Fic: Remarkable
Title: Remarkable
Rating: PG
Pairing: Billy Bones/Abigail Ashe
Word Count: 3,248
Summary: Billy Bones and Abigail Ashe meet again. Black Sails season four compliant.
Abigail would never have thought that she’d fail to recognize the pirate Billy Bones if she saw him again. A man of his size and good looks was most memorable. But she’d been aboard this ship three days and seen the big, bearded sailor several times without realizing until this moment who he was.
Recognition must have flashed on her face and he must have noticed it because he muttered, “Fuck.” He glanced ahead and behind, but they were alone in the narrow hallway.
Abigail stared at him. It was not the beard, she decided, that had made him initially unrecognizable. It was his demeanor. It was not his face and form that had made Billy Bones fascinating. Handsome men were a pleasure to behold but not that uncommon. What had made him remarkable was the light that had seemed to shine from within him. He’d almost seemed to glow with goodness amid his pirate brethren.
That light was gone now. And not simply gone - in its place was darkness.
“It would be best if you did not confuse me for someone else, ma’am,” he said. His tone was even, but the threat was clear. He did not wish to be unmasked as a pirate.
She knew that Governor Rogers had granted pardons to any pirate who sought one. Indeed, he had offered them all pardons. Captain Flint’s crew had not only refused to accept pardons, they’d waged war against the lawful government. The things she’d heard about Captain Flint before her kidnapping paled in comparison to the stories that came after the devastation at Charles Town. She supposed it ought to be no surprise that committing those deeds had extinguished something within Billy Bones.
“You became the monsters they’d said you were. Your whole crew.”
She realized belatedly that it was unwise to call him a monster to his face, but it seemed to sadden rather than anger him. Abigail was sorry for saying it. It might be the truth, but the truth did not always need to be stated aloud when it was clearly understood. “I apologize. I should not have said that.”
He didn’t reply. He gave her a look she could not decipher, and then he nodded at her and continued on his way.
~
Two images kept alternating in Billy’s mind: the way Abigail Ashe had looked at him a lifetime ago on the Spanish man o’ war, and the way she had looked at him just now.
He had spent so many years on a ship that his body could perform the work without direction from his conscious thought. He finished his watch without any memory of doing so, and then found himself lying in his hammock.
He had managed to keep the guilt and rage and pain at a distance this past month. He’d wallowed in them for a good few weeks on Skeleton Island before finding the courage to rejoin the world. He’d fashioned a raft and drifted until the Merry May picked him up and he’d passed himself off as an honest sailor and sole survivor of a shipwreck, and accepted when they offered him employment. He worked on this ship, but he could not think of himself as having joined this crew. Never again.
Abigail Ashe had only voiced aloud what he already knew. He was a monster. The things he’d done and the things he might have stopped that he’d allowed to happen...
The little girl and her mother… He’d thought it would placate the slaves. He’d thought the death of Underhill’s wife and daughter would appease their anger towards him for the suffering their kin would be made to endure. It hadn’t. Another sacrifice he’d made for nothing.
He didn’t deserve what he intended when this ship reached London. But he wanted it and so he would do it because, now that he was honest with himself, that was the sort of man he was. He would not let his parents see him, of course. He would not hurt them by making them see what sort of monster their son had become. But he needed so desperately to see them again, even if it was only to glimpse them as a passing stranger on the street.
That would never happen if Abigail Ashe told anyone he’d been Billy Bones before he was Mr. Williams. If the captain and crew learned who he was, they would put him in chains and deliver him to the authorities at the nearest port. That was if he was lucky. If he was unlucky, they would take him to London where he might be tried and hanged under his true name, where his parents and his brothers and sisters and everyone he’d once known might learn what he had become.
There was only one way to be absolutely certain that she would not reveal his identity. But even if he could get her alone again and murder her and throw her body overboard unseen, the world would not accept that she’d fallen overboard and drowned. Not her. She was a lady; there would be an investigation, and the crew closely scrutinized.
If he could not silence her, then she had to be persuaded to keep her silence. But how? Threatening her carried the risk that she might become too afraid and reveal his identity out of fear. Then a radical thought occurred to him. He could try simply asking her.
