“Dream or no dream, you should eat, Mrs. Daniels.”
“I’m a grown woman, Neave Terhune,” she said kindly. “I’ll do what I want about my own dreams. I had Violette especially bake this crusty pumpernickel you love. And this butter?” She held it up. “Irish butter. The best in the world, though how the Irish do anything so fine as this butter is a mystery to me, given their attraction to self-destructive, pinheaded, backward habits. Have one of those little cucumber things. Those at least are English.”
I tried to eat the little cucumber things but failed. Violette set a half dozen slices of aromatic bread before me, and for the first time in my life the siren call of toast failed to move me. Mrs. Daniels and I sat across from each other, the table between us piled high with every delicacy I had ever greedily sought in her house. It all sat untouched. In the next weeks Mrs. Daniels actually shrank, physically, but that didn’t diminish her. She just got concentrated.
“Neave Terhune,” she said on the last day I saw her alive, her voice pure and hard and very small, “I am grateful to you. And I have loved you.”
I already knew that, and the knowledge cut into me so sharply I didn’t think I could stand it. I said, “Even though I’m a kind of unlovable young woman.”
“Yes,” she nodded. “Particularly so.”
I began to cry.
“Don’t cry,” she said, a terrible kindness in her voice. “All will be well. I’m sure of it.”
She died just before sunrise. That week a sunny young man improbably identifying himself as her son showed up with a lawyer and went to work selling everything under her roof. He knocked on my door one day to tell me his mother had left me her books.
“She knows I’m no reader, and most of these are for ladies.” He shrugged. “You know. Novels. Stuff like that.”
I thanked him. When the boxes of books came into my house courtesy of some chunky young men that her son had hired for the job, I went through them looking for the Forbidden Shelf of Romances. None were there. I had “borrowed” several of them, meaning I’d jammed them into a book bag when Mrs. Daniels left the room for even an instant, but I’d returned them all, all except The Pirate Lover, which I hadn’t ever been able to give up.
I took The Odyssey and Jane Eyre under my arm and climbed up to my bedroom. There I sat on my bed and looked out into the backyard. In Daddy’s garden the carrots and cabbages were long gone, but I watched a rabbit nose around hopefully until a neighbor’s terrier flushed it into the next yard, the dog howling along behind the poor floppy-eared thing, intent on ripping it apart. It made me cry again, the stupid dog. The rabbit.
There are people who think that every experience offers you a lesson, but I’m not one of them. Mrs. Daniels died. What are we supposed to gain in the way of comfort or wisdom from that?
That afternoon, Lilly knew where I was and she had a feeling for what I was feeling. She came and sat next to me. The Pirate Lover lay on the floor by my bed. She picked it up, asked me if I wanted her to read to me. I said yes. She kept on until the moon got high enough to throw shadows that moved when the curtains blew, which was pretty. There was the runaway Electra at the captain’s table in her first hours on board the Cat, skimming rapidly across the black surface of an ocean, sailing away from all that threatened her. Love, courage, generosity of spirit, adventure—all triumphant. Surely this was the truth, somewhere. The awful feelings seeped out of me. When Lilly stood up and stretched and said let’s sneak downstairs and fry up some eggs, I realized I was hungry. So that’s what we did and the day ended all right after all.
THE PIRATE LOVER
The Fool’s Game
Had she found herself on a pirate ship? Electra Gates was led to a cabin that had room in it for no more than a modest cot, over which hung a single lamp. “The surgeon’s mate was the last one to use this cabin and he liked a bunk better than a swinging hammock but I can ship you either one, miss,” Trotter said as he swung the door open and let his lantern shine to the farthest edge of it—five feet away. A rat skittered out of the light and into some hole invisible in the dimness. Electra stepped into the coffinlike space. “Unlucky bloke. Copped it last trip.”
“Pardon?”
“Ship’s surgeon. Fool took a swim in shark-infested waters. Just as useless in the sick bay—was afraid of blood—so I’m sorry to say he ain’t much missed. I myself prefer a hammock to a bunk. Most find it an easier berth in the workings of the ship. When at sea, like, if you know what I mean, miss. And it’s drier should water happen, which is frequent.”
“A swinging hammock, then, would be perfectly lovely, and I thank you.” He turned to leave but she stopped him. “Mr. Trotter, am I aboard a pirate ship?”
“Oh, miss, never in life! You must not use that word before the crew or captain, for it’s a low word, miss! We’re a letter of marque! The cap’n’s got the letter set careful like in oiled leather in a waterproof tin chest and I’ve seen it myself. We sail at the pleasure of the queen.”
“You mean king.”
“No, ma’am. I mean Victoria, our queen. I see the confusion. The cap’n’s got a French name and a French brother, but he’s no friend to either. This is no Frenchie Louis-Philippe ship. He’s his own man, miss, a man with connections on both sides o’ the Channel. We hunt Spanish and Dutch prizes—as do all the French and English afloat at the moment. I should tell you that there’s still a half a glass before the tide and a person who found she wasn’t where she wanted to be could disembark now if she hustled. Should you want to hustle. If you take my meaning.”
“You don’t want me aboard, Mr. Trotter?”
Mr. Trotter blushed a deep pink. “Well, some say women aboard are bad luck, like parsons, but I find they lighten the people’s mood. Not that we aren’t a happy barkie, which we are, but they do. Unless they cause fighting. Then they’re no good to man or beast.” He waited for her to absorb this information. “Normally, miss, you’d mess with the midshipmen and keep an eye on the young gentlemen as a person of a more refined nature but as we’re a privateer there’re no young gentlemen so you’re a member of the gunroom mess though the cap’n invites you to dine with him tonight, you being a kind of guest.”
“I’m very tired.…”