“Only with wood.” I gestured at the chopped twigs around his boots. “If I had my own cutlass…”

“I would give you my finest blade, lass.” He tapped my nose. “But Abigail would discover it.”

“How are you going to deal with her?”

A strange expression creased his face, and he looked away. “What I have planned for her isn’t proper for your ears.”

“I don’t understand.”

“Would you like to hear about my latest prize?”

“Yes!” I bounced on my toes and dropped the cutlass. “Was there a battle?”

“Many battles.” He laced his fingers through mine and led me to the shade of the woods.

Lowering to the ground, he gathered me on his lap and told me every heart-pounding detail of his attacks on the king’s warship, a French brigantine, and numerous merchantiers.

“Then, two months ago, I encountered a Spanish treasure fleet. Twelve ships in total.” His eyes lost focus. “We were outgunned and would’ve never attempted something so dangerous, but there was a deadly storm on the horizon. We waited in safe waters for the tempest to take its toll. Then we moved in, attacking the battered ships and claiming their salvage.”

“They fought back?”

“The storm did. I thought it had passed, but a surge unlike any I’ve seen followed in its wake. I lost my ship.” At my gasp, he pinched my chin and smiled. “I seized a new ship that night.”

“You did?”

“Aye. A Spanish galleon. She was neither broken nor sinking like the others in the surge.” His expression glowed with veneration. “She was spitting fire and laughing at the storm.”

He explained how he rallied his surviving crew and boarded the fifty-gun galleon, even as his own ship was swallowed by the king tide.

I committed the particulars of his ambush to memory, hoping one day I might have a need for such knowledge and become half the wise, courageous captain that he was.

“What did you name her?” I asked.

“Jade.” His gaze lowered to my necklace. “She’s a beauty, she is. When I saw her, I knew I had to take her. For you.”

“For me?”

“She’s yours, Bennett. I’ll captain her until you’re old enough to decide.”

“Oh, Father!” My heart burst from my chest and soared with savage joy. “There’s nothing to decide. I want to be a buccaneer like you.”

“You’re too young to know what you want.”

“I’m old enough.”

“But not too old to sit on your father’s lap, are you now?”

“Just so.” I wrapped my arms around his shoulders and burrowed into his hard chest.

“Someday you might wish to travel to England in your own right and follow your mother’s dream.” He chuckled. “God knows, you would make a meal out of the beau monde.”

“No, thank you. I wish to follow you.”