He’d read the journal she’d kept while she was aboard the man o’ war, out of curiosity. In it she’d recorded the story Flint told her about how Billy had come to be a pirate. He’d been angry at Flint for telling his story, but he’d quickly realized its value towards the goal of persuading Governor Ashe to partner with them. Abigail Ashe had felt sorry for the boy he’d once been. She was kinder and more understanding than most of her class. If he told her why he needed to reach London a free man, perhaps she would keep his secret.
He shaved in the morning, thinking that if he looked more like the man she’d met on the man o’ war, the one she’d thought looked like he shouldn’t be a pirate, she might be more inclined to regard him favorably.
~
Abigail thought she’d remembered just how handsome Billy Bones was. Clearly time had caused her memory to dull because when she saw him clean-shaven the next day, she found herself staring at him.
Her chaperone Mrs. Winters followed her gaze. “A young lady ought not to stare at a man like that, dearest,” she chided.
Abigail averted her eyes and tried not to feel resentful. She remembered Lady Hamilton and Captain Flint - Mr. McGraw - smiling in gentle amusement when they’d caught her staring at this same man. If only things had gone differently between them and her father. She would have liked to have Lady Hamilton’s friendship.
Her spirits fell at the memory of Lady Hamilton. She mourned her father’s death, of course, but Abigail was relieved she hadn’t had to live another day in that house. If her father had lived and she had to remain in the governor’s residence, not a day would have passed without her seeing Lady Hamilton’s lifeless body on the dining room floor. She imagined she would have wasted away from starvation, for she certainly would not have been able to eat in that room ever again.
She didn’t realize Billy was approaching them until she heard him speak. “Is everything alright?”
“Yes,” Mrs. Winters answered him. “Thank you for your concern, sailor.”
“I heard you all had a bad case of sea sickness.”
“Our maid Dina is below feeling quite poorly,” Mrs. Winters replied. “I have felt better myself, but I was obliged to accompany Miss Ashe for a breath of fresh air. She is fortunately unaffected.”
“Perhaps I can tell you a story to distract you from your ill feeling while Miss Ashe enjoys the breeze,” he said. He leaned on the rail.
He was looking at Mrs. Winters. He had pointedly not looked at Abigail at all, but she had no doubt as to which of them he was truly speaking to as he began to tell a story about a young boy who’d been pressed into naval service. The boy he spoke of labored for years, longing to see his parents, and he eventually escaped, with the goal of returning home, only to be caught and hanged just days before he would have set eyes on his parents again.
“Why, what a sad tale!” Mrs. Winters exclaimed.
It was a rather transparent ploy. Someone from Captain Flint’s crew had given her journal to Captain Vane to take into Charles Town, someone who had read it and knew the words within were sympathetic to pirates. She did not imagine that there were many literate men among a pirate crew, so it was likely this man who had read her journal. He knew that she knew of his personal history. This story of his - he wanted her to believe that he was going home at last? What a cynical attempt to manipulate her sentiments.
“It seems like some things were left out of that story,” Abigail said. “Perhaps that boy did not make for home right away. Perhaps he did things he ought to be hanged for.”
“Perhaps so,” Billy admitted. He looked at Abigail for the first time that day and held her gaze. “But would you not grant him the mercy of seeing his family before he is sent to the gallows?”
Shamefully, as terrible as the things she knew he’d done were, with him looking at her like this, Abigail felt the same feelings stirring that she’d felt whenever he was near on that Spanish ship. She wanted to kiss him. Not that she’d ever kissed a man, of course, but he made her want to.
~
Abigail Ashe desired him. At the time, Billy had been bemused by her staring at him on the man o’ war. It had just seemed odd. He knew he was attractive to other people and women and men alike often looked at him with lust. It was easy to find a partner whenever he was in the mood for a fuck. He hadn’t recognized her attraction to him for what it was because he simply had not expected it from the lord governor’s maiden daughter.
She pitied the boy he’d once been, but perhaps not enough to spare him his deserved fate. But combined with what she felt towards him as a man, that might be enough. He would have to encourage her attraction.
It was summer, but they were farther north than Billy had been in years. The air felt chillier than was comfortable for him. He was most definitely not over-heated, but Billy pretended he was and removed his shirt while he worked on deck.
