She lowered her brush. “You’re not happy.”
Ever so slowly, he shook his head; that queue of blond strands flopped back and forth with the side-to-side movement.
No words.
He spoke not a single one.
Cassia bit the inside of her cheek.
Alas, survival was becoming increasingly unlikely at this point.
Oh, dear. This was very bad, indeed.
Nathaniel wasn’t one to lose his temper.
He’d been raised and reared in a household where any and all shows of emotion were not only discouraged but also instructed out of the boys who lived there by stern tutors who’d answered to an even sterner duke.
Only his mother had been permitted displays of emotion, and that had been only because she was of the fairer sex and Nathaniel’s father had clear expectations of how women carried themselves as opposed to men.
There was even less a place for emotion aboard a ship. At sea, sailing a privateer ship during wartime and potentially facing enemy vessels at any moment, a man had to be in full and complete control—of his temper, his wits, and every other last part of himself.
But God help him, Nathaniel was being tested.
In this instant, with the chatterbox rambling on and on in that voice that hadn’t fully changed, Nathaniel fought to retain every last lesson he’d learned, and it was all he could do to keep from shouting him down for a second time.
For Nathaniel saw red.
Nor was it just the thick blanket of dark red that had fallen over his eyes.
It was . . . red.
His walls.
His once plain-as-they-ought-to-be walls bore streaks of red and blue and—
A low growl started in his chest and worked its way up his throat and stuck there.
Pink. The lad had painted his room . . . pink.
“You really don’t like it?” The tentatively spoken question emerged hesitantly from the boy, who’d fast made a menace of himself. “I . . . don’t think it’s as bad as all that.”
“Oh, it is not bad,” Nathaniel whispered, and the lad’s face brightened. “It is a good deal fucking worse.”
He may as well have kicked the boy’s pup for the look he gave Nathaniel. Perhaps if he had been someone else, Nathaniel would have cared more. Or at all.
“You are done in here.” Nathaniel didn’t even bother to hide his grimness.
“I . . . but I’m not,” Cassius said, gesturing with the tip of his brush and pointing at that damned atrocity upon his wall. “Mayhap once I finish, you’ll be less harsh in your opinion. Mayhap, if you let me finish my work, you’ll even like it?”
“Like it?” he echoed dumbly. “Like it . . . ?” And then it hit Nathaniel with all the force of a cannonball to the chest. The lad actually thought it was the scene he took affront with, and not the fact that he’d painted a scene, at all. “I asked you to paint my walls,” he said, taking a step forward.
The young man immediately backed up. “A-and I did.”
Just like that, that thin, tightly stretched nerve snapped like a fiddle string that’d been plucked too taut. “White,” he bellowed, sending the lad jumping for a second time. “I asked you to paint my walls white.”
Cassius was already shaking his head. “No, you didn’t. You most certainly did not.”
“Are you challenging me?” he barked.
“No.”
Good, the boy wasn’t completely dicked in the nob.
“I . . .” The lad paused. “Yes, I am.”
Apparently, he was completely dicked, after all.
“But it is more that I am pointing out your directives. You said . . .” Then the boy dropped his voice, deepening it in a hideously bad but clear impersonation of Nathaniel’s own voice. “You can begin by cleaning my quarters and then applying fresh paint to my walls. I’m not looking for bowls of fruit, baskets of flowers. Country scenes. This is a sea vessel. It’s a ship. A ship. It’s not the pleasure boat you thought you were getting yourself on.”
So there wasn’t something so wrong with the dandy’s head that he remained incapable of memorizing those very specific, those very exact orders Nathaniel had doled out earlier that afternoon.
Nathaniel’s nostrils flared, and he inhaled slowly through his nose and silently recited a shanty.
“In Amsterdam there lived a maid,
Mark well what I do say,
In Amsterdam there lived a maid,
And she was mistress of her trade,
I’ll go no more a-roving with you, fair maid.”
“Are you . . . talking to yourself?” Cassius ventured in halting tones.
“A-roving, a-roving, since roving’s been my ruin,
I’ll go no more a-roving with you, fair maid.”
And when those verses didn’t prove near enough to temper his rage, he silently mouthed the remaining lyrics of that verse.
It was futile. “Hayes,” he bellowed, and Cassius jumped an impressive foot in the air. “I want Hayes.”
There were several long beats of silence, and then the quartermaster was there.
“Cap . . . ?” Hayes’s greeting and question trailed off as his gaze landed on the newest addition to Nathaniel’s chambers.
“Get him out of my sight for now. Put him in the galley.” Except, wait. No. Strike that. “Not the kitchens. The lad’ll burn my damned ship down. Assign him to the surgeon.” Only . . . “No.” Not the ship’s doctor. The boy would somehow cut someone’s limb off or spread scurvy. “Something . . . anything, where he’s not getting himself into trouble. And keep on him.” Because the good Lord knew the menace needed looking after.
Hayes nodded. “Aye, captain.” He motioned for Cassius.
Cassius, whose eyes glimmered and glistened like enormous pools of despair, and—
Nathaniel grimaced. Good God. “No tears,” he said sharply. “Absolutely no tears.”
“I-I’m not c-crying.” A bit fat drop tumbled down a ridiculously soft, plump, pale-white cheek, making an absolute liar of Cassius McQuoid and his assurance of the contrary.
Nathaniel dragged a hand down his face. The boy was going to get himself mocked mercilessly. He’d never survive. And yet, perhaps that was what he needed to put some hair on his chest and some strength in his spine. What failure was it on Nathaniel’s part that he couldn’t bring himself to do what needed to be done?
“This way,” Hayes said with a gentleness Nathaniel had certainly never been capable of. But then Hayes had four sisters and was better at dealing with people who leant to the emotional side.
Cassius headed to Nathaniel’s desk, and Nathaniel took in that detail to previously escape his notice—the jars and bottles he’d commandeered and turned into a makeshift art space.
“What are you doing?” he snapped.
“Cleaning—”
“Get out,” he interrupted, startling the boy into dropping the brush with a soft little clatter. Nathaniel tried again. “That’ll be . . . all for now.”
And this time, Cassius raced past, joining Hayes and quitting Nathaniel’s chambers.
The moment he’d gone, Nathaniel closed his eyes and shook his head.
Keep him out of trouble, and keep him away from me . . .