This understanding might be called a little late in coming, but Araminta had generally considered the laws of etiquette as the rules of the chase, and divided them into categories: those which everyone broke, all the time; those which one could not break without being frowned at; and those which caused one to be quietly and permanently left out of every future invitation to the field. Caught browsing a spellbook was in the very limits of the second category; a bit of quiet fun with a lady friend in the first; but a night alone in the company of an unmarried gentleman was very firmly in the last.
“You aren’t married, are you?” she inquired, not with much hope; she was fairly certain that in any case, a hypothetical Mrs. Weedle a thousand sea-miles distant was not the sort of protection Lady D—would ever consider acceptable for a daughter’s reputation, magic amulet or no.
Weedle’s face assumed a cast of melancholy, and he said, “I am not.”
He was the by-blow of an officer of the Navy and a dockside lady of the West Indies sufficiently shrewd to have secured a vow on the hearth before yielding; accordingly he had been given a place aboard his father’s ship at a young age. He had gifts, and might well have made a respectable career, but he had been taken too much into society by his father, and while of an impressionable age had fallen in love with a lady of birth considerably beyond his own.
He had presence enough to appeal to the maiden, but her family forbade him the house as soon as they realized his presumption. She in turn laughed with astonishment at his suggestion of an elopement, adding to this injury the insult of drawing him a brutal chart of their expected circumstances and income, five years out, without her dowry.
In a fit of pride and oppression, he had vowed that in five years’ time he would be richer than her father or dead; and belatedly realized he had put himself into a very nasty situation, if any god had happened to be listening. One could never be sure. He was at the time only eighteen, several years from his own ship and the chance of substantial prize-money, if he should ever get either; and the lady’s father was exceptionally rich.
Pirate ships were rather more open to the advancement of a clever lad, and there was no Navy taking the lion’s share of any prize, or inconveniently ordering one into convoy duty. He deserted, changed his name, and in six months’ time was third mate on the Amphidrake under the vicious Captain Egg, when that gentleman met his end untimely from too much expensive brandy and heatstroke.
A little scuffling had ensued, among the officers, and Weedle had regretfully been forced to kill the first and second mates, when they had tried to assert their claims on grounds of seniority; he was particularly sorry for the second mate, who had been an excellent navigator, and a drinking-companion.
With nothing to lose, Weedle had gone on cheerful and reckless, and now six years later he was alive, exceptionally rich himself, and not very sorry for the turn his life had taken, though he still liked to see himself a tragic figure. “I am not married,” he repeated, and sighed, deeply.
He would not have minded in the least to be asked for the whole tale, but Araminta was too much concerned with her own circumstances, to care at all about his. She did not care at all about being ruined for its own sake, and so had forgotten to consider it, in the crisis. But she cared very much to be caught at it, and locked up in a temple the rest of her days, never allowed to do anything but make aspirin or do up accounts for widowers—that was not to be borne. She sighed in her own turn, and sat down upon the lid of the chest.
Weedle misunderstood the sigh, and poured her a glass of wine. “Come, sir, there is no need to be afraid, I assure you,” he said, with worldly sympathy. “You will come to no harm under my protection, and soon you will be reunited with your friends.”
“Oh, yes,” she said, unenthusiastically. She was very sorry she had ever mentioned a ransom. “Thank you,” she said, politely, and took the wine.
For consolation, it was excellent wine, and an excellent dinner: Weedle was pleased for an excuse to show away his ability to entertain in grand style, and Araminta discovered she was uncommonly hungry. She put away a truly astonishing amount of beef and soused hog’s face and mince pie, none of which she had ever been allowed, of course; and she found she could drink three glasses of wine instead of the two which were ordinarily her limit.
By the time the servants cleared away the pudding, she was in too much charity with the world to be anxious. She had worked out several schemes for slipping away, if the pirates should indeed deliver her to her family; and the pearls around her waist, concealed, were a great comfort. She had meant them to pay her passage home, if she were not ransomed; now they would give her the start of an independence. And, best of all, if she were ruined, she need never worry about it again: she might jettison the whole tedious set of restrictions, which she felt was worth nearly every other pain.
And Weedle did not seem to be such a bad fellow, after all; her father’s highest requirements for a man had always been, he should be a good host, and show to advantage upon a horse, and play a decent hand at the card-table. She thoughtfully eyed Weedle’s leg, encased snugly in his silk knee-breeches and white stockings. It certainly did not need the aid of padding, and if his long curling black hair was a little extravagant, his height and his shoulders rescued that and the red coat from vulgarity. Fine eyes, and fine teeth; nothing not to like, at all.
So it was with renewed complacency of spirit she offered Weedle a toast, and gratified his vanity by saying sincerely, “That was the best dinner I ever ate. Shall we have a round of aughts and sixes?”
He was a little surprised to find his miserable young prisoner already so cheerfuclass="underline" ordinarily, it required a greater investment of patience and liquor, a show of cool, lordly kindness, to settle a delicate young nobleman’s nerves, and impress upon him his host’s generosity and masterful nature. But Weedle was not at all unwilling to congratulate himself on an early success, and began at once to calculate just how much sooner he might encompass his designs upon Lord Aramin’s virtue. Ordinarily he allowed a week; perhaps, he thought judiciously, three days would do, in the present case.
Meanwhile, Araminta, who had spent the last several months housed in a cabin over the sailors’ berth, and was already familiar with the means of consolation men found at sea, added, “Winner has first go, after?” and tilted her head towards the bed.
Taken aback, Weedle stared, acquiesced doubtfully, and picked up his cards with a faintly injured sense that the world was failing to arrange itself according to expectations. The sentiment was not soon overcome; Araminta was very good at aughts and sixes.
Araminta liked to be on Amphidrake very well. The pirates, most of them deserters from the Navy or the merchant marine, were not very different from the sailors on the Bluegill. But they did not know she was a woman, so no-one batted an eye if she wished to learn how to reef and make sail, and navigate by the stars. Instead they pronounced her a good sport and full of pluck, and began to pull their forelocks when she walked past, to show they did not hold it against her for being a nobleman.
Weedle was excellent company in most respects, if occasionally inclined to what Araminta considered inappropriate extremes of sensibility. Whistling while a man was being flogged at the grating could only be called insensitive; and on the other hand, finding one of the ship’s kittens curled up dead in the corner of the cabin was not an occasion for mourning, but for throwing it out the window, and having the ship’s boys swab the floor.