“So you won’t give me a week?” she sighed. “All sorts of things might have happened in that week. I shall always believe that the fairy prince would have come for me.”
“Believe that he HAS come,” he claimed.
“Oh, I didn’t mean a prince of pirates, though there is a triumph in having tamed a pirate chief to prosaic matrimony. In one way it will be a pity, too. You won’t be half so picturesque. You remember how Stevenson puts it: ‘that marriage takes from a man the capacity for great things, whether good or bad.’”
“I can stand a good deal of taming.”
“Domesticating a pirate ought to be an interesting process,” she conceded, her rare smile flashing. “It should prove a cure for ENNUI, but then I’m never a victim of that malady.”
“Am I being told that I am to be the happiest pirate alive?”
“I expect you are.”
His big hand gripped hers till it tingled. She caught his eye on a roving quest to the door.
“We don’t have to do that,” she announced hurriedly, with an embarrassed flush.
“I don’t do it because I have to,” he retorted, kissing her on the lips.