An Officer but No Gentleman(97)

“You’re sorry? For what?”

“You know I don’t know the things land girls know,” she said haltingly. “I-I didn’t know I wasn’t supposed to touch you.”

Jaxon realized why she was upset. “Charlie, I love it when you touch me. I-I....” He hesitated trying to come up with the right words. “When you were tracing my scars, my mind kept going back to that day. I didn’t want to think about it when we were making love.”

“I’m sorry,” she said again.

“No, I’m sorry, baby. You didn’t do anything wrong. I did. I didn’t know it would upset you. Give me your hand. If you want to touch them you can.”

He took her hand, kissed her palm and placed her fingertips on his forehead over the scar and guided her hand the length of it to his jaw. Then he placed her hand on a scar on his chest.

“I wish I could make them not hurt you anymore.”

“They haven’t hurt in a long time.”

“I mean in here,” she whispered, sounding sorrowful as she tapped his chest.

“When I get my revenge, I’ll feel healed.”

Charlie felt his body tensed and heard the hardness in his tone. She lifted up on her elbow so she could see his face more clearly. He looked off into the darkness; his sight focused on the images in his mind conjured up rather than anything inside the room.

“Your revenge?”

“That’s why I had the ship built and got my Letter of Marque and Reprisal. I’m going to find the man who did this to me and I’m going to take his ship.”

His anger surprised her. It was a deep-seated hatred she didn’t know was inside him. She wished she understood where it came from.

“You’re never going to tell me are you?”

“Tell you?” He turned his focus on her.

“What happened to you?”

Jaxon pressed his lips against her forehead and stroked her hair. “You never asked so I thought you must have asked Daniel or someone else. It’s common knowledge.”

As he told her how he was keelhauled, she rested her hand on a large scar on his chest. When he finished, he could feel wetness on his shoulder where her tears had fallen.

“That man is a monster. But if you hadn’t been keelhauled, you might have married Millie. You wouldn’t have had your ship built, nor become a privateer. You wouldn’t have rescued us and we would’ve never met.”

“So you think I should be thankful that this was done to me?”

“No, of course not, Jaxon. I think I see a higher plan in this. Fate if you will.”

Jaxon was again amazed by her logic and had to be grudgingly acknowledge that being keelhauled had started him down a path that led to her. How he met the love of his life in the middle of the ocean amazed him still. He didn’t know if there was such a thing as Fate, but he wasn’t about to challenge it.

“Only you could see the good in being keelhauled. That must be why I love you so much.”

“You love me?”

“I’m sorry I doubted it, Charlie.”





34





Daniel and Jaxon ensconced themselves in the overly tidy captain’s quarters of the Arcadia going over the logs and ledgers. Jaxon noticed the scars in the wood where Charlie’s hammock once hung. The cabin expanded the breadth of the ship with two curtained windows that brighten the room which was as void of decorations as Charlie’s had been. The men thought it would be best to go through the books hoping if Daniel had any questions, they could be answered before he was thousands of leagues away.

Jaxon looked through the log books as Daniel opened the ledgers.

“Whoa!” Daniel exclaimed. “Have you seen this?”

He turned the book around and showed it to Jaxon. Jaxon’s eyes grew wide.

“That’s the company’s net worth?”

Daniel flipped back a page. “That is the company’s net worth. This—,” he flipped back to the original page, “is Charlie’s percentage.”

“I wonder if she knows. She told me they had plans to commission a new ship eventually, but my heavens, she could commission an entire fleet.”

“You realize when you get married, this all becomes yours.”

Jaxon paled. “I guess she wasn’t kidding when she said she could pay for her own dresses. I’m glad I didn’t know about it when I proposed.”

“When who proposed?”

Jaxon ignored him. “The old man must have been a shrewd negotiator. Look at this,” he said showing the Daniel the logs. “With every entry about a negotiation there is a footnote about what the shipping clerk and area merchants would like to get their hands on. When he came back to that port, he made sure he had what they wanted and he charged a premium for it.”