He’d gotten the timing right and Abigail and her chaperone came above deck for their afternoon walk not long after. He didn’t have to look to know that she was watching him; he could feel it.
Some of the crew teased him about it later. “Her ladyship couldn’t take her eyes off you, Williams.”
“I’ll strut around bare-chested tomorrow and it’ll be me she likes then.”
“You, she’d beg to put your shirt back on,” he retorted, laughing.
He didn’t remove his clothes outside crew quarters again. He didn’t have to. All he had to do was meet Abigail’s eyes and smile at her, and she blushed, betraying that she was thinking blush-worthy thoughts. Three days in a row.
There was an unintended consequence to all of it, however. In trying to stoke Abigail’s desire for him, he found himself with desires he could not fulfill. It was not something that could be satisfied by his own hand. He masturbated regularly purely for the physical release, but this was different. This required someone else - ideally Abigail Ashe herself, though he knew that would not happen, that however much she wanted to, unmarried women of her class did not let men fuck them.
Billy refused to seek relief with someone from the crew for the same reason he hadn’t accepted any of the offers from them to fuck before this. He didn’t want any connection to them. He couldn’t allow himself to be part of a crew ever again.
On the fourth day, shortly after Abigail and her chaperone had gone back to their cabin, Davies brought him a scrap of paper.
“Found this,” he said. “Does it say anything important, or can I wipe my arse with it?”
The name ‘William’ was written on it and one other word: midnight. Billy slipped the paper into his shirt. “Nothing important, but it’s mine now.” He softened this apparent theft with a smile.
“Fuck you, Williams,” Davies said, but he smiled back.
Billy felt a pang of intense longing. He wished he could be back with his brothers aboard the Walrus in simpler times. If only Flint had never heard of that fucking Spaniard named Vasquez.
~
Preachers warned against wicked women who tempted men astray. Abigail had begun to wonder whether it was possible for a man to tempt a woman in that way. A mere look from Billy Bones caused her body to heat and made the most intimate parts of her crave touch.
It was an exquisite torment and she did not think she could bear it much longer, so Abigail had resolved to give Billy what he wanted. More than ever Abigail resented that social convention forbid her from going wherever she wanted and speaking to whomever she wanted without watchful, judging eyes always upon her.
Fortunately, Mrs. Winters was a deep sleeper and Dina was too miserable to care if she awoke and noticed her mistress sneaking out of their cabin in the middle of the night. Abigail drew a dressing gown over her nightclothes - it was horribly indecent, but she could not dress fully without help - and opened the door as quietly as she could and slipped outside.
Billy was waiting there, as she’d expected.
“You must have been avoiding me before that day we encountered each other in this spot. You knew I know who you really are.”
“I would have jumped ship when I heard the name of our new passenger, but I didn’t get a chance to. So, yes, I avoided you and hoped you would not see me well enough to recognize me.”
“But now it seems you seek me out, that you intentionally draw my notice.”
He didn’t reply. He only smiled and crossed his bare arms over his chest and leaned against the wall.
The artifice of it cooled the heat that had threatened to rise within her. “I think you are trying to manipulate my affections, and it is disappointing. It seems beneath you.”
The smile faded from his face and was replaced by a more somber look. “Does it? What would you say then if I told you that my first instinct was to murder you to ensure my secret was kept?”
Abigail considered that. She was both surprised and not surprised. She wanted to believe he’d only said it to shock her, but she did not think so. “I would ask what happened to you. I would ask what happened since Charles Town to darken you so.”
Captain Flint had very good reason to seek vengeance on the civilized world after it dealt Lady Hamilton such an uncivilized fate, but it did not seem likely that a whole ship’s crew of men would join him in his grief. She had not had the sense that Captain Flint’s men loved him, only that they feared him. Their motives for joining him in burning homes and murdering families must have been their own.
There was long silence, then Billy said, “I don’t know.” He looked very sad.
She felt an impulse to embrace him, comfort him. She truly did not understand how she could feel such a thing after he’d admitted that he’d contemplated killing her.
“At first I was just fighting back, just retaliating against the people who would have seen me and my brothers hanged. Their rules left us with only a choice between submitting to the cruelest servitude for rich men’s benefit or to free ourselves and be branded criminals for it.”
