Turning Tides

New Providence, August 1719

The sun hung mercilessly over New Providence, beating against the dry earth until the streets shimmered beneath the midday heat. Sweat slicked every brow in the marketplace, yet still the crowds pressed shoulder to shoulder between the stalls. Merchants barked their wares into the heavy air while sailors, thieves, and traders drifted through the chaos like currents in a tide.

Anne kept to the shaded side of the street, one gloved hand lifting the hem of her blue day gown clear of the dust.

Ireland had not properly prepared her for a place like this. Cork’s grey skies, endless rain and rolling green hills were a far cry from this marketplace.

Ten years ago, Anne had believed her family’s voyage across the Atlantic would become the beginning of something better. She shook the thought away almost immediately.

How wrong she had been.

She paused beside a stall draped in rolls of lace and expensive cloth. The gaggle of ladies crowded around the stall suggested this was exactly where she ought to have belonged. Instead, she felt entirely apart from it.

She supposed the fabric was fine enough, but it held no interest to her. After eloping with John, they had been penniless, every remaining coin of Anne’s dowry poured into keeping their battered little cutter afloat. They could not have afforded lace and silk like these.

Anne had not minded then.

Back then, she had believed herself rich in all the ways that mattered.

Her husband, John, had minded.

John who hungered for fortune. John who had clawed his way towards a fine house, a respectable position, and a miserable wife.

John who was late.

And worse than that - making her wait.

Anne shifted uncomfortably as the corset her husband had lovingly bought her stuck to her body and pinched in places, she did not even know existed. Anne had never understood why women were expected to suffer fashion so obediently beneath the Caribbean sun. As she adjusted it, her gaze snagged on the tarnished mirror propped against the stall.

Anne had never quite resembled the women gathered around stalls like these. Her unruly red hair had always refused to stay where it was pinned, no matter how tightly the maids secured it. In the tarnished mirror, her green eyes seemed almost startling against the heat-flushed faces surrounding her.

She turned away from the fabric stall and walked on. Palm trees swayed lazily overhead, offering no relief from the unrelenting heat. Anne adjusted her parasol to gain what little shade she could, her fair skin prickling beneath the relentless sun.

A horse neighing loudly startled her from her thoughts. Her gaze flicked towards the town clock.

Four o’clock.

Anne scoffed loudly enough that an older gentleman passing nearby turned towards her in open disgust. Anne did not have the composure to look embarrassed and instead gave the man a sarcastic smile in response. The man turned on his dress heel and stalked away muttering under his breath about modern women. Haughtily, she crossed her arms, tapping her feet with growing impatience.

He was still late.

She continued to meander aimlessly around the market, feigning interest in the same wares and merchants that set up every week. But even that was not cutting it now.

She huffed under her breath, irritation rising like a tide. The only reason she was standing in this infernal marketplace at all was because John had deposited her there while he attended his precious meeting, as though she were something to be set aside until convenient again.

She glanced back at the clock. Ten past four.

She grumbled under her breath. She had had enough. If he wasn’t even going to give her the courtesy...

There he was.

Strolling through the crowd at a leisurely pace, weaving through the marketplace with the confidence of a man already convinced the island belonged to him.

Watching him take his time, Anne felt irritation flare hot and sharp inside her. Once, Anne had considered herself the luckiest woman in the Americas. John Bonny had caused quite the stir with his easy charm and classical good looks. Sun-bleached blond hair, ocean-blue eyes, a smile capable of persuading almost anyone of almost anything.

Back then, Anne had been no exception.

However, a few years of marriage had altered him in small, unflattering ways. Comfort and status sat more heavily on him now than adventure and sea wind ever had. Fine dinners and expensive whisky had softened the sharp edges that once made him seem appealing.

Anne felt her lip curl again.

He had been late.

Despite the changes time had made to him, women still fawned over John. Wealth and status, Anne supposed, compensated for a great many shortcomings.

Anne gave thought to her flaring temper. If she was brutally honest with herself, it was not the fact that he was late that really irked her. When she first met him, he had been a dashing sailor who owned his own vessel and was ready to take on the world. A far cry from the other man her father had lined up for her to wed.

Somewhere along the way, John had become alarmingly similar to Anne’s father; respectable, predictable, endlessly concerned with status and routine. All Anne’s dreams of adventure had withered beneath the Caribbean sun, shrivelling slowly into something dry and joyless.

“You took your time,” Anne remarked, a bite in her voice as she pointedly glanced towards the clock tower.

John smiled, but his eyes hardened behind it as if warning her not to cause a scene. “The meeting ran over,” John replied easily. “Come now, let’s go home.” He held out an arm for her to take, so he could guide her towards a waiting carriage, but she pushed it away.

“Pray tell - what took so long that I had to spend the afternoon baking out here?”

John glanced uneasily towards the surrounding crowd, as though far more concerned that someone might overhear his wife’s hostility than the fact he had kept her waiting. “You do realise the world does not stop simply because you are inconvenienced for an afternoon, Anne.”

Anne stilled. Once, John had spoken to her like an equal. That time had long since passed.

“How reassuring,” Anne replied, her smile thin as glass. “I had begun to worry you no longer remembered you possessed a wife.”

John merely hummed in response, his attention drifting towards the nearby stalls as though calculating stock and profit rather than speaking to his wife.

