Hidden Secrets

When Tom Pullings reported to the captain's cabin and informed him that all was well and no other sails had been sighted, he found Jack was cutting the string on the lady's parcel with an antique dirk that he used as a letter opener. "Ah, very good, Tom. Have a seat."

Stephen had his shoes off and was sipping a glass of wine. Next to him, the lady sat looking at the faded, old birdhouse with a strange, solemn expression on her face. "Are you ill, ma'am?" he asked. "If you don't mind me saying, you look done for."

The first real smile of the day lit her face and she laughed. "How very kind of you!" she teased.

"What is this?" Jack demanded. The parcel was open and he was pawing roughly at some very fine, expensive silk chiffon that had been wrapped in the paper.

"Jack! My chiffon!" she cried in annoyance, reaching to take it from him. "It was a gift from Mrs. Terayen, if you must know, and I shall make myself a new evening gown. I hope you have not soiled it."

"I don't know what kind of game you are playing, ma'am," said Jack angrily, "but my patience is at an end."

"Rose, where are your father's papers?" asked Stephen more delicately.

"Right here." She reached to tap on the birdhouse.

For a second, they all stared at it, then Jack reached impatiently across the table. With the dirk, he pried off the top of the birdhouse. Old bits of speckled eggshells and nesting material scattered over the tabletop and floor. Reaching inside, he yanked out a false back, and with more care, he removed a flat packet wrapped tightly in sealskin.

"I'll be damned," he said to himself.

The other two men got up from there chairs to see. Jack laid the packet flat on the table and slit the leather thong tying it closed. Very carefully, he opened the sealskin to find a heavy parchment folded within. Glancing at the others, Jack grinned, then began to unfold what turned out to be a maritime chart with the latitude and longitude marked very plainly and an almond shaped island with a sizable inlet like a crab's claw. There was no name given to the island, but the initials JF were in the corner.

"Do you mark that location, Tom?" Jack asked.

"It can't be," replied the other man.

"I don't understand," said Stephen. "What is it?"

"There is no island there."

They all sat there in silence for a long minute. "Sir, perhaps you may tell me some of what occurred today?" Pullings finally asked.

Jack quickly told his lieutenant about the churchyard and the disturbing interview with Terayen over luncheon. When he heard about the price on the lady's head, his tanned face paled a bit, and he looked worriedly at her as if he finally comprehended the source of her melancholy.

"I am quite sure you have questions you would like me to answer." Rose smiled a little, but there was no happiness in her expression, just sorrow and softness, as if she were blurred around the edges. "May we speak of this tomorrow, please?"

Jack hesitated a moment. His own weariness had faded a little in the excitement of the discovery, and he burned with questions. However, she was obviously in no state to go on. "Yes, of course," he finally said. "You need a good night's sleep. Tom, will you see the lady to her cabin?"

"Yes, sir."

They all got up. "My dear Rose," said Stephen, embracing her and kissing her on both cheeks in the Continental fashion. "You are a remarkably brave lady."

"Thank you," she murmured, tears trembling in her eyes.

"Good night, ma'am," said Jack, not knowing what else to say.

"Good night, and thank you both," she said, then went with Pullings.

Now that they were alone, both men knew that they could speak freely, which they had refrained from doing in her presence.

"By God, I wish we could have had the whole story from her tonight," Jack muttered, rubbing his head. "I thought that this would answer some questions, not create more." He took up Flint's chart again.

"Jack, whatever it is she is involved with, it is far more than mere piracy," said Stephen slowly. "Five thousand pounds!"

"And we'll have it out of her tomorrow," Jack said as he studied the parchment.

"That woman is dangerous. Not in the way we may have originally thought, but still more than she appears."

He had caught Jack's attention. "What do you mean? Under a death sentence by pirates?"

"No. I mean here, aboard ship." He picked up a shard of an eggshell that had fallen out of the birdhouse and examined it. ""I remember a reaction that one of my colleagues once showed me. Into a clear liquid, he dropped a catalyst that turned it dark and tempestuous."

"Stephen, what the devil are you talking about?"

"Think about the power a woman can have over a man and then increase it exponentially. That is the danger we are facing. It is clear that Mrs. Stirling is a lady and is certainly not a trained agent; however, if events warrant, she may act out of desperation."

"You think she has influence over some of the officers?" Jack felt a deep sense of foreboding at Stephen's words.

"You cannot have failed to notice the way she looks at us, at all of us. The charming inability to disguise her feelings is incredibly flattering and not a man among us minds at all, but the distraction! When a man like Tom Pullings almost drops her off the top of the mainmast, then I begin to worry about what mischief she could generate if she had the correct motivation."

At first, Jack glared at him; then he stopped to think. What had really happened up there that day? And what was the ineffable quality that the lady possessed which still remained an inchoate thought only partially recognized by his mind but fully familiar to a more primal part of him?

"Men think of themselves as one type of creature and of women as something else entirely, closer to angels than to the warm-blooded animals we really are. Thus, though men visit brothels or have women, they do not think a lady who is widowed might have a lover until there is compelling evidence to the opposite. There is the assumption that she has been chaste these four years."

"What difference does it make to us now?" Jack snapped, but in truth, the thought was an interesting one. It was true that he had assumed she had been just a widow and a mother since the death of her husband. The possibility that she had had a lover during that time woke something fierce and protective in him.

"There is something vastly different between a woman who is happily married and one who is without any lover. It is the same with every other kind of animal in nature: a scent, a look, an indefinable aspect. It is nothing conscious, to be sure, and perfectly correct though her behavior has been, with nothing to distract him from her, a man cannot help the attraction. Now, here she is aboard the ship: a pretty widow with no one to take care of her. Men are terribly protective and territorial in their nature, as women are guardians of their children, you see. More of the natural instinct, I'm afraid."

"Stephen, we are men, after all, not goddamned animals. We have minds and morals and consciences. And I would warn you that it is a lady you are talking about and not some beetle under your microscope."

"I disparage the name of no lady. All I state is the scientific facts of the situation. It is a struggle for all of us to control the appetites that arise out of instinct."

"That sounds very much like a disparagement to me. You are saying that she is hungry for a man!"

"No," said Stephen quietly, "no, it is quite the opposite. She has the ability to influence us – all of us – and she hasn't had any reason to do it yet. But with men out to murder her for profit, who knows what she might do in a desperate situation."