In The Arms Of My Pirate

Little Raccoon

"Who are you, really?" Charles asked.

Octavia stayed silent for a long moment, dabbing at the wound on his forehead with the rum-soaked cloth.

"My name is Octavia Palmer," she said. "My father was a merchant whose ship was captured by the Americans in Baltimore when the war started."

Charles looked thoughtful, his pale blue eyes brightening. "Then you must have been there at the same time as my sisters. You were telling the truth."

Octavia nodded. "Yes I met them in Baltimore." That was true enough, she reasoned.

"Where are they?" he asked, eagerly grabbing her hand. "Are they safe? Are they alive?"

Octavia paused at his touch. The rum from the cloth trickled down her fingers and dripped onto the leg of his trousers. His hand, warm and coarse, made her stomach flutter.

But then the flutters turned to a painful twisting when she realized she wasn't sure if she could answer his questions.

If she told him the truth, would it endanger Fidelia and Lottie? What about Lord Greyville? Charles seemed to bear an extreme hatred against him.

Slowly, Octavia shook her head. "Last I saw them, they were alive. But they were in trouble."

Again, that was true enough. Lottie and her handsome stable boy were trying to discover the truth about the blackmailer, and Fidelia had been struggling with a difficult pregnancy.

Charles' gaze dropped, and the hope drifted from his face.

"Why did you come back to America?" he asked.

"I came searching for a treasure that my father left on his ship," Octavia said.

"What sort of treasure is worth risking your life?" Charles asked with a scoff.

"The kind that will save my father from dying in debtor's prison," Octavia said.

Young David returned with the needle and thread. He touched the captain's arm hesitantly, eyes glistening with moisture. "Take good care of him, yeah?" the boy said, looking at Octavia with a pleading expression. When he moved, Octavia noticed the bright red stain of a freshly healed scar on the boy's chest beneath the gap of the neckline.

Octavia paused in surprise, but nodded. "Don't worry, young master David. He'll be right as rain."

David sniffled, wiping his nose with a blood-stained sleeve, and scurried back to Mr. Green's makeshift infirmary.

"The boy seems very fond of you," Octavia said, watching David with a smile.

"Another little scamp I have saved," Charles said, his tone gravely with pretended annoyance. "He didn't want to join when his ship was captured. Said he'd promised his mother to never become a pirate."

"And yet forcing him into piracy somehow saved him?" Octavia scoffed, struggling to hide her disdain. "I don't see how that could be."

"When the punishment is death otherwise," Charles said darkly, "piracy becomes much more interesting."

Octavia frowned, remembering when her ship was captured. Indeed. It was better than being killed, she thought.

"How did you convince him," she asked as she threaded the needle and dipped it into the half-empty bottle of rum, using the string to pull it back out.

With the fingers of her left hand, she pinched the gash on his head closed and pressed the sharp tip of the needle against his flesh. His pulse jumped beneath her touch.