“You know you helped yourself to more than a bit of pin money, and yes, you’re going to return all of it.”
“Even the amount I spent on train tickets, food, and the wage I paid Miranda?”
“I’ll cover the cost of your food, but you have to replace the money you used for tickets and Miranda’s wages.”
“That’ll wipe out my pin money for ages.”
“And hopefully teach you that helping yourself to the contents of your brother’s safe without his express permission comes with consequences.”
“I might have liked you better when you were ignoring me,” Norma Jean muttered, although her eyes were crinkled at the corners and had taken to twinkling again.
Seth grinned. “I’m sure you did, but I’m not ignoring you now, although I do apologize for ignoring you in the first place. Know that to make it up to you, just like Mother, I’m going to make a point to spend so much time with you that you’ll undoubtedly begin to find me annoying.”
“I already find you annoying.”
Seth laughed. “I’m sure you do, but to make good on that promise of spending more time together, I was just about ready to dismantle this old sextant the captain isn’t using anymore to discover how it works before you joined me.” He held it up to show her. “Care to help?”
“Since I read a book a few years ago regarding how seamen navigate their way through the seas and thought the sextant invention was exceedingly clever, I will.” Norma Jean smiled. “And while we’re working on it, and even though you claimyou’re perfectly capable of figuring out romance on your own, I’m going to lend you an unsolicited feminine perspective on the matter.”
“Not to point out the obvious, Norma Jean, but you’re thirteen, which begs the question of why you believe you’re in the position to lend me a feminine perspective about romance since it’s not as if you’re old enough to have gentlemen callers.”
“Young ladies begin preparing for gentlemen callers when we start playing with dolls,” Norma Jean said. “It’s that whole let’s-pretend-we’re-mothers scenario, and then, as we get older, we tend to listen to our older siblings—or anyone speaking about romance, for that matter—and share all of that information between our friend groups.” She smiled. “In my case, I’ve been discussing romance with Mabel, Velma, Phoebe, and the rest of the girls for at least three years. We, I’m sure you won’t be surprised to learn, have some rather strong opinions regarding gentlemen and how we feel they should approach romance in general.”
“I now find myself waiting with bated breath for you to divulge those opinions.”
“I’m not surprised,” Norma Jean said as she took the sextant and gave it a bit of a perusal before she looked up. “I think the most important opinion I can lend you is this—a gentleman should make a grand gesture to a lady he holds in affection, and then, after he makes that gesture, he should get down to the business of kissing her.”
“That seems reasonable, although I’m going to need you to elaborate on what this grand gesture should entail.”
Norma Jean fiddled with the knob that adjusted the sextant’s lenses and wrinkled her nose. “It would be more romantic if you came up with a gesture on your own, but to give you an idea of what you should do, just think about what Rhenick Whittenbecker did for Drusilla.”
“Helped her rid the castle of supposed ghosts and ghouls?”
“I’m relatively sure Drusilla did that without much help from Rhenick. I’m talking about when he had that iron scrollwork made for Drusilla and then had it fashioned on a new gate leading into the academy.” She smiled. “Now every time Drusilla drives through those gates, she gets to see the Merriweather Academy for Young Ladies scrolled in a beautiful iron script above the gate, a reminder of her husband’s grand gesture.”
Seth’s brows drew together. “An iron gate can be considered a grand gesture?”
“Well, when given to Drusilla Merriweather, certainly, but I don’t think that would impress Annaliese.” Norma Jean’s lips curved. “She’d probably be impressed, though, with some rescued animal, or it would be a really grand gesture if you could run down a unicorn as she told me only this morning that she always longed to acquire one of those.”
“I’m fairly sure unicorns won’t be easy to find.”
“True, so that’s probably not feasible, but she does appear to really appreciate bugs, although you did already make her some bug habitats, which, before you ask, don’t count as your grand gesture because I’m pretty sure you made them before the two of you even spoke the wordcourtshipbetween you, so... maybe you could find a book on really rare bugs and go from there.”
Before Seth could do more than make a mental note to research where the best place was to find unusual bugs, Annaliese suddenly wobbled into view, the wobbling a direct result of the Gulf of Mexico being rather rough today.
“Good news,” she called out as she listed to the left, righted herself, then plowed forward, coming to a stop beside Seth, who’d risen to his feet the second after he’d caught sight of her. She grabbed hold of his arm, something that left all thoughts of unusual bugs disappearing. “I just spoke with the captain. He’s spotted an island up ahead.”
“He’s spotted a lot of islands, but none of them seemed tobe inhabitable, nor could we get close to them because of the reefs,” Norma Jean pointed out.
“True, but Charlie and Howard told us that we’d run across inaccessible islands on the way, and to specifically keep an eye out for an island that has a much smaller island beside it.” She smiled. “That is what the captain just spotted.”
“I’ve got to go see this for myself,” Norma Jean said as she set aside the sextant and dashed away, not wobbling in the least because she’d found her sea legs the moment she’d stepped foot on the ship, yet another impressive accomplishment she hadn’t even considered until he’d pointed it out to her.
“Care to join me as I tell your mother about the island?” Annaliese asked.
“Why do I get the distinct impression there’s a reason you want me to join you?”
She released a sigh. “Was it that obvious?”
