I swallowed, trying to find my voice again. “I’m not telling you a thing about me.” For all I knew, he’d take me back to Sewel.

“No? Well, it don’t much matter. I know all I need to know.” He came toward me. “You’re running from something. You’re hiding from it, and you’re scared as can be. And you’re lying. You’re lying to save your tiny little life. En’t that right?”

“Stop!” I backed into the bulwark. “Don’t come any closer!”

He leered down at me, his teeth snaggled and stained. “You asked me what I want. Well, I’ll tell you. What I want’s a fee, you might say, for keeping your little secret all the way to New York. Something only Miss Coates can provide.”

“You mean…” My legs shuddered as it came to me. “You want the jewels?”

“Righto.”

Relief turned me light as a cloud. “You want me to steal ’em for you?”

“Steal ’em? No, no, no. Lord, girl. Nothing so splashy as that. We go on’s what we do. We sail northward, according to plan. You keep being a good Miss Coates till we get to New York, where Jansen’ll give you those baubles. Then you give ’em to me and you go your way, still alive, and I go mine a rich man. You seeing how this works?”

I did. I knew just how this worked. Dive, Frannie. Steal, Frannie. I had plenty of practice with orders and threats.

Hackett leaned closer. “Well?”

“Yes, you old hellhound! I see!” I cringed at my outburst. If he was anything like Sewel, I’d pay for it.

He scowled. “Old hellhound?” He looked up as the ship’s bell began to toll the hour. “Time I go, Little Salt.” He bowed, swirling a hand mockingly through the air. “Oh—one last thing.” He turned at the door. “You keep that mouth shut tight. ’Cause hell, girl, you got a vulgar tongue that en’t the least bit ladylike.”

In the morning, I took Miss Coates’s journal out to the crates where I’d sat with Captain Jansen, more determined than ever to make myself into her. It wasn’t a choice anymore; I needed it for me and so I could get the jewels for Hackett.

Opening the journal, I read a swirly love poem Miss Coates had written to her future husband, then pages of her favorite recipes for things like “a superb paste for the skin” and “a secret to keep breath smelling sweet after drink.”

I closed it, blowing out a long, frustrated breath that perhaps smelled sweet or perhaps not, but either way I didn’t care a whit. I’d reach New York in a week or two, depending on the wind, and I had so much to learn. I knew I didn’t talk or eat right. Probably there were a thousand other things I’d need to learn, and this journal wasn’t helping one bit. My situation was not looking superb.