“And then it just grew. They answered blood for blood, and we answered back, and eventually it seemed it would not end until every man in the Americas lay dead.”
“I hated the man I’d become, so I told myself it was all because of Flint. I made myself believe that if he was gone from the world, everything would be better. I fucking became Flint and didn’t realize it until well after it had happened, when it was too late and I didn’t recognize myself anymore.”
He’d looked off into the distance as he spoke, but now he looked directly into her eyes. “I suppose the shorter answer is that I happened to me.”
“I’m sorry.”
“Why?”
Abigail was not sure how to respond, so she fell back upon the truth of what she felt and believed. “The loss of a significant part of yourself seems a loss for the world.”
He was looking at her oddly. “Why? I was just a pirate, and before that just an impressed sailor.”
He’d mattered in a way that simply was. He’d mattered in the truest and most natural sense that had nothing to do with wealth or titles. But Abigail did not know how to convey that without seeming terribly inappropriate. Then again, she was standing here alone with him in her nightdress, a situation she’d entered of her own volition.
“Because on that voyage to Charles Town I saw something in you that was remarkable.”
He looked pained.
“I will not reveal your true identity for the sake of the memory of who you were.”
He removed himself from the wall and uncrossed his arms, and stared at her with an expression she could not read. Then he said simply, “Thank you, Miss Ashe.”
~
He turned to go and leave the girl be, but then Billy found himself turning back to her. “You are remarkable, and I hope that you will never lose that part of yourself that makes you so.”
She was looking at him in a way that made him think she’d allow it if he tried to kiss her. And while part of him was tempted to do it and more, to see how much she’d let him take, he knew it was unworthy.
He took one of her hands, so tiny within his own hand, and raised it to his mouth. He let her knuckles brush his lips for a moment before releasing her hand. “I’m glad to have known you and been known by you, Abigail Ashe.”
She looked as though all thought had fled her mind, but she recovered. “And I, you, Billy Bones.”
He smiled and knew it had to be a rather sad smile. “I think you knew William Manderly, not Billy Bones.”
“Good bye,” he heard her whisper as he walked away. And for the first time, he wondered if it might be possible to become William Manderly again.
Rating: PG
Pairing: Billy Bones/Abigail Ashe
Word Count: 3,248
Summary: Billy Bones and Abigail Ashe meet again. Black Sails season four compliant.
Abigail would never have thought that she’d fail to recognize the pirate Billy Bones if she saw him again. A man of his size and good looks was most memorable. But she’d been aboard this ship three days and seen the big, bearded sailor several times without realizing until this moment who he was.
Recognition must have flashed on her face and he must have noticed it because he muttered, “Fuck.” He glanced ahead and behind, but they were alone in the narrow hallway.
Abigail stared at him. It was not the beard, she decided, that had made him initially unrecognizable. It was his demeanor. It was not his face and form that had made Billy Bones fascinating. Handsome men were a pleasure to behold but not that uncommon. What had made him remarkable was the light that had seemed to shine from within him. He’d almost seemed to glow with goodness amid his pirate brethren.
That light was gone now. And not simply gone - in its place was darkness.
“It would be best if you did not confuse me for someone else, ma’am,” he said. His tone was even, but the threat was clear. He did not wish to be unmasked as a pirate.
She knew that Governor Rogers had granted pardons to any pirate who sought one. Indeed, he had offered them all pardons. Captain Flint’s crew had not only refused to accept pardons, they’d waged war against the lawful government. The things she’d heard about Captain Flint before her kidnapping paled in comparison to the stories that came after the devastation at Charles Town. She supposed it ought to be no surprise that committing those deeds had extinguished something within Billy Bones.
“You became the monsters they’d said you were. Your whole crew.”
She realized belatedly that it was unwise to call him a monster to his face, but it seemed to sadden rather than anger him. Abigail was sorry for saying it. It might be the truth, but the truth did not always need to be stated aloud when it was clearly understood. “I apologize. I should not have said that.”
He didn’t reply. He gave her a look she could not decipher, and then he nodded at her and continued on his way.
~
Two images kept alternating in Billy’s mind: the way Abigail Ashe had looked at him a lifetime ago on the Spanish man o’ war, and the way she had looked at him just now.
