Chapter 10
Chapter
McGann’s back aches from the hard boards on the deck where he slept. He could have hung a hammock anywhere last night, but he chose the main deck because he wanted to look at the stars and feel the bracing cold.
He wanted to remember why he loved the water and the outdoors. And why he chose this life for himself. In equal measure, he wanted to forget Lady Catherine West, asleep in his cabin below. In his bed.
This morning, the main deck is cold and uncomfortable and he wakes early. Even before the morning watch begins. And by the time the sun has fully risen, he’s already inspected the ratlines; greeted the cabin boy, cook, and first watch; and boiled enough steaming hot water for a bath for Catherine.
It’s only a hip bath—they cannot afford the loss of a full tub’s worth of fresh water—but it’s a bath nonetheless. He drags it into her room himself and then brushes his fingers lightly over her sleeping shoulder to wake her before letting himself out.
And now he must wait, like a small boy in leading strings, for her to awaken fully and find his present. To grin at him with the same delight she showed yesterday when he released her from the hatch and she felt the fresh air of the sea on her face for the first time.
He is ridiculous.
He shakes his head. This has to end. Somewhere in his body remains the last shreds of self-preservation, and he will find them. Damn it. And the best way to do that, he knows, is to throw himself into the business of captaining this ship.
Lucky for him, there is no shortage of duties for him to attend to.
He turns his attention to the navigation charts.
He had the sense last night, as he lay staring at the stars, that their direction was off.
Not by much, but as he lay in the cold and the dark and tried to think of anything but Lady Catherine West a deck below in his bed, he noticed something.
He opens his charts to investigate.
“Captain,” the first mate greets him.
“Rogers,” McGann replies, not lifting his head from where he has bent it over the maps. He is correct; their navigation is off.
“Where is the helmsman?”
“I believe James is at breakfast, sir. Have we drifted?”
McGann doesn’t answer. He doesn’t think it’s drift. But if it isn’t, it’s negligence or worse, and the thought unsettles him. Has time ashore dulled his bearings at sea? It’s unlike him to be paranoid or overly suspicious of his crew, but…
“Captain?” Rogers continues, “is something amiss?”
It’s a spur of the moment decision that makes him mutter, “Nay, all’s well.”
He knows he should trust his first mate with everything: his life, the life of his crew, Catherine. But he doesn’t know Rogers as well as he might. The man came highly credentialed, but he hasn’t ever sailed with him before, which is the only credentialing McGann cares about.
“We’re in good shape this morning,” Rogers reports. “Lines, rigging, deck, and hold are all in order. Nine days to port.”
McGann nods. “Good.” But Rogers makes no move to leave him. “Is there something else?”
“The lady, Captain.”
“What about her?”
“The men will want to know why she’s aboard. What should I tell them?”
“You’ll tell them naught all. It’s not their business why she’s here.”
“It may be better,” Rogers says carefully, “to tell them something so they aren’t left to speculate.”
McGann turns to him then. “What would they be speculating about?” He already knows what Rogers is implying, and the idea makes him want to pick the man up and toss him overboard.
“That she’s your—ahem…” Rogers pauses and McGann glowers at him. “Wife,” Rogers finishes meekly.
They both know he’d been about to say mistress. Or worse, doxie.
But the look on McGann’s face must have made Rogers reconsider that statement, because he says, “It would be better for everyone if you said she was your wife.”
“Don’t be ridiculous. A sea captain does not bring his wife aboard his ship.”
“Some do. American whaling captains take their wives with them often enough.”
McGann raises his eyebrow. “Do they?”
“Yes, sir. Although, whalers are well-known gluttons for punishment.”
“They must be.” McGann sighs. “But you might be right about our guest. I’ll speak to her. Better they think she’s my wife than some other fool notion.”
“Indeed, Captain. And if I may ask, who is she really?”
He feels that flare of… something… again. “She’s my wife. Did you not just say so yourself?”
Catherine sees the hip bath, a bit of steam rising from the still-warm water, as soon as she wakes. She vaguely remembers McGann bringing it in and stroking her shoulder. At the time, she thought it was a dream, but now she sees it isn’t.
He’s brought her a bath. A bath! The man is a godsend. She gives a little squeal and launches herself out of bed. She should probably be annoyed that he crept into her room while she was sleeping, but she isn’t. A bath is heaven.
She shrugs out of the linen shirt she slept in and undoes her golden, glittery hair from its braid. She is certain she will never glitter her hair again. Empress Eugénie can keep all her bright ideas about fashion to herself next time. The glitter clings to everything and makes her scalp itch.
She faces the tub and dips one toe in. Still warm. And then the other. Glorious. She sinks down, immersing as much of herself as possible into the water. And then she takes her time, wiping away the sweat and dirt and grime of travel from her body with the felt cloth that McGann left for her.
He’s left a small sliver of soap, too, which she saves for her hair. It’s greasy and knotted and, heaven help her, so itchy, from the dirt and glitter and rain. She wets down her scalp and then uses the soap to scrub every bit, from her roots to her tips.
Once rinsed clean, Catherine rises and dresses herself, feeling better than she has in, well, certainly better than she has since her first season. Back when her father was alive and she danced through balls and chatted through salons, a diamond of the first water with the world at her feet.
But even then, when proposals were thick on the ground and she never dreamed she might one day worry about money or safety or freedom, even then, she turned every one of those proposals down.
