“Riches. Adventure.”
“Both true. Also rape. Four women in London. So easy for a man to simply slip away. The ship vanishes over the horizon and you avoid uncomfortable prison sentences or undesired trips to an Australian penal colony.” She stared. He went on. “My seductive, mesmerizing creature—half the men afloat, both in the Royal Navy and in the privateers working these waters—are fleeing a woman. Sometimes it is a wife. Or perhaps the father and brothers of a pregnant girl, a girl who may have been induced to intimacy somewhat, shall we say, before she was ready to do so.”
“You exaggerate.”
“Joe Bent. Gunther Schmidt. Ahab Hummori. Peter Piper. One-Eye Bentham. Daniel Rose. The Davies brothers. Surely you saw something besides admiration in their eyes as they watched your arrival? Surveyed your charms?”
Yes. There had been a darkness in the gazes of these men in particular—some hunger. She had dismissed her observation. As if he divined her thoughts and was merely responding to something she’d said aloud, Basil added, “So you did indeed see it. My love, you were not wrong.”
“I am in no need of protection. I am not your object.”
“Not to me. Not to you. But to them, you are. The men I named will be encouraged to volunteer for the attack I plan on my brother’s ship. In the event that I do not survive that attack, I do not want them here to watch over you. My first lieutenant and first mate will be briefed on your protection. They are steady, strong men. Good men. They can be trusted with your life. They will give their own to protect it.”
“You plan a direct assault? Two ships like ours cannot attack your brother’s convoy and survive.”
“We will not fire a shot, my dear.”
“Are you mad?”
“Only in my relations to you. In matters of war, I assure you I am no fool. The xebec will lead, but she will be tricked out as a perfect surprise—stuffed to the gunwales with powder and tar with the littlest fire left burning in her aft port—a fire that, if their own cannon does not reach her magazine and turn her into an enormous bomb, the flames we set ourselves will do the job. We will keep the Cat at a distance, appearing all the while to be moving heaven and earth to hurry her but actually we will have set a sail dragging behind her beneath the surface. We will point the xebec into the midst of my brother’s convoy, set her mizzen to keep her on her course, and slip over the side into our tender to pull as fast as we can back to the Cat.”
“And if you do not gain enough distance before the explosion?”
“Then I will die at the same time that my brother Henri does—but you will be safe. Now or later, my sorceress. He will hunt you forever if I do not stop him now. He must die in order for you to live.”
“Do not do this, Basil.”
“I know the danger my brother poses to you, my beloved. There is no other way.”
“I will go with you.”
“You will not. You have many strengths, my love, but setting sails in an instant and pulling a barge quickly through high seas are not among them.”
Against every fiber of control and will, Electra’s eyes filled with tears. The first one sprang free and coursed down her cheek. Basil touched it, gently, and swept it aside. “I do not believe I can live without you,” she whispered. “I cannot imagine it, Le Cherche.”
“Nor can I imagine my existence without you. So I must go to assure your safety.”
NEAVE
Ponytail
Days and more days, and no Lilly. Jane and Snyder got quieter. Then I found Annie in the backyard one morning with a shovel and a shoebox.
“What are you doing, sweetie?”
“I have to bury William. He was sick and then he died,” she answered, clutching the shovel so hard that the knuckles in her hand were white.
“Who’s William?”
“My groundhog. Now he’s dead.”
“Really? Let me see.”
Annie set down the box and lifted the lid. There lay William, still as a rock or a clump of earth, but that was because William was a stuffed animal and that had always been his nature.
“Are you sure he’s gone?” I pressed on the groundhog’s chest. She nodded soberly.
“Do you think he’ll mind being buried, Aunt Neave? I thought about it, and maybe since he’s a groundhog he won’t mind being under the ground. But I don’t know.”
“Are you afraid that he’s scared?” I asked.
She nodded.
“Let’s consider that,” I suggested. “Let’s have tea and think a bit.”
We did that, and in the end William was returned to life, though not to the same one he’d been living only a few weeks ago.
I went home to my apartment but couldn’t settle anywhere. The kitchen was suddenly enormous and the light pouring in through the large windows felt hard and white. I moved restlessly from chair to table to sofa and back around again. I tried reading the first of the books that always sat by my bedside, then the second, and a third, and tossed every one of them aside. The books ended with the joyful union of lovers, safe in worlds of their own making. I’d thought that those worlds, the book worlds, were the truer ones. Now with safety, love, joy, all at such a distance, that seemed less certain. Maybe The Pirate Lover was just a lie, spun to comfort the gullible. This thought was so horrible that I fell asleep in order not to think it anymore.
Nights when I was alone in the warehouse apartment I sank into my largest armchair with a book or a pile of Good Housekeeping propped on my belly, crumbs from whatever I was calling dinner in a halo around the pages. Ladies’ magazines had an inflexible seasonal pattern that was soothing when it wasn’t annoying: “Best Christmas Ever,” “Start the New Year a New You,” “Thanksgiving Side Dishes,” “Best Brownies Ever,” “Lose Ten Pounds,” “You and Your Teenager.” Then there was “Can This Marriage Be Saved?” which also seemed to cover the same territory it had when I first met it. Every marriage began to seem riddled with the same rot, every hopeful piece of advice too flimsy to hold the crumbling thing together. I revisited the books that I’d read by Mrs. Daniels’s fire, watching Jane Eyre commune with spirits that urged her to flee temptation, feeling oddly soothed when the Cyclops ate a few more of Odysseus’s men, and I revisited Electra once more as she made her way through the break in the wall and fell into her chained lover’s arms.
I tried on the possibility that I might never feel safe again. I missed Lilly. I played checkers with Annie. I comforted Jane and Snyder. I longed for something that was related to but not Charles Helbrun III. I didn’t mention Charles Helbrun’s proposal of marriage to anyone. I knew what they’d say, and I didn’t want their voices mixed up in my own thinking.
“Let me think,” I said to Charles when he called. “Give me time.”
A practical man, an accommodating negotiator, he agreed to wait for my call and leave me to think. I had surprised him. I promised not to take too long.