He had spent so many years on a ship that his body could perform the work without direction from his conscious thought. He finished his watch without any memory of doing so, and then found himself lying in his hammock.
He had managed to keep the guilt and rage and pain at a distance this past month. He’d wallowed in them for a good few weeks on Skeleton Island before finding the courage to rejoin the world. He’d fashioned a raft and drifted until the Merry May picked him up and he’d passed himself off as an honest sailor and sole survivor of a shipwreck, and accepted when they offered him employment. He worked on this ship, but he could not think of himself as having joined this crew. Never again.
Abigail Ashe had only voiced aloud what he already knew. He was a monster. The things he’d done and the things he might have stopped that he’d allowed to happen...
The little girl and her mother… He’d thought it would placate the slaves. He’d thought the death of Underhill’s wife and daughter would appease their anger towards him for the suffering their kin would be made to endure. It hadn’t. Another sacrifice he’d made for nothing.
He didn’t deserve what he intended when this ship reached London. But he wanted it and so he would do it because, now that he was honest with himself, that was the sort of man he was. He would not let his parents see him, of course. He would not hurt them by making them see what sort of monster their son had become. But he needed so desperately to see them again, even if it was only to glimpse them as a passing stranger on the street.
That would never happen if Abigail Ashe told anyone he’d been Billy Bones before he was Mr. Williams. If the captain and crew learned who he was, they would put him in chains and deliver him to the authorities at the nearest port. That was if he was lucky. If he was unlucky, they would take him to London where he might be tried and hanged under his true name, where his parents and his brothers and sisters and everyone he’d once known might learn what he had become.
There was only one way to be absolutely certain that she would not reveal his identity. But even if he could get her alone again and murder her and throw her body overboard unseen, the world would not accept that she’d fallen overboard and drowned. Not her. She was a lady; there would be an investigation, and the crew closely scrutinized.
If he could not silence her, then she had to be persuaded to keep her silence. But how? Threatening her carried the risk that she might become too afraid and reveal his identity out of fear. Then a radical thought occurred to him. He could try simply asking her.
He’d read the journal she’d kept while she was aboard the man o’ war, out of curiosity. In it she’d recorded the story Flint told her about how Billy had come to be a pirate. He’d been angry at Flint for telling his story, but he’d quickly realized its value towards the goal of persuading Governor Ashe to partner with them. Abigail Ashe had felt sorry for the boy he’d once been. She was kinder and more understanding than most of her class. If he told her why he needed to reach London a free man, perhaps she would keep his secret.
He shaved in the morning, thinking that if he looked more like the man she’d met on the man o’ war, the one she’d thought looked like he shouldn’t be a pirate, she might be more inclined to regard him favorably.
~
Abigail thought she’d remembered just how handsome Billy Bones was. Clearly time had caused her memory to dull because when she saw him clean-shaven the next day, she found herself staring at him.
Her chaperone Mrs. Winters followed her gaze. “A young lady ought not to stare at a man like that, dearest,” she chided.
Abigail averted her eyes and tried not to feel resentful. She remembered Lady Hamilton and Captain Flint - Mr. McGraw - smiling in gentle amusement when they’d caught her staring at this same man. If only things had gone differently between them and her father. She would have liked to have Lady Hamilton’s friendship.
Her spirits fell at the memory of Lady Hamilton. She mourned her father’s death, of course, but Abigail was relieved she hadn’t had to live another day in that house. If her father had lived and she had to remain in the governor’s residence, not a day would have passed without her seeing Lady Hamilton’s lifeless body on the dining room floor. She imagined she would have wasted away from starvation, for she certainly would not have been able to eat in that room ever again.
She didn’t realize Billy was approaching them until she heard him speak. “Is everything alright?”
“Yes,” Mrs. Winters answered him. “Thank you for your concern, sailor.”
“I heard you all had a bad case of sea sickness.”
“Our maid Dina is below feeling quite poorly,” Mrs. Winters replied. “I have felt better myself, but I was obliged to accompany Miss Ashe for a breath of fresh air. She is fortunately unaffected.”
“Perhaps I can tell you a story to distract you from your ill feeling while Miss Ashe enjoys the breeze,” he said. He leaned on the rail.
