Maggie bristled. “Papa can captain in his sleep. He can give orders from his bed, and his boatswain will do the rest.”
Mother sighed as she tucked her skirts up in her belt to keep them out of the way. She squatted, waiting for Maggie to grasp the other handle of the wash tub. “Another season at sea will kill him.One, two—”
They heaved the tub in tandem and carried it outside to dump the dirty water into a stone gully that carried it over the cliff’s edge. They paused a moment to listen as it splashed down the rocks. It was the sound of a few more pennies in her mother’s pocket, ones they desperately needed to pay for Papa’s medicine.
“Is it really that bad?” Of course, she knew it was. But shehadto believe that Papa could recover. It was too much to consider that he might not. “Surely we can scrimp enough to get through another year? I have a little cockle-and-mussel money saved away.”
Mother stopped on the stone doorstep to shield Papa’s sleep from the sound of their conversation. The pale moonlight cast silver shadows across her cheeks, hollowing her eyes. She looked tired. “We need a miracle, and when have we been able to afford miracles, Maggie? We can’t even pay the latest apothecary bill, let alone the moorage for theWolfhunterto rot in the harbor. But Kaspar has the skills to run her. Even split with him, a good catch would settle our debts, and the ship would stay in the family.”
Maggie swallowed. It made sense when Mother put it that way, but… “Kaspar doesn’t like me.”
“Of course he does. He likes you enough to offer.”
“He likes theWolfhunter.”
“Every sailor’s wife comes in second to his ship. What’s not to like about you? You’re young and pretty. Hardworking. From a good family.”
“Not that young,” Maggie pointed out.
“All the more reason to marry now. Anyway, you’re acting like marriage would be a bitter pill. There are plenty of things to enjoy about being a wife.”
Maggie grimaced, imagining it. All the ways she’d have to alter herself to please Kaspar. Holding her tongue, baking pies. Staying home while he sailedhership. “Just what I need, another set of shirts to scrub.”
“Is that what you think marriage is?” Her mother was unable to suppress a smile. “For all the trials of marriage, don’t discount the benefits of a warm body in your bed.”
Don’t need marriage for that, she didn’t say. Her mother might be a salt-hardened fishwife, but she believed her daughter was innocent in certain respects. Maggie didn’t intend to correct that particular assumption.
“Plus, a husband would protect you. Did you hear that Jenny Peck disappeared night before last? Her family says the goblins took her.”
Maggie rolled her eyes. She knew for a fact that Jenny had eloped with the blacksmith’s apprentice. “What do goblins want with Jenny Peck?”
“Dellis says they have a taste for virgin blood,” her mother confided, quite seriously.
Maggie laughed, clapping a hand over her mouth to stifle the sharp noise. “Jenny is no more a virgin than—well,you.”
Mother cuffed her on the shoulder, and none too gently. “My point is that a husband could keep you safe. I worry about you out and about, alone, with all this talk of goblin hordes. I would go into town with you myself if it weren’t for your father’s needs.” Her voice was worn as the laundry stick, and Maggie cursed herself for not coming home earlier to help her with the chores.
She tried to make light. “The gargoyle will run off any goblins. You should have seen how he terrorized Kaspar and his stupid friends tonight. They were howling as they ran away. I think Kaspar wet himself,” she added, hoping to jostle a laugh out of her mother.
But of course, Corine Sparhauk saw right through the story. Instead of laughing, she frowned. “They were hassling you?”
“Teasing the cat. Nothing I couldn’t handle.” Maggie stepped through the door frame into the stone cottage, hoping her father’s snores would protect her from a tongue-lashing.
No such luck.
She endured a good half-hour of hissed scolding on the dangers of walking alone at night, the risks of being drained dry by hungry goblins, and the necessity of accepting life’s hardships. Hardships being husbands, apparently.
It all rolled off her like waves on the rocks until Mother’s last hoarse plea. “If not Kaspar, choose someone else. We need the help, Maggie.”
That stuck like a blade in her heart, quivering, as she finished the evening’s chores and crawled into bed well after midnight. For all the help she gave her parents with her cockle-and-mussel money, with her younger arms stirring the laundry tub and cooking breakfast porridge, it wouldn’t keep them all warm and fed, the roof thatched and the lamp full, clothes mended and apothecary bill paid. It wasn’t enough.
A small ginger lump lodged itself, purring, between her breasts. The sweet little thing was as loud as a grown man’s snores. She’d put up with the noise for the warm, maternal feelings it brought out in her. As sleep tugged at her eyes, she smiled, remembering the gargoyle’s momentary confusion that the fluffy little dear might be her own baby. His wrong assumption had given her the oddest pang.
Perhaps she was still raw from Kaspar’s comments about her potential inability to throw brats. That was the one thing she couldn’t do without a husband. The thing she’d mourn a little if it never happened. She’d like to set a cooing babe on Papa’s knee before he sailed off beyond the horizon of this life.
It might be worth putting up with a man to have a baby. Especially a husband who’d often be at sea and wouldn’t trouble her when he was ashore because he didn’t enjoy her company, anyway.
Kaspar could suit after all. Even if he didn’t love her, he loved theWolfhunter, and that they had in common. Plus, the match would please her parents and give Papa a chance to recover, and that was worth more than anything.
