The Swashbuckling Yarn of Milady Vixen (2 page)

“I will give it much thought, for there is truth in your proposal. However, I must confide in my own sovereign lord since…I cannot…make such a decision…”

“Is Your Grace feeling quite well?”

Violet looked up to see the face of her sire go gray like the sails of a derelict vessel. His hands fluttered around the ruffled collar of his shirt and tugged frantically at it. Sliding off his knee, she stuffed both hands into her mouth in horror.

“Papa?” she said nervously.

“Your Grace? Are you in need of a physician?” the rouged-faced visitor inquired.

“Water,” he croaked in an awful voice.

Scurrying to the table, Violet slopped the clear liquid into a goblet and handed it to her father, her hands wet and trembling. The scarecrow figure on the chair reached out only to knock the glass from his child’s grip.

“Papa!” she wailed while the goblet rolled in a semi-circle, leaving a darkening trail upon the stone floor.

“Duke Cornwell!” the nanny erupted in a shriek.

The viscount dashed toward the hallway, squealing and running like some frightened maid, his voice shrilly shouting for assistance. Violet screamed when her father fell out of the chair as if pitched from the deck of a ship amid an ocean storm. Behind her the girl could hear the sounds of her governess following the terrified ambassador.

“Papa! No!” She slid to the floor and cradled his head in her lap. His lips were a hideous shade of gray, and his kind eyes bulged outward like some fish.

“Violet,” he wheezed.

“I am here, Papa! What should I do?”

He raised a quaking, liver-spotted hand to her face, wiping away the hot rush of tears pouring down her cheek. He smiled. It was a waning twist of his lips.

“There is nothing you can do, my sweet Violet,” he gasped. “Tell your mother I love her. Know as well I love you too.”

“You can’t die,” she demanded. “I won’t let it happen!”

“You have as much choice in this as I. Oh, how I would’ve loved to see you grow into the fine woman I know you will be.”

“Papa…”

A heave ripped through her sire, making his body arc upward and his lungs fill with air. Through watery eyes Violet witnessed her father take one more breath, sink to the floor and expire. The lights went out in his gentle eyes. Lifting her face to the ceiling. Violet screamed at the heavens, her voice rippling with sorrow at the loss she was never prepared to bear.

I know it’s sad, reader, but these things happen. If no one has told you life isn’t fair, I’m sorry to be the first. You must steel your heart, for this isn’t the worst of it.

Court Orders, Corsets and Corsairs

Standing at her father’s grave, young Violet was weeping. Her hitching shoulders were the only other indicator of the depth of her grief. Silently she stood there, a bouquet of wildflowers clutched in her tiny hands, which quivered and shook. Violet knelt. Laying the flowers tenderly before the massive marker, she stood quickly as the sea breeze whipped her long curly locks around her head. Looking behind her, she hatefully glared at the rising towers of the place she had called home. Just behind her, wearing a devastated expression, stood her mother. Over the tall woman’s shoulder was a huge, gaily colored sack containing all the belonging she had been permitted to take with her.

The coltish-limbed girl glanced down at her feet. On the grass of her father’s grave was her own bundle, the wooden sword she so loved and the ragged teddy bear named Mister Snookums. The brown-and-white stuffed animal, missing one button eye since she was five, seemed to echo her own sorrow at being banished.

“We must leave,” her mother said in her clipped, accented voice.

“Why did he have to die?” she sobbed.

“All men die, my daughter. It is the will of the gods.”

“It isn’t fair.”

“No, it is not. He is gone, and we cannot change this.”

“Why are we being exiled? I thought I was going to grow up to be the duchess; Papa always told me this would be.”

“In my homeland you would be. But these—
civilized
—people have said since your father and I did not wed, you are not a legitimate heiress to his title. Also, the people of your father’s tribe have spread lies about me. Swayed by such gossip, the judge declared me not to be a citizen of your father’s native land.”

“They will pay—on Papa’s grave I swear it!”

