Chapter 20 #2
By late afternoon, frustrated beyond endurance, she sought out Louisa, hoping the woman’s tart tongue would lash some sense into her. Louisa wasn’t fond of Gideon. She would remind Sara of all his faults, and that was just what Sara needed.
When she went in search of Louisa in the ship’s galley, however, she found Silas instead. As she walked in, he was lifting a huge mound of bread dough onto the floured surface of the table.
“Louisa—” he began, then broke off when he saw it was her. “Ah, Sara, you’ll do, I suppose,” he said in his usual gruff manner. “Come knead this bread. I have to make sure the meat don’t burn.”
“Where’s Louisa?”
He shrugged. “Who knows where that woman’s gone off to? She’ll be back soon, I wager, but this dough must be kneaded now. Trust Louisa to disappear when I need her.”
His grumbling didn’t fool Sara. The man was utterly in love with Louisa.
Indeed, the two of them had become inseparable in the last two weeks.
They’d already asked Gideon, as a ship’s captain, to perform their marriage ceremony and were as engrossed in each other as any newly married couple. It made her envious.
“Come now, girl, help me with this bread,” Silas repeated, waving her toward the table.
“I don’t know how to knead bread.” At home, the servants did such things. But on Atlantis, where there were no servants, she’d learned a great many skills she’d never had use for before.
Today, however, she wasn’t in the mood to learn anything . . . except how to get Gideon out of her thoughts.
“Kneadin’ bread is simple enough,” Silas said, ignoring her protest. He pushed down on the ball of dough until it flattened, then folded it over and repeated the motion. “You see?”
“But I’ll ruin it.”
“Balderdash.” Grabbing her by the arm with floury fingers, he drew her to the table. “You can’t ruin it. The more you punch it, the better ’tis. The harder you handle it, the higher it’ll rise. Take me word for it. It’ll take anythin’ you give it.”
She eyed the dough skeptically, but did as she’d seen him do, timidly at first, then with more confidence. The dough was so resilient and springy, it did seem as if she couldn’t hurt it. And he had said it would take anything she could give it.
As she continued the kneading motion, her thoughts wandered back to Gideon.
How could she get past this frustration she felt every time she was near him?
This wasn’t supposed to happen to respectable ladies.
Men lusted after women of course, but only fallen women lusted after men in return.
Or so she’d been taught. She was beginning to think that everything she’d been taught was suspect.
Otherwise, how could she have found such enjoyment in the arms of a pirate? But she’d certainly done that. She couldn’t deny it.
Now what was she supposed to do about it? He’d said she would have to ask him to touch her. She couldn’t imagine doing so. Why, he might not even care about her any more. Maybe he’d decided a noblewoman wasn’t worth his time. The very thought of that made her go cold with fear.
She stabbed the dough furiously with her fists. It didn’t matter what he thought one way or the other. She’d be returning to London without him. It was inevitable.
Silas’s grumbling voice interrupted her thoughts. “Hold up, lass, I know I said you couldn’t hurt it by punchin’ it, but I didn’t say kill it.”
That’s when she realized she’d been punching the bread silly. She swallowed hard. “I’m sorry . . . I . . . my mind was wandering.”
He took the bread from her, rolled it in some lard, then placed it in a bread pan. “Aye, wanderin’ in troublesome places, I’ll wager. What has you in such a dither?”
She cast him a wary glance. “Nothing . . . important.”
He returned to ladling gravy over the meat. “It’s our good captain, ain’t it? He’s been troublin’ you again.”
“Yes . . . well, no. Not the way you think.” When he cast her a searching glance, she turned her back to him and fiddled with the latch to the pantry. “He . . . he’s been the soul of courtesy.”
“And that bothers you?”
“No, of course not. It’s just that . . . I don’t know what to make of it. Sometimes I think he dislikes me very much. Other times . . . he . . .”
Other times, he makes love to me with passion and caring. But she could hardly tell Silas that, could she?
“Depend on it, the man don’t dislike you,” Silas said in a calm voice. “Gideon just finds it hard to trust a woman, any woman. Especially one of your kind.”
