Page 68 of Mardon

Mardon couldn’t answer that question now. Not after she was the one who just figured out where to find their treasure. Nay, not after she’d just told him she loved being here and would be nowhere else but by his side. He felt like he was being sucked into some kind of crazy spiral and losing control. He couldn’t stop anything from happening anymore. His crew was proof enough.

“It can wait,” he said. “Come on, we have a treasure to find.”

* * *

“It won’t be long before we’re there,” Mardon told Emmaline a little later. Stitch was at the helm wearing his new fingerless gloves. Mardon stood at the stern, leaning on the sidewall, looking out to sea. “I would have given anything to see Nereus’ face when we shot right past him instead of stopping.” Mardon chuckled. “He’s docked at Hastings, and we’ll have the treasure and be on our way before he even knows what happened.” Mardon started thinking about Emmaline again and his fists clenched and his jaw tightened. He was going to have to tell her soon.

“Mardon, is something bothering you?” Emmaline laid her hand over his.

“Why would you say that?” he asked, still not able to look her in the eyes. He had to find an easy way to let her down and tell her that she couldn’t stay. However, he didn’t want to hurt her either. This was proving to be harder than he thought. “Why do you think something is wrong?”

“I don’t know. Mayhap I’m just imagining things,” she answered sweetly. “Mayhap it’s just a look on your face that pirates usually have, I’m not sure.”

He turned his head to look at her and smiled. “I didn’t realize pirates have a certain look.”

“How did it happen?” she asked.

“What? The look? I didn’t even know I had one.”

“Nay,” she answered with a soft giggle. “I mean, when did you become a pirate? What made you do it?”

“It doesn’t matter.” He turned his face away from her and looked down into the water below them.

“It matters to me.” She started to gently rub her fingertips in small circles over his back.

“Well, if you must know, I was the son of a fisherman.”

“You and your brothers, Aaron and Tristan.”

“That’s right. We had – I mean, have – a sister named Gwen.”

“You do?” she asked in surprise. “Well, where is she?”

“Nairnie tells me she’s married and has a family back in Cornwall.”

“Are your parents there, too?” she asked curiously.

“Nay. They’re dead.”

“I’m sorry.”

“Don’t be. I miss my mother, but blame my father that my brothers and I ended up as pirates.”

“How so?”

“When the fishing wasn’t so good, my father, Cato, had to do something to make money to put food on the table for his family.”

“So he turned to piracy?” she asked, her eyes opening wide.

Mardon bit his bottom lip and slowly nodded. “He did, but didn’t tell my sister or mother. He took me and my brothers with him, and we learned to love it.”

“What happened to your father?”

“Well, he gave up piracy after a while. Then, when my mother died . . . well, my brothers and I were angry with him. We ended up leaving him and my sister and going back to piracy. After that, we never saw him again.”

“Why were you angry with him?”

Mardon clenched his jaw, not wanting to relive the events leading to his mother’s death. “I don’t want to talk about it,” he told her. “Anyway, Nairnie told me our father is dead and, honestly, I don’t really care.”