“Violet, you mustn’t give voice to such oaths. Not here, not now. The gods hear all and will hold you to your words.”

Violet shook with rage, her tiny body rippling with its hotness. Taking up her wooden weapon, she thrust it into the skies and took a dramatic stance.

“I swear by all the gods and demons I will avenge myself upon those who have wronged us!” she shouted defiantly.

Youths of all races and ages have taken up rash oaths and regretted them in the future. This particular vow would be no different, I’m sorry to say.

Tracing a path down to the docks, Violet was aware of the stares from the inhabitants of what were once her sire’s holdings. Flapping lips, jabbing fingers and hushed whispers flew their way as they walked to the docks.

“Where are we going, Mama?” she queried.

“I have been given enough money to get us to my homeland,” the tall woman stated. “Once there, you will know the love of my people, which is as thick as fleas on a water buffalo.”

“Is it far away?”

“Yes, many waxings and wanings of the moon goddess.”

“I cannot fulfill my promise from so far off, Mama.”

“Forsake your oath, for your father would not wish you to be so callous. I may be named a savage, but even in my lands people prize other people over gold.”

So merciless was Violet’s current state of mind, this did nothing but harden her resolve to make good on her sworn statement.

“That is our ship,” Suga remarked with a paling of her face.

“Why do you blanch at it so?” Violet inquired.

“I have no stomach for sea travel. Even though I was the pampered guest of your father when I made my first trip across Mother Ocean, I did not come to enjoy it.”

“What was it like?”

“Sickening.”

Violet knew the calm waters of the bay, for her sire had often taken her out on a small skiff. She had thrilled to the salt spray, the wind and the lurching deck beneath her. Her young mind found it incredible that her mother detested it so. Her memories of sailing were her fondest recollections of time spent with Papa. Now, trailing behind her statuesque dame, she tried to cling to Mister Snookums, her sacked belongings and the hem of her mother’s dress. They reached the docks amid the hateful stares, pointing fingers and gawking looks. Then Violet saw the ship.

It was a three-mast affair with billowing sails of white upon the fore, main and mizzen masts. It possessed a low poop deck to the aft. Constructed out of sturdy Effingham oak, the craft was stained a dark color from many a journey upon the rough seas. A single row of hatches dotted the side of the passenger ship, and the small girl knew this was where the cannons were concealed. At the bow of the ship was a dolphin connected to the vessel by a wooden spray boiling out beneath the belly of the creature and spreading over the bowsprit in rolling waves. Violet thought it was the most beautiful thing she had ever seen. The ship, of course, not the dolphin.

“Ahoy there!” shouted a man in a white-and-blue striped shirt. “Are ye coming onboard?”

“Yes,” her mother stated sternly.

“Ye be the former duke’s mistress and his bastard child?”

Violet bristled at this comment despite his speaking in a matter-of-fact tone, a statement instead of an insult. She watched as her dame’s shoulders stiffened. Like her mother, she stared daggers at the insulting knave.

The young man’s untamed red hair was as wavy as the ocean and about as wild. He wore no shoes, had a red sash for a belt and a small cutlass stuffed into the scarlet material encircling his waist. His blue eyes danced with inner merriment. Violet judged him to be around sixteen or so, a gangly youth who smiled at them both. This didn’t make his statement any more tolerable.

“Yes,” Suga answered.

“Welcome onboard the
Dancing Dolphin
, then!” he cheerily called out.

“Come, Violet.”

As her mother towed her up the gangplank, Violet tried to take in every detail her brain could handle. Men worked diligently upon the decks and on the spars and entered and exited the cargo hold’s opening. The man who had greeted them bowed and led the two women to their cabin.

“Captain Roebuck told me ye were to have the best accommodations possible,” he commented. “Although ye be exiled from Effingham, the master of this vessel believes the two of you were done wrong by the courts.”

“He is a wise man, then,” Suga noted blandly.

“Aye, that he be!”

