Chapter 17
Chapter
He watches her sleep, pacing by her bedside like a caged beast. Surges of righteous anger pulse through him, demanding retribution. It’s exactly the same feeling as when he took that vessel from the East India Company.
He became someone else in that moment, just as he does in this one. Someone who will do whatever it takes to right a wrong. Someone who will steal a ship and then burn it. Someone who will not hesitate to gut like a fish the person responsible for harming her while she’s aboard The Elphame.
Under my protection.
He does not for one minute believe she wandered down to the hold in the middle of an emergency and knocked herself out on a bit of oil on the ground.
There was the incident with the hatch, of course, but she’s not prone to hysterical overreactions or pratfalls.
She didn’t even flinch when a man held a knife to her throat in a darkened alleyway in Covent Garden.
No, whatever happened to her was someone else’s doing and made to look like an accident.
And when he finds the man who dared hurt her, he will not stop kicking until his boot is so far up that wretch’s arse he tastes Spanish leather for days.
He will not stop punching until the cur’s mother cannot even recognize his face. He will—
“You’re going to wear a hole in the floor,” he hears her say quietly from the bed behind him.
He whips around to find her pushing herself upright. “You’re awake,” he says, followed by, “I’ll make you some tea.” As if leaves in hot water could cure a blow to the head.
But it’s all he can do until he figures out who’s responsible for her injuries and those goddamned fires. The incidences are related; they have to be. Whoever perpetrated one is almost certainly responsible for the other.
“No more tea,” she says and shakes her head, before wincing in obvious pain.
“What do you need then, lass? Tell me and I’ll get it for you.”
She steadies herself on her arm and breathes in deeply. He can tell that even that small exertion hurts, but she pushes herself through it anyway until she is all the way upright.
“Let me help you,” he says, but she only shakes her head again.
Whatever she’s trying to do, she wants to do it alone. He frowns but lets her be, hovering nearby in case she needs him.
“Stop fretting,” she says as she begins to shift her feet off the bed and onto the floor. “You’re worse than a clucking mother hen.”
He only shrugs at that. “Just trying to make sure you don’t kill yourself, Menace.
Is it too much to ask that I not have a dead body to deal with?
Christ above, lass, we’ve already lost our navigation twice and had to put out four bloody fires aboard this ship.
Not to mention the need to address whatever it is that’s happened to your head. By Elphame, maybe we’re cursed.”
“Oh, stop. If we were cursed I’d be dead.” She grins at him. “And I am clearly not deceased. Although, what do you mean we’ve lost navigation twice?”
“Just as I say. We’ve been off course twice. But James, the helmsman—nay, the former helmsman—is now relieved of his duties.
“You didn’t mention that before.”
“I had my attention diverted,” he says. “Fires and stubborn Sassenach lasses and whatnot.”
“No need to concern yourself over me,” she says and pushes her weight off the bed, trying to stand. Her feet hit the deck unsteadily and far too quickly for her to catch her balance.
“Menace!” He lunges forward, catching her as she staggers.
When he has her safely in his arms, he holds her there, pressed against himself, his heart beating riotously inside his chest. She smells like smoke and sweat, but he doesn’t care. He would bury his face in her hair and inhale the whole of her if he thought for half a second she’d let him.
“Are you alright?” he asks.
“Yes,” she says, her voice stifled from where her face still presses into his shirt.
He takes a deep breath and pulls away from her. “Then what in hell were you trying to accomplish? I am standing right here, waiting to help you.”
“I don’t need your help. I’m quite fine.”
“You obviously are not! Just tell me what you need, lass, and I’ll get it for you.”
She sits back down on the bed, a heavy thump on the thin mattress. “I have to use the water closet,” she mumbles.
“I’ll help you.”
“No.”
“Then I’ll get you a chamber pot.”
“No.” She shakes her head and her voice is still raspy from the fire. He’s sure her throat must be sore.
“Menace—”
“No.”
He sighs. “I know how to empty a chamber pot, Menace.”
