The Pirate by Kate Hoffmann

Author:Kate Hoffmann [Hoffmann, Kate]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2012-02-03T00:33:17+00:00

The salt breeze skimmed across the water, kicking up sprightly whitecaps on the blue surface of the wide Pamlico River. Mare's-tail clouds trailed across the azure sky, the colors a reflection of the sea below, where their white-sailed sloop sliced through the water.

Meredith sat in the cockpit and watched Griffin steer the boat before the brisk wind. They'd been on the water since sunrise, sailing across the Sound and up the Pamlico River. After their sail around the harbor the previous afternoon, Griffin had easily adjusted to the new technology of the sloop, instinctively knowing which lines controlled which functions. She was right—sailing hadn't changed much in the nearly three hundred years that stood between them. But then, Griffin had spent most of his life on the water.

They passed the time in idle conversation, Meredith relating stories of the breezy days she'd spent on her father's shrimp boat, wrapped in a blanket, her nose stuck in a history book; and the sunny days they'd spent in the harbor, her father teaching her to navigate the little sailboat he'd built for her. He'd been a man who loved the water and she had inherited his fascination with all things seaworthy. But like her father, she was wary of the weather, always keeping one eye on the horizon, ready for the worst.

She had hoped that talk of her life would encourage Griffin to speak of his own. She knew of his father and mother, but was still left to wonder just who Griffin Rourke really was.

Meredith sighed inwardly and stared up at the sky, watching a gull dip and sway on the wind. Though the day hadn't been conducive to enlightening conversation, at least it was perfect for sailing. Out on the Sound, she had bundled up against the wind. But once they reached the sheltered waters of the Pamlico River, the afternoon sun had warmed her. They ate a picnic lunch while still under sail near Pamlico Point, the place where the river emptied into the Sound.

It was nearly dinnertime when they made the turn into Bath Creek, a wide tributary more aptly compared to a river than a stream. The shallow draft of the sloop made navigating simple, but Meredith kept her eyes on the charts, anyway. The colonial town sat on the water's edge, much as it had in the early 1700s, when it served as the first port of entry and the seat of colonial government in North Carolina.

Griffin seemed suddenly still, staring beyond the bow of the boat at the small waterside town. The breeze fluttered in his hair, the only sign that he was a mortal man and not some marble likeness of an ancient sea god.

"Do you recognize anything?" she asked softly.

He nodded slowly. "Some. The shoreline looks a bit changed."

"More than a few storms have roared through here in the past three centuries," she explained.

"There are more houses in some places and less in others, but they have changed also." He cocked his head toward the bridge that spanned the creek ahead of them.

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