He was looking at Mrs. Winters. He had pointedly not looked at Abigail at all, but she had no doubt as to which of them he was truly speaking to as he began to tell a story about a young boy who’d been pressed into naval service. The boy he spoke of labored for years, longing to see his parents, and he eventually escaped, with the goal of returning home, only to be caught and hanged just days before he would have set eyes on his parents again.
“Why, what a sad tale!” Mrs. Winters exclaimed.
It was a rather transparent ploy. Someone from Captain Flint’s crew had given her journal to Captain Vane to take into Charles Town, someone who had read it and knew the words within were sympathetic to pirates. She did not imagine that there were many literate men among a pirate crew, so it was likely this man who had read her journal. He knew that she knew of his personal history. This story of his - he wanted her to believe that he was going home at last? What a cynical attempt to manipulate her sentiments.
“It seems like some things were left out of that story,” Abigail said. “Perhaps that boy did not make for home right away. Perhaps he did things he ought to be hanged for.”
“Perhaps so,” Billy admitted. He looked at Abigail for the first time that day and held her gaze. “But would you not grant him the mercy of seeing his family before he is sent to the gallows?”
Shamefully, as terrible as the things she knew he’d done were, with him looking at her like this, Abigail felt the same feelings stirring that she’d felt whenever he was near on that Spanish ship. She wanted to kiss him. Not that she’d ever kissed a man, of course, but he made her want to.
~
Abigail Ashe desired him. At the time, Billy had been bemused by her staring at him on the man o’ war. It had just seemed odd. He knew he was attractive to other people and women and men alike often looked at him with lust. It was easy to find a partner whenever he was in the mood for a fuck. He hadn’t recognized her attraction to him for what it was because he simply had not expected it from the lord governor’s maiden daughter.
She pitied the boy he’d once been, but perhaps not enough to spare him his deserved fate. But combined with what she felt towards him as a man, that might be enough. He would have to encourage her attraction.
It was summer, but they were farther north than Billy had been in years. The air felt chillier than was comfortable for him. He was most definitely not over-heated, but Billy pretended he was and removed his shirt while he worked on deck.
He’d gotten the timing right and Abigail and her chaperone came above deck for their afternoon walk not long after. He didn’t have to look to know that she was watching him; he could feel it.
Some of the crew teased him about it later. “Her ladyship couldn’t take her eyes off you, Williams.”
“I’ll strut around bare-chested tomorrow and it’ll be me she likes then.”
“You, she’d beg to put your shirt back on,” he retorted, laughing.
He didn’t remove his clothes outside crew quarters again. He didn’t have to. All he had to do was meet Abigail’s eyes and smile at her, and she blushed, betraying that she was thinking blush-worthy thoughts. Three days in a row.
There was an unintended consequence to all of it, however. In trying to stoke Abigail’s desire for him, he found himself with desires he could not fulfill. It was not something that could be satisfied by his own hand. He masturbated regularly purely for the physical release, but this was different. This required someone else - ideally Abigail Ashe herself, though he knew that would not happen, that however much she wanted to, unmarried women of her class did not let men fuck them.
Billy refused to seek relief with someone from the crew for the same reason he hadn’t accepted any of the offers from them to fuck before this. He didn’t want any connection to them. He couldn’t allow himself to be part of a crew ever again.
On the fourth day, shortly after Abigail and her chaperone had gone back to their cabin, Davies brought him a scrap of paper.
“Found this,” he said. “Does it say anything important, or can I wipe my arse with it?”
The name ‘William’ was written on it and one other word: midnight. Billy slipped the paper into his shirt. “Nothing important, but it’s mine now.” He softened this apparent theft with a smile.
“Fuck you, Williams,” Davies said, but he smiled back.
Billy felt a pang of intense longing. He wished he could be back with his brothers aboard the Walrus in simpler times. If only Flint had never heard of that fucking Spaniard named Vasquez.
~
Preachers warned against wicked women who tempted men astray. Abigail had begun to wonder whether it was possible for a man to tempt a woman in that way. A mere look from Billy Bones caused her body to heat and made the most intimate parts of her crave touch.
It was an exquisite torment and she did not think she could bear it much longer, so Abigail had resolved to give Billy what he wanted. More than ever Abigail resented that social convention forbid her from going wherever she wanted and speaking to whomever she wanted without watchful, judging eyes always upon her.
