"What kind of problems?" Adam asked.
"Prickly problems, which made his family send him to us. He had embarrassed them rather infamously at a ball. He's known now as Jack the Rip."
"What is the little peculiarity that landed him here, and why the odd nickname?" Adam pressed, not wanting to beat around the bush any longer.
Pavlov sighed. "The nickname really says it all. He… rips off his clothes and exposes himself… to rosebushes."
Ouch, Adam thought. A sticky business, trying to cure a man who flashed his prick at pricker bushes. "The man must be mad."
"Cela va sans dire."
"Quite so," Adam remarked. " 'That goes without saying.' Quite so."
Chapter Thirteen
The Good, the Bad, and the Good and the Mad
The skies were an ominous gray that perfectly matched Eve's mood, as did the aging buildings she was passing. Although Eve had seen a hundred docksides while growing up in ports around the world, they always depressed her. The taverns were shabby, and the patrons a dirty and uncouth lot living in abject poverty. Garbage always lined the streets, and the sewage smells were enough to put a person off her food.
Again Eve cursed her father for his interfering ways, and for having to seek him out in one of his favorite haunts. When she found him, she didn't know what she would do, but she did know that the coming confrontation would not be pleasant. Especially if she unleashed her formidable temper. "Loose lips sink ships," Eve muttered, remembering this fact well, since her father had drummed it into her as a child. He'd always advocated a united front for the Bluebeard family, no matter how bad things got. Of course, he was usually the one causing problems. "I shan't pull out his blue beard or curse a blue streak and threaten his liver. I shan't call him an infernal interfering boil on the arse of humanity," she reminded herself.
By her side, her butler nodded. He'd driven her here in the asylum trap. "That's right, Dr. Eve. I wouldn't think you should."
Eve gave an inarticulate grunt. "Don't get mad, get even," she muttered.
Teeter glanced around, taking in the rough-hewn cobblestone path. "Get who?"
She rolled her eyes. "No one. I meant, I shouldn't be angry; I should get even with that callous conniver who calls himself my father. He'll rue the day he crossed me!"
Teeter replied anxiously, his Adam's apple bobbing, "I wouldn't threaten to break his bottles of rum or lock him in a treasure chest and throw away the key, like you did the last time."
Eve glared at her butler. Then, continuing her search, she found her ire increasing, but no Captain Bluebeard.
"My father is like a hammerhead shark—hammering away until he gets what he wants," she complained. "Doesn't matter what he destroys in the process. Like my very fine life. Oh, no! He wants me married, pirate-booted, and pregnant, the old-fashioned reprobate. To his mind, a woman's made to stay on a ship for her master's pleasure, bearing his children and cleaning the poop deck. Perhaps wielding a cutlass in times of emergency. For him, one female is much like the others. Hence his seven marriages. He's a barbarian, the ripe old cod!"
As the afternoon wore on, Eve discovered that the captain wasn't at the Barbary Coast Pub, the Sword and Crossbones, or Thatch Blackbeard's Den of Scurvy. Finally she located her father at Lafitte's Pride, a regular nest of pirates with a few landlubbers thrown in for good measure. Materlinck, both the bartender and an aspiring writer, waved her through to the back, where her father was holding court by telling outrageous tales of his high-seas adventures.
The smoky room teemed with rough characters. Some wore eye patches, others earrings, and a few sported peg legs. There were scarred faces, grizzled beards, and smelly bodies, and a continual din of grumbling voices. Through the hazy atmosphere and the window's faint light, Eve spotted Captain Bluebeard sitting by a grimy hearth, with his back against the wall—the only way her father sat in a room full of cutthroats—a smile on his face. He was smoking his corncob pipe.
Turning to Teeter, Eve noted her father's condition. "At least he isn't castaway yet. I wish you to stay here by the bar." Seeing her butler's pleading eyes, she relented. "Yes, you can get yourself an ale."
Teeter's delighted grin spread from ear to ear, which had her hastily adding, "One ale. Only one. I need you to drive us back. Read my lips. No new taxies."
The grin fled as quickly as it had appeared, and the ogrish butler peered down his very long nose at her. Eve ignored his wounded expression and marched over to her father, pushing through the mass of disgustingly dirty humanity.
Catching sight of his daughter, Captain Bluebeard grinned. His dark blue eyes lit with joy, his lips twisting into a knowing smirk. The cat was out of the bag, the vampire out of the coffin, and the pirate off his ship. Ship ahoy! His daughter's prow was true and straight, and she was approaching at ramming speed.
Captain Bluebeard's smirk only made Eve's blood heat to the boiling point. "I'll personally kick his Tortuga," she muttered, but halted abruptly when she reached him. Ignoring his disreputable drinking companions—his crew were beyond three sheets to the wind, were more like eight sheets into a full-blown hurricane—Eve let loose her own personal nor'easter. "What skullduggery have you set loose in my asylum?"
Bluebeard chortled. "Skullduggery, you say? Just exactly what are you accusing me of?"
Eve didn't fall for the look of indignation that quickly covered her father's rugged face. The old scalawag was playing it for all he was worth. "You really should tread the boards on land, not on sea. Don't fash me, father. As if you didn't know! You can forget the protestations of innocence. You haven't been innocent since the day you were born. Knowing you, I bet you swiped the cookie of the baby next to you!"
Planting a large hand on his chest, Bluebeard groaned, playing to the audience of blasted buccaneers seated around the table. "To think me own dearest daughter speaks to her da like this. Doesn't trust me. Just breaks me heart, it does."
Eve stamped her foot. "If the eye patch fits, wear it!"
"Evie, my love, shiver me timbers. How cold is a thankless child!"
Glaring at her father's companions, Eve snapped out her next words: "Do you louts think you could pretend to be gentlemen for once, and leave me to speak with this old scalawag alone?"
The three pirates hastily departed, Ol' Peg almost getting his wooden leg caught in a spittoon. Drunk or not, none of Bluebeard's sea dogs wanted to get in the middle of this father-and-daughter talk; the Bluebeards' bites and their barks were equally bad.
Pulling out a chair, Bluebeard nodded for Eve to sit down. She obliged warily, plotting her options. Then temper won out. "How dare you presume to invent a husband for me when I've already invented one myself! It's utterly despicable! I want Adam whatever-his-name-is out of my life tonight! And I do mean tonight!" She lowered her voice to keep the tavern's crooked customers from overhearing, she didn't need to be blackmailed by this scurvy lot. Though, with the din of the crowd and the fact that most were so drunk they wouldn't remember much of anything, she wasn't too worried.