There was that horrible phrase again—your kind. She whirled around to face Silas. “Why does he hate ‘my kind’ so? Which one of ‘my kind’ ever hurt him?”
He set down the gravy ladle and stared at her a moment, stroking his beard thoughtfully. “If I tell you what I know, will you keep it to yourself?”
Her curiosity roused, she nodded vigorously.
He gestured to a chair. “You’d best sit down then, lass. It’s a hard tale, and a long one. But if anyone should hear it, it’s you.”
Taking a seat at the scarred table, she folded her hands in front of her and looked at him expectantly.
“His mother,” he said. “That’s who hurt him.”
She looked at him blankly. “I don’t understand.”
“Gideon’s mother was a duke’s daughter. A very wealthy lady from a very powerful English family.”
An awful feeling crept over her. Gideon was English? His mother had been a noblewoman? Gideon’s mother?
“You look surprised.” Taking up his pipe, Silas filled it with tobacco from a pouch in his vest pocket. “I s’pose that’s to be expected. Pirates aren’t known for their fine bloodlines.”
“But how? Who?”
Silas stuck a straw in the stove fire, then used it to light his pipe.
“I can tell you the how. The who ain’t so clear, least of all to him.
” He tossed the straw in the fire and puffed hard on his pipe.
“He told me most of the story when he was drunk one night. We’d seized a ship that day, with an old woman on it named Eustacia.
Hearin’ her say her name rattled him bad enough to send him to the bottle.
Mebbe you noticed as how Gideon don’t drink much.
I think he fears endin’ up like his father.
Anyway, that night, he said his mother’s name was Eustacia, or so his father’d said when he was drunk. ”
“Gideon told me a bit about his father. The man sounded like an awful person.”
“Aye, he was. Gideon hates him. But he hates his mother more. He blames her for leavin’ him to the care of his bastard father.”
“I don’t understand. How does a duke’s daughter meet a man like Gideon’s father? Wasn’t his father American?”
“Nay. His father was as English as you. Apparently, he was Eustacia’s tutor.
He must’ve been a charmer, seein’ as how he got her to run off with him.
” Silas’s expression grew grim. “But after she bore Gideon, she got tired of the poor life she led with Elias Horn. She asked her family to take her back, and they agreed.” He stared at her from above his pipe.
“But they made her leave her son behind.”
Sara gasped aloud. “They didn’t!” When he nodded, she said, “But why?”
He shrugged. “I dunno. Mebbe to hush up the scandal. Mebbe they hoped that if Elias and Gideon wasn’t around, they could keep it all quiet more easy-like. Who knows how an English noble thinks?”
She flinched. She knew he didn’t mean it as a criticism of her, but it demonstrated how suspiciously the entire crew of the Satyr regarded her countrymen.
And her class. No doubt their hatred had been nurtured during the American Revolution, which had probably just ended around the time Gideon was born.
But for Gideon, there was more to it even than that. Remembering how bitterly Gideon had spoken of his mother, she felt heartsick. No wonder he hated “her kind.” No wonder he’d been so reluctant to trust her.
Still, his distrust wasn’t quite fair. She would never leave her own child behind, no matter what her family asked of her. She couldn’t understand how Eustacia could have done it.
“Did he ever go looking for her, ever try to hear her side of the story?” she asked.
“If he did, he never told me. Would’ve been near to impossible anyhow.
His father took him off to America when he was just a wee thing.
Said he wanted a new life for them. But his wife still tormented his mind, and he drowned his sorrows in drink many a night.
Gideon once told me they lived in fifteen different towns when he was growin’ up.
His father couldn’t keep a position as a teacher on account of his drinkin’. ”
That explained why Gideon wanted Atlantis so badly. He wanted a home and someone to care for him, though he would never admit it aloud.
“What made him run away to sea? His father’s beatings?”
Silas shook his head. “He didn’t have no choice. His father drank himself to death when Gideon wasn’t even thirteen, so Gideon went to sea to keep from starvin’.”
“At thirteen? He was only thirteen when he went to sea?” A crushing pain built in her chest. At thirteen, she’d been coddled by a doting mother and a kindly stepfather and given everything she wanted, while Gideon had been huddled in the cold rain on a ship’s deck, running errands and shining a man’s boots.
