dear readers,

i have changed the name Ahab to Gideon because...my parents made me... they want this story to be "orginal" so i'm so sorry please keep reading and revieing 3

Jeze p.o.v her room

I watched my chest heaving in frustration within the mirror as I sat in only my corset and petticoat. Ever since I have turned 18 my existence has seemed a mess. It is as if everything I've done was wrong. It was so clear to me now, Lady Griffin and my mother fully intended for me to marry Wesley, something I could never do…not now. He held neither physical attraction nor mental stimulation for me. He had the view that women were inferior to men. A view instilled in him as a young boy by his stepfather, for his mother was more a servant to him than a mother, or a wife to her husband.

Often he would undermine and belittle Katrina and me in school, constantly teasing and insulting us that we were stupid because of our gender. In fact, if not for milord's investment in the vineyards both Katrina and I would have gladly discarded and dismissed Wesley as a cruel, little dolt or nincompoop.

Wesley did grow out of his bullying stage, and eventually became a fair conversationalist and loyal friend. After all, when the barn burnt down two summers ago he was one of the first to pick up a hammer and nail. Yet his medieval ideals on women and marriage still remained. Even tonight he talked down to me as if I was somehow still that small child whose hair he use to pull. My intellect mattered naught to him; in fact, he wishes that I had less intellect if not at all. The way he rolled his eyes at me when I began to question his figures on the vineyard's yields in polite conversation told me so.

"Dear little Jeze." He laughed. "The numbers would be far beyond you, besides we have more important things to discuss."

He then began speaking to me about marriage and breeding. His family was a pedigree family and had a long line of strong, attractive Summit boys (even though Wesley was only an adopted Summit), while Summit daughters were dismissed as malfunctioning errors and were often sent to boarding school or to live with an "aunt" of sorts. Summit daughters much like Summit wives were only spoken of when they were to wed or supplied another male Summit, and even then it was little talk of the wife or daughter herself. In a Summit household all was male; the dogs were male, the horses were male, I think even the rats were male.

Wesley told me he had an older stepsister once, Hattie, though one would never know. I never saw anything of her, and I wonder now if I did in fact marry Wesley if I would become a ghost and dead to the world also.

Aside from that…breeding with Wesley to me would be like breeding with ones kin. Wesley had no sexual appeal to me in any way; he was like a brother to me, just as Katrina is a sister. My attraction to Wesley matched that of my attraction to a tree-limb or stump. I cringed to think of reproducing with him, I cringed to think of him desiring me in that way.

I now go to the window and look at the night sky, my hair brush still in hand. Sea of black in the sky, what image can I conjure in you? you and your many celestial waves of stars. And the moon the commanding captain of all the night time heavens. In your unending tides of blackness I see the visage of Gideon… my resilient and tender Gideon. Gideon the captain of the seas, captain of the stars and moon and the captain of my heart.

Something else became clear to me this night. Gideon loved me that I knew. I now saw it as clear as I could see the moon and stars before me. I saw it in the way he moved, the way he looked at me. I now felt his love in his every touch and heard it ring in every word he spoke. Captain Wrath loved me and he too grew weary of hiding it.

But how long could this go on? I wondered.