Page 215 of Storm over the Caribbean
For some reason, he did not sound very sure.
“Well, what are you waiting for?” Mr Ambrose demanded. “Get to it! Chop, chop!”
“Y-yes, Sir! Right away, Sir!” Hurriedly, the ex-doorman, now gofer, rushed over to the carriage and took hold of the other end of the crate. Together, he and Karim carried the wooden box towards the front door. I had to give the new fellow credit. Healmostdidn’t flinch when the crate rattled and muffled French curses came from the inside.
“You two.” Mr Ambrose snapped his fingers. “Wait here for a moment.”
Then he headed back to the carriage and, a moment later, re-emerged, a certain little girl in his arms.
“Let me go, you bastard! I don’t care if you’ve got a nice bird! If you don’t let me go back to the pirate fleet, I’ll rip your eyes out and use them as marbles! Get me on a ship to the Caribbean this instant, or I’ll cut off yourmmphmphmph—!”
Mr Ambrose clamped his hand over her mouth. She responded to this by promptly biting said hand, hard. A muscle in Mr Ambrose’s cheek twitched—then, without a word, he proceeded to march back up the stairs and past the ex-doorman, who was staring at him with wide open eyes.
“Um…Mr Ambrose, Sir… The girl, who…?”
The man threw a questioning look at Leah, who was currently chewing on Mr Ambrose’s fingers in an attempt to gain freedom. Or turn herself into a flesh-eating zombie, maybe. With this girl, one couldn’t really be sure about how realistic her aspirations were.
My dear husband cocked his head and gave his new employee a frosty look. “This is my ward.”
Leah chose this moment to reach up under Mr Ambrose’s tailcoat to try and grab his revolver.
“Your, um…ward, Sir?”
“Yes,” my dear husband repeated, snatching the girl’s hand before she could gun him down. “Myward.”
“Um…yes, Sir! Definitely, Sir! Your ward, Sir!”
The crate rattled again, and from within issued some more muffled curses in French.
“And our new pet,” I added helpfully.
My dear husband nodded. “Indeed.”
“R-right.” The ex-doorman gulped. “Of course. Pet.”
Wasn’t it wonderful to have understanding employees?
“Now, enough of this useless chatter.” Clapping his hands, Mr Ambrose strode into the entrance hall. “Let’s take our new pet to his new home, shall we?”
It probably said something about Mr Rikkard Ambrose as an employer that he could walk through the entrance hall of his main office building with a crate that was cursing in French and a girl shouting about wanting to become the Queen of the Pirates while none of his employees even blinked an eye. If I had to venture a guess, they had been told in the past that blinking wasted precious time, and it would get their pay docked.
“I must say, I’m looking forward to welcoming our guest to his new home.” Coming to a halt in front of the door at the other end of the hall, I rubbed my hands with a glint in my eye that was most definitelynotevil. My gaze moved over to a certain crate. “Let’s head down to the dungeo—ehem, I mean cellar. Yes, let’s head down into the cellar, shall we?”
“Indeed.”
A protesting groan came from within the crate. I reached out and gently patted the rough wood. “Don’t you worry. We’ll get to you soon enough. The moment we get you situated, we can start our little chat. Mwahahaha…!” Oh, if only I had a nice, villainy moustache right now. Well, maybe I could buy one later. “But first…”
Stepping over to Mr Ambrose, I grabbed hold of Leah, and, after unclamping her jaws from Mr Ambrose’s wrist, handed her back to the nanny. Said nanny looked about ready to draw his sabre and go on a massacre.
“Now, you behave, all right?” I told the little girl. “Me and Uncle Dick have some stuff to take care of. But we’ll soon be back, and then we can talk about what you want to do in the future…”
“I want—”
“…that doesn’t involve raiding ships and slaughtering people while singing sea shanties.”
“Go boil your head, you bloody balloon-shaped tart!”44
And she pouted at me. Cutely.
