That was to come later. At the moment Amra was strangely quiet and meek. All she would say was that she had many business connections and that she knew well Zingaro, the Thieves' Guild Business Agent. They had been childhood playmates, and they'd helped each other in various shady transactions since. It was only natural that she should hear about the exurotr a slave hiding on the Bird of Fortune had given Zingaro to take back to the Duke. Cornering Zingaro, she had worked out of him enough information to be sure that Green had escaped to the 'roller. After all, Zingaro was under oath only to be reticent about certain details of the whole matter. From there she had taken the business into her own hands, had told Miran that she would inform the Duchess of Green's whereabouts unless he permitted her and her family to go along on the voyage.
"Here I am, your faithful and loyal wife," she said, opening her arms in an expansive gesture.
"I am overwhelmed with emotion," replied Green, for once not exaggerating.
"Then come and embrace me," she cried, "and don't stand there as if you'd seen the dead return from the grave!"
"Before all these people?" he said, half-stunned, looking around at the grinning captain and first mate on the foredeck beside him and at the sailors and their families on the middeck below. The only ones not watching him were the goggled helmsmen, whose backs were turned because they were intent on wrestling with the great spoked wheel.
"Why not?" she retorted. "You'll be sleeping on the open deck with them, eating with them, breathing their breath, feeling their elbows at every turn, cursing, laughing, fighting, getting drunk, making love, all, all on the open deck. So why not embrace me? Or don't you want me to be here?"
"The thought never entered my head," he said, stepping up to her and taking her in his arms. Or, if it had, he reflected, you can bet that I'd not dare say it.
After all, it was good to feel her soft, warm, firmly curved body again and know that there was at least one person on this godforsaken planet that cared for him. What could have made him think for one minute that he could endure life without her?
Well, he had. She just would not, could not, fit into his life if he ever got back on Earth.