The Lady's Guide to Petticoats and Piracy (Montague Siblings, #2)

by Mackenzi Lee

Monty catches some sort of head cold three days into the voyage and collapses into histrionics, which Percy only encourages with doting concern. Since he’s given up spirits, Monty has leaned in even harder to his addiction to attention. His good ear is blocked up by the chill, rendering him almost entirely deaf, though I think not as deaf as he pretends to be when I mention a remedy I read in An Easy and Natural Method of Curing Most Diseases, in which a head cold can be doused by rolling up an orange’s peel and shoving it up both nostrils. When he refuses to listen but continues to moan, there’s somewhere else that I consider threatening to shove it.

And maybe it’s the fear in his voice. Maybe it’s that I notice Monty has tried to stop the blood by pressing that ridiculous hat Percy knit for him against the bullet hole, but it’s slipped down and nestled against his side. Maybe it’s that Percy isn’t just precious to me, but he’s half my brother’s heart. I’ve never seen fear like this in Monty. I’ve never seen fear like this in another human, as Monty presses his hands to Percy’s face and his forehead to his and begs him to open his eyes, to breathe, to survive.

Platt lets the pirates take him. He doesn’t struggle against them or resist in any way, and I wonder what it’s like to be too beaten down to fight anymore. I hope I never learn.

That oil slick of a smile spreads over her lips, and I want to touch a candle to it and watch her smolder, this dangerous, gorgeous, wildfire of a woman.

“Just because you’ve never seen me cleaned up doesn’t mean I can’t lean deeply into the princess part of my piracy.” “Oh, can you now?” “Felicity Montague, if you saw me dressed for Eid in my blue-and-gold kaftan, you’d faint dead away. You’d propose marriage to me on the spot. And maybe my kisses aren’t magic for you, but of course I’d say yes, and I’d treat you right and we’d be very happy together. You could have your house and your books and your old dog, and I would have a ship and sail for years at a time and only stop by to see you on occasion, so you’d never grow tired of me.” “And would we be happy?” I ask. “Ecstatic,” she replies.

It is not a failure to readjust my sails to fit the waters I find myself in. It’s a new heading. A fresh start.

Sim’s thumb floats over the soft skin of my forearm, stretching it tight, then she leans down and deals a quick kiss to the spot. “For luck,” she says. As she raises the needle, I look between her and Jo-hanna. In the company of women like this—sharp-edged as raw diamonds but with soft hands and hearts, not strong in spite of anything but powerful because of everything—I feel invincible. Every chink and rut and battering wind has made us tough and brave and impossible to strike down. We are mountains—or perhaps temples, with foundations that could outlast time itself. When the needle breaks my skin, the pain is as cold and bright as the horizon of a cloudless winter sky. In this moment, this place, this perch upon the edge of the world, it feels like the view goes on forever.

I’m learning there is no one way for life to be lived, no one way to be strong or brave or kind or good. Rather there are many people doing the best they can with the heart they are given and the hand they are dealt. Our best is all we can do, and all we can hold on to is each other. And, zounds, that is more than enough.

We tend to think of history as less individual than we do our modern experiences, but most general statements about all women in any historical context can be proven false. By exceptions, not rules, of course. But still disproved. Just as there is no single story for women today, there is not one for historical women either.

voyages of discovery almost always included artists, who were used to record the landscapes and natural wonders. Before photography, artists were critical to capturing precise details of nature so that they could be compared and analyzed.

Sailors have long been practitioners of “situational homosexuality” as a result of long months at sea without sexual release, but for pirates, these relationships could be open and legitimate. The term for these unions was matelotage, which was eventually shorted to mate, and then matey.

There are many things that make this book fiction, but the roles women play within it are not. The women of the eighteenth century were met with opposition. They had to fight endlessly. Their work was silenced, their contributions ignored, and many of their stories are forgotten today. Nevertheless, they persisted.