"You're wrong." Why did he try so hard to be infuriating? "Home rule here is just a start. Someday there'll be no more indentures, and who knows, maybe one day they'll even decide to let the slaves be free." She wanted to grab him and shake him, he was so shortsighted. "You just refuse to try and understand. Isn't there anything you care about?"
"I care about living life my own way. It may not sound like much of a cause, but it's taken me long enough to get around to it. I've given up thinking that one day I'll go back home and work for the honor of the Winston name, or settle down and grow fat on some sugar plantation in the Caribbees." He turned on her, almost shouting against the storm. "Let me tell you something. I'm through living by somebody else's rules. Right now I just want to get out. Out to a place I'll make for myself. So if getting there means I first have to fight alongside the likes of Briggs and Walrond to escape Barbados, then that's what it'll be. And when I fight, make no mistake, I don't plan to lose."
"That's quite a speech. How long have you been practicing it?" She seized his arm. "And the point, I take it, is that you like to run away from difficulties?"
"That's exactly right, and I wish you'd be good enough to have a brief word with the admiral of the fleet out there about it." He was smiling again, his face almost impish in the rain. "Tell him there's a well- known American smuggler who'd be pleased to sail out of here if he'd just open up the blockade for an hour or so."
"Well, why not ask him yourself? He might be relieved, if only to be rid of you and your gunners." She waited till a roll of thunder died away. "And after you've sailed away? What then?"
"I plan to make my own way. Just as I said. I'm heading west by northwest, to maybe turn around a few things here in the Caribbean. But right now I've got more pressing matters, namely keeping my provisions, and those of the Dutchmen, out of the hands of the fleet." He turned and continued toward the shore, a dim expanse of sand shrouded in dark and rain. "So you'd best go on back to the Assembly Room, Katherine, unless you plan to gather up those petticoats and lend me a hand."
"Perhaps I just will." She caught up with him, matching his stride.