Page 1 of Hired by Pirates

~ Chapter 1 ~ Astor ~

* Busy Morning *

If I wasn’t so concerned about being seen as a respectable doctor’s assistant in this town, I would have hitched up my skirts and run, like when I was a little girl. Some days I missed feeling my pigtails flying in the breeze, like they did back in the days where I was completely free of all worries.

Instead, I walked as sedately yet quickly as possible while keeping my head high, bidding good morning to each of the townspeople as I passed. Paying such close attention to my reputation and how I was regarded was a constant source of irritation, but it was necessary.

It was a fine line that I trod. For years I was the annoying little orphan girl that people didn’t know what to do with. When I began spending my days and nights immersed in medical textbooks, I became the strange little bookworm.

Toburg was the sort of town where distant relatives would come to spend a week’s holiday with their families, since it was so quaint and picturesque. I always got the feeling that they were calling us backward, in the nicest way possible.

Yet Toburg was growing quickly, with people coming here from smaller towns every year. There were more shops, a wider variety of goods from increased trading, and there was even entertainment now, ever since they built a Town Hall where people could play music on Saturday nights.

Although I’ve always disliked large crowds of people, I did appreciate the steady stream of patients at Dr. Grenville’s office – the office where I might be a bit tardy in opening the doors this morning.

Scurrying down the path, I berated myself for having stayed up so late. It was impossible to put down the many textbooks that I borrowed from the doctor’s office.

Even though I knew that as a woman it would be hard to be taken seriously as a real doctor, I wanted to absorb as much knowledge as possible. Mostly for my own satisfaction, but also because Dr. Grenville, the only doctor in town, was a drunken lout.

He had inherited the business from his father, Herman Grenville, who was a wonderful man. A true healer. The kind of person I had always dreamed of being.

Yet he had eventually retired and moved away.

Although I had put in many hours as a doctor’s apprentice, and some of Dr. Grenville’s patients clearly preferred my care to his, there were many others who simply didn’t trust me because I was a girl of barely twenty.

As I reached the pier, my feet slowed to allow me to breathe in a bit of the crisp, damp air. It was even better than a cup of tea for clearing the morning cobwebs out of my mind.

A large group of people was gathered by the docks. At least, large for Toburg. It was normally a sleepy town, and a crowd at this early hour might mean trouble.

Pausing briefly, I took a look around to see what the hullabaloo might be. Perhaps it was a long lost relative returning home for the first time in years. Or some new invention or item from a faraway town that would soon be sold in our local shops.

I kept my ears open. The docks were also the best place to pick up a pinch of gossip, as people shared the local news on their way to and from other, grander places.

Then I stopped dead in my tracks.

A large ship was moored in our small port. It was easily twice as big as any other that had been docked there before.

The long wooden hull seemed to dwarf the pier. There was something imposing about the off-white sails, even though they hung down, loosely furled. Then a breeze caught the small top flag, fanning it out so that I could clearly see the design of a white cup, a star, and a bone on a field of black.

Pirates.

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