A Most Charming Prince

Thirteen: A Pirate and Her Passengers

The devastatingly sensuous and roguishly bold pirate Captain Hips boobed breastily at the helm, garbed in the usual womanly nautical uniform—red tricorn topped her dark ringlets, leather pants so tight they might have been painted on and clearly showed the face of old King Buckworth on the lucky gold coin in her back pocket, hour-glass figure squeezed to extremes by her corset belt, a shining pair of pistols holstered on each side of her namesake hips, tattoos of her loving and dearly departed ma on her arm and a heart with a knife through it on her belly near her navel, and a spyglass in hand. Let's not forget the haughty curl of her crimson lips, either.

At the prow of her ship, the wooden figurehead of a bare-chested knight (recognizable by his helmet, shield and lance) thrust into the wind, keeping watchful gaze on the horizon, and bestowed her ship its name: the Queen's Jouster.

"The river mouth 'tis clear, here be smooth sailing and a straight shot to the summer home of Master Il Répoute, wherefrom he rules this land in the hot months o' July and August. Though why ye be desiring to visit yon despot and foul usurper—" she spat, and a cabin boy wiped it clean in a blink of the eye, "who holds this lush land in his grip like a fresh lemon he will press to the last drop, and I'll have ye know, 'twas his laws drove me and many o' my feminine brethren to the high seas for looting and buccaneering, since the untimely drowning of our beloved King Bucky and the entire royal family, is beyond my poor imagining." She heaved a sigh that threatened to knock her male passenger over.

The lady passenger, after a moment of reconstructing the above sentence to make sense of it, put a protective arm around her husband. "Yes, quite, quite. Well, it isn't what you would call a particularly friendly visit. In fact, we'd rather not bump into him at all. You see, we are mostly worried our son has gone to the house and will marry a frog, among other unpleasant things." The lady's two foot high wig shook like a mast in an ocean gale.

"Personally, it's the 'starting a war' clause that occupies me the most," the gentleman said. "Which is why, Captain Hips, we must reach the house in utmost secrecy and urgency."

"I'd not shed a tear to see that craven lounge lizard dragged to the fields o' war to lose fortune and stolen crown, a black pox on him and his spawn, may the green rot take his ears and fingers and toes 'til all fall off in blackened, curled lumps and then spread through his body reaching his offspring-making appendages and may they shrivel and—"

"Quite right!" The gentleman turned decidedly green without catching the pox. "I need a whiskey, darling."

"Indeed. I'll take a double," the lady said. "We'll be there soon?"

"Within the hour, me hearties, and a yo-ho-ho."

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