The year was 1725 and I was a young woman of my father’s household, bound to sea in the following week to travel across the North Atlantic and into the Caribbean where my father had purchased a small amount of land for a new plantation that would secure the family’s wealth. I was but eighteen, a young woman at that age and considered the pride of my father, though my mother had died some time in my early youth. I was spoiled and doted upon with my every whim attended to, my ladies dressed me and kept me and my father paid my way in every venture. Schooled and more than appropriately educated to the world I was ready for adventure and freedom that my father would never permit, in his eyes I was little more than his daughter and a woman.

I was not what you would call feminine, though in many ways I was. I wore dresses and cared greatly for the state of my hair, in which I carried so much pride. Groomed to perfection it was, shone in the light with shades of pale blonde and light brown. It was my eyes that my father always said he loved, a pale grey-blue, but they changed in the light. Sometimes they looked as pure blue as the sky above them; for they only showed that particular shade when the sky was clear and the sun was bright. However with the English weather I endured they showed a steely grey far more often. I was proudest still of my figure, I had remained slim enough to fit into the most well designed garments of the season, which seemed to get tighter and tighter with the passing weeks, but I did not struggle with them, even my firm, perky breasts could fit comfortably enough into the well-formed costumes.

So when the time came to prepare myself for the long journey that would take me from my beloved London home across the North Atlantic Ocean, into the Caribbean Sea and onto some unknown island with a small plot of almost completely undeveloped land, I of course selected the best and most expensive outfits to go into the bags that would stay with me on the ship, and the others to be put into a storage facility there. If I was going to be stuck on some God-forsaken boat for several days, if not weeks for that matter, then I might as well enjoy myself and look good.

At first the journey was uneventful; I soon become bored of wandering the ship as there was simply nothing to do. I was reminded regularly by the captain that he didn’t like having women on board because it made them greater targets for pirates; I and my ladies were to stay below deck in our cabin. My father told me the dangers of the sea whenever he saw me at a distance he considered to be too close to the railings. A few days into the journey I was positively fed up, my ladies and I had no privacy away from one another, almost always confined to our cabin. Conversation fell low quickly, I grew to have nothing but pity for my ladies, the two of them had both left behind husbands, of whom they spoke fondly and regularly, and my father had called them to join me on a journey none of us wanted. The only thing we could still speak of were my plans for our arrival, which I told to them on our fourth night aboard the ship after discussing it with my father. When we landed in our new home they were to join me at the house for a single day and night, to help me settle, then my ladies were to return to England with the ship and join their families once more.

Spoiled though I might be, I would not tear them from their husbands so that they might tend me. No, I would have other maid servants that would be native to my new home.

I needn’t have bothered making plans for my arrival, because I didn’t arrive. It was my eighteenth night aboard the ship and a storm had blown up. It made little difference to me; I remained in my cabin with my ladies as always, completely unaware of the struggle that went on above our heads. Little did we know a fight had broken out on deck, pirates had boarded the ship not moments after the storm had started and took an instant home field advantage, but we remained ignorant to this with the shouts and the clatter of swords drowned out by the thunderous roar of the waves and furious battering of them against the ship.

As the night drew to an end and the storm softened a little I got to my feet and shifted about the room, something felt strangely uncomfortable. Every other night several men would come into the room to check on myself and my maids, I would have thought with a storm they would look in on us more often to ensure our safety. But I had not seen anyone that night, not my father with soft words of comfort and reassurance, nor the captain with sharp words of warning, nor the cook with his bright smile and delivery of our supper, not even the cabin boy, who would look in to tidy our cabin and give us hot water bottles and fresh linen and most nights provide us with a dashing tale about brave soldiers and their battles at sea with pirates and great sea monsters. It was for this reason that I couldn’t help but to feel strangely alone and concerned, I would have left the room right then and headed above deck to check on things, had it not been for the knock at our door just as I had turned to move towards it.

I hesitated slightly and glanced at my ladies, one moved forward briskly to open the door, but no gentleman stood there, not my father with his kindly face and misty blue eyes, not the cabin boy with his thin little body and messy arrangement of dark hair – this man was quite obviously a pirate. He stood there proudly with a white silk shirt half open across his torso, a tight pair of pants pulled in at the waist by a thick belt of black fabric and at the calves by a pair of dark and slightly tattered looking leather boots. I was instantly aware of the pistol that lay in a holster around his upper leg and the long curved sword that had been stuffed into his belt. I know I probably shouldn’t have thought this, but hell he was hot and it showed. His wasn’t exactly what you’d call slim but he was built, the half open and thin silk white shirt displayed that. He had a pair of sharp green eyes that shone like emeralds, glinting in her direction, a white toothed grin that emerged and locks of dark brown hair that fell down almost to his shoulders.

I stepped back, or rather I leapt back. There was a stranger in my cabin, my ladies had moved to my side and he was approaching us quickly, not the slightest hint in him of hesitance just an unknown and intimidating confidence that radiated about him. He wasn’t about to get the better of us, I stepped forward and glared, I knew my eyes had flashed dangerously at him because he stopped and looked at me with an insolent smirk that I would be all too happy to see beaten out of him. “How dare you enter a lady’s room!” I spat at him furiously, though even I couldn’t help but notice the fearful quaver in my voice. I clenched my fists and forced myself to face him in the way a proud young lady should. “State your business here, rogue!” I snapped, my glare never leaving his eyes.

He said nothing though his smile broadened and I saw his gaze flicker from the maid at one side of me, to the maid at the other then snap back to meet my glare. His voice came at last, steady and deep like the slow lapping of the waves themselves; “I am, I suppose, to take it that you are the lady Katharina?” I froze, he knew my name? What interest did he have in me? Should I be worried? I was so confused in that instant that I said the first thing that came to my mind, “that would be lady Parkson to a creature like yourself. I demand that you tell me where my father is and why you have boarded our ship uninvited.” Good, he seemed startled by my sudden authority, though no more than I was.

He simply raised a single eyebrow at me and smirked. “Well my lady,” he spoke taking a step towards me, “I am here to welcome yourself and your father into the Caribbean with our own true style. However, your father refuses to pay us for our trouble and for the right of safe passage through our waters, and we both know how rude it is to insult a pirate’s hospitality. I think however that he may prove a little more co-operative when he finds his daughter in the clutch of sea bandits, don’t you?” My eyes widened, how dare he? He would take me captive to gain money from my father, I couldn’t care less about what hospitality he thought he was showing my father, I wasn’t about to stand for this behaviour. I quickly found however, that I had no choice. Myself and my ladies were bustled from our cabin and pushed up to the deck with a dagger at our backs. I hated this young man already, nothing about him seemed at all charming or kind all of a sudden, where I might have thought it of him before.

On deck things looked no better, I fell into silence as I found the majority of the crew surrounded by the scruffy looking men that were most obviously a pirate crew, a few of the brave men my father had hired lay dead or injured at one side of the deck, my chest tightened as among the dead I spotted a small, scrawny looking young man with a mess of dark hair and pale skin, his jerkin torn and stained red with his own blood, they had murdered even the cabin boy; the harmless young man who had befriended me and provided myself and my ladies with companionship and thrilling stories. I felt sick, was killing and taking so easy to these men that they could kill a boy who had never done harm to anyone?