The Privateer by Josephine Tey — Read

The widow of Edward Morgan stood in the shade of the upper veranda and watched Barley Sugar come up the drive with a letter. Barley Sugar's proper name, as witnessed to by the estate books, was Richard William Baker, but the children, fascinated by his particular shade of brown skin, had long ago changed all that, so that even his mistress, a fanatical pursuer of the proprieties, never referred to him or addressed him as anything but Barley Sugar. Barley Sugar had been sent into Port Royal at the crack of dawn with embroidery silk for matching, but it was conceivable, nay possible, nay probable, that he had come back with something else altogether. Anna Petronilla watched his meandering approach with irritation. Barley Sugar's method of progression was so haphazard, so vague, so butterfly-like that one was continually surprised that he did arrive at last at any given point.

A tear of mingled exasperation and self-pity shone in her round blue eye. It was unfair of Edward, poor Edward, to bring her out to this barbaric island and leave her in this ramshackle house in a half-made plantation among a crowd of black slaves away from her friends and her family, with no proper society for the children nor matches for the girls nor education for Rupert nor anything that could be of interest to a well-bred woman and a von Pollnitz. Edward, poor Edward, should have stayed at home and looked after his family, instead of dashing off on military expeditions at his age. How was Rupert to grow up a credit to the Pollnitz side of the family if he had no male control? This morning he had failed to turn up to the lesson about Julius Caesar she had prepared for him, and she was very much afraid that he had run away to be a pirate, having been excited thereto by the slaves' gossip that a nephew of Edward's had turned up at Port Royal with ten prizes and had come ashore dripping with jewels, pistols, doubloons, pieces-of-eight, and similar proceeds of piracy. She hoped that it would occur to him before he went too far that the best way of meeting a pirate was to stay at home and wait for this Morgan nephew of Edward's to call. It was so like Edward, poor Edward, to have a pirate for a nephew.