Remiel glanced over her shoulder, inspecting the ransom note.  It read:<br/><br/><div align="center"><span class="bbc_size" style="font-size: 16pt;"><span class="bbc_font" style="font-family: trebuchet ms;"><br/>To Lord Robert,<br/><br/>We have captured your lovely wife, the Lady Suzume, and hold her at our pleasure.   If you ever wish to see her again unharmed, you must render no less than ten thousand gold doubloons.   Bring the gold to the cove south of Shipcracker's Point, where we shall be berthed, at dawn tomorrow.  If you think to seize us by force, the life of your dear wife will be forfeit.    <br/><br/>May this find you in good health,<br/>Captain Remiel of the Dusky Lady <br/>and Myobi of the Dusky Lady</span></span></div><br/><br/>He had needled Myobi into adding the "may this find you in good health," over her objections.   It would, he knew, be received as an insult, as pouring salt in the wound.  When he imagined how this Lord Robert would react, he couldn't help but laugh aloud.    No doubt he would rage and froth, barking at his men to take Remiel's and Myobi's heads and serve them up on a silver platter.<br/><br/>Of course, Remiel had no intention of sticking around until the sunrise to collect the ransom.  The letter was for one purpose, and one purpose only; to pacify Kuno, and protect her honor in the event that she ever saw her lordly husband again.   He listened when Myobi suggested telling him where they were going, but stopped her before she wrote it.  It wasn't that he was afraid of Lord Robert, or any strength he might be able to wheedle and scrape together, but if something happened to him while he was pursuing them to Florida, Remiel imagined that his wife would be quite cross.<br/><br/>He rolled the parchment up and affixed it with a glob of wax.  As Myobi seemed like she wasn't about to mount him, he eased her off of him and sought about for the breeches she had removed from his thighs.  "Take this to Bryson, and give him a silver to pay off a man to give this to His Lordship," he said.  Bryson was a eunuch, who'd had his balls cut off in punishment for a crime he'd committed in his youth.  He would probably be the only man aboard not to care that he'd miss Kuno's welcome home orgy.<br/><br/>Drawing up his trousers, and cinching the belt tight around them, he stared out the porthole, where the moon was hanging huge and bright in the sky.  "The men won't like it, but we must needs make ready to cast off," he said.  "I plan to be gone come morning, and for all that Lord Robert to find waiting for him in the cove to be the crabs and the gulls."