The ship swayed violently, and tightening her fingers reflexively around the brush she clutched in a death grip, she closed her eyes a moment and willed her stomach to settle.
“‘Quarters,’ not ‘chambers,’” she whispered aloud, focusing on that other difference he’d pointed out, in her edification of life aboard a boat.
A ship.
Think of the differences and the new lessons, to keep from thinking about the fact that she was stuck at sea with a ship full of strangers and a stomach that wouldn’t quit.
If she survived this, it would be a tale her children and children’s children would one day tell, a legend that lived on in the McQuoid family for years to come. How Cassia had set out on her own to see the world, as only men were permitted, and not only made her way but also lived amongst the toughest, nastiest sailors and their menacing captain.
Unbidden thoughts of the captain traipsed in. His skin golden from the sun. His noble jaw was too square and his aquiline nose too straight, and his cheeks were entirely too chiseled for him to ever be considered classically handsome.
But with his also-too-long golden hair tugged back into a queue, he may as well have been a Norse god, a Viking warrior of old, in full command of his ship and the lesser men—and lone woman—who answered to him.
Yes, if she survived his wrath, it would be a wonder.
What would such a man say, were he to discover he’d had his precious ship boarded by . . . a woman?
Cassia’s stomach roiled, and this time the vicious churning had absolutely nothing to do with the boat—well, a little bit, it did—and most everything to do with the thought of just what would happen were she to be found out.
Dead . . . She’d be dead. Or worse . . .
And suddenly, all those gothic tales she’d read—books of ravished ladies and dashing pirates—proved a whole lot less romantic and more terror-inducing for how those suddenly authentic-looking scripts played out in real life.
With hands that trembled, Cassia cleaned the black bristles of her narrow brush. She dipped them in a glass of water she’d helped herself to from the kitchens, and the red paint turned the clear liquid crimson, like small drops of blood expanding and filling the glass. And also conjuring new, unwanted imaginings—of being found out and left at the mercy of a ruthless lot.
“Do not think of that . . . Do not think of it,” she whispered into the quiet of Nathaniel’s rooms, opting to use his Christian name to make him more human. More real. “Think of what you will see, and what stories you’ll have to tell . . .” A story of grit and strength and—
A low whistle cut through the talk she gave herself, and she spun to face the person, whose arrival she’d failed to note.
“What in ’ell . . . ,” the young lad whispered to himself.
Timothy. Painfully thin and lanky, he’d the look of a colt still not comfortable on his own legs. He’d also proven the least mean toward her of all the deckhands. Which was not, however, saying much.
“Do you like it?” she asked, reassessing the art she’d spent the better part of the day creating, taking it in with a critical eye. He’d said no fruit or country scenes . . . which, given they were on a ship, made complete sense. “I do believe I’ve quite admirably captured the waters,” she remarked, motioning with the tip of the brush to those white-capped waves of deep sapphires and aquas. It’d been a remarkable feat, creating those many shades of blues from the paint afforded her. At the stunned silence of the fellow cabin boy beside her, she angled her head to the left and then to the right, eyeing her work all the more critically. “It is not my finest sky. I fear I may have leaned too much into the pinks for the sunset. I might have been better served mixing the red and blue to create a soft purple, and then from that, added my red.” Cassia chewed at the thin end of her wooden paintbrush. “Are you thinking it is a bit . . . lazy . . . to have gone to pinks? Because I can see that,” she allowed.
At the protracted silence, she looked over and found the boy’s horror-filled sea-green gaze locked not on the painting, but rather on her. “Gor, yer stupid as shite.”
She frowned. “I’d hardly say I’m stupid,” she said defensively. “I know how to make orange. It’s just that I opted not to.”
“What in Satan’s fiery hell is this?”
That thunderous shout brought Cassia and Timothy jumping.
“You painted my walls!”
That horror-filled, fury-laced shout reverberated off entirely too-low ceilings, and swallowing rhythmically, Cassia looked to the source of that rage.
Captain Nathaniel.
Her stomach sank. For in this instant, with rage rolling off him with the same ease of the waves undulating in the waters, the menacing figure before her was no mere “Nathaniel” and absolutely and only “Captain.”
“Is something wrong with both your head and your ears?” he asked, in a low, gravelly tone that proved somehow more sinister than his previous shout.
She automatically took a step closer to Timothy.
“Timothy.” The captain managed to bite out the three syllables into a clear order.
Timothy, who proved remarkably without mercy that day, bowed and quickly quit Cassia’s side. He headed for the door and scurried around the captain.
The captain, who made no attempt to move out of the boy’s way.
“You know, it really is quite rude of you to make him squeeze around you,” Cassia said archly, cleaning some of the excess paint from her brush. “It would have been far more polite to step aside.”
Effectively silenced, the captain gawked.
Having grown up amidst a large brood of siblings, Cassia had long ago learned the art of conflict. More specifically, the art of dealing with it. As such, at the moment, she methodically cleaned her brush. “Furthermore, shouting is also quite rude and, I’ll add, in this instance, quite unnecessary. My work is hardly complete. I’m not so arrogant as to be above critique or criticism and certainly understand the reason for your upset.”
“You understand the reason for my upset,” he repeated, his tone peculiarly flat.
He really did have a habit of echoing her words.
Even so, Cassia nodded.
“You understand the reason for my upset,” he said again, and this time she offered a more hesitant nod. “You—”
“I believe we’ve confirmed I certainly understand the reason for your upset. Yes.” Cassia motioned with the now thoroughly cleaned bristles of her brush at the crux of his discontent. “This, right here. The pink.” She frowned. “I really should have figured, with the way my own brothers feel about the color, that you’d react the way you did.” Though in fairness to Arran and Dallin, they’d never been so over the top in their disdain as the captain and Timothy had.
Shipmen were a peculiar lot.
“I can lighten the pink, you know. As you see, I’ve more reds here.” She motioned to that color in question, bringing his focus to the more pleasing portion of the sky she’d created upon the canvas he’d charged her with covering. “I . . .” Cassia’s words trailed off, her eyes locking on the vein pulsing at the corner of his right eye. A bulging, throbbing vein that bespoke a man with a thin control of his rage.