Escorting them into the small cabin just to the port side of the stairs that led to the poop deck, he flung the door wide and ushered them in with a bow and sweep of his arm.

“If’n ye need anything, just sing out.” He grinned. “My name’s Tom, but everyone calls me Ginger Tom for the color of my hair.”

“I will do so if necessary,” her mother stated.

Shutting the door behind him, the strange sailor left the two exiles alone. Violet surveyed the cabin and found it contained a trio of hammocks, a table—bolted to the deck—and a pair of chairs. In addition, there was a footlocker standing just below the porthole on the port side. She scampered atop of it only after dumping her belongings—all except Mister Snookums. Peering out of the open portal, she watched the milling flocks of people on the docks with anger, occasionally glancing sorrowfully up to where she knew her father to be buried. Hearing the cries of the gulls, the slap of the water against the sides of the vessel and the general hubbub of the folk made her grief even more acute.

“Take a last look,” her mother said unemotionally, “for we shall never return here.”

“I will never forget it, Mama,” she said with a choking sob.

“Other sights will soon be ours. My father is a great juju man in my village, and we will be welcomed as honored guests. You will learn many new things and have pleasant playmates in the jungle. I am sorry I ever left.”

Turning around, she saw the impressive woman’s countenance crack for the first time in her life. Her mother’s calm and unshakable strength was legendary in the keep. Nothing seemed to bother her. Now faced with an ocean voyage, the death of her beloved husband and the cruel exile, tears began to well up in her deep brown eyes. Violet noticed with great pride her mother didn’t wail and beat her breast like many of the other females she had seen grieve. Instead in proud silence she cried, without false fanfare but with no less intensity and honest feeling.

She is a warrior, Violet thought, and she would never show a loss of dignity. If I am to take my vow seriously, I should learn from her.

After a few minutes, the tall and elegant woman took up her walking staff and sat down cross-legged on the deck. Violet watched with interest. From her sack her mother unveiled a sharpened and well-honed flint spearhead. Singing a song of the hunt in her native language, her dame lashed the dull, dark object to the staff.

Mama is going to practice! Violet gleefully thought.

Suga began kicking off her shoes and tossing the last remnants of civilization out the porthole. Violet watched her mother motion to her. With a haughty expression she met the gazes of the sailors while she climbed to the empty prow. Pointing to the very tip of the ship, Suga told her daughter without words where to take up her vantage point. Kneeling briefly, Mama set the short lance beside her and began chanting. All eyes were upon her. Suga’s dark chocolate skin, her swaying bosom, long, lean legs and proud arching neck were seared into the memory of everyone who witnessed her preparations.

She stood without warning. Twisting her long braids into a ponytail, so it appeared a sea creature with endless tentacles had gripped her by the head, she picked up the spear on the deck. A surprised gasp was torn from every throat when she launched herself into a series of jabs, thrusts, and spinning movements too quick for the eye to follow. Her feet slapped against the floor in a primal rhythm, and a fierce look twisted her features. Violet studied every move, the powerful grace and the intense concentration of the spear dancer.

Yes, I must be strong like my mother and learn the ways of the spear if I am to avenge my father, Violet swore inwardly.

Of course you realize that Suga’s bizarre display was not truly for practice, right? She was sending a warning to the men whose hot stares she had detected when they had boarded. Any lusty thoughts or erotic daydreams died upon the flashing tip of her weapon. A woman has to look out for herself and her daughter—don’t you agree?

To Sea with Thee!

Violet was standing at the prow of the
Dancing Dolphin
, the salt spray in her face and the wind in her hair. Gripped in her right hand was a smaller version of her mother’s spear, and in the other was Mister Snookums. Looking out all around her, she could only spy the rolling deep blue waves until they met the sky far off on the horizon. The pitch and yaw of the ship’s motion had become second nature to her. Even the sailors toiling on the vessel had given her tight-lipped but honest grins at the speed with which she had obtained her sea-legs. Her mother, on the other hand, was often hanging over the side, retching loudly. Some people just don’t travel well.