or no.

“Must you?” he asked, begging her answer to be no. Begging her to stay.

“’Tis the surest way I can think to dispel the rumors,” she said. “You know. That I gained my position in an unorthodox manner. That you are flouting your own decree against mixing aboard the ship.” 

He hated hearing her say it. Padraig loved recounting the cruel lies his crew spread belowdecks, but it hurt more coming from Maggie. He had exposed her to such rumors, so he was responsible for the pain they caused her.

“One of the crew has told me he intends to expose this lie as if ’twere the truth,” she went on. “I merely wish to continue on as I have been, proving my innocence however I can.”

“Who is it threatens you?” Driscoll, probably. Blackmail required the right combination of sadistic, bold, and stupid. 

“’Tis well in hand. I meant not to trouble you with it.” She flicked her hand. “Now it appears I have followed you to your cabin, so I must needs find my cap and return to the festivities.”

He spread his arms, eyes darting to the folded cap he so childishly held back when she came to collect the rest of her things. He told himself it had been for just this purpose, a ploy to lure her back here, to have a moment alone with her. But for three happy days, whenever he caught sight of it, there was an instant in which she lived there as his wife, and he recalled his hand covering hers, the name Margaret Stokes on his tongue. 

It was mad.

She flourished the coif when she found it, and to his relief, she didn’t ask how it got there. “Gramercy,” she said. “Good rest, sir.” A few steps, and she was at the door.

He couldn’t keep her. 

He couldn’t bear to let her go.

“You are returning to that den of vipers, are you?” He crossed his arms and rested his weight on the edge of the table, the picture of nonchalance, but his fingers dug into the muscle of his arm.

“’Tis nothing,” she breezed. “You must not trouble over me.”

“’Tis my ship. I shall trouble over whatever and whomever I please.”

“Then I urge you to choose something of greater value to trouble over.” 

“Will you⎯!” 

His voice rang in the small room, and huge, green eyes stared back at him. He stifled the rest before he frightened her more and anchored himself on the table’s edge, fingers aching as they tried to bend the wood. 

When he had collected himself enough to speak levelly, his words came out a hoarse growl. “’Tis not yours to determine what I value.”

For how dare she underestimate her value again, and to him, of all people? He who stayed up all night to select a poem worthy of her? He who rejoiced when she bargained her way back onto his ship, because he was too great a coward to ask her? He who kept watch not over the treasures that lay in his hold, but over the treasure that lay behind her door?

Pushing himself away from the table, he approached her. Each step was a league, and even when they stood face to face, toe to toe, closer than propriety generally allowed, there was still an ocean to cross. His gaze touched all the soft lines of her face that his fingers couldn’t, and he dragged in a lungful of her. It was all he could take without asking.

The bard’s words were there, polished, ordered, waiting to be put to their ideal use. Thy love is better than high birth to me, he should quote. Richer than wealth, prouder than garments’ cost, of more delight than hawks and horses be. He should take her hand, press it to his heart. And having thee, of all men’s pride I boast.

But he was mute. 

Maggie met his gaze, her chest falling and rising with shallow breaths, both hands fisted in her skirts, as the weight of the unspoken lines settled over them. 

Present, also, was the crushing vice of what he had been so selfish to forget: Duty. Justice. Integrity. What captain would break his own laws of order? What friend would expose his comrade to ridicule and slander? What man of honor would speak words of love to a heart so newly broken? 

With a booming crack, the latch under his hand released, and the door whimpered open. Maggie blinked as if roused from a daydream and parted her lips, and that all-too-familiar urge to kiss her surged up in him, blurring right and wrong, demanding satisfaction at any cost.

With his last grain of will, he looked away.

Once she was gone and he was slouched over an empty goblet, he drew the book of sonnets out of his doublet and cast it onto the table. 

God had better have been watching. Will was undoubtedly hell-bound for all his many sins, but only because Our Father kept leading him straight into temptation. Surely this display of saint-like restraint helped balance the scales.

Even knowing it had been the righteous thing, the decent thing, a wicked part of him fumed. He should have kissed her, and to hell with righteousness. Would it have been worth the gamble? One perfect gift, a reward to enjoy now while he lived, even if it meant sacrificing his immortal soul? With a single kiss, he could show her his heart in a way fourteen lines of sentimental nonesuch never could.

Minutes, maybe hours, of wishful thinking crumbled as he registered another knock on his cabin door. Before he could react, it opened, and a thoroughly sober Padraig peaked in through the gap.

“There’s an ado on deck.”

Indeed, the merry music had been replaced with the rise and fall of sharp voices.

“’Tis Driscoll. You’ll want to come, I wager, for he claims he was ravished.”

Will furrowed his brow, irritated as much as concerned. The man had always been a thorn, but accusing a mate of such a crime was extreme even for Driscoll. “Who does he name as his attacker?”

Padraig’s face darkened. “Maggie Bailey, says he.”

Whatever happened between hearing Maggie’s name and calling for order at the quarterdeck railing, Will couldn’t say. The harsh scrape of his chair as he pushed it back, his boots shaking the deck as he stomped down the corridor, Padraig taking something from his table and tucking it into his belt before shutting the cabin door—all of it was lost in sudden, deafening blackness as rage and terror overcame him. 

Terror, because Driscoll’s tale rang truer with the parties reversed. And rage, because Will could have prevented it if he had only asked her to stay.

Woe betide Driscoll and any man who dared to hurt her. In defense of his treasure, a pirate gives no quarter.