Fortunately, Mrs. Winters was a deep sleeper and Dina was too miserable to care if she awoke and noticed her mistress sneaking out of their cabin in the middle of the night. Abigail drew a dressing gown over her nightclothes - it was horribly indecent, but she could not dress fully without help - and opened the door as quietly as she could and slipped outside.
Billy was waiting there, as she’d expected.
“You must have been avoiding me before that day we encountered each other in this spot. You knew I know who you really are.”
“I would have jumped ship when I heard the name of our new passenger, but I didn’t get a chance to. So, yes, I avoided you and hoped you would not see me well enough to recognize me.”
“But now it seems you seek me out, that you intentionally draw my notice.”
He didn’t reply. He only smiled and crossed his bare arms over his chest and leaned against the wall.
The artifice of it cooled the heat that had threatened to rise within her. “I think you are trying to manipulate my affections, and it is disappointing. It seems beneath you.”
The smile faded from his face and was replaced by a more somber look. “Does it? What would you say then if I told you that my first instinct was to murder you to ensure my secret was kept?”
Abigail considered that. She was both surprised and not surprised. She wanted to believe he’d only said it to shock her, but she did not think so. “I would ask what happened to you. I would ask what happened since Charles Town to darken you so.”
Captain Flint had very good reason to seek vengeance on the civilized world after it dealt Lady Hamilton such an uncivilized fate, but it did not seem likely that a whole ship’s crew of men would join him in his grief. She had not had the sense that Captain Flint’s men loved him, only that they feared him. Their motives for joining him in burning homes and murdering families must have been their own.
There was long silence, then Billy said, “I don’t know.” He looked very sad.
She felt an impulse to embrace him, comfort him. She truly did not understand how she could feel such a thing after he’d admitted that he’d contemplated killing her.
“At first I was just fighting back, just retaliating against the people who would have seen me and my brothers hanged. Their rules left us with only a choice between submitting to the cruelest servitude for rich men’s benefit or to free ourselves and be branded criminals for it.”
“And then it just grew. They answered blood for blood, and we answered back, and eventually it seemed it would not end until every man in the Americas lay dead.”
“I hated the man I’d become, so I told myself it was all because of Flint. I made myself believe that if he was gone from the world, everything would be better. I fucking became Flint and didn’t realize it until well after it had happened, when it was too late and I didn’t recognize myself anymore.”
He’d looked off into the distance as he spoke, but now he looked directly into her eyes. “I suppose the shorter answer is that I happened to me.”
“I’m sorry.”
“Why?”
Abigail was not sure how to respond, so she fell back upon the truth of what she felt and believed. “The loss of a significant part of yourself seems a loss for the world.”
He was looking at her oddly. “Why? I was just a pirate, and before that just an impressed sailor.”
He’d mattered in a way that simply was. He’d mattered in the truest and most natural sense that had nothing to do with wealth or titles. But Abigail did not know how to convey that without seeming terribly inappropriate. Then again, she was standing here alone with him in her nightdress, a situation she’d entered of her own volition.
“Because on that voyage to Charles Town I saw something in you that was remarkable.”
He looked pained.
“I will not reveal your true identity for the sake of the memory of who you were.”
He removed himself from the wall and uncrossed his arms, and stared at her with an expression she could not read. Then he said simply, “Thank you, Miss Ashe.”
~
He turned to go and leave the girl be, but then Billy found himself turning back to her. “You are remarkable, and I hope that you will never lose that part of yourself that makes you so.”
She was looking at him in a way that made him think she’d allow it if he tried to kiss her. And while part of him was tempted to do it and more, to see how much she’d let him take, he knew it was unworthy.
He took one of her hands, so tiny within his own hand, and raised it to his mouth. He let her knuckles brush his lips for a moment before releasing her hand. “I’m glad to have known you and been known by you, Abigail Ashe.”
She looked as though all thought had fled her mind, but she recovered. “And I, you, Billy Bones.”
He smiled and knew it had to be a rather sad smile. “I think you knew William Manderly, not Billy Bones.”
“Good bye,” he heard her whisper as he walked away. And for the first time, he wondered if it might be possible to become William Manderly again.