Page 30 of Freeing Hook

My mother’s training on what’s appropriate, and more importantly, not appropriate to speak of, kicks in, so I ask, “You said where you come from, women aren’t supposed to be gunners. Are you from Estelle too?”

Charlie shakes her head. “No. I’m from Xhana.” She pats me on the knee. “I grew up as an aristocrat like you, believe it or not. Except my father got into money trouble. Racked up his debts with a nasty band of pirates, so they slaughtered my family when he wouldn’t pay. I happened to be courting a nobleman at the time, so I wasn’t at the estate when it happened. Needless to say, he ended our courtship when he discovered the pirates had burned our estate down, as well as my father’s faerie dust mills.”

Faerie dust mills? Interesting. If that’s the case, Charlie is underselling just how wealthy her family was. “Pirates killed your family…so you became one?”

“Well, I always thought being a whore sounded unpleasant, don’t you agree? All those nasty men’s hands all over you.” Shespeaks of it as if she’s discussing which brew to serve during afternoon tea, but there’s a subtle quiver to her tone, a tell in the way her left eyelid twitches. My mind flashes back to the parlor, and all I can do is nod gently as she continues. “Besides, we’re not pirates. Not really. Captain Astor’s a privateer. I know what you’re thinking—but he really is picky about the assignments he takes. He doesn’t kill innocents.”

“Except for my parents. And the guests at my masquerade,” I say.

Charlie peers at me apologetically and bites her lip.

“How was that?”I ask, straightening my spine. Charlie sits cross-legged across from me on my bed. Someone moved it into her room for me now that Astor has taken his bedroom back and Charlie has been temporarily demoted to my chaperone. Parchment with Charlie’s bubbly script is laid out between us across the bed, overflowing with notes on Cressida Rivers, the woman I’m planning on impersonating.

Charlie blinks, her smile somehow both genuine and forced. Apparently, my performance was awful enough that even Charlie is having difficulty coming up with something complimentary to say. “You’ve got it all memorized perfectly. I saw you—you didn’t peek once.”

“Well, yes, but how did I do?” I ask. We’ve just spent the past half hour role-playing a conversation between Lady Carlisle and me, Charlie playing the secret-trader as I answered her questions. Again, it takes a moment for Charlie to produce a response, her supportive smile unwavering.

I groan, slinking into the mound of pillows behind me. “I’m going to get us killed, aren’t I?”

“Not necessarily,” says Charlie. “Maybe the Carlisles aren’t familiar with Delphian cadence and will assume it’s a difference in dialect.”

I cut my eyes across to her. “Assume what’s a difference in dialect?”

“Wendy, you sound like you’re reciting your own ransom while a knife’s being held to your throat,” Charlie says, then quickly adds, “but we’ve still got plenty of time to work on it.”

It’s probably not worth mentioning that we’ve been working on this for two weeks already, and I still can’t seem to get the hang of it. Memorization isn’t the problem—I had all the facts of Cressida River’s life branded into my memory by the end of the first day. It’s pretending to be Cressida Rivers that I can’t quite seem to get a grasp on.

“You’re just stiff, is all,” says Charlie. “Just, you know, loosen up a little.” She rolls her shoulders as if that’s all it will take to unwind fifteen years of constantly anticipating impending doom.

Because my eyes are beginning to cross from sleep deprivation, I fix my attention on a knot in the beam above us. “This is useless. I’m not quick-witted enough. I can hardly get the right words out when I’m being myself. Much less when I’m trying to be someone else. I’m not going to be able to come up with answers fast enough to be convincing.” I drag my palms over my face as I groan, my chest wound tight with frustration.

Charlie shifts on the creaking bed and exhales slowly before clapping her palms on her knees. “Okay, well, maybe we just need to think about this differently. Take a different approach. You said your parents trained you to charm suitors, didn’t they? Just think of the Carlisles as potential suitors.”

I peek through my fingertips at Charlie, who actually has the audacity to look hopeful, then roll myself upright, extending myfingertips in front of me on the bed as I stretch out my back, sore from cowering over the notes on my alias.

“That’s different,” I say. “When I was chasing a husband, it’s not as if I was having to pretend to be anyone else.”

Charlie raises a skeptical brow. “You weren’t?”

I open my mouth, but the words get stuck in my throat, like a shard of chicken bone lodged at the base of my tongue.

But then an idea flutters across my mind, wistful and wild and a smidge mad. Perhaps it’s just the late night and utter despair. But it feels right. More right than forcing facts out of my mouth like we’ve been attempting for the past several hours. “Charlie,” I ask, running my fingers over the pages of notes on Cressida Rivers, “does the captain have one of these for the Carlisles?”

While the stackof notes on the Carlisles at first appears daunting due to the weighty thud it makes when Charlie dumps it on the bed, I find these facts exceedingly easier to memorize than the notes on Cressida Rivers.

It helps that the Carlisles are actually interesting.

What’s easier to remember? That Arthur Carlisle once hid in the pit of an outhouse for three days because he’d gotten a tip that rival gang lords were planning to collude there? Or that Cressida Rivers’ favorite flower is a lilac?

Charlie keeps me company into the wee hours of the night, her enthusiasm for our task rekindled. Admittedly, I can’t tell if it’s because the Carlisles are so intriguing or because she no longer secretly considers working with me a lost cause. If I were to ask, she’d tell me it was the Carlisles, regardless.

We’re about to practice another conversation between Arthur Carlisle and Cressida Rivers when there’s a knock at the door. Charlie and I glance at one another, confused.

A moment later, Captain Astor enters the room.

“Everything alright?” Charlie asks.

Captain Astor wrinkles his brow. “Why do you ask?”

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