Free By The Sea, Book Three: Laura by Antoinette Stockenberg

not?"
    She nodded.
    "Do you still need a mate?"
    "Why do you ask?" she said, wondering. But
she felt bound to add, "The position hasn't been filled yet."
    "Good. I think I may be your man."
    Him ? His confidence rankled her. So
she stood up, walked over to the boarding steps as self-assuredly
as she knew how, and said, "Before you even trouble to come aboard,
may I ask if you've any experience on a coasting schooner?"
    "No," he answered honestly enough. "But I
was mate on a schooner-yacht—she was a hundred and forty-odd
feet—during the Pacific leg of an around-the-world cruise."
    "Oh." She faltered, then rallied. "But not
the whole way around? I suppose you managed to put her up on a
reef?"
    He took in Laura's testiness, then answered
calmly, "No. The owner fell overboard in Tonga—just outside the
harbor at Neiafu, Vava'u—and drowned. The yacht changed hands and
the new owner brought his own captain and crew."
    Tonga. Vava'u. The names sounded as ordinary
on his lips as Boston and Providence.
    "Oh? How did the owner fall overboard?" she
asked, without having any idea why.
    "Not because I pushed him, if that's what
you mean. He was drunk."
    "Oh? So he's dead?" she said, continuing to
listen to herself with amazement. "Then how can I check him out as
a reference?"
    "I didn't offer him as a reference."
    "Well, if you're not going to
cooperate—"
    "Lady! I thought you were looking for a
first mate, not a second character for a one-man play." He allowed
himself a short, ironic laugh. "This has been very ... educational.
Bye." He threw her a jaunty salute and turned to leave.
    "Wait!"
    He stopped and she said, "I am looking for a first mate. If you want to talk about it …."
    He seemed to consider whether he wanted to
or not anymore, leaving Laura with absolutely nothing to do but
stare at her feet or try to guess how old he was. She stared at her
feet.
    He came aboard, which caused her immense
relief—a reaction she needed to analyze further—and they went aft
to the cockpit, right past Billy, who was hovering over the
donkey-engine like an irritated prospector over a balky pack mule.
The two men nodded, Laura held her breath, and Billy went back to
cursing the machine; he did not recognize their guest of the
previous week.
    Laura sat down rather demurely (considering
that she was wearing Sam's pants, drawn in at the waist with a
length of manila line), took a deep breath, and launched into the
interview. She explained her husband's absence and the contract in
a few words, skipping the business of the angry Bahamian locals,
and when her applicant signaled his interest in taking on the job,
said, "I am sorry. I haven't even asked your name."
    He'd been glancing around the schooner
observantly as she was speaking. Now he turned and said, "Colin
Durant."
    "Colin Durant." She turned the name over
slowly, like the pages of a foreign-language dictionary. His eyes,
she saw, were heavily lashed, his cheekbones high. Yes, he might
have French in him. But her visceral response was to distrust him,
starting with his name: it sounded made up to her. "Where are you
from, Mr. Durant?"
    He smiled and said, "That's a tough one. Can
we start with something easier, like, can I fix that sputtering
donkey-engine?"
    She set her chin in the way she had. "No, we
can start with where are you from?"
    A veil dropped over his chameleon eyes, and
the green in them retreated behind the brown. "I was born in
Nantes, spent my childhood in Brest, my teenage years in
Guadeloupe, and the time after that"—he shrugged—"all over."
    "Where did you learn to sail?"
    "All over."
    "Where did you learn to speak English?"
    "All over."
    "You don't have an accent."
    "You're not listening." He shifted into the
devastatingly charming lilt of a Frenchman just off the boat: "At
what hour leaves the next bus for, how do you say, the Flat
Bush?"
    Startled by the transformation, Laura burst
into nervous, instantly infatuated laughter. But she did not
believe him.