Chapter 5
Chapter
McGann storms his way below deck via the ladder made for that very purpose, not the cabin boy’s hatch, for fuck’s sake. He knows what happens next; that he’s going to have to lay his hands on her to get her out of the ridiculous predicament she’s gotten herself into.
He doesn’t want to. He’s already survived the temptation of her once, barely, and it’s not clear to him he’ll be able to do it again.
What in hell is she thinking?
She’d been at the bloody church! Ready to be married.
I saw her there with my own eyes!
And instead, she’s somehow here, stuck in a hatch with her nose freezing above deck and her arse in the air below it.
The whole thing is absurd. And absurdity has absolutely no place in his life or on his ship.
Not that there seems to be anything he can do about it, not when Lady Catherine West is present, anyhow.
She brings the absurdity along with her, like a bee brings its pollen or a tide its waves.
“Can you hear me, lass?” he calls up to her after he’s located said arse below deck.
“Yes.”
“Good. Now hold still. I’m going to disentangle you. You’ve got yourself both wedged in and somehow—” his hands reach under his peacoat and fuss with the outer layers of her dress, “snagged. It doesn’t even seem possible to have done this. You could not do it again, I wager, if you tried.”
“McGann,” she says, her voice muffled from above, “it would be ideal if you could release me with as little commentary as possible.”
“Aye.”
It’ll definitely be best to get this over with as soon as he can. While touching her body as little as he can manage. Surely he can handle that. He’s a man who has gone head to head with the East India Company and come out the victor. A snagged wedding dress cannot be his undoing.
Still, he feels his heart beat against the wall of his chest as he climbs the ladder rung below her. He ignores it. All he has to do is find where her gown has caught the edge of the hatch door and release her.
There’s no reason for any kind of heartbeat foolishness. None.
He reaches for her waist and feels her shiver beneath his touch. From the cold, certainly. Although his imagination helpfully provides other reasons she might shiver.
Stop it, eejit, he commands himself.
And then to her, “Are you cold, lass? I’ll hurry.”
“No,” she says. And then, more quickly, “Yes. Yes, please hurry.”
He draws in his breath, demanding his heartbeat behave itself, and reaches again for the hem of his coat. It’s caught half in the hatch and half out, as she is, and he thinks the snag is somewhere underneath it.
“See if you can pull the coat up at least. Then I can see where the issue is.”
She does, and he closes his ears against the sound of wool ripping as she drags his peacoat up and out of the hatch, rending a giant hole in the side of it in the process.
“Is that better?” she calls down to him, and he glowers at her, not that any part of her can see it but her derriere.
He puts his hands on that same derriere and swivels her a bit, looking for the cause of her current predicament.
Without the peacoat in the way, she has a little bit more room, but she still seems to be stuck.
He swivels her hips again, grateful for the extra-wide crinoline that acts as a barrier between his hands and her skin.
He needs every barrier, buffer, and obstacle between them he can get.
He steps away and stares at her, frowning again.
The bloody crinoline’s the issue.
He’s nearly certain of it.
He puts his hands back on her to test this theory, but she keeps shifting beneath his fingertips. Wiggling.
Damn it.
Of course the lass is going to make this as hard as possible. He wraps one big palm around the curve of her waist to hold her still. And then, with the other, he slightly shifts her body back and forth, looking for any ensnarement. Hoping to find one. Anything that isn’t the crinoline.
She shakes, trembling from his touch. As if he’s holding her for some other purpose entirely than the one at hand.
Get a hold of yourself, man.
All he has to do is unstick her, and then tuck her away somewhere aboard the ship, out of sight and out of mind.
He can ignore the ache beginning to grow in the pit of his belly. And the way his body feels like a live wire, unpredictable and dangerous. And the cockstand beginning to make itself known beneath his trousers. Of course he can.
He removes his hands from her and breathes in deeply.
Please, Elphame, he begs, don’t let it be the crinoline. Even though he knows damn well it’s the crinoline.
“Captain?” Catherine calls from above the decks as McGann jerks his hand away from her body. A chill seeps in where the warmth of him had just been.
She knows he’s stepped away from her. He had been standing on the rungs of the ladder just below her, his body nearly pressed up against her, his hands encasing her waist. And now he isn’t. He’s gone still, his movements as halted as one of the Roman marbles she’s seen at the London Museum.
Which is just as well, Catherine supposes. He’d never touch her on purpose, not like that. He made that point abundantly clear six months ago, and she has no right to expect him to change his mind now just because she forced herself into his company.
