“We could have used your help earlier,” she says, a little sternly.
“I heard you had several pairs of willing masculine arms at your disposal,” he says.
“Reasonably willing,” I pipe up. Ternis had clearly been motivated by guilt, and the fanfare trumpeters by, apparently, the promise of a morning’s work for an evening off.
“See? You didn’t need me at all.”
“If you’re here…” Sasha slides a glance in my direction. “Does that mean another prince is on his way?”
Bash shrugs with studied casualness.
“Not necessarily,” I say. “Sometimes he just appears. Once he brought me dinner.”
“Hedid, did he?” Sasha says, smirking at me.
“Not likethat,” I hasten to add.
“A little like that,” Bash says.
I blush, and can’t think of anything suitably ironic and detached to counter with.
He smiles at Sasha. “There, you see?”
“Usually he’s just here because of a prince,” I grumble, my syntax understandably a little jumbled.
“So thereisanother prince coming?” Sasha says, sounding much too hopeful, given what a disaster princes generally turn out to be.
“Not necessarily,” I say. “He also could just be here because he hasn’t got anything better to do.”
“I haven’t, you know,” he says, agreeably.
“You have a very irritating way of talking sometimes,” Sasha tells him, echoing my thoughts. “You never sayanything.”
“That way you know that when I do say something serious, it means something,” he replies, settling into his favorite spot on the staircase and easing into his usual lounge.
“Doesn’t it also mean that no one pays attention to you, even if you are being serious?” she says. “Like the boy who cried wolf?”
“The pirate who talked nonsense,” I add.
“Maybe I don’t want anyone to pay attention.”
“Weren’t you acaptain, though? Shouldn’t youwantpeople to pay attention to you?” I’m awfully glad that Sasha’s decided to deal with her anxiety about her friend’s forthcoming appearance by putting the pirate on the spot; it saves me the trouble of finding gentler ways of asking him the same questions. And I have been very curious. Curiosity, of course, not being considered a polite emotion among royals. Gentle interest is about as far as my mother tends to permit questioning to go. I’ve already asked him a hundred questions that would make my mother scowl with disapproval.
“Perhaps.” He shrugs. “Perhaps I simply used to drink the days away and let my crew run rampant.”
“That would explain the whole ‘got cursed and now skulk around in rural barns’ thing,” Sasha shoots back at him. “Don’t you think, Tandy? He must have been an awful pirate captain to get cursed and stuckhere.”
I know she doesn’t intend to suggest anything with the “stuck here” bit, but it stings anyway.
“Yes, Princess, any thoughts about my effectiveness as a pirate captain?” He turns his irritatingly attractive, fathomless blue eyes on me.
“Not a one,” I say, deploying one of my mother’s favorite tricks for dealing with troublesome ministers with issues sheconsiders rather beneath her notice: a slight, elegant shrug. The kind that signals that one is emotionally disconnected from the matter at hand. As I am wholly emotionally disconnected from anything that’s currently lounging on my stairs.
“Well, that’s whatIthink,” Sasha says, not taking the hint. Bash’s gaze remains trained on me, however, as even as a cat’s, and I suddenly have the very strong sense that he’s quite a good pirate captain, and runs an extremely orderly ship. Even if it’s the kind of ship engaged in…how had he put it? Stealing and spending the profits?
“When are you expecting your friend?” I say. Bash chuckles at my obvious and rather ham-fisted attempt to change the subject, but Sasha takes the bait and blushes.
“Soon,” she murmurs. Bash and I exchange a look, the kind that saysIsn’t it lovely to focus on someone else’s adorable problems for a while?At least, that’s whatmylook says. He’s probably just wondering if he can steal my necklace. I move my stack of tiny books again.
