Madylin had always been thin, flat-chested, and awkward; but she was lovely enough in her fine, silk gowns with flowers in her sandy hair. It was easy to tell that her brother, Marcus, was her twin. He had the same high cheek bones, green eyes, and full lips. Childhood was simple for the McGuffin twins. Living in Pleasant Cottage in the English countryside with their widowed gradmother, Lady Agnes McGuffin. Though, there was nothing interesting about the people they knew (snobbish tutors, mad cooks, prissy old friends of grandmother's) they played nasty tricks and cruel pranks and were the most clever children in the province. They dreamed their early years away, pretending that Father and Mother were still alive and warming up to none but each other.
Then Grandmama passed away…
Madylin and Marcus were barely sixteen when the kneeled next to Agnes's deathbed. They squeezed her hands and she promised that everything was going to be alright. That all her posessions were to go them. But Uncle Bernerd would have nothing to do with that, and the McGuffin twins were left on the street………
"Maddy! Maddy darling, I've got it!" Marcus was waving a piece of paper in his cold hands and looking wild and excited!
"What is it, Marc?" Madylin had just come home from a longe, excurciating days work at the factory and was in no humor for her brother's antics.
Marcus drew himself up to his full height and was glowing with pride as he said, "You are looking at an official sailor on the HMS Surprise!" Madylin was at a loss for words, and Marcus hadn't the patience to wait. "Just think of the money, sister!" You'll never have to work yourself half to death in those godforsaken factories again!" He threw his arms tight around her. "Isn't it wonderful?" But Madylin hadn't responded the way Marcus had hopped…expected. "What's the matter?" He asked after a long awkward pause.
Madylin sighed and whipped of her brother's dirty hands on her apron.
"Marcus, you're health." She said shaking her head. "However did you pass the inspection?" She could see the guilt in his eyes and knew the answer to her question before he even spoke. "Where on earth did you get the money for bribery?"
"Borrowed it." He said pseuto-casually, but falling back into his nervous habbit of biting his fingernails. "From Higgsworth, the inn keeper."
"Marcus!" Madylin began.
"Just hear me out, love, all right?" He put his hands on her bony shoulders and looked her straight in her eyes that matched his so well. "I've got it all figured out. The Surprise sets sail in two months. Two months. Well, I figure if we spend all that time working towards paying back Higgsworth, then while you can live off the mony the Royal Navy sends you. Seeing as how I have no wife, and you're my only other living relation, of course the mony'll go to you." Poor Madylin was doubtful, but she loved Marcus more than any other creature on the earth and wanted to trust him.
Everything should've gone perfectly to plan. But Marcus was laid off from his job when the coal factory closed. Madylin was demoted in the sewing factory after an argument with another worker. And Higgsworth and his gang were cruel and heartless to those were debt to them.