“Not mine you don’t. I’ll not have you anywhere near my chamber pot, thank you very much.” She tries to move again. “Just help me to the water closet.”
“I’m not in the mood to scrape you off the deck.”
“Help me and you won’t have to.”
He sighs deeply and sends up a little prayer to Elphame for strength. “Aye, alright. But then you’re to rest.”
He knows from his sister that women have as much pride as men. Maybe more. And if he refuses to help, she’ll just try to do it by herself again. And then he really will have to scrape her up off the deck.
He leans down and brushes an errant strand of hair off her face, tucking it back behind her ear. “Promise me,” he says, “that you will rest if I help you to the water closet.”
“I promise.” She holds her arms out to him and he sweeps her up as if it were the most natural thing in the world.
The cabin boy arrives sometime later with their supper and a small bucket of water for her to wash.
“I’m sorry I cannot spare another bath for you, lass,” McGann says as he sets the bucket on the deck. “But this will take the scent off you at least.”
She raises an eyebrow at him. “Are you saying I smell, Captain?”
He only smirks back at her. “Aye, you do. Like you rolled around all evening in the hearth instead of that bed.” He pauses. “Doesn’t make sense, though, that you’d smell so much like smoke. You weren’t in the galley or mess or berthing where the fires were. I found you in the hold.”
“Wasn’t I?” she asks and eases herself up to standing. She’s steadier on her feet now, but he still moves to her side quickly to help her walk.
“Not that I’m aware. But damnation only knows what path you took from the cabin to the hold. Do you not remember anything more?”
“Only a little. I was here, reading a book.” She glances at the small table beside the bed but the Robert Burns book she was reading is gone.
“A volume of Burns’s poetry. But I don’t see it there now.
And then I smelled smoke.” She furrows her brow, trying to recall anything substantial from the hazy pieces of her memory.
“You were calling for me, so I opened the door.”
“You did not hear the shouts?”
“No.” She shakes her head. “Not that I remember. Just you yelling, ‘Catherine!’ until I opened the door — but you weren’t there.” She raises her hand gently to the back of her head. “And then something hit me.”
She hears him inhale a sharp, harsh breath. “You heard Catherine?” he asks. “Not Menace or lass? Are you sure?”
“Yes,” she says but then shrugs. “I believe so, anyway. I wish I could remember more clearly but I don’t. I’m sorry.”
“It’s not important now. Come and eat your dinner.”
He leads her to the table, one arm wrapped around her, her hand resting on his bicep. She squelches the urge to run her fingertips over its curved summit, carved out like a mountain range. A rugged Scottish peak, not the little English molehill of her own.
“McGann,” she says as she sits, but he only shakes his head at her, making his dark curls flop onto his forehead.
“That’s Andrew to you.”
She grins at him while he pours her wine and sets her food on her plate.
“Andrew,” she says, “why would someone want to hurt me? I don’t think I slipped on oil and hit my head.”
“No, lass, I don’t think you did either. It wasn’t me you heard, calling out for you.”
“You didn’t come for me?” she asks and tries to hide the hurt she knows is on her face and in her voice.
“Aye, I did. But when I called out for you, I called you Menace. And lass too, I believe. But not Catherine.” He pauses and then reaches for her hand. “I don’t know who would do that to you, but I swear to you I will find out.”
“It could have been anyone,” she says. “You called me Catherine when you first saw the glitter and knew I was aboard. Anyone could have heard you.” She pauses. “Everyone likely did hear you.”
“Aye. I’d forgotten about that.”
“Do you think…” She keeps her voice carefully neutral. “Do you think it was the same person that set the fires?”
“Aye. I do.”
“I do too. And I wonder… that is, I suspect, that whoever did this wanted me out of this room and you occupied, because they were looking for something.” She pauses and fishes around in her trouser pocket, producing the key. “Perhaps this?”
She’d never put the key back in the book. It had been tucked into her trouser pocket ever since she’d found it.
She’d forgotten all about it until something sharp jabbed into her side in the water closet.
She looks up to see the color drain from his face.
“Andrew?”