Joss's mouth was dry as he watched Lilah climb the ladder onto the pirate ship. She made a great show of fumbling at the ropes, keeping her supposedly bad leg stiff as she hauled herself upward. Positioned behind her, he had an eagle's-eye view of her backside, as did the other men in the boat. He breathed a silent sigh of relief. In the baggy breeches, there was nothing to reveal that she was a female. Her waist was small, but then so were the waists of many a scrawny lad. With the oversized shirt hanging outside the breeches, and her dress ripped into that ragged jerkin on top of that, her shape was almost impossible to determine. He only prayed to God that the cloth binding her breasts would hold. If it did, if she remembered to keep her eyes down, limp whenever she moved and remain constantly mute, they had a small chance of pulling this off. He hoped.
"Step lively, Remy," he shouted.
Lilah continued her slow pace up the ladder as if she had not heard. Joss shook his head for the benefit of the onlookers.
When Joss reached the deck, Lilah was at the center of a crowd of pirates, being looked up and down by none other than Captain Logan himself. They formed a loose circle in front of the forecastle, and four flaming torches lit the small area so that it was almost as bright as day.
"Um-what's your name?"
Joss opened his mouth to reply when Lilah, appearing to take no notice of the question or the staring men around her, squatted and began drawing aimless patterns on the deck with her finger.
"By damn, is he deaf?" Logan sounded more puzzled than angry, staring down at Lilah with a growing frown on his face.
"Addled, like I told you," Joss said, joining the group. "He's always been a little slow-witted, but the wreck really did him in. He hardly seems to understand what even I say to him, and I'm his bloody uncle."
"Don't know as I care to have any deadwood on my ship." This was said in a thoughtful tone, as if Logan was pondering the point. "On the Magdalene, we all pull our own weight."
"I'll pull his oar and mine too, if necessary," Joss said sharply. "What I won't do is leave him. He's my dead brother's boy, and I'm responsible for him. You want me to read your sextant for you, you take him as well as me."
"Hmmph." Logan pondered this too, his eyes studying Lilah. Joss felt his heart stop as that hooded gaze ran over the slender figure crouched at his feet. To her everlasting credit, Lilah appeared unaware that their very lives hung in the balance while Logan considered whether the liability of taking on a useless mouth to feed outweighed the plus of Joss's ability with a sextant. To Joss's eyes, even with the black kerchief pulled low over her head, hiding her forehead and what was left of her hair, her breasts flattened and the rest of her shape concealed by the baggy men's clothes, and covered with dirt, she still looked unmistakably like a woman, like the one he loved. But she was playing her part well. She even managed to drool at this point.
If she hadn't been a lady, the girl should have been an actress. Joss's heart swelled with pride as Logan turned his eyes away from her in distaste.
"Can he write? Enough to sign his name? He'll have to sign the articles of agreement, same as the rest."
"He can make his mark. Can't you, Remy?" Thus addressed by Joss, Lilah drooled again, never ceasing in her endless pattern-drawing. Joss almost applauded. He had to bite back a grin.
"Get out the articles of agreement."
To Joss's relief, Logan turned away from Lilah to give the order to a man at his left. Now that he had decided to allow the two of them on board, he seemed to have no further interest in his addled crew member. Attention shifted from Lilah to the pirate Logan had addressed, who disappeared briefly below, then returned with a tattered roll of white foolscap. A hogshead barrel was dragged forward, a quill and ink pot were produced. Joss was motioned over; he smoothed out the paper and glanced over it carelessly. It was nothing more than the standard rules of shipboard life and the formula for division of the spoils, calculated to give the most to the captain with a decreasing percentage according to the importance of the crew member. He and Lilah would, he deduced, receive one twenty-fifth of what was left after the captain and other officers took their share. Which was fine with Joss. He didn't intend for either of them to hang around long enough to collect. At the first chance offered, hopefully at a well-populated port, they were going to jump ship. Their lives hung by a thread, and that thread would be cut as soon as Logan got where he wanted to go, or decided that Joss and his addled nephew were more liability than asset. Before that happened, they had to win free. In the meantime, they would have to be very, very careful if they were to survive.
The names of the crew members were signed round- robin fashion. Joss picked up the quill and, with a flourish, signed his name at the far edge of the circle. Then he bent, caught Lilah by the arm, and hauled her up to stand beside him.
"Make your mark. Here, on this paper," he ordered, thrusting the quill into her hand. She promptly dropped it, dribbling ink over the barrel and the boards of the deck as the quill rolled toward the rail. With a pained look, Joss retrieved the quill, only to find Lilah squatting again when he got back to her side. The watching pirates howled with mirth, slapping each other on the back in their merriment at his expense. Even dour Logan had to smile. Starved for entertainment, the pirates were finding their new shipmate an unexpected treat.
Cursing loudly, Joss hauled Lilah to her feet again, thrust the quill into her hand, closed her fingers around it and held them while he tried to convey to her what he wanted. The girl was fantastic. She frowned and drooled, tried to squat and had to be held upright, let her head roll limply on her neck. If he hadn't known better, he would have thought she really was addled. Finally he was forced to trace a scraggly X for her by holding his hand around hers and guiding the quill in the direction he wanted. When it was done and he let her go, she immediately squatted again, while he was left to write beside that lopsided X: "Will Remy's mark."
With the articles signed and put away, Lilah was left to trace her endless patterns on the deck while Logan called for a tot of rum all around. As Joss drained his mug, he thought with relief that they had passed the test. Until and unless something happened to show them otherwise, the pirates had accepted Lilah as what she pretended to be: a half-wit boy.
If she could keep up the act, they would be safe. As he had told her once, she was a female in a million.
Which was why he loved her, although he had never told her that. Maybe he would, one day soon.
Or maybe, just maybe, she was the last person that he would ever tell. He had a feeling that admitting to Lilah that he loved her would give her a hold on his heart that neither time nor circumstance would ever be able to break.
Somebody thrust another tot of rum in his hand. Joss drained it as rapidly as he had the first. For the time being, he and his addled nephew were members of a pirate band.