In The Arms Of My Pirate

Treasure and Treachery

Charles placed the candle in his satchel alongside a ball of twine and strung the golden locket around his neck.

"Captain?" Oliver peeped from the cabin's door.

Charles closed the satchel quickly and slung it over his shoulder.

"Get back in bed, cabin boy," he ordered. 

"I should have protected her better," Oliver mumbled. "I tried to keep her secret but--"

Charles paused, looking up at him sharply.

"Bloody Benny made me tell him the first night aboard the ship," he mumbled, eyes downcast.

Bloody Benny had known for so long? Charles frowned thoughtfully. Why only act now?

Charles sighed and patted the boy on the shoulder, lowering to one knee to look him in the face. "When you get to Barataria and you have shore leave, sneak into one of the merchant caravans and never come back," he said.

"But I signed my name to the crew--" Oliver protested. 

Charles cut him off. "You'll be the least of their worries," he said. "Leave Octavia to me."

With that, he collected a bottle of lamp oil from his desk and stuffed it into the satchel. He paused beside his bed and removed his captain's hat. He turned it over in his hand, the worn leather sun-bleached. This was his first position of power, the first time in his life where he'd had to say.

And yet, he'd still been nothing more than a dog to lick someone else's boots.

That would end tonight, he decided.

He tossed the captain's hat onto his bed and strode out the door.

***

Octavia gazed around the Captain's quarters on the Queen's Orient, heart aching. Many of the furnishings had remained the same from when her father was the captain of the ship.

His writing desk still stood against one wall, ropes lashing it down to the floor. She'd spent many hours sitting across from her father at the the table by the large set of windows, reading or embroidering.

The quilt on the bed was one that her mother had made for him early in their marriage, just after the death of their first son. A strange sense of anger bubbled in her gut at the sight of the blanket.

Would any of this have happened if her brother had lived, or if she had been born a son? Would her father have trusted her to help the family instead of casting her aside? He was the beloved son that they had pinned all their hopes on; she'd been nothing more than a china doll to be wedded off to the highest bidder.

"Not much has changed, I see," Lafitte said, entering the room behind her.

Octavia turned sharply and lifted her chin, unsure of what he meant.

"I had my suspicions," he said, pulling out a chair at the table laden with food and gesturing for her to sit. It was a meal of salted pork that had been fried in lard and supplemented with a side of green vegetables. The ship must have been at port recently, Octavia knew, for the greens had only just begun to wilt.

She sat and he pushed the chair closer to the table.

"They say a ship always remembers its master," he said, running a hand over the back of her chair, his fingertips brushing along her spine. "Or mistress, as the case may be."

She kept her gaze forward. "This was my father's ship. The Americans confiscated it at the start of the war."

Lafitte nodded. "I've captured many such ships from the English and the Americans." He rounded the table and sat across from her. Thoughtfully, he fingered the silver knife that lay beside his plate.