Free Buccaneer by Dudley Pope

ears. “I don’t steal your money, I don’t whip you, I don’t come home drunk and punch you, I don’t call you a French slut: Aurelia, I just love you. I am not trying to trap you, so right now, this minute, you can choose.”
    She was sobbing again, twisting a ringlet of hair with one hand, dabbing at her eyes with one of his linen handkerchiefs that had been lying folded on the dressing table.
    “Choose what?”
    Ned gave a deep sigh; he seemed to be sinking into a quicksand of emotions, words, decisions, contradictions and, he suspected, misunderstandings.
    “Choose what you want to do. Either you return to Wilson, and I’ll provide a horse and a groom to escort you, or you stay with me and we sail in the Griffin .”
    “But…but…oh, he will kill me; I know he will. Then he will have everything –”
    Again Ned sighed. “That settles it. No more talking. We leave Wilson to his mulatto – the one you know about, but there are several more. Now, in that trunk over there are the rest of my clothes. Sort them out and keep only the ones that are worth having. Remember we may have to adapt some for you – it might be more comfortable on board a ship wearing breeches and hose than a skirt and petticoat.”
    “That other trunk contains cloth. It is good cloth and they use it to make my clothes. Look through that – I imagine we will take it all. And behind that curtain are my boots and shoes. I will take them all.”
    “Your hats,” she asked, “where are they?”
    “I have only that beaver,” he said pointing to the one he had been wearing. “I wear a hat only to visit you.”
    “But the sun! It will kill you with the heat.”
    “Do not worry; it has already sent me mad.”
    Her eyes widened in alarm until he said: “That’s why I love you. From what you’ve been saying up to now, only a madman would love you –”
    “Edouard,” she said, her voice serious.
    Ned turned to her, alarmed by the tone.
    “There is one other thing. Walter is still my husband.”
    “I know! But what does that mean to us?”
    “While I am married to another man, you and I cannot share a marriage bed.”
    “Any bed,” he said lightly. “Even a hammaco.”
    She shook her head. “I made my vows in church before God: they last while he and I live, or the marriage is annulled.”
    “Start packing those clothes,” Ned said, “and we’ll discuss it later. There are no beds, marriage or otherwise, in the Griffin . I hope you like sleeping in a hammaco.”
     

Chapter Five
    The sugar sacks slid down into the blackness of the hold and as soon as there was a shout, the four men hauled on the rope going up to the stay. Saxby, standing by the coaming beside Yorke, gave a satisfied grunt. “That’s the lot, sir; fifty-eight tons of sweetness, and the Dutch will give us a penny a pound for it.”
    Yorke looked along the jetty and could see three or four men approaching, each with a knapsack on his shoulder. “Are these the last?”
    “Yes sir, but with your permission I’d like to light a lantern and read out the names, just to make sure.”
    Yorke laughed and clapped the foreman on the back. “A ship of scoundrels, eh Saxby? A would-be murderess and her two accomplices, for all of whom a hue and cry will soon be raised, a Royalist for whom the Assembly will soon be offering a reward, and thirty-one indentured servants who the Assembly would claim are breaking the terms of their agreement and escaping. You and your assistant and our nine time-expired men are the only ones on the right side of the law. And even you are leaving the island without paying the tax.”
    “Aye,” Saxby said grimly, “but we could stay and seize the ship and the lot of you lawbreakers, and make ourselves rich men on the reward.”
    “Aye,” Yorke said, mimicking the foreman’s Lincolnshire accent, “and may the Good Lord and the militia protect you from Mrs Judd and Mrs Bullock!”
    “I hear tell that the Spanish still call Sir Francis