Ill Wind and Dead Reckoning: Caribbean Pirate Adventure (Valkyrie) Read Free

the cabin. The door opened and Klara entered.
    ‘Are you all right?’ I asked.
    She nodded, but didn’t speak and limped to her sleeping mat.
    ‘Your eye!’ I exclaimed. It was bruised and half-closed. She gave me her hate look again, but now I didn’t blame her. She lay down and curled into a ball with her back to me.
    ‘I’m sorry,’ I whispered. ‘I didn’t know.’ Nothing. Once again, no reaction. I stared at the ceiling. Will my husband do that to me?

Chapter 4
     
     
    I was thrown against the cabin wall hard enough to wake me, and lay on the cot for a few moments trying to work out where I was and what was happening.
    Oh yes: aboard a ship; sold into marriage to a stranger; shut inside a cabin with a woman who hates me.
    Everything moved far more than it had yesterday and the ship was rocking violently from side to side, which is what had woken me so rudely. There was more noise, too: the sea as we crashed through it; thumping from overhead; as well as the creaking of wood and cracking of sail. I was thrown against the wall again and grabbed the edge of the cot, then looked up. Where’s Klara?
    I pulled myself to sit on the edge of the bed. She wasn’t in the cabin. Fresh salty wind, a relief after the stinking air of the harbour, blew my curls over my face and I realized the door to the ledge outside was open and Klara was leaning over the rail. I jumped up and staggered towards her, bracing my hands against the ceiling to stop myself falling.
    I reached the balcony door and clung to the frame. The sea had changed from a beautiful calm blue to a forbidding dark grey, and I shivered.
    ‘Klara!’ I called.
    She looked up at me, then leaned over the rail again and retched. I sighed in relief; she was seasick, not trying to jump, although I didn’t understand why she was ill now. The fresh air had quietened my own stomach.
    ‘Are you well? Can I help you?’
    She shook her head. ‘Leave me,’ she said.
    I hesitated. They were the first words she’d spoken to me, but I didn’t want to leave her alone in such misery.
    She retched again. ‘Leave me!’ she repeated, more insistently.
    I went back into the cabin. She’d been humiliated enough in the day I’d known her: once when van Ecken had given me the whip, and again by Captain Hornigold. I would not humiliate her further.
    I crossed to the jug and bowl on the table and poured out a small amount of water to wash myself. I noticed the table had a wooden rim built into it to prevent the china falling, but I’d poured out too much and water sloshed everywhere. I washed my face as best I could considering I needed one hand to hold on, then turned to find something to wear.
    Klara had laid out an emerald-green gown, which went well with my dark hair and pale complexion. I stripped my nightgown off and pulled a clean shift over my head. It wasn’t easy with one hand and a moving floor. I picked up my stays and looked in the glass, wondering how I would tie them, when they were taken from me.
    Klara wrapped the garment around my middle and I adjusted it so the wooden supports were as close to comfortable as possible. She pulled on the strings and I gasped in pain. She loosened them slightly and I thanked her; she nodded. Progress. We finished my dressing in silence and I sat down. I noticed the whip had gone from the table and didn’t care – I hoped she’d thrown it overboard.
    A loud explosion startled both of us, and we looked at each other in horror. We could see nothing but sea behind, were we being attacked?
    ‘I’m going to find out what’s happening,’ I said to her with a bravery I didn’t feel.
    ‘No!’ She bowed her head, then added, quieter. ‘You’d be better off staying here, out of their way.’
    ‘I need to know what’s happening, and if Mr van Ecken or the crew don’t have the courtesy to inform us, I’ll have to go and ask them.’ I couldn’t stay blind in the cabin; I had to know.
    I stumbled to the door, unlocked