Her feelings must have shown in her face, for Silas’s voice was gentler than before when he answered her. “It weren’t so bad as all that, lass. Bein’ a cabin boy made a man out o’ him, and that was a good thing, don’t you think?”
Tears sprang to her eyes unbidden, and she turned her face away to hide them. All the times she’d unfairly accused Gideon of cruelty came back to haunt her. If anyone had known cruelty, it was Gideon.
Yet he wasn’t cruel. Far from it. Yes, he’d taken them against their will, and she still thought him wrong for that. But he’d done it thinking he was doing something good. He’d done it for the sake of his precious colony, a place where he could put an end to cruelty.
Indeed, she’d seen how well he governed.
He always listened to both sides of a dispute and settled them fairly.
He’d kept to his promise that the women would be treated with respect, enforcing that rule with an iron hand.
When she’d wanted to begin teaching the women again, he’d shocked her by agreeing.
He’d even taken to sleeping in his half-finished house, so his cabin and comfortable bed could be used by Molly, the pregnant woman whose time was nearly come, and her daughter Jane.
He wasn’t at all the dreadful, wicked man she’d first taken him to be. And that made him far more dangerous to her than before.
“You care for the lad, don’t you, Sara?” Silas said, breaking in to her thoughts.
Wiping her tears away, she slowly nodded. “But he hates me for being an English noblewoman like his mother.”
“Nay.” His voice was kindly. “Gideon may be bitter, but he ain’t no fool. He knows a good woman when he gets his hands on one. I think he cares for you somethin’ fierce.”
“Then why didn’t he tell me about her?” It wounded her to think he hadn’t trusted her enough for that.
“He told me about his father, but he refused to tell me about his mother, even after we—” She broke off with a blush.
“It’s because he thinks I’m . . . I’m like her, isn’t it?
He thinks I only care about my family and the privileges I enjoyed in London. That’s why he won’t tell me things.”
“That ain’t true. Mebbe he thought you were like his mother at the first, but he don’t think that now. I’m sure of it. He sees you for what you are.”
“And what is that?”
“The kind of woman he needs. Someone who’ll soften the hardness his mother put there.”
I can’t do that, she wanted to cry. Even if he would let me, I won’t be staying here long enough to be what he needs. I’m going to abandon him, just like his mother did. I’m going to leave when Jordan comes.
But she didn’t want to leave, didn’t want to abandon him.
For the first time since Petey had left, she recognized the truth.
She didn’t want to return to the grime and sorrow of London.
She wanted to stay here to teach the women, to watch the colony grow, and yes, to be with Gideon.
She wanted to soothe his hurts and heal his heart.
And she could tell Silas none of that.
“If he ain’t talkin’ to you ‘bout things, you got to be talkin’ to him,” Silas said.
“Talk to him? And say what?”
“How you feel. What you want. It took a mighty lot of my courage to speak to Louisa about . . . well, about things. But thank the good Lord I did, else I wouldn’t be havin’ her for a wife now.”
“I can’t talk to Gideon.” How could she tell him what she wanted when she wasn’t even sure herself? And how could she tell him how she felt when she might be abandoning him any day?
Quickly she rose from her chair and headed toward the entrance. “I’m sorry, Silas, I have to go.”
“Wait!” When she paused and turned toward him, he picked up a bucket and held it out to her. “If you don’t mind doin’ an errand for me, I need this taken to Gideon’s new house. He was askin’ for it this mornin’, said he needed it to haul away wood shavings.”
“I told you, Silas, I can’t talk to Gideon now.”
“Oh, it’s all right. No need to talk to him. He ain’t at his house. He’s helpin’ Barnaby catch fish at t’other end of the island.” When she hesitated, eyeing him suspiciously, he pointed down to his wooden leg. “It’s a far piece for me with me leg an’ all, and Gideon’ll be wantin’ it later.”
“Very well.”
She took the bucket. Anything to appease Silas, she thought, so she could get out of here. She had to get away before she poured her heart out to him and told him the full extent of her dilemma.
Silas meant well, but he couldn’t help her decide what to do about Gideon. She was the only one who could do that.