Chapter 2
Chapter
Andrew McGann flexes his fingers and feels his entire body settle into the movement of the ship. He exhales. Being back on the water is a blessed relief, even if he isn’t entirely chuffed about the timing.
It’s December, and it’s cold. Too cold to be launching, but needs must. There’s a war headed from the land to the sea thanks to the bloody English, and although it started in Crimea, there’s no telling where it might end.
So, McGann and Lord Alistair Crawford, his unlikely Sassenach business partner, have decided to launch The Elphame to sea and out of reach of any forthcoming naval battles as soon as possible.
McGann rolls his shoulders and stretches his large body, feeling the rock of the ship on the water.
The sea is his home. Or as close as he gets when he isn’t in his beloved Highlands, which he hasn’t been for any real length of time since he’d left at thirteen and gone to work for the East India Company.
That’s a decade of his life lost. Plus the four additional years he just spent in England.
It’s taken much longer than he ever imagined to find a business partner he can trust—one with the right kind of societal leverage and connections who might also be willing to partner with the likes of him.
He’d all but given up when he finally met Lord Alistair Crawford, the second son of a marquess, who had quit the East India Company in disgust over its policies, too. And Crawford had done it without stealing and scuttling a ship, which is more than McGann can say for himself, frankly.
Four goddamned long years. That’s how long it took him from the moment he left Jamaica and landed in London to today, when he’s finally back on the water where he belongs.
Blast, it’s cold.
McGann stands out on deck despite the weather and watches the coastline of England recede from his vision.
The wind whips at his face and the salt spray freezes in his hair, but he won’t give up this opportunity.
Any day he sails away from England is a good day, and he’s damn well going to enjoy it.
He lifts his hand in a sort of goodbye salute to the rolling hills of Kent. The Kentish countryside is a far sight better than the hell-pit of London, but it’s still regrettably filled with the English, and he’s not sorry to leave it behind.
McGann regards himself as first and foremost a Highlander; hell, he’s even named his ship after the fierce Celtic faerie queen, Elphame herself.
Second to that, he’s half-Scotsman and half-Jamaican.
Ergo, he is loyal to his sister, Esmee; his grandmother, whom he has every intention of visiting again as soon as he can; his new business partner, Alistair Crawford; and nothing and no one else.
Crawford himself barely made the cut. But McGann likes the man despite the circumstances of his birth (namely, being English and an aristocrat) and so has decided to overlook those facts for the sake of their business and his future.
But no other English need apply to be a part of his inner sanctum. On that, he is decided.
So, get the wee bloody menace out of your head then.
He lowers his hand and sends a little prayer up to Elphame, asking her for safe passage during this inaugural voyage of the shipping and trading company he’s waited so long to form.
Unfortunately, he let Crawford name the company, as he’d named the ship, and the man chose Viola Reformare—Violet’s Reformation. It’s a stupid name, but in truth, he doesn’t mind it as much as he might.
He’s glad Crawford met and married Violet Goodwin, and that the two are expecting their first child. The fact that Violet is first cousin to Lady Catherine West, wee menace of the first order? Unimportant.
There’s no reason for him to think of Catherine at all. Not now, when he’s back on the water with The Elphame’s hold packed full of Esmee’s first-rate whisky and the wind at his back.
McGann pauses one more moment, reveling in the feel of his boots on the swaying deck. They’d been made for him in Spain, his boots, of a heavy black leather that he’s worn down to perfection, a nice contrast with the new-hewn planks below his feet.
The Elphame was updated with the newest in steam technology while she was docked in Kent.
He and Crawford added an engine, a boiler, and a propeller.
They changed the rigging to accommodate the machinery and trained the crew in the new technology.
It was a slow and costly update, but feeling the ship skip over the water now, McGann knows the re-fitting was the right decision.
A hybrid of steam and sail, The Elphame is one of the fastest ships on the water. Possibly the fastest.
Uncatchable, he hopes.
Not that anyone is chasing him.
He hopes that too.
But he hasn’t bothered to hide his face nor his name in the four years he’s been in London since Jamaica, and he hasn’t seen hide nor hair of the East India Company in that time. He’s every reason to believe that nasty business is behind him.
And if it isn’t, The Elphame and her captain are ready.
All’s right with the world.
Except—
What in hell?
He bends his tremendous frame down to the ground to examine a light dusting of something shimmery and gold at his feet.
Not gold dust.
It isn’t possible. The Elphame launched in shipshape condition, and he’s certain he’d have noticed errant gold dust.
But…
He presses his fingers to the stuff and brings it closer to his face. It isn’t gold, though it’s gold colored.
And it glitters.
He stands, his broad shoulders heaving in an effort to hold in his roiling emotions. He needn’t have bothered, because there’s no containing the roar about to erupt from his mouth:
“CAAAAAAAAATHERIIIIIIIIINE!”
God fucking bloody damn it all to hell!
No one provokes him like Lady Catherine West. He becomes undone in her presence, some man other than the solid, patient, precise one he usually is.
He closes his eyes, hoping beyond hope that when he opens them again, he won’t see what he knows he is going to eventually see: Lady Catherine West, the wee bloody menace, somehow aboard his ship. Her blonde hair powdered in gold glitter just as it was when he’d last seen her yesterday.
Standing outside the church.
In her wedding dress.
On her wedding day.