Page 58 of Storm over the Caribbean
“Great. You’ll do that. Meanwhile, I’ll…” I looked down at the crabs with a less than enthusiastic look. “…get cracking.”
That morning reaffirmed a belief I had held ever since I was old enough to be conscripted for kitchen duty by my aunt: cooking wasnotfor me. Mostdefinitelyon a deserted island without any oven, cooking implements, and ways to prepare food that didn’t make me look like a serial killer!
“If youever,” I told Mr Rikkard Ambrose the moment he reappeared, “tell me to go to the kitchen and cook like a good little housewife, I will murder you!”
The statement was probably lent a bit more weight by the various slimy, unpleasant liquids splattered over the front of my dress, and the mangled remnants of crab clutched in my hands.
“I shall take your words into consideration, Mrs Ambrose. Now, shall we finish making dinner?”
My eyes narrowed. “That was a yes, right? You agreed just now, right?”
Silence.
“You…come here, you! Give me an answer! Hey, don’t you dare sneak off!”
Suffice it to say that it took quite a while till we got to eating breakfast. Unfortunately, chasing your husband around the beach doesn’t work quite so well when you’re more than twenty weeks pregnant. For some reason though, I didn’t particularly mind. Somehow, we ended up cuddled together in our little hut, slightly out of breath and nibbling on roasted crab.
“You know…we should play on the beach more often. That was fun.”
Reaching up, Mr Rikkard Ambrose removed an offending grain of sand from his top hat.10 “Your definition of ‘fun’ leaves something to be desired, Mrs Ambrose.”
I noticed, though, he didn’t remove his arm from around my shoulder or move away from me.
We finished our breakfast in a silence that was, despite Mr Ambrose’s best efforts, companionable. When the last bite was finally gone, we simply sat together, my head on his shoulder, watching the ocean.
“So…what now?”
The silence suddenly turned grim. That told me more than I really wanted to know.
I swallowed. “We…we could just stay here on the beach and go on like this until we’re found, right?”
Again, grim silence.
“So…no relaxed holiday on the beach, then?”
“I’m afraid not.” Taking a deep breath, he rose and strode out of the hut. I followed, and found him standing at the shore, staring out onto the ocean. Cautiously, I came up behind him.
“Mr Ambrose?”
Silence again. Then, after a moment…
“There are only so many crabs on the beach,” he said, not looking at me, instead still staring at the open water. “But the real problem is that most of the trees around here aren’t coconutpalms, and the coconuts aren’t going to last long. Once they run out and we don’t have any drinking water any more…”
He trailed off. But he didn’t really need to continue. If there was one thing I had learned from my time with Mr Rikkard Ambrose, it was that, sometimes, silence said more than a thousand words.
“We could light a larger fire. Maybe the smoke will attract our escort ships.”
“Maybe,” he agreed. “Or maybe it will attract any of the dozen or so pirate ships infesting the region.”
There wasn’t much I could say to that. You didn’t need to be a maths genius to know which was more likely.
“So…what are we going to do?”
In answer, he turned around. Away from the ocean. Away from the beach. His gaze went right past me, towards the opposite direction from the sea. Turning my head, I followed his eyes to where he was looking.
The jungle. The steaming, wild centre of the island, where, from among the shadows of the trees, rustles and other disquieting sounds originated. For one moment, I thought I saw a pair of yellow eyes, staring at me unblinkingly.
“So…” I swallowed.
