Kate Hoffmann - The Pirate

"We're in the middle of hurricane season. I'm not going out on the water until the sky is perfectly clear and that's that." She glanced up at him. "Can't you find something better to do than pace the room and curse beneath your breath? Why don't you take a walk?"

"I do not find aimless walking about a relaxing venture," he replied.

"What do you colonials do for fun? You must have something to occupy your leisure time."

"There is fox hunting and cockfighting," Griffin said.

"I meant like a hobby," Meredith said.

"Horse racing, wrestling matches. Sometimes there are parties with dancing and gambling… and drinking, of course."

Meredith frowned. "All right, maybe there isn't much of interest to occupy your time here. We'll just have to find you some new hobbies."

"To what end? What would this pointless activity accomplish? Would it turn me a better profit or make my life easier?"

Merrie blinked, then frowned, a look of consternation crossing her pretty features. "No," she finally said. "But it would give me time to do my own work."

Griffin sighed inwardly at her edgy reply. Would he ever learn to control his impatience? It was his least admirable quality, right behind his stubborn nature. "All right," he relented. "I would agree that during my time here, I could make use of a hobby."

Her smile was worth his capitulation, for it warmed him to the very center of his soul.

"Good," Merrie said. "Now, what did you usually do on a rainy day back in your time?"

He grinned lasciviously. "I can think of only one thing," he teased. "And I would guess things have not changed that much in this century."

"I'm talking about hobbies, here," Merrie said, understanding his meaning immediately. "What would you like to be doing… for fun… I mean, for a hobby?"

Griffin considered the question for a long minute then shook his head. Besides spending a rainy afternoon in bed with a warm and willing woman, the only other thing he could imagine doing was standing on the deck of his own ship, feeling the swell of the sea beneath his feet and the rain on his face, hearing the snap of the sails above his head. He'd been born to captain a ship, to realize the dreams his father had of building a vast shipping empire on the profits from tobacco.

From the time Griffin was a boy, his father had talked as if Griffin's destiny had already been determined. He was an only child, and he and his father had been inseparable, and of one mind. By the time he was ten, he knew every facet of growing tobacco. And he also knew that every crop of tobacco harvested on the Rourke plantation was crucial to realizing the dream.

Finally, after years of planning, the ship was built, and the empire founded. They christened their first ship the Betty , after his mother, and launched the sloop on Griffin's twelfth birthday. And from that day onward, Griffin's life was promised to the sea.

He could still recall with such clarity the look of pride on his father's face as the boat slipped into the water. The Betty was his father's life, the business of the ship sustaining him after Griffin's mother died.

And then Teach took it all away. The pirate attacked and captured the Betty off the Virginia shore while his father was on board. The brigands stole what cargo they fancied, then scuttled the ship with the rest still in the hold.

"What is the date?" he asked softly, stopping to stare at a strangely silent Ben Gunn.

"September twenty-sixth," Merrie replied.

He stroked the parrot's breast with his finger. "Nearly a year gone by," Griffin murmured. "That is when this tangle began."

"What tangle?"

"Teach and me…and my father." His voice was flat and emotionless. He barely recognized it as his own.

"Can you tell me what happened?" Merrie asked.

Griffin turned away from the parrot and began to pace again, stopping at the window to check the weather once more. "Teach killed him," he finally said. "There is nothing more to tell."

"That's strange," Merrie said.

He turned and stared at her. "And why is that?"

"Even though Blackbeard fashioned a wicked image for himself, he didn't go down in history as a bloodthirsty murderer. We know that sailors on merchant ships were superstitious and they believed him to be the devil himself. But the sources say he managed to capture most of his booty without a fight."

Griffin felt his temper rise. How could she defend such a man? Had the pirate Blackbeard merely become some romantic myth, a colorful hero whose evil deeds had faded with the passage of time? "He murdered my father," Griffin repeated, trying to keep his voice even, "as surely as if he had run him through with his own cutlass."

Merrie drew a deep breath. "I'm sorry. Would you like to talk about it?"

"No," Griffin said. "There is nothing more to be said."

"But maybe if you talked about it, you might-"

"No," he repeated. "Talking will not bring back my father, so what is the point to it?"

"All right," Merrie snapped. "We won't talk." She pointed to the place on the floor at her feet. "Sit!" she ordered. "And relax!"

He glared at her through narrowed eyes, then grudgingly did as he was told. She handed him a boating magazine.

"You're making me tense," she said.

He sat on the floor for a moment then sighed and tossed the magazine on the low table in front of him. "You see, I cannot relax. It is not part of my nature."

Merrie placed her hands on his shoulders and pushed him back down. With a frustrated oath, she settled behind him on the couch, pulling him against the cushions, her legs on either side of his shoulders, her bare feet braced along his thighs.

She placed her hands on his shoulders and slowly began to knead the muscles on either side of his neck. Her fingers were strong and warm and he closed his eyes, letting a tightly held breath escape his chest. He'd never been touched by a woman in this manner, but he found the casual contact wonderfully enjoyable.

"You truly are the most impatient man I've ever met," Merrie said.

Griffin smiled. "I inherited that quality from my father. He was never satisfied with tomorrow, or even today. Everything had to be done yesterday. My mother would become so angry with him that she would not speak to him until he would agree to take her for a long carriage ride."

"She sounds like a sensible woman."

"She was." He tipped his head back and sighed contentedly. "My father once owned her and she proved to be so sensible, he had to marry her."

"He owned her?" Merrie asked.

"My father came to the colonies in 1670 when he was twenty years old, straight away from the gallows where he'd been sent for petty theft. And when he arrived, his articles of indenture were auctioned off to the highest bidder. He worked on a tobacco plantation for fifteen years before he was free to start a life of his own."

Merrie's fingers stilled for a moment. "That must have been very difficult for him."

"Don't stop," Griffin murmured.

"What?"

"This thing you are doing with your fingers. Don't stop," he repeated.

Merrie continued to work magic with her fingers, lulling him into a lazy state of languor. He felt like a cat, stretched out in a spot of sunshine, completely content with his lot in life.

"Tell me more," she said.

"By the time he was free, he had learned two things," Griffin continued. "The first was how to raise tobacco and make a profit at it. The second was a deep and abiding hatred of slavery. Instead of owning slaves, he would buy only the articles of redemptioners, those who came to the colonies of their own free will, and after four years of work, he would give them new clothing, a gun and enough money to buy fifty acres of land."

"In 1665, former indentured servants constituted almost half of the membership of Virginia's House of Burgesses," Merrie said.