Page 19 of Escaping Pirates (Legends of Neverland #4)

It wasn’t until I had scrubbed for more than an hour that it occurred to me that I must have gotten significantly stronger since I’d been forced into servitude.

The first time I’d scrubbed the deck had been some of the worst pain of my life, but now?

Even though my knees were sore, my muscles had become hardened and tough.

At some point past noon, one of the pirates came to find me.

“You just love cleaning, don’t you?” he laughed, looking around at where I was wiping down each individual bar.

“Sugar told me to,” I answered. It was true in a way. “I’m just following instructions.”

“The girls want you.”

“I’m coming.” I gave the cell one last sweeping look. It felt different now. It still wasn’t clean, exactly, but at least it looked slightly cared for. I could finish later. If I needed to, I would squeeze through the loose bar in the dead of night and complete the task.

Sugar and Blossom were in a surprisingly good mood when I got to their quarters.

“He’s been sleeping very well,” Blossom told me proudly. “And he’s declining.”

“What?” I hurried over to look at him.

“His temperature is almost back to normal now.”

I heaved a sigh of relief. “So you mean his fever is decreasing? ”

“I said that. He’s declining.”

I didn’t bother correcting Blossom. She could use whatever incorrect speech she wanted to as long as Harlan was recovering.

My fingers itched to stroke his hair and adjust his blankets, but I couldn’t with Sugar or Blossom watching.

“You called for me,” I reminded them, still looking at Harlan. “What do you need?”

“I wanted to know what you were doing all morning.”

“Cleaning like you told me to.”

“Where?”

I hesitated for a fraction of a second. “Harlan’s cell. If it’s clean, he’s less likely to get sick, and I know how much you want him to get well. I don’t think Blossom has had a single dance yet, and sick people don’t dance very well.”

Sugar and Blossom thought about that for a minute, then smiled, causing the knot of apprehension in my stomach to loosen.

“Good plan. You can go finish that, then. We want him to get better.”

“He would recover faster with better bedding,” I told them, wondering if I was pushing my luck too far. “He would be better rested and more ready to see you. I’m sure he’d appreciate it immensely.”

The sisters exchanged looks, but again, they surprised me by not only agreeing, but also by adding a wash bowl, comb, and fresh set of clothing for Harlan. They instructed me to continue what I was doing and to prepare the cell to be fit for a king.

Thrilled with my success in procuring so many extra things, I took everything and completed the cleaning, working late into the afternoon.

Just before nightfall, I heard the brig door’s hinges groan as Harlan was escorted inside by Steele.

I wasn’t sure the day of rest had helped; he didn’t look much better, but as the only lighting came from the dim sunset beyond the porthole and the lantern I’d recently lit, it was difficult to tell.

If nothing else, at least he didn’t look worse.

Both Harlan and I were locked into our respective cells. The moment Steele left, Harlan took time to survey his cell thoroughly. Even in the dim light, I could see his eyebrows raise. His eyes were still fever-glazed, but they searched for mine.

“You’ve been busy,” he observed.

I smiled. “Just tending my favorite neighbor’s estate. He went on some business trip, and his housekeeper was sleeping on the job, so I had to fill in.”

He let out a breath of laughter, followed by another round of coughing. “You didn’t trample the flowers, did you?”

“I replanted them. I didn’t have time to install a waterfall feature like mine, though. Your butler wouldn’t hear of it when I made the suggestion.”

“I shall have words with him immediately,” Harlan said solemnly. He turned to address one of the rats scampering along the walkway beyond our cell. “Fritz, you were out of line. If you want to continue your employment, you will never say such things again.”

I laughed. After my stomach being knotted from neglect and anxiety for so long, the motion felt like a foreign sensation, but the most welcome sort. “Are you feeling any better?”

Harlan lay down on his bunk, which I’d neatly made up with all the blankets and pillows and things that Harsh’s daughters had sent for him.

“A little I suppose, but I couldn’t get much sleep today.

Between the girls squabbling and their father warning them that I might be feigning illness to catch them unawares, it made for a slow recovery.

This helped, though.” He held up the tiny cork.

“And I basically live in a palace already. You didn’t have to clean all this, you know. ”

“I wanted to. I couldn’t do much to help you, but I could do that.”

Harlan’s hand crept through the bars separating us and his fingers sought out my own. “You do more for me than you know.” Our fingers touched, and Harlan’s thumb, still hot from his fever, traced the creases on my palm.

“My hands are a lot rougher than they used to be,” I said apologetically. “The only time I had calluses before this was a summer when I was about nine. One of our maids had a daughter my age, and she and I used to sneak out and climb the support beams under the bridge over a nearby pond.”

Harlan sucked in a breath. “Wasn’t that dangerous? How high was the bridge?”

“Not high. Only six or so feet above the water. Sometimes we fell, but we would splash down and swim back to dry off so we could try again.”

“That wouldn’t work in Berkway,” Harlan told me. “There are arched stone bridges that support aqueducts that run from the mountaintops to provide running water for the entire country, so many are high enough to easily kill someone if they fell.”

“Oh no, nothing that high. I can’t even imagine anyone building something so tall. Can you imagine having to walk along the top to do maintenance? Who does that?”

“We have a team who constantly monitor the network and repairs breaks. They’re well paid for the risk. Tell me more about your childhood.”

I told him about the times Father would take me and my two younger siblings to a shipyard, and all the different lessons Mother enrolled me in.

“She said they weren’t going to send me to finishing school since they cared more about me taking over the family business than securing an advantageous marriage.

I thought it gave me a good head for business, but based on my current circumstances, I wonder if finishing school would have been the better option. ”

“I think they made the right decision. If they had done anything else, we wouldn’t have met, and I’m glad we did.”

I propped myself up on my pillow to see Harlan better. “What about you? Tell me something from when you were young.”

He thought. “I tried to run away from home when I was about seven. I’d found some fancy, expensive porcelain dish and remembered one of my teachers who said that some dishes are unbreakable.”

“Oh no,” I laughed. “I can see where this is going.”

“I threw it at a stained glass window…”

“Oh no!”

“In the chapel.”

“Harlan!”

“In the middle of a church service.”

My mouth hung open and I laughed. “How awful!”

His laughter turned into a coughing fit.

“I know, I know, I was a naughty kid. Anyway, I got into a heap of trouble so I tried to run away, but I didn’t get far.

I just went and sat at the top of my favorite climbing tree because I didn’t know where else to go.

They didn’t find me for the whole afternoon though. It was getting dark.”

I groaned. “I’m sure your parents panicked when they realized you were gone.”

Harlan grinned, but his voice was growing weaker the longer he talked.

“I think they had everyone in the entire town looking within the hour. I kept watching them from up in the tree, but they kept screaming my name and I knew that I would get in trouble if I climbed down, so I kept hiding until I was more hungry than scared.”

“Do you have any brothers or sisters? Were they worried, too?”

“Just one younger brother, but he was a baby at the time.”

“What’s his name?”

“I call him Ernie and he hates it.” Harlan rubbed his eyes and stifled a yawn. “I’ll never tease him again once I’m out of here.”

“Go to sleep,” I told him. “You need to recover so we can make our escape soon, remember? They have to make port any day now. We’ve been out at sea for ages and supplies are getting low. Once we are closer to shore, we can let out those bottles.”

“I’ve never been so glad to hear that the food stock is running out,” Harlan said with another jaw-cracking yawn. “I’ll get you out of here, I promise.” Just before he fell asleep, he passed the cork through the bars back to me and squeezed my hand. “I promise,” he repeated.

I smiled and rolled the cork around in my hand. As long as I had Harlan on my side, I could face anything.