Pearl laughed. “Pitts and Earwood. They should be friends.”
“After this, perhaps they will be!”
Pearl’s smile softened. “I know we certainly shall be.”
Something in the curl of Pearl’s voice called a corresponding curl in Clara’s breath. She did not respond and the two girls drifted in silence while the sun slowly drained from the sky. Clara sighted a particularly reedy section on the opposite side of the river from where Pearl had just fled and nosed the sloop inside it for extra coverage. It would be a cold night on the sloop, but it was still too dangerous to camp on shore. They would have to make do with what little heat her lanterns could provide.
But Pearl would need more than that.
The girl made no complaint, but she shivered in her layers of wet dress. She would make herself ill sleeping in such a state.
“Here,” Clara said, offering her single change of boy’s clothing. “Put these on.”
Pearl accepted them gratefully, cold fingers brushing Clara’s as she took them from her hands. Though they were surrounded by mere reeds instead of sturdy walls, Pearl quickly began the work of loosening her dress. Clara helped, tugging on cold, wet lacings until her own fingers burned.
The work was so familiar that it didn’t occur to Clara that Pearl was a near stranger until the dress slid from her shoulders, leaving only the shift behind. Then it wasn’t only her fingers that burned, but her cheeks, her lips, her chest. She turned away to give Pearl her privacy and tend to the stirring in her lungs.
“I have bread and cheese,” she said, rooting through the bag she’d stowed on the sloop ahead of time. “Jars of preserves and a few bottles of wine.”
“You’re my savior,” Pearl said, voice muffled by cloth. “Let’s start with the wine. Tonight’s a celebration after all.”
“You’re right,” Clara said, feeling the truth of it expand in her lungs. “We did it, Pearl. We left.”
“And tomorrow’s all about the life we choose.”
The life we choose. The words were said with such anticipation that for a moment, Clara felt overwhelmed. She had spent so long trying to imagine herself inside a house she had no hand in creating, imagining the rooms and cabinets and nearest neighbors she might have as a married woman in a new town. Now there was no house, no town even, and the possibilities seemed as long and steady as the river rushing past.
The girls opened their wine and tore their bread and scooped generously of fig preserves. They drank until the bottle was gone and ate until the jar was empty, and then they lay on their backs on the flat nose of the sloop.
“What was your plan?” Clara asked. “Just...run?”
Pearl’s laughter sounded like merry song of a wood thrush. “From start to finish. The thought came over me all of a sudden. I was standing there, at the entry of the church, staring down that short aisle to a long future with a man who was already calculating the value of our wedding gifts. And I tell you before I knew what I was about, I was running out the doors and down the road. So, yes, ‘run’ was my plan. And it worked, I’ll remind you.”
“Barely! And by luck alone!”
“What was your plan, then? More than run, I assume?” Pearl leaned up on her elbow to level Clara with a playful glare. “Did you steal this boat, Clara? You might’ve chosen something less conspicuous than a sloop with yellow sails.”
It was Clara’s turn to laugh, and she felt self-conscious as she did. “It was mine, but seeing as I was married when I took it and all my belongings were also Mr. Earwood’s, it’s probable he thinks I stole it.”
“You’re an outlaw,” Pearl teased.
“In good company,” Clara teased back, noting the way Pearl’s gaze slid to her lips and back again to her eyes. “And my plan was to take my sloop and ride the river to the open ocean. I’ve food and a fishing pole to keep me fed, a blade to keep me safe and skills to keep me afloat.”
“And then what?” Pearl asked.
Clara was almost afraid to say it. For so long, she’d nurtured this secret desire knowing anyone who heard it would think her too childish for the world. The words had been so long held back that now they feared coming out. But in the flicker of lamplight, Pearl’s smile was encouraging.
“Do you know of the Sweet Trade?” Clara asked, fiddling with the delicate lace on her stomacher.
Pearl’s expression was skeptical. “Piracy? That’s your plan? Become a pirate?”
“It is,” Clara answered seriously. “All my life, people have told me what to do or taken what’s mine. The same is true for you! We’ve been raised among pirates who call themselves gentlemen. And I’m ready to turn the tables. I’m ready to take what’s mine and maybe a few things that aren’t.”
“That sounds like a lovely sort of justice.” Pearl smiled as she leaned close, her breath sweet with figs, her lips stained purple with wine. “Perhaps I’ll join you and we’ll rule the Carolina seas together.”
“I’d gladly take you amongst my crew.”
“And I would gladly join it.”
Clara felt warmth spreading through her cheeks. Pearl’s smile was softer now, her brown hair falling around her face to curl at her chin near her lips. She looked perfectly unkempt and radiant. Clara had started this day evading a kiss she didn’t want, but she would end it with one she did.
Clara leaned up, and Pearl leaned down. Their lips met, gently at first, then more urgently, one kiss diving into the next and the next like little waves until they parted to breathe. Clara rested in Pearl’s arms, a sheet of brown hair covering them both.
“We shall be the most dreadful of pirates,” Clara said, cupping Pearl’s chin in her hand. “Because between us, we’ve left three husbands wanting.”
Silence fell around the girls. Clara watched as Pearl drifted away from her, though her body remained so near she could feel its gentle heat. Finally, after several long moments, Pearl sat up and spoke again.
“It won’t work,” she said. “It’s just a dream.”
“This whole thing is a dream. But we’ve made it real,” Clara protested.
“No, maybe if we were boys, this would work. But we’re not. We’re only girls, and this won’t work.” Tears shimmered in Pearl’s eyes. She scooted away, huddling in her boy’s clothing, her cheeks still flushed from the kiss. “We have to do something girls can do.”
Clara knew that she hated everything Pearl had just said, but she had no solution for it. “Perhaps you’re right,” she said. “We should get some sleep.”
The girls settled down to sleep with their eyes on the stars above and their ears full of crickets and owls and the soft shushing of the river. It all sounded like tomorrow and like the future and like a life they’d chosen. For better or worse.
* * *
