The lantern light flickered gently, its feeble flame barely lighting the dark cabin. The boat rocked erratically, causing the little girl's stomach to turn a bit, and she wondered what penalty her seasickness would earn her at the hands of this madman...
Her owner...?
Stealing a furtive glance at her father through the curtain of curls shrouding her pale young face, she wondered how it had come to pass that such a vile and vicious man could have won her mother's heart. She wondered if her mother would have tried to dissuade him, prevent him from selling her only daughter off to a pirate. Most of all, she wondered whose idea the exchange had been...
Her father's...
Or Captain Savage's?
"Look at me, girl," the pirate snarled, and she could do naught but obey him. His white-bearded face was heavily scarred beneath the whiskers, and his icy blue eyes bore holes through the back of her head; she felt certain the man could see straight through her to the other side of his quarters. "She's too young," he told her father without taking his cold eyes off her.
"She ain't, I tells ya," he insisted, worriedly crumpling the brim of his hat in his slender, filthy hands. "She'll fetch ye a nice price on the islands, plenty of men around wantin' a fresh young thing like 'er t' warm their beds. And ye might as well 'ave yer way with 'er before ye be sellin' 'er off, eh Cap'n?" His vulgar cockney chuckle sent a violent shudder coursing through her... or maybe it was simply cold, hard fear...
Captain Savage shook his head. "She'll be of no good to me if she hasn't her virginity. Has she that, Hartwell?"
"Aye, that she does."
The captain shrewdly considered his purchase, finally nodding and extending a hand to her father. "Forty shillings?" Her father nodded. "We've reached an accord."
"No!" she shrieked, but her father's frightened backhand silenced her, sending her flying backward and into the Captain's desk, upon the corner of which she landed hard, scoring a searing pain in her temple.
Blackness consumed her, and she remembered naught after the blow.