Only to discover at the hands of merciless men how very wrong she’d been.
“Wants a fancy bath, do ye!” Carlisle taunted. “Well, ’ow’s about a dip in the ocean instead, to clean yerself off?”
“No!” she rasped, thrashing and twisting, kicking her legs out—in vain. “Please.”
Only her efforts here were met with laughter, as Carlisle grabbed her on either side of her arms, and hoisted her—
Oh, God.
Over.
“That is—”
Cassia screamed, screamed loud and shrill enough to drown out whatever words the equally merciless captain of this vessel was saying to his men.
She screamed for all she was worth and all she had. Even as she told herself to be still so the hands that held her didn’t let go, she kicked her legs back and forth, and she clung to both sets of equally enormous arms about to hold her over the side of the ship.
Cassia stole a glance over her shoulder at the ocean below.
So this was how she was to die.
On occasion, Cassia had thought of the day she’d draw her last breath.
She’d had a macabre wonder about what that moment would be like and had always envisioned being an old woman with snow-white hair, tucked in her bed, wearing a soft smile as she, surrounded by a gathering of the many children she’d one day have, slipped from this earth, content in knowing her life had been full.
Never once in any of those many wonderings had she imagined dying before her twenty-second birthday.
Though in fairness, it wasn’t just that she was going to die this day.
They were going to murder her.
Cause of death: drowning.
Drowned by a cruel sailor and the young, impressionable boys he’d gathered who quite despised her, which was rather peculiar, as children tended to like her.
Not these.
These nasty buggers, whooping and laughing and dancing about, were ruthless savages who’d not be content until they killed her.
She forced her eyes open and took in the churning waters below, whitecaps forming atop the peaks of waves that would swallow her whole. Dread sluiced through her.
She’d been so very wrong this voyage. Death was not preferable.
At least, not this death.
Perhaps another one.
Like . . . like . . .
Only, as her panicky mind raced, she couldn’t drag forth a single pleasant-seeming death. That was, aside from the one she’d imagined as an old woman in her bed. But then, mayhap this was the Lord’s punishment. Perhaps this was how she was to be repaid for sneaking off to see the world aboard Jeremy’s ship, and pretending to be a lad, all in the name of exploring. Tears pricked her lashes.
Yet, why should she be punished? Why, when she was doing something no different from what any other man was allowed to do? And from the bowels of despair came the stirrings of a safer, welcome fury.
How dare the world?
And how dare this man?
Still, she was at their mercy.
“Please,” she cried, pleading, begging.
A large wave crested against the side of the ship, spraying her face and slapping her body with icy seawater that easily penetrated her garments. She gasped as the chill of it seeped into her skin and sucked the breath from her lungs.
“Never tell me yer afraid of the ocean?” Carlisle guffawed, and not waiting for an answer, he directed his next words at the audience around them. “A deckhand afraid of the sea. Wot’s next? A cook afraid of the kitchen?”
Laughter met the man’s question.
“Please,” she begged a third time, because, well, she wasn’t really so proud as to not plead for her life.
“That is enough!” the captain thundered.
And there was a God, and surprisingly, there was also some mercy within the leader of this crew. For he managed to do what Cassia in all her begging and threatening hadn’t—he silenced the fun they’d been having at her expense and called for them to save her.
The men holding her remained frozen. Horror wreathed their sun-weathered features, their eyes bulged, one man’s grip went slack, and Cassia screamed as she slipped from his loosened hold, even as the other fellow now holding her tightened his hands on her.
And she wrapped her arms about those bulky muscles, attempting to claw herself free.
Then he dropped her.
Gasping for air, Cassia collapsed atop the deck, and her cap, knocked loose by Carlisle, fell over her eyes. She pushed it back into place, attempting to still her thunderous heart, sucked in desperate breaths, and laid her cheek against the deck surface, never more grateful for another person’s arrival than she was Captain Ellsby’s.
Mayhap she was going to survive this, after all.
The crew around her had gone silent, the sharp rasps of air she sucked into her lungs and the waves lapping against the side of the ship inordinately loud in that sudden, unearthly quiet left by these men who hated her. These men who’d attempted to kill her.
All the fury and rage and frustration bottled inside exploded from her.
Leveraging herself with her elbows, Cassia pushed herself upright and glared at the gaping men. “You are nothing but nasty, horrific, monstrous people,” she said, jabbing her finger at Carlisle and the boys who’d done his bidding as she spoke. She paused. “Not you,” she said to Little Ron, the one kindly deckhand. “I’ve got nothing bad to say about you, other than the fact that you could have tried to stop th-them.” Her teeth chattered from the cold left by the wind’s chill and the leftover fear she was certain she’d take with her to her eventual death. But it wouldn’t be this day, and as the group parted and the captain stepped forward, she found herself enlivened just by the very nature of being alive. Perhaps any other time she would have been besieged with the suitable dread he always inspired. Not this time. Not with him and his callous crew and harsh words. She looked to the captain. He dared her with that flinty gaze to speak even a word. She wavered. Only for a moment. After all, she was a McQuoid who’d faced down a bevy of terrifying siblings and cousins. “You have a problem with your crew,” she seethed.
A large gust of wind ripped across the deck, knocking the air from her lungs.
Tension snapped in the salt-filled air around them.
She’d gone too far—again.
She knew it in the unnatural quiet that descended over the vessel, with only that howling wind and the slap of the ocean waves against the ship filling the air.
Hayes tensed and looked from Cassia to the captain.
She shivered, dread skittering along her spine, and then the ship pitched under her, rolling violently back and forth and taking her stomach, along with her pride. And for the second time since she’d met the piteous man, Cassia opened her mouth and vomited at his feet.
A miserable moan escaped her, and she wiped at her lips, fighting the desperate need to cry again. Not that she’d done so publicly. That she knew she couldn’t do if she expected to survive however long this godforsaken journey, in fact, was.
When she forced her eyes open, she found the captain’s harsh, unforgiving eyes locked with hers.
Nay, not her eyes. Rather, her shoulder.
Cassia stilled, then registered her exposed plait. No. Oh, God. With dread mounting, she touched those tresses.
She swallowed hard.
This was not good.
This was not good. At all.