Editing Cardamon Jones (section)

==Background==
Background: Malcolm Jones had just started a good, honest life as a groundskeeper for the Duke of Kent, taking over from his father, who took over from his father, and so on as far back as anyone could remember. The Duke’s granddaughter Eleanor was bored and lonely and hating the marriage that had been arranged for her. Both were still teenagers when she became pregnant. She pretended to take ill, hiding her pregnancy under pillows and blankets, until she couldn’t anymore. Counting on the discretion of the few who knew, she entrusted the child to Malcolm and pretended that the illness had mostly past, but she would need some more time.

The ruse almost worked, but Malcolm found himself leaving everything he knew in the dead of night. Guards searched the grounds, but he knew them better than anyone living. By morning there was no trace of him. But there was the infant. Lemon Cardamon cakes were Eleanor’s favorite, so she named the infant Cardamon. He had truly loved Eleanor, against all sense. But the small supply of milk she’d gifted wouldn’t last long. A young woman in the poorest part of town named Candice took pity on them, and agreed to see Cardamon through to weaning, if Malcolm would see to food and shelter. Those were lean years, with the family having to pick up stakes and move whenever the Duke or the Watch started getting suspicious.

When Cardamon was old enough to set out on her own, she did. She hoped that she could take pressure off her parents. They hoped they could take pressure off her. But the nobility don’t like loose ends, especially when they could cause a scandal for one of their own. Cardy had her mother’s eyes. And so, as luck would have it, she found herself on a pirate ship, under the study of Roxani, a canny old Turkish woman, as an apprentice navigator.

She lost track of her parents, and of Eleanor. Life on a wooden ship was non-stop work. But it was honest work, and she thrived. She took over as principal navigator when Roxani got too old. Sailors said she had the devil’s own luck, the way she just seemed to make decisions that skirted storms and squalls, and the Navy. But luck is fickle, and one day the Navy caught them. Fortunately, the Duke had kept things quiet enough that they didn’t know to look for her. So she was surprised when surrender negotiations were underway, the pirate captain, out of the blue, begged them to take her as a navigator, arguing that she was too good and too young to rot in prison. So it is that the woman wanted by British nobility ended up on ships flying the British flag. She relishes the freedom of the salt and the sea, but she has to always keep one eye over her shoulder. The Duke’s men could be anywhere.