She told her mother she wasn’t ready. She told her father, on the rare occasions he deigned to remember she existed, that she was waiting for the kind of wealthy, powerful match that a diamond of the first water deserves. And later, after he died, she told Violet she was having too much fun.
But the reality is that even then, she harbored a notion that the world of the ton was not enough. Or that she was more.
And that the world she’d lived in her entire life didn’t quite fit her the way it should. That it was limiting, although she couldn’t quite articulate how. Or she couldn’t until her engagement, which taught her more about the limitations of the ton than she ever cared to know.
But now, here, aboard this ship, she has something akin to freedom, and she isn’t going to waste it.
Nine more days to sort her future. Nine more days to—her stomach rumbles, interrupting her thoughts.
She ought to find breakfast before she goes about designing her future. She strides to the door in her still bare feet and grasps the handle, only to find—Oh.
No.
Not possible. She jiggles the door handle.
But it’s definitely, beyond a doubt, locked.
No! Drat that dratted man!
He’s locked her in. How could he?
Never let a man lock you in anywhere, lass.
That’s what he said to her six months ago when he taught her how to fight. She remembers his words exactly. And his mellifluous accent that washes over her senses, even in recollection.
Drat him twice over.
She yanks on the handle once more, just to make sure, calmly at first and then harder and harder until she knows for a certainty it’s not going to open.
“Hello!” she calls out then. “I seem to be stuck.”
“Hello, milady,” comes the tremulous voice of the cabin boy from the other side of the door.
“Could you please open the door?” Catherine asks. “It’s jammed.” She tugs on the handle a few more times for effect.
“‘Fraid I can’t do that. Cap’n’s orders. But I’d be happy to get you what you need. Also Cap’n’s order.”
“What I need,” she says as sweetly as she can muster, “is to be let out of this room. If you could ask that of the captain, please.”
She can hear his footfalls as he scurries away, and then sometime later, she hears the sound of him returning.
“Cap’n says you’re to stay in and there’s books on the shelf if’n you need to occupy yourself.”
“I think,” she says in her most winning voice, “that we can agree the captain may be a bit dim-witted about ladies, can we not? Not like you, young sir. You seem a very capable young man indeed.”
She pauses to let the compliment sink in. She would absolutely flutter her eyelashes, too, if only he could see her. “Are you sure you won’t let me out? I’d be very grateful.”
“Aye, the lad’s sure,” McGann hollers at her with a smugness that makes her blood boil.
After last night’s dinner and the bath, she’d thought, well, it didn’t matter what she thought. She should have known that Andrew McGann would never come to any sort of accord with her. He dislikes her too much.
“Though you might consider a thank you,” he adds. “Fresh water to bathe is a luxury even I don’t warrant.”
“I’ll thank you as soon as you let me out.”
“You’ll stay where I put you, lass. Until I tell you otherwise.”
“How about breakfast then?” Her stomach rumbles on cue.
“Breakfast was hours ago, when the rest of the crew was eating it.”
“What then,” she asks, not bothering to keep the exasperation out of her voice, “do you expect me to do with my time?”
She really should have known better than to be lulled into a sense of camaraderie with him.
He’s never going to treat her with anything like respect, no matter what she says or does.
And, she thinks with some embarrassment, she must have smelled badly enough he felt he had to give her a bath for his own sake.
Heavens.
“I suggest you read, lass. Supper will be around before you know it.” And then she hears the heavy cadence of his footsteps taking him away.
She turns from the closed door and frowns. He’s locked her in. While she’s aboard her first ever sailing ship. Of all the—argh!
She likes to read; usually she’ll read everything she can get her hands on, even all those boring agricultural and legal texts from Scotland when she’d been ill there.
But that isn’t the point. She doesn’t want to read now.
Not when she’s in the midst of her first ever adventure.
Not when she’s an investor in the company that owns this ship.
She has every right to be on board and not locked in a room.
She frowns and sinks down on the bed. She doesn’t want to do what he’d told her to do. But she doesn’t want to just stare at walls for the rest of the day either.
Fine.
She rises and peruses the bookshelves. She can read. She can do anything so long as it means she goes her own way when her feet touch ground in Boston.
She’ll be okay. She’ll be more than okay. She has her entire life, her entire life, ahead of her. Freedom is only nine days away.
She pulls out and rejects tome after tome from the bookshelves: navigation charts, books on shipbuilding and steam technology, the art of naval warfare.
Boring.
Catherine crouches down to find even more boring books on the bottom shelves. And then she drags the desk chair over to search the top shelves.
Where would she put her favorites? At eye level, of course. And McGann’s eye level is much higher than hers.
She steps onto the chair and begins to peruse the upper shelves of the bookcases, and sure enough, here she finds treasure. Two volumes of Robert Burns poetry and multiple Walter Scott novels.
Excellent.
And a whole row of books on Jamaica. She pulls one out. Long’s History of Jamaica. She slips it back onto the shelves and grabs Coke’s A History of the West Indies. There’s also Scotland and the Caribbean and one without a title at all.
Odd.
She pulls that one down and opens it, watching in confusion as something shiny falls out of its hollowed interior and clanks onto the deck.
“Menace,” McGann growls from the open doorway where he stands with a tray of tea and toast. “What in hell are you doing?”
She startles and looks up. She hadn’t heard him come in, and she’s still standing atop his desk chair.
“You did tell me to read,” she says.
“Aye, but I did not tell you to snoop.”