Nikole was standing at the window. Just like she did every day after she had heard the news. She wasn't really watching anything, just staring really. Out at the horizon. The sea. A comforting freedom of which she had no longer the privilege to enjoy. It continued like this day in day out. Her father whined at her in displeasure of what was happening and the way she felt. The baker insisted on trying to feed her more and more pastry until he had about worked up a full room of sweets that would have normally tempted her, and then only to have to throw them away. He muttered curses in French under his breath after the sixth day of his sweat-breaking baking and still none of it gone by Lady O'Brien. "No new sails" Nikole thought aloud. Eyes still glued to the horizon. She turned and sat down quietly on the bed. Reviewing over what had happened just a mere month ago. "Come now Nikole! He is a fine man! A wealthy man!" She glared with daggers at her father. How could he do this? She was only 19! She had her whole life a- head of her! She had to get married. The thought had merely just been that before. A thought. A word. Nothing more but what obviously lay in her future. But now the harshened reality of the confining vastness of the sentence was brought down on her with a verbal smack so hard her head nearly spun. She was to be wed to the count of Beckleson. The title sounded handsome for a man. Of good stature, and of honor. But the man of which carried the title was a despicable and vile character. Cheating and evil. His looks were not that of a wealthy man either. His facial hair grew thick and sparse on his misshapen-with- the- fat- of- greed on his face. His lips were dry and cracked, even in the most humid weather and his cheeks were pouchy and reddened from his constant drunkenness and the rage he let forth when he was so. He had once beaten a maid because she had brought him the wrong type of brandy. Through her cold and brief meetings with this man, she had acquired a strong dislike of the drink. Though she occasionally drank herself, being Irish.

She had moved from the bed to her mirror and boudoir. She watched her now pale and thin complexion as she tried to contort her face into a smile, a shape it didn't recognize after the month of solitude and sadness. A burning slowly reeled inside of her. Her cheeks became hot and her breath quickened. She was not going to take this. She was the daughter of Katherine O' Flaherty. And she was not going to take this decision lying down (insert Nikka Costas-everybody got their something her from blue crush- lol) she pulled her hair back into a tight bun, restraining her deep red curls except for one which she let forward next to her lavender blue eyes. When her mother was living she had always told her how much they looked like the sea. She missed her mother. She sighed as she headed for the first time in a month out of her room, pushing the deep mahogany double doors and nearly frightening a maid half to death, only to find herself breathless. There he was .She swallowed hard. Drawing her skirts up to her in a bone- crushing grip. "Ahhh," he growled, baring his yellow teeth and wrinkling and distorting his already disgusting face into a cruel and greedy smile. He glared hungrily down at her breasts, which was an either deliberately unnoticed action by her father or he was just commonly blinded by his iron will to see that Nikole was to be married to this idiot. "So here's my beautiful wife to be." He reached a greasy hand up to touch her face. She didn't move a muscle. Except for the ones in her face, which she was squeezing and quivering in repulsiveness and incredible anger, her lips had been drawn back into a tight drawstring. She slapped his hand away with such force he fell to the floor. The house shook when his almighty girth landed hard. "Nikole!" Her father yelped, terrified. She interrupted him however.
"How dare, how dare!" She screamed
"How dare you touch me!" "You wicked piece of scum. Never see me again, or..." She violently reached for a sword that was hanging by his belt and shoved it to his throat "or I will rip every fiber from your body and feed it to the dogs praying that your soul goes straight to hell." Her teeth were bared and her face was now so close to his that she could smell the rankness of his body and the sweat of fear "If you ever." "Dare again." "I shall.." He squelched rasping for breath. As she had been moving closer to him letting herself get carried away with her anger, her sword had also. It was now poking into his throat and a small trickle of blood was gradually oozing from beneath her sword tip. She cocked her head; still bearing her teeth with an almost stone still face, eyebrows still sliding angrily down her skin. He rasped once more. She pulled the sword from his neck and wrenched it away Letting it clatter to the ground noisily echoing in the huge stone hallway, she pulled her skirts up and stepped over the trembling disgusting man. Her father let out a small whimper as she passed by, sounding much like a pathetic animal about to be killed. She almost let herself smile as she pounded out of the house. But as she reached the cobblestone walks of Tortuga, she could not contain her happiness. A shadowed figure, which had been watching from the darkened window smiled and walked away into the darkened streets outside, beads and rings glinting in the moonlight as he swayed away into the pub greeted by a cheer as an even bigger smile erupted on his tanned features.
" Rum all a'round!"