It was a lesson Nathaniel well knew as captain of this ship, and a lesson he’d gathered even long ago, before he’d had his shipping company.
“What do you mean he’s not there?” he asked, his voice a low growl.
One of his younger deckhands, Little Ron glanced down for a long time at his feet. “Said ’e’s busy and wasn’t of a mind to draw you a bath,” he said weakly.
Nathaniel narrowed his eyes. “He said that.”
“A-aye.” Little Ron paused, then added something under his breath that sounded a good deal like, “And more.”
Nathaniel tuned his ears to that latter statement. “What was that?” Because surely, he was hearing things. Surely—
The deckhand cleared his throat. “Oi said ‘an’ more,’ Captain.”
“And this . . . ‘and more’?” he asked when it became apparent Little Ron had no intention of continuing.
“Called ye ‘Captain Surly-Breeches’ and said even if he had the energy and inclination to quit his work on the main deck and draw ye a bath, well, then, he’d have done so two days ago for himself. But here we are . . .” And Little Ron swept his arms wide and then closed as if repeating a gesture that Nathaniel would wager his entire shipping line he’d witnessed from the damned recalcitrant stowaway.
An unwanted deckhand who spoke in fine tones befitting his lofty station.
Nathaniel steeled his jaw. “Let it be clear to McQuoid that I’m expecting my bath filled, and if he’s going to gainsay an order, I’ll be more than happy to toss him overboard and give him the bath he desperately craves.”
Little Ron gulped, and snapping the heels of his boots together smartly, he bowed. “Aye, aye. I’ll try again . . .”
“Problems with the cabin boy?”
Nathaniel glanced over at the issuer of that sardonic question and scowled.
His friend promptly burst out laughing.
And it was only the history of friendship between them, the fact that Hayes had been like another brother to him over the years, that made him pardon that offense.
“What is it?” An unspoken “now” hung on the end of Hayes’s query.
Nathaniel rolled his shoulders. “What isn’t it now?” he mumbled. From painting his damned halls blue to painting an ocean scene in his chambers and now defying his orders.
“We were all young lords once, looking to escape. Luckily we had your uncle and his ship,” the other man reminded him. Needlessly.
He’d heard the McQuoid name but had no real knowledge of the family. Just knew they were good ton. And Nathaniel well knew he’d his mother’s brother, Lord Eric Holbrook, to thank for helping set him on his feet following his time in the navy. His uncle, who took great delight in riling Nathaniel’s father, had been all too happy to turn over one of his ships so that Nathaniel could begin his own shipping venture.
“The fact that I understand very well what it is to need to escape that damned life is the only reason I’ve not locked him up or tossed him overboard,” Nathaniel muttered, earning another round of laughter from Hayes.
He glared at his lifelong friend.
“Oh, come,” the other man said. “You’ve never tossed a fellow overboard in your career.”
“No.” Nathaniel hadn’t. But if anyone was going to push him to that point, it was decidedly the accidental deckhand he’d been saddled with.
Or perhaps the Captain Jeremy of some ridiculously named ship had known precisely what a menace the boy was and had given him some made-up name, saddling some other poor bugger—Nathaniel—with him instead.
“What is it you really want?” he asked, knowing intuitively that there was more to this line of questioning and discussion.
Hayes grunted. “The other lads are giving the boy a . . . difficult time.”
“As they do every new member aboard the ship,” Nathaniel pointed out. “Protecting him isn’t helping him. The crew is going to see you’re providing deferential treatment, and that’s only going to make it go worse for him.”
“I remember how miserable it was on my first voyage, Captain. The boy is constantly emptying the contents of his stomach and weak from being sick, and when he’s not ill, the other lads are particularly cruel. Tying the laces of his boots together and lying about weevils in his bread and”—Nathaniel heard something in the other man’s voice—“this is different.”
Nathaniel snapped his brows together. “Different how?”
“The boy is younger and more naive and . . . and . . . not accustomed to the ribbing . . . and Carlisle, one of the men we were forced to hire . . . He is leading the charge.”
Tension snapped through him. With the exception of Nathaniel, Hayes, and Albion, all the men who served aboard the Flying Dragon were born outside the lofty ranks of Polite Society. They were men from some of the harshest streets of East London, some of whom had found themselves jailed for one minor offense or another in Newgate, all of whom were former sailors or soldiers in the King’s Army. The ones who’d been with him since the beginning, he knew and trusted with his life . . . but when one took on new crew members, well, one never knew what one was getting.
Impatient, Nathaniel cut into Hayes’s lengthy list. “What do you propose?”
“I’m suggesting you tell the crew you’ve named him your new cabin boy. If they know he’s directly responsible to you, that he has a position of privilege, then it’ll go easier for him.”
Just then, across-the-deck sniggering caught his attention, and Nathaniel glanced over to find the cause of his crew’s amusement.
Oliver had flung a rope ladder over the side of the ship and was motioning for one of the deckhands.
A perpetually green Cassius stared in wide-eyed horror, and then, his enormous eyes bulging, the boy shook his head frantically and stepped back.
Immediately two other boys were there, gripping him by the shoulders and steering him forward, pushing him until he reached the railing.
Cassius shot his palms out, gripping the wood.
Nathaniel narrowed his eyes. “What in hell . . . ?”
“I believe they are intending to tell the boy he has to climb over and clean the side of the ship.”
Surely the boy knows better than that.
“Surely he does not,” Hayes drawled, confirming Nathaniel had spoken aloud.
Meanwhile, the crowd around the gathering of boys continued to swell, as more of the Flying Dragon’s crew rushed to take in the latest penalty.
Hayes stood, his hands clasped behind him, his gaze directed forward.
“Over with ye, boy,” one of the crew shouted.
Just then, two of the men grabbed the boy and lifted him by his shirtfront so that his feet danced and dangled in midair.
Bloody hell.
Nathaniel took off running.
It was funny the thoughts a person had when she was about to die.
Given the fact that Cassia had stolen away from home and, in boarding the wrong vessel, would leave her family wondering for all time just where their eldest daughter had gone, one would think she’d be mourning the life not lived and the family left behind.
Funnily, there’d been any number of times since the Flying Dragon had sailed, and Cassia along with it, that she’d thought death preferable to her eternally sick stomach.