After much crying and pacing around the too-small cabin, Penelope Kinsey finally quieted down.
She was offered certainly comfortable quarters, being locked down at the first mate cabin, and Oliver thought it should be better than whatever she had with the pirates, but she did not lay on the bed. In fact, she stood up in the middle of the room, looking off the tiny hatch window, at the dark ocean outside, in absolute silence.
Oliver managed to be the one responsible to watch over her in her captivity. She was a prized prisoner and a dangerous pirate, to be sure, but she was also a very beautiful woman amongst sea-hardened and ill-disciplined men. He feared for her safety, had anyone else taken the role.
Miss Kinsey was not very happy with him. Being instrumental on her capture, not to mention avoid mentioning his… dubious parentage had such predictable effect, but he was a weak man. There was something about her that drew him in like a mermaid's song, and he was quite certain it had little to do with the blond, soft hair like Chinese fine silk or the sapphire eyes bristling with emotion and wonder.
No, that is not it. Oliver had seen Miss Kinsey deal with his father, the poise and elegance of her manners, the delicacy in with she held her goblet of wine and the light movements of her cutlery through her plate reminded him of Princess Augusta, from the one and only dinner he attended at St. James Palace. Reminiscent of so many other young girls he met in sojourns in Europe and America alike.
However, contrary to her regal manners, in stark opposition to the absolute silent women of the Royal Family, she faced her captors with a hardened spirit and the will of a lioness, maintaining her ground in spite of every circumstance.
Yes, that is all correct. The reason why Penelope Kinsey was so attractive to Oliver Cochrane was the opposition, the contrast of the society lady and the impetuous pirate. She seemed a complex character, someone he could learn a thing or two from, and that had been awfully rare in his military career.
Now, he faces an interesting dilemma. He holds a profound respect for the young lady, and so it hurts to feel her disappointment. Yet, earning back her good will does not seem feasible. Not if he wishes to retain his head attached to his neck.
The young lieutenant wants to set her free and let her go back to the pirates she seems so attached to, just to have the pleasure of chasing her again, but that will have to remain just a dream. He was strategizing how he was going about convincing the Admiralty Courts in London that she was just a bystander, and not a criminal, but even that was a stretch.
"Oliver?" Her soft voice breaks him out of his reverie. It was the first time that day she called his name, and the first time in weeks she does it with anything other than disgust. It pleases him more than he cares to admit.
"Yes?" He responded, looking up to her standing form. She still faces the ocean.
"Do you know a man by the name Adam Kinsey?" Penny asks, quietly. "He was a ship captain. He must have died not too long ago."
"Captain Kinsey? From Liverpool?" He asks, curious about where the conversation was leading.
Of course, he knew Captain Kinsey. Not personally, the old man had passed away at a shipwreck in the Azores some thirty years earlier, but he was a well-known Navy man. Not to mention, his descendants had a quite profitable shipping business, with ties to the Hudson Bay Company.
"That is the one. You know, he was married to the daughter of a Bavarian count. A love match, they say. They married in the Netherlands, and then he took her to live in Liverpool, at a very comfortable house. However, soon he left her, as the sea called for him.
"She understood, of course, she was a Navy wife, but the comprehension grew thin, as the loneliness bloomed on her heart. Months turned to years, and all she did was look out the window, hoping her beloved would return to her. Eventually, she could not wait anymore and passed away, flanked only by her twin sons.
"Eventually, Captain Kinsey returned to Liverpool, hoping to see his loving wife and the two babies, but he was met with a tombstone and bitter men. He loved the woman and hoped to spend time with her, but when it came to choose, he chose his Navy life, and I daresay he regretted it."
"How does you know such things?" The lieutenant asks, intrigued.
Penny turned to Oliver, looked into his eyes and smiled. "I used to hear this story when I was younger, from my parents. Adam Kinsey is one of my ancestors, I guess you could call that, and his story holds a lot of weight for me."
"Oh." It did make sense to Oliver, given her manners and behaviour. "That would make you…"
"Yes." She cut him off. "The Right Honourable Lady Kinsey, or some other courtesy title I never bothered to use."
The blond man scoffs. "I must say, this is an unusual situation for someone like you to be in."
She joins in the mockery. "You can say that again."
"May I ask how?" He asks, quietly.
Penelope sighs and sits down on the cot. "You see, Oliver, things are always the same. The season in London, the fashions of Paris, the balls in Vienna and the winters in Dubai. The dull conversation, marriage, business, the same people with the same surnames, doing the same thins day in and day out. It is always the same, how it ever was and ever will be. It suffocated me.
"So, I decided to be something more, do something more with myself. I wanted to be an actress, to know, to feel, to live more than one life. I left my parents' home. I studied and practiced, I fought my way into the Royal Shakespeare Company, and I was very happy with it. However, it turns out I didn't have what it took to make it there, so I tried other avenues, only to be met with failure after failure, disappointment after disappointment. Until I found myself here.
"However, I never regretted leaving my old life behind, and I never will. Not even if I had to suffer it all again, hundred-fold. Because my acting career is my Bavarian countess, it is what I want and love, and I'll be damned if I end up like Captain Kinsey, alone and full of regrets.
"Alas, Oliver, you face such a choice, yourself." She looks deep into his olive-green eyes and he feels a chill on his soul. "Whether you agree with your father's goals and practices is of no object to me, nor is my fate as an individual is to you. What is indeed important is for you must decide if you will ever be your own man, or just someone else's lackey. Know what you really want, and do it soon, lest you find just a tombstone to tell the story."
The man's jaw was set, his teeth grind against each other. He wanted to protest, but the woman soon lay down on the bed and turned her back towards him. Moreover, what would he say? That he did know what wanted? Who he was? If he really knew, he would not be having confidences with a pirate, now, would he?
Soon enough, the night turned into day, and soon his father's men came for Penny. They would sink the Poseidon's Revenge and bring them to England, for trial and certain execution.
Perhaps she was right. If he does not decide what he wants to be, and does it soon, he will find only a tombstone.