The young woman pursed plump lips that he hated himself for suddenly noticing. Alas, for the first time in his career, he found himself in the presence of a person without a suitable unease around him. “As I was saying, I thought your b—ship belonged to my brother’s friend Jeremy.”
And then it hit him. “You were running away with the fellow.” The poor man had undoubtedly come to his senses before committing himself to marriage and provided the minx the wrong ship name on purpose.
The woman cocked her head. “Marry Jeremy?” she echoed, her befuddlement worn in her words and in her eyes. She laughed. “Running away with . . . No. Jeremy is my brother’s best friend. Not that I could not marry my brother’s best friend, just that he isn’t the sort I would harbor any romantic feelings for. I’ve known him since we were both pudgy, small babes and were playing at pirates. But Jeremy owns his own boat, and I was sneaking off”—she paused, her gaze growing distant, and when she spoke, her voice was sad—“to see the world.”
To see the world. “Well, you’ve certainly seen it, haven’t you?”
And as soon as he spoke those cold words, he wished he could call them back, only because more of those tears glimmered, and the last thing he wanted to deal with, the last thing he cared to deal with, was more of her bloody tears. Any woman’s. They made him deuced uncomfortable—women and tears.
“What is your name?” he asked grudgingly, a safer question.
“Cassia McQuoid, of the McQuoid family.” God, she was a lady, after all. “I gave you my family’s name.”
And then he blanched as she stood and dipped a neat little curtsy.
“You’re a lady,” he said, his tone accusing to his own ears.
The lady inclined her dainty chin as only a young woman could. “Well, I’m certainly not a gentleman.”
“I mean of the peerage,” he snapped. “You’re the daughter of a peer.”
“An earl.”
He cursed darkly and roundly, and the lady widened her eyes. “I’ve never heard that one before,” she said, an appreciative quality to her voice.
“Good. You can add it to your book.”
“I don’t have a book with curses.” Her thin reddish eyebrows went flying up, along with a finger she shot toward the ceiling. “My journal . . . for my travels is for sketching, though I suppose I can add it to the pages. Do you think you would be so good as to fetch—”
The ship listed left, and the lady went sliding.
Nathaniel caught her to him and instantly regretted the decision, for it brought him flush with her small, soft breasts, and the flat of her belly and curve of her hips pressed against him.
Desire hit him. Aye, how had he failed to note that his new deckhand was, in fact, purely woman? Why, it was as plain as the freckled nose on her face.
The lady traced the seam of her lips once more, bringing his focus back to that flesh, and he did a sweep of her features.
With the high lines of her cheeks and narrow, pert nose, she’d not the soft, plump quality he tended to favor in women, and yet, from those angles of her face and the cream-white quality of her skin, she put him in mind of a perfectly sculpted statue, made real only by that dusting of freckles at the bridge of her nose.
“You’re bad luck,” he snapped.
The lady cocked her head. “I most certainly am n—”
“All women.” He cut off what was undoubtedly about to be a meandering argument. “On board ships.”
She gasped. “We most certainly are not.”
The ship rolled slightly, and the lady’s eyes slid shut, and her tone went as weak as her argument.
Alas, he was all out of pity for her.
Though in fairness, he’d not had it even to begin with.
“And just where does your knowledge of seaside cultures and customs come from, my lady?” he taunted. “All your years spent away at sea with Captain Jeremy?” With her green countenance and lack of footing since they’d set sail, he’d venture she hadn’t so much as rowed a boat across whatever lake whichever family she belonged to owned.
“Oh, no,” she said, when the ship listed gently once more. “This was to be my first time sailing with Jeremy.” She leaned in and whispered conspiratorially, “I expect this will come to something of a surprise to you, but I’ve never set sail before.”
Nathaniel folded his arms at his chest. “You don’t say?” he drawled, keeping his features absolutely even.
She nodded. “Not even on a skiff on my family’s Loch Allt na h-Airbhe.”
Loch Allt na h-Airbhe? “You’ve made that up.”
“No,” she said with a solemn shake of her head. “I’ve not once been aboard—”
“The name of that damned loch.”
“Oh, I assure you, not. My father’s family is from Scotland.” She was Scottish, then. Of course she was. “And my mother is part Scottish. We have a home there. In fact, you should sail your boat through the loch. They are quite lovely waters.”
He went motionless. He couldn’t even manage so much as to blink his eyes. For damned if there wasn’t a ton to unpack within that handful of bat-shite-crazy statements. And if he were one of those lighthearted, cheerful fellows, he’d have tossed his head back and managed a laugh at the fact that she (1) thought to sail his ship through a damned loch and (2) seemed to think his boat—as she called it—was some kind of pleasure vessel.
“Oh, dear,” the lady murmured. She peered up at him, and concern filled her eyes. “You’ve gone all queer in the face. Your stomach is unsettled, too. I would recognize—”
“My stomach is not unsettled.” That avowal exploded vehemently from him. In fact, Nathaniel’s stomach was the one damned steady thing about him at the moment.
“Of course not.” The lady patted his hand and, as if a sea of observers had crowded around them, lowered her voice to a whisper so low even he had to strain to hear. “I have several brothers and know that gentlemen oft have a difficult time admitting a weakness.”
But he wasn’t a lighