Cassandra

Born into an aristocratic family in central Bridgetown, the delicate Cassie’s days were spent in the activities of high-born women.

The monotony of this existence was broken with the arrival of a tall, dark handsome stranger who came calling to do business with her father.

It was only a matter of time before his visits to their home became more frequent, their walks in the park the highlight of her never-ending, boring days.

The first time he gently touched her hands she marveled at the contrast of his chocolate skin against her light, brown dermis. The air around them crackled with desire when they stole a kiss in the waning light of the evening sky.

Dreams of marriage swirled in her head as their secret relationship grew, the thoughts of becoming his wife seemed a plausible next step, but the reality was she could not marry her beloved. He was not the suitor her father approved of, not because he wasn’t wealthy and of good stock, in fact he was even more wealthy than her family who made up the small and slowly growing class of riche.

The man she loved was a pirate, a robber on the high seas making his fortune by looting and plunder.

Adorned in the garments of respectability he made some of his money from selling contraband to and for the elite, Cassie’s father included.

She knew all of this because as he expressed his love for her, he confessed his sins as well. It felt like fate to meet a man who lived a life of danger, whose love was sweet, deep and whose touch lingered in his absence. She could not let him go.

And she did not, in the middle of the night, with nothing more than the clothes on her back she snuck out of her parents’ house, and without even a backward glance she fled on foot to the port, sweating and disheveled she ran up the gangway of her buccaneer lover’s ship and collapsed into his waiting arms, holding her tightly he bellowed ‘Ship Ahoy’ and set sail on the ocean for a lifetime of love and adventure.