“Are you alright?” she asks.
“Fine,” he says, but she can hear the strain in his voice. He’s upset with her, and not without cause. She ripped his coat. And stole aboard his ship. And requisitioned his cabin.
“I’m sorry for this predicament,” she calls down to him. “And I do appreciate your help. Truly.”
“Hell’s teeth,” she hears him mutter in response, and then she feels the pressure of his hands again as he pulls at the fabric encasing her.
“Try to move,” he directs, but every movement seems to make her situation worse.
“Try again,” he orders, and she obeys, becoming only more snagged and more stuck.
Then, finally, he utters a terse “hold still.” She frowns, not that he can see her, but does as he’s asked her to.
“Menace,” he says after a long moment, his voice oddly flat. “I’m going to take off your skirts.”
“I beg your pardon? I’m certain I did not hear you correctly.”
“I said,” and here he makes an exasperated, strangled sort of sound, “I’ve to take off your underskirts.
Not all of them. Just the big ones. Goddamned crinoline and petticoats and whatnot.
Otherwise, I cannot get you out. And as much as it would please me to leave you here, I cannot do that either. ”
“You certainly may not remove my underskirts, Mr. McGann.”
“If you’ve another idea, lass, I’m all ears.”
She purses her lips, thinking. He’s correct; she knows he is. They’ve been here for a quarter of an hour already, the sun doing heaven knows what to her complexion, not to mention the cold wind chapping her skin, and her bottom waving around in the air for any wandering sailor to see.
Oh, for heaven’s sake.
“Do it quickly.”
“Aye.”
And then his large fingers make their way under her skirts, searching for the ties to the crinoline. She holds her breath, her body humming at the light touch of his fingers against the length of her thigh. Her hip.
He hasn’t lifted her gown to better see his objective, which she supposes is the gentlemanly way to go about it. But it means that without sight to guide him, he has only touch. Touch that, after only a moment or two, has turned her into a quivering bowl of jelly.
His hands pat their way around her middle, searching for the ties.
One large palm encircles the span of her waist, keeping her still, while the other strokes the curve of her side.
Seeking. Exploring. She feels every brush of his fingertips and every caress of his palm.
Every bit of pressure from every touch, and she’s not certain she can survive the tactile onslaught.
She squirms beneath his hands.
“Stay still,” he growls, but she can’t.
Her senses are far too heightened for stillness. She’s not made of marble, not like him, and she can’t help but react. She can feel him.
And it’s too much, this strange, fiery sensation gathering in her core. One that only grows stronger as his hands work at the ties on her waist and hips. She shimmies and shivers, feeling some delicious blend of excitement and embarrassment and liberation and warmth.
She’s so, so warm, despite the bitter cold wind at her face.
Is it possible to feel everything all at once?
And then whack!
“What in heaven’s name?”
The man spanked her. Not hard. But hard enough to be felt.
“I told ye to stay still.”
Her rear end burns, which only adds to her list of sensations.
More, she thinks as his hands work away at the ties. More.
And then, Is he taking longer than necessary?
She knows the underneath of a woman’s skirts, especially a woman’s wedding gown, has a confounding number of knots to undo, but she’s not naive enough to believe he’s never had cause to undo them before.
If Janet, her lady’s maid, can undo her crinoline in less time than it takes to make tea, Andrew McGann can too.
She gives another shimmy, just to check.
Whack.
His hand hits her bottom again and she makes a little gasping noise, which he returns with a strangled groan.
Well, then. Perhaps there’s more to him than marble after all.
But no. As soon as her mind articulates the thought, his hands freeze along her waist, and the same thing happens that always happens.
Drat it all.
Andrew McGann pulls away from her. And then his rough fingers speed into action so quickly that in only a moment more, her crinoline is undone and he’s removing it from her body. She steps one foot off the ladder and then the other so that he can pull it away with a whoosh, and she’s free.
“There,” he says stiffly, and she can move again.
She climbs the ladder and emerges on deck, fully into the sun.
Ah…at last.
It feels so good, breathing in the fresh air despite the cold.
She’s done it. She’s made it here. And she will have a proper discussion with McGann eventually about how she ended up on this boat.
And why she caught him lurking about the church in Surrey when he was meant to be seventy miles away in Kent, launching The Elphame.
But that can all come later. For now, she turns her face to the sun and feels the wind at her back.
London is gone and with it goes Lady Catherine West, daughter and cousin of earls, fiancé of a peer.
Whoever she will be now is a woman of her own making, and she feels nearly delirious with the thought.