Anne bristled, her jaw clenching as stray strands of red hair descended into her eyes. As much as this time was leisure for him, she had an appointment, and she would not be late.

Straightening her back, and attempting vainly to swallow her anger, she started, “I can’t go home now, I’m expected at the dock. I have that meeting with the carpenter to fix the boat.”

John’s attention immediately snapped back to her. Before he hadn’t even deigned to look at her.

“There’s no need, I sold the boat.” His tone was entirely dismissive.

Anne did not understand the words at first.

Around them, the marketplace continued without pause; merchants shouting, horses stamping, laughter drifting somewhere further down the street. Yet, the sounds suddenly seemed impossibly far away, as though she had been plunged beneath water.

Her fingers tightened around the handle of her parasol.

No. He couldn’t have...

Heat climbed viciously beneath her corset. For one horrible moment, Anne thought she might actually be sick there in the middle of the street.

“What?” The word barely escaped her, a harsh comparison to the clear fury in it moments before.

“Yes, that was why the meeting went on.” He turned away from her almost immediately. Not from guilt, Anne knew him better than that. John simply had no desire to witness the aftermath of his own decisions. Once a couple of paces away, he turned back towards her, his face conveying sympathy. But Anne knew this mask, this manipulation.

The audacity of it nearly choked her.

Even now, John seemed more concerned with who might be watching than the devastation he had left standing in front of him.

“You sold it?” Anne repeated, the words barely audible above her thumping heart in her ears. “You sold our boat?

John exhaled slowly, as though she were being difficult over something tiresome and unavoidable. “Anne, be reasonable. We were pouring money endlessly into repairs for a vessel that neither of us truly uses anymore.”

“That was not your decision to make alone,” Anne burst out, years of swallowed frustration crackling through, despite every warning she has ever received about her temper. The words came out far louder and far more frantic than Anne intended. Nearby conversations faltered for a moment. She immediately felt the familiar pressure to pull herself back into line before John decided she was causing a scene again.

John’s expression tightened almost imperceptibly.

“Anne,” he warned quietly. The single word carried years of reprimand beneath it; lower your voice, stop embarrassing me, behave yourself.

But Anne could scarcely hear him over the roaring suddenly filling her ears.

“That boat belonged to both of us,” she pressed on, her voice shaking despite every effort to steady it. “You cannot simply sell it without even speaking to me first.”

People had stopped to watch them now. Anne saw John notice it too. Of course he noticed it. He always noticed who was watching.

“Control yourself,” he muttered tightly through his polished smile.

Something hot and furious twisted violently in her chest.

“Sentiment does not keep a household afloat. Someone had to think practically,” he drawled placatingly.

Anne simply stared at him stunned.

John lowered his voice, his tone softening into that maddening calm she had once mistaken for kindness. “We cannot continue wasting coin chasing old fantasies,” he said. “We have a respectable life now, a home, connections, responsibilities.”

Responsibilities.

Anne had begun to hate that word. Her eyes couldn’t help but drift past him towards the harbour glimmering beyond the town. For one dangerous moment, the world around her disappeared entirely.

She could almost feel it again – the fresh sea wind whipping loose strands of hair across her face, stars scattered endlessly above dark open water, the steady creak of timber beneath her feet. No corset digging into her ribs. No suffocating drawing rooms. No expectations pressing down upon her shoulders until she could scarcely breathe beneath.

Freedom.

Not this. Never this.

This was never the dream that he sold her.

John continued speaking, oblivious to the storm gathering behind her eyes. “And frankly, Anne, it is not proper for a woman of your rank to spend so much time wandering the docks alone. People talk.”

Anne’s attention snapped back towards him.

“Oh, do they?”

“You know exactly what I mean.” His jaw tightened faintly. “Wives do not loiter among sailors and dockhands unattended. I am protecting your reputation.”

“My reputation?” Anne echoed, the words escaping louder than intended. Several heads nearby turned.

John’s expression tightened immediately.

“Lower your voice.” he said through gritted teeth, careful not be heard by the bustling crowd.

Anne straightened her shoulders, glare fully forming on her face. “No.”

John scoffed but carried on regardless. “Yes, your reputation. It reflects upon us both.”

Anne almost laughed.

“You mean it reflects upon you.”

John ignored the remark smoothly, like a practiced politician. “You are my wife. There is no need for you to concern yourself with boats and repairs anymore.”

Anne felt something cold twist sharply in her chest.

No need. As though he were speaking of some childish hobby she ought to have outgrown. As though the sea had not once been the very thing that bound them together.

“Who did you sell it to?” She asked suddenly.

John’s expression hardened at once. There it was again, that quiet immoveable wall sliding into place behind his eyes. He had expected this question.

“There’s no buying it back, Anne.”

The fury that surged through her then was so violent she thought it might consume her entirely.

John mistook her silence for surrender. “In time, you will understand this was for the best.”

Anne looked at the man standing before her; polished boots, pressed waistcoat, carefully measured words, and struggled to reconcile him with the reckless young sailor she had once crossed an ocean with.

Somewhere along the way, John Bonny had left the sea. And now he was trying to drag Anne kicking and screaming with him.

Without another word, Anne turned sharply on her heel and stormed away through the marketplace in a fury of silk, lace and blazing red hair.

Behind her, John called her name once in warning.

Anne did not stop walking.