Page 28 of The Pirate Lord
— JOHN PLAYFORD, “THE JOVIAL MARRINER”
The sun lowered into the horizon like a god’s golden pendant dipping into the sea. Sara leaned on the rail and stared at its rippled image in the water, wishing she could just walk the fiery path until she reached England and the safety of home. Jordan had been right. This trip had been ill-fated from the beginning.
And that wretched captain made matters worse. Oh, how he must have laughed after she’d left his cabin, after she’d succumbed to his kisses. How he must have reveled in her weakness. Instead of arguing on the women’s behalf, she’d let him take scandalous liberties. He’d distracted her quite effectively, no doubt for his own nefarious purposes.
It couldn’t be because of any real attraction. He’d made that clear, both in his cabin and later, when he’d publicly spurned her before his men, acting as if she were some … piece of piratebooty to be doled out as he saw fit! Her cheeks grew hot just remembering it. He’d made her melt, then offered to hand her to the first man who asked. The scoundrel! How she hated him!
“Miss Willis.” She turned to find Louisa threading her way through the women seated everywhere on deck, eating their supper. With a plate of stewed beef and ship’s biscuits balanced in one hand and a cup of whisky-flavored water in the other, Louisa reached her.
“You really must eat,” Louisa said in the governess tone she was wont to use. She held out the plate. “You must keep up your strength.”
“For what?” Sara sighed, though she took the cup. “It does no good to fight them. They’ll do what they want, regardless of what we say.”
“That’s not true.” Setting the plate on a nearby box, Louisa picked up a biscuit and closed the fingers of Sara’s free hand around it. “You’ve already convinced them to give us a choice. That’s more than we had before.”
“Some choice.” In a burst of defiance, she crumbled the biscuit into the sea. She had no appetite after her encounter with the dreadful captain. When she spoke again, her tone was edged with pique. “We can marry an old pirate or a young one, a daring or a dull one, but still we must marry pirates and live out our days on some remote island where we may never again see our families.” Her voice broke at the thought of being separated from Jordan for the rest of her life.
No matter what she’d told Gideon, Jordan would never find her. He’d search in all the wrong places, never dreaming that the pirates were on an island. A tear slipped from her eye, and she brushed it away. She never cried. She was too practical for that. But tonight she felt very impractical … and weepy.
With a murmur of understanding, Louisa squeezed her arm. “There, there, now. Don’t fret yourself over it. It’ll be all right. You’ll see.”
A new, gruffer voice sounded beside Louisa. “If the lady ain’t gonna eat her dinner, then she should give it to one o’ the others and not waste it by throwin’ it in the sea.”
Sara and Louisa turned to find the peg-legged cook scowling at them. In one hand he held a pitcher of water and in the other, the knobbed, worn stick he used as a cane. But the mottled brown and gray beard covering half his face gave him a fierce appearance that negated any hint of weakness.
Another pirate to plague them. Sara was sorely weary of them, and she was not in the mood to fight anymore.
Apparently, Louisa’s mood was quite different, for she wagged her finger at him. “How dare you give the poor woman trouble over those nasty biscuits! If you made biscuits worth eating, sir, perhaps she wouldn’t throw them to the fish!”
He blinked. “Biscuits worth eating?” His voice rose. “I’ll have you know, madam, that I bake the best biscuit on the high seas!”
“That’s not saying much, considering that ship’s biscuits are notoriously awful.”
“It’s all right, Louisa, you needn’t defend me—” Sara began.
Louisa ignored her. “Those biscuits were so hard, I could scarcely choke them down. As for that stew?—”
“Look here, you disrespectful harpy,” the cook said, punctuating his words with loud taps of his cane, “there ain’t nothin’ wrong with Silas Drummond’s stew, and I defy any man—or woman—to make a better one!”
“As you wish. I suppose itwouldbe better if I took over the cooking.” Louisa lifted the hem of the flimsy apron assigned to the women as part of their convict costume. “Of course, I’ll need a better apron and a decent cap, but I’m sure we can drum oneup somewhere. Oh, and if you’d be so good as to show me where the stores are kept?—”
“I will not!” Silas’s expression was an amusing mix of fury and astonishment.
To Sara’s surprise, Louisa paid no attention to his anger. “Then how can I prepare tomorrow’s dinner?”
“You ain’t preparin’ tomorrow’s dinner!” he roared. “My kitchen ain’t for the likes of an uppish female who probably don’t even know how to leech the salt out o’ beef!”
Sara rested her elbow on the rail, watching the interchange in silent amusement now that she was sure Louisa could take care of herself.
“How hard can it be to cook a decent meal?” Louisa muttered. “I’ve seen some of the best cooks in the world prepare dinner.” In an aside to Sara, she added, “I was employed by the Duke of Dorchester for a time, you know. He hadtwoFrench chefs in his employ. I should think I learned a thing or two from them.”
“French chefs? English dukes?” Silas sputtered. “You ain’t gettin’ within a yardarm’s length of my kitchen, you … you?—”
“My name is Louisa Yarrow, but you may call me Miss Yarrow,” Louisa said primly.
He looked so stunned by the condescending statement that Sara had to disguise her laugh with a fit of coughing.
“It don’t matter what I call you or what you call yerself,” he growled as he stepped near enough to Louisa to glower down at her. A sudden trough made the ship lurch forward, but while Sara and Louisa had to grab for the rail to keep their balance, he somehow managed to stay perfectly upright as if his feet were welded to the deck. “You ain’t gettin’ near my kitchen, woman. I got enough to worry about, havin’ to feed all these females. I don’t need a troublemaker underfoot.”
