Chapter 3
Chapter
“CATTTTHHHHHEEEEERIIIINE!”
She startles awake. The dratted man is bellowing at her. Sure, she’s a stowaway aboard his ship, and she’s taken his cabin, a fact she presumes he hasn’t yet discovered. But there is still no cause for bellowing.
She has every right to be on this ship. She’s paid for it, after all. Or some of it, in any case.
Catherine rises from where she fitfully slept on his bed, another nugget of information he isn’t yet privy to, and looks askance at the gold glitter now spread out on his linens.
Nothing to be done about that now.
She’ll have a bath as soon as she speaks with him. She looks down at her bedraggled wedding gown, still damp and torn from last night’s storms. She’ll also change her clothes as soon as she can.
She hasn’t brought any others because there wasn’t time to retrieve them, but she’s sure there must be an extra set somewhere aboard.
She reaches behind her to tighten the stays she wiggled loose last night, only to find that stays are harder to re-tie than to loosen. Especially when one’s fingers are trembling with cold.
Drat.
She can still hear McGann causing a ruckus above deck. She ought to go and see the man before he alerts the whole Atlantic Ocean to her presence. Not that her fiancé—well, he isn’t that anymore, is he?—will mind.
She’d done the Honorable Henry Pembrooke quite the favor when she left him at the altar. Given some time to reflect, she’s certain he’ll see it that way as well. The man is deeply in love, and not with her.
And frankly, just because she’s his father’s choice—an earl’s daughter with a plentiful portion—she doesn’t think she’s ever been his. So, as far as she’s concerned, she’s given Pembrooke just the push he needs to go make his future his own.
Just as she’s done. Or she’s in the process of doing it, anyway.
She just needs to handle this immediate concern first. Not her former fiancé; her immediate concern is the ornery Scotsman still yelling at her from above deck.
She picks up her soiled, disheveled skirts and finds a coat in the wardrobe that she shrugs herself into. The warm wool is far too large for her—McGann is approximately the size of a mountain—which makes her, now that she thinks about it, the size of a molehill.
Not a flattering comparison.
She puts it out of her mind and straightens her shoulders in the oversized peacoat; she’ll just have to project larger than she is if she’s going to have the conversation with him that she needs to have.
Because Catherine West is staying on this ship whether Andrew McGann likes it or not. And all immediate evidence tells her he isn’t going to like it.
At least the woolen coat covers the loosened stays of her gown.
And it envelops her in a warmth she’s grateful for.
Along with a smell that she isn’t. His smell, that particular heady scent of pine and peat and rain and flowers that she wishes she didn’t immediately recognize with a jolt of electricity. But she does.
Not that it matters in the least. Andrew McGann has made his disinterest in her clear enough.
“CATHERIIIIINNNNNEEEEEEE!”
My goodness, does sound carry on a ship.
Or he’s just that loud. She supposes he probably has lungs larger than most men. He certainly has hands larger than most men. And forearms. And thighs.
Stop!
His thighs are none of her concern.
This is to be a business arrangement and nothing more.
She pins up her dirty, knotted, glittery hair into the best coiffure she can manage and examines her slippers. Originally made of a lovely, embroidered, white satin, they’re now ripped and muddied beyond repair.
Much like my reputation.
She leaves her slippers where they are, lying ruined in the cabin. Just as she left her reputation lying ruined in the country church in Surrey from which she’d fled her nuptials yesterday morning.
But if ruination is the going price of freedom and a life lived on her own terms, so be it. She’ll willingly, if somewhat impulsively, pay it.
She’s never again going to be beholden to anyone but herself for her security and her happiness. From this point forward, Lady Catherine West is a woman in charge of her destiny, even if her feet happen to be bare and really quite cold.
She makes her way out of McGann’s cabin—my cabin now, thank you very much—and toward the sound of yelling.
Below deck, where the captain’s cabin is located, it’s dark, and the passageways are confusing, but she finds the ladder to the upper deck she used last night.
Or she thinks she does. They all look confusingly alike.
But any of them, she reasons, will get her where she needs to go. She climbs up, wincing from the feel of her bare feet and ankles exposed to the frigid air, until she reaches a hatch door with a large wheel protruding from it that seals off the top of the ladder.
Hmmm.
That’s not a detail she recalls from last night. But it had been dark and raining, and she’d been rushed. Much like fleeing one’s wedding, stowing away requires a certain amount of hurry.
She reaches the top and places her hands on the large, wooden wheel.
She turns it slowly while it creaks in protest. After she feels it loosen, she pushes open the hatch door, her muscles flexing and straining with the effort.
She manages, though, and heaves herself up, wriggling first her arms through and then her head.
The cold wind from above immediately slaps her in the face and brings tears to her eyes.
For a moment, she can’t feel her nose. But then she inhales, taking all that cold, fresh air into her chest. It’s hers to breathe, and she revels in it.
The sun, shining brightly after last night’s storm, reflects off the blue of the water and the skies. It makes her squint, but she shields her eyes and endeavors to pull herself up the ladder a little further.
If only… she could… well…
She seems to be stuck.
I should have removed the crinoline, she thinks. The thing is as wide as the Thames.
Double drat.
She squirms, trying to get herself out, to no avail. She really is stuck. She frowns but then realizes her skirts are the least of her worries as a shadow falls across her face. She looks up to find Andrew McGann looming over her with a scowl unlike any she’s ever seen before.
His emerald-green eyes hold a kind of… confounded fury. If such an expression is even possible. She looks again; it does seem to be possible.
“Good morning,” she says cheerfully, hoping to get the conversation off to a good start.
Catherine isn’t clear on how he even knows she’s aboard, but she hopes they can sit and have a conversation like two regular people of business.
She is now a person of business. She’s made herself into one. He just doesn’t know it yet.
She tries again to pull herself up out of the hatch, but she can’t. She’s wedged halfway between the decks. Head, arms, and shoulders above. Hips, legs, and overly-wide skirts still below. It’s utterly preposterous, and yet, the more she moves, the more entangled she becomes.
Well, then.
Argh. Ridiculous.
“What in hell are you doing on my ship, Menace?” McGann’s scowl deepens further, as if he means to frighten her.
Catherine West will not be frightened. Not by him, nor by anyone.
“Could you please lend a hand? I seem to find myself in a pickle.”
Her request is all politeness with a brilliant smile. Is that because she’s ignoring his question? She is for the moment, yes.
Just as she’s ignoring his emerald-green eyes and golden brown skin and curly, slightly too-long hair, thank you very much.
“You’ll stay exactly where you are until you answer me.” McGann glances up at the clouds as they dance across the blue sky. “And you better hope the weather holds, because if it rains again, I don’t think you’ll survive the exposure.”
“Really, McGann. There’s no reason to threaten me.
As your investor, I’ve every right to be on board.
In fact, from what I’ve gathered on the nature of investment, and I have done my due diligence, it’s just as much my ship as it is yours.
Now, tick-tock like a clock, let’s move this along, shall we? ”