The Lady's Guide to Petticoats and Piracy (Montague Siblings #2)(28)

“How do you know all of that?” she asks.

“I read a lot of books.”

“By that man? The one we’re going to see?”

“Among others.”

She rolls the marlinespike between her hands, the patches rubbed silver by her fingers glinting. “You want to be a surgeon.”

“A physician, actually. It’s a different license and requires more—it doesn’t matter.” I sit down again and turn my back to her, tossing my hair over my shoulder, though the wind immediately yanks it back across my face. “Go on then.”

Behind me, she lets out a small, breathy laugh. “So spirited.”

“I’m not spirited,” I say, sharper than I mean to.

Her hand, which I had felt hovering near my neck, jerks away at the spark in my voice. “All right, easy. I didn’t mean it as an insult.”

I cross my arms, letting myself sink into a slouch. “No one calls a girl spirited or opinionated or intimidating or any of those words you can pretend are complimentary and means it to be. They’re all just different ways of calling her a bitch.”

Her fingers tug at the ends of my hair. “You’ve heard those words a lot, have you?”

“Girls like me do. It’s a shorthand for telling them they’re undesirable.”

“Girls like you.” She laughs outright this time. “And here I thought the spectacles were decorative.”

I twist around to face her. “What’s that supposed to mean?”

“The only girls who talk like that are the ones who assume there are no other women like them in the world.”

“I’m not saying I’m a rare breed,” I reply. “I just mean . . . you don’t meet many girls like me.”

“Maybe not,” Sim replies, fingering the marlinespike again. “Or maybe you just don’t look for them.”

I turn back around with more of a petulant huff than I intend. “Just unknot my hair.”

There’s a pause, then I feel her fingers against my neck, sweeping my hair over my shoulder so that she’s holding the knot on its own. “You’re right,” she says softly.

“Right about what?”

“I’ve never met a woman quite like you.” There’s a sharp pinch and a sound like ripping cloth, and then she touches my shoulder. “Here.” I hold out my hand, and she drops the knot into it. “No blood spilt.”

“Thank you.” I run my fingers through my hair, trying to find the shorter strands. “I should wrap my hair like yours. It would be more practical.”

“I’m a Muslim,” she says. “That’s why I wear it. Not because it’s practical.”

“Oh.” I feel silly for not realizing it. Then wonder if I am permitted to ask any questions on the subject or whether that will only prove how ignorant I am on almost all matters of religion, particularly those outside of Europe. “I’ve heard Muslims pray quite a lot. Do you need . . . ?” I trail off with a shrug. When she goes on looking at me, I finish, “Somewhere private or incense or something?”

She picks a few stray hairs off the end of her marlinespike, then holds them on her open palm for the wind to snatch. “Have you met a Muslim before?”

“Ebrahim is as well, isn’t he?” I say. “From the Eleftheria.”

“Most of their crew is,” she says. “Or were born into it. Not the Portuguese men, but the lads from the Barbary Coast.”

The Barbary Coast pricks a vein inside my mind. I am not so foolish as to think there is only one kind of sailor that comes from the Barbary Coast of Africa, but there is a particular sort of ship that makes berth there, and most of them are in the business of piracy. And most are not the sort of cuddly pirates with career aspirations that we found in Scipio and his men. I remember the fear in the sailor’s eyes when Sim showed him her arm, too intense to be raised by a scratch or a scar.

“What’s on your arm?” I ask before I can stop myself. I’m not certain if she can follow the complex footwork that led me to this conversational pivot, but I say, “I’m not stupid. You showed that man something, and suddenly he was willing to help us.”

She doesn’t turn, just darts me another sideways glance—I almost miss it in the fall of her scarf. “It’s a mark.”

“Like a mole?”

I can hear her teeth grind. “No, not like a mole.”

“Is it a crown and a cleaver?”

She lets out a tense sigh, lips pursed so hard her skin pinks. “I didn’t think you heard that.”

“How did you know it would frighten him?”

“He’s got ink on him that means he’s sailed where frightening things happen to honest sailors who cross that banner.”

“Are you one of the honest sailors?” I ask.

“No,” she replies, and sticks the marlinespike hard into her boot.

“Oh.” I turn forward. She straightens. We both stare out across the gray water, watching England disappear into the fog, and all I can think is that if she’s not one of the honest sailors, it may mean she’s one of the frightening things.





Stuttgart





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