Desperate, Nathaniel looked to his number two.
Hayes shot his palms up and shook his head.
“Your job is to do what I tell you,” Nathaniel muttered.
Hayes grinned. “Not this. This one is all you, Captain.”
Nathaniel flashed a vulgar gesture, and the lad slapped a hand over his mouth, stifling a gasp. “Did you just t-turn a c-crude finger on me?”
Did he—?
The lad crooked his middle finger up and waggled it. “Because I’ll have you know my brothers taught me what that means and—”
“Your brothers should have also done you a favor and taught you not to go weeping like a woman at the slightest provocation,” he added under his breath.
The deckhand’s tears faded, and an annoyed frown turned his mouth down. Angling his hands on his hips, the boy came forward. “Without provocation? Without provo—”
“That’s what I said. Isn’t it, Hayes?” He directed that at his quartermaster, not even looking at the other man.
Folding his arms at his chest, Hayes nodded. “It’s what he said.”
“Provocation?” Cassius finished, ignoring the both of them. “I’ll have you know I’ve—”
“Boarded the wrong boat?” Hayes ventured, ignoring the glare Nathaniel tossed his way.
The boy jabbed a finger in the quartermaster’s direction. “Precisely. Mr. Hayes understands.”
“Quartermaster Hayes,” Nathaniel corrected. “He is the quartermaster.”
That pronouncement managed the seemingly impossible—it silenced the chatterbox.
For a moment.
“Quartermaster Hayes?” Cassius McQuoid echoed. “That is what you call when you need him?”
Nathaniel opened his mouth to confirm he’d just said as much but couldn’t manage to sneak in even a breath before the boy continued.
“I expect there is some better term or title to call out.”
“There isn’t,” he said tightly.
“But if there are some sailory problems that arise . . . ,” the lad went on.
“Sailory problems?” Nathaniel mouthed.
At his side, he caught the twitch of Hayes’s lips.
“Quartermaster Hayes, get here now.” The lad cupped his hands around his mouth and deepened his voice, and added—Nathaniel narrowed his eyes—“The jib is plunging.” The lad did a surprisingly accurate impression of . . . Nathaniel.
Hayes let out a sharp bark of amusement that not even Nathaniel’s glare could manage to quell this time.
“See?” Cassius McQuoid said, gesturing to Nathaniel’s entirely-too-amused quartermaster. “He gets it.”
Nathaniel couldn’t even make his mouth move to get words out, which was fine, as the deckhand had plenty for both of them.
“I think you should give him a new title. In fact, until we return to England, I can help y—”
“No.”
“You,” the boy finished over his curt interruption, “create an entirely new system of how to refer to your crew to help make communication easier with them.”
Nathaniel stood frozen, his mind spinning, and if he’d been the sort given to levity, he’d have laughed his damned head off at the thought of this jabberpot doling out lessons on “making communication easier.”
Alas, he’d a problem on his hands, and a mighty one at that. Had his parents sent this problem into Nathaniel’s lap, there couldn’t have been a more effective tool to make him at least consider returning to London.
It was a thought.
But not a serious one.
There was no way he was ending his mission. He’d French plans to intercept and funds to shore up to last his men long enough for him to fulfill the duke’s demands of him. Either way, he’d not cut a voyage short before, and he’d never not succeeded, and he’d no intention of failing now. Not because of a pale English lad who could really benefit from some time in the sun and some hair on his chest.
There was no way Nathaniel was turning his ship about.
And yet . . .
“Captain?”
“I’m thinking,” he muttered to Hayes.
Nathaniel also couldn’t have the lad underfoot. If he sent this boy to freely mingle with the crew again, they’d eventually eat him alive faster than a swarm of sharks converging on a bucket of fresh chum just tossed out to sea. As it was, McQuoid had already made a pain of himself. There wasn’t a single crew member who had the inclination or patience to deal with an untried son of some nobleman—even less so the motley crew he’d been forced to hastily assemble. With the exception of him and Hayes, the rest of the men on board this ship were a rough sort from the streets and prisons of London. There was also the fact that not a single member of Nathaniel’s crew deserved the punishment of having Cassius McQuoid about.
“I’m assigning you to my cabin,” he finally said. Even as he made the offer, he saw the implicit peril in doing so. There were problems, either way. However, it was better to not have his men distracted, and this was the surest way. That lofty position would also signal that the boy had Nathaniel’s protection.
Relief lit Cassius’s eyes. “I am ever so grateful. I trust your chambers are surprisingly lovely. More elegant than the other space I’ve been occupying.”
“Quarters,” he said tightly. “They are not ‘chambers.’ They are not ‘rooms.’ They are quarters.”
“Quarters, then,” Cassius corrected himself. “Well, I thank you for your benevolence, Captain. It is most generous of you.”
Thanked him for his generosity . . . ?
And then it hit him.
Apparently, the same time it did Hayes.
His quartermaster strangled on a laugh, and Nathaniel glowered at the man who’d been one of his closest friends in the world, glad one of them could find amusement in this mess. When the other man had managed to get his mirth under control, Nathaniel looked at the pampered boy/man before him.
“To clean, McQuoid,” Nathaniel snapped. “You’re to tidy my quarters.”
The lad’s soft jaw went slack. “Like a . . . servant?” he ventured as if he’d been handed a riddle to solve.
Hayes lost it. Again.
Ignoring the quartermaster’s explosion of hilarity, Cassius bristled. “I most certainly will not.”
That managed to kill Hayes’s humor.
Nathaniel narrowed his eyes on the insolent boy across from him.
“Hayes.” With palpable relief, Hayes took that one word—his name—for the pardon it was. Dropping a bow, he rushed off.
The moment Nathaniel and his accidental deckhand were alone, he peered at the lad before him. Cassius McQuoid had called him out in front of his crew. It had been the first—and only—time in the whole of his career running ships. In his haughty tones and lack of deference, Cassius had proven precisely what he and Hayes had taken him for: a high-in-the-step nobleman’s son, or by-blow, with an inflated sense of his self-worth. And there was nothing more essential than disabusing those types of the illusion that they held any power—both lads and men.
The lad shifted under Nathaniel’s scrutiny but didn’t so much as lower his insolent gaze. Nay, rather, the boy tipped his chin up a fraction and glared back.