A row of grizzled faces looked down at them, all grinning to see the handsome piece. “Send her up!” called out one.
One of her rowers hooted back, but the other turned to reassure her. “It ain’t no navy ship with navy rules, miss,” he said, “but you won’t do better than this ship here. It’s a handpicked crew of volunteers and they sail with the Cat because it’s got the best fighting captain among all the privateers. You don’t want to cross him, but he’s always got more volunteers than he can take. Only the best sail with him.”
“What is his name?” she asked.
“Le Cherche. Viscount Basil Le Cherche. A fine seaman and a cunning sea wolf. No storm’s sunk him yet, nor no ship could take him with less than eight hundred pounds of metal to throw at him. Nobody’s forced his flag down, never.”
Just then Basil Le Cherche himself appeared at the rail. His expression remained impassive and he looked down calmly. “Permission to come aboard,” he called at last. “We’ll drop a line.”
Electra froze. Had she run from one predator directly into another’s grasp? She looked behind her at the port, considered her options, and stepped into the rope cradle. She allowed herself to be swung up and over the rail, greeted with hoots and then, under Basil Le Cherche’s cool and silent stare, respectful becks and nods from all hands. Le Cherche led her to his cabin, the only private space on the ship. A bank of windows at the stern reflected candlelight from tapers set on an enormous desk. The room was beautiful, even luxurious in a masculine way. It had the look of a country gentleman’s study, lined with books and furnished with Turkish carpets, polished wood chairs, a massive desk. A cello sat on its stand by the bookcases. He nodded to a chair and she sat.
“I had not expected to see you so soon, Miss Gates.”
She reddened, more in pride and anger than embarrassment. “If I had any idea that this ship was yours, you would not have. I am under duress. In fact, I am under duress from your own brother, who has convinced my mother to give me to him in marriage.”
“He is a rich man. You are a poor girl.”
“He is an animal, and poverty is preferable to allowing him to lay his hands on me.”
“I would agree,” Le Cherche said mildly.
The steward interrupted with a knock and entered bearing a tray with little glasses of gin and a plateful of biscuits. “I thought the lady might need some refreshment,” the steward said by way of explaining an entirely invented intrusion whose only goal was to get a better look at the captain’s passenger. Le Cherche let him set the tray before them and fuss with cloth and decanter before he dismissed the man. He poured her some gin, which she held uncertainly.
“Ah,” he said. “Tea would have been the more expected thing in your world, wouldn’t it? But this is a different world. A pity we had no opportunity to prepare, but we did not expect you.” Electra met his gaze, tipped the glass to her lips, and drank. She coughed. “You will no doubt be served any number of things you didn’t ask for by everyone from the bosun to the bosun’s cat.” He smiled. “They don’t see many beautiful women.”
“You are a Frenchman, but your crew is English?”
“For the better part. I find they’re excellent sailors.” He poured the clear liquid into his own cut glass. He drank. “But now that we are alone and since you already seem to have decided to reject my brother’s advances, I can tell you what I know of his proclivities and tastes.”
“You needn’t. He described them to me himself.”
“How unwise of him to reveal them to you before he had you securely in hand. He must have been very confident of your malleability. The better strategy would have been to conceal his own nature until you were a wife and had no legal rights.”
“Your brother described his expectations of me because he does not believe that my acceptance or rejection is relevant. He informed me that my youth makes my mother my legal guardian and she can dispose of me as she will.”
“And your mother would give you to him?”
“She would.”
“So the woman is either dull-witted or venal.”
Electra held her head a bit more erect, tried to make her expression wooden, but she was not indifferent to his words. They were painful and they were true—or rather, they were painful because they were true.
“Unfortunate,” he said softly. “So you fled?”
“I was forced upon the water, sir. I would surely have departed the city by carriage or horse had I not been sure that your brother had the power to keep a watch on all roads.”
“You are quite right. He dislikes being thwarted and would have spent whatever was required to secure you. Let me answer your questions before they are posed: No, I will not return you to him. And no, if you remain aboard I cannot tell you our destination. Do you still wish to stay? We slip anchor at the next tide.”
Electra nodded.
“Strange creature.” He smiled, but not with his eyes. “The twisting currents of fate gave you the mother and circumstances that would draw my brother to you and then send you fleeing to this very vessel. I seem to be a part of your revealed destiny, and I am not a man to do battle with destiny.” He turned away from her. “Trotter!” he called. “Find Miss Gates a berth near the surgeon’s in one of the cabins by the gunroom. Stow her things and see to it that she is fed. Dismissed.”
Apparently he meant this last command for both Electra and Trotter. She hesitated by the door. “Sir? I am entirely prepared to supply a fee for my passage, though I may need to beg for patience in payments.…”
“You assume I care about fees, mademoiselle.” He brushed past her on his way out the door. “I do not.”
So began Electra Gates’s first sea voyage.
NEAVE
Mrs. Daniels Decides to Go
Mrs. Daniels decided to die in the winter of 1943. I was still reading to her once or twice a month. We checked in on “Can This Marriage Be Saved” and revisited favorite scenes in favorite novels. We still read Mrs. Roosevelt’s “My Day,” and returned to The Odyssey every now and then. At this point in our acquaintance Mrs. Daniels and I communicated in the kind of shorthand that I’d only known with Lilly. More and more when tea arrived, she pushed it away. Then one afternoon she mentioned speaking to her husband.
“Mrs. Daniels, I thought your husbands were dead.”
“That does not always silence them, particularly if they have something to say.”
“What did he say?”
“He suggested it was time to come along.”
“Ah.” I just nodded. “Which husband was this?”
“Oh, the first one, of course.”
“Mrs. Daniels, was this in a dream?”
She looked me over, considering. “All right,” she said finally. “We’ll call it a dream.”