Page 189 of The Romance Adventure

Magnus rocks back on his heels, the first time he’s moved in minutes. However, he doesn’t say anything.

I expect he will now. “Supposedly, the ship in the bottle was the Crimson Tide, captained by a woman who called herself the Devil’s Charm.”

Magnus doesn’t give any indication that he knows who that is. I didn’t either until Mrs. Lipman let it slip, filled with shock and awe.

“She wore a crown. A special crown.”

Still, nothing.

“Her given name was Márcia Sousa.”

He tilts his head as if he doesn’t believe me. “She would’ve been long dead.”

“True, but if the ship was cursed and shrunken, who knows what kind of dark magic was used.”

“Do you really believe that?”

I don’t know what to believe other than that he’s relatively non-responsive to this outrageous story.

“Chip brought his wager onboard. The card game was played. He won.”

“And the pirate was willing to trade a bottle of Sempre Spirits rum for the supposedly magic ship in a bottle?”

I shake my head slowly. “True to pirate form, they attacked Chip, and while wrestling the glass bottle out of his winning hands, it broke. Smashed on the ship’s deck. He noticed something interesting about the sail...it looked like a piece of a map. The tussle continued and he managed to get the map fragment into an empty rum bottle—his wager that they’d drank during cards—and tossed it into the sea, making it a message in a bottle.”

“It was all for nothing. Chip didn’t get the ship or the map fragment. Why would he do that? Chances of it washing up on shore are slim.”

I offer a mouth shrug. “The Pirate Defense League was formed to keep watch. They’ve been doing so all these years. My guess is that Benecio Estevão is long gone. But that ship returned. The card game waits. A debt is owed. Maybe the message in a bottle was recovered and is onboard.”

“And the old folks told you all of this?”

“Sempre Spirits did the talking.” I wink.

Magnus doesn’t respond. Perhaps he’s processing the outlandish account, trying to piece things together. I understand that it’s a lot to absorb. I hardly believed my ears as they told it all to me. I suppose it could be tall tales.

But as the days pass and the ship with the tattered sails appears and then disappears along the horizon, I can’t help but wonder whether the card games continue on the ship. If the message in the bottle is there. If the Torment pirate gang is looking for the same thing that the McGregor brothers are.

Meanwhile, Magnus is slightly distant, but he had a close call with the spider bite. It’s hard not to think about how somewhere in the cottage, there is a ring he wanted to give me. There are words on his lips that he hasn’t spoken since he was in a fit of agony.

For the most part, he’s acting like everything is normal.

It’s not.

But we can pretend, right?

The next day, I bring my laptop over to the cottages because we just got our first official applicants for the veteran-doggy love connection and week-long retreat, and I want to see Maiti and Rebel again.

As I tell Magnus the good news, he seems far away, staring at the wooden box that was in the safe deposit box. Then he jumps to his feet and wavers.

Likely, he’s still regaining his strength. “I realized something during those long hours.”

I look at him expectantly, wondering if this is it. He’s going to ask me...

“The box. The knife.” He pulls the blade from his pocket, opens it, and then slides it into the slot at the top of the box. Something clicks, and where we didn’t see any seams or openings, the four wooden sides fall away. In the center is another smaller box.

“Whoa, whoa, whoa,” I repeat.

The small box inside has a sliding lid inlaid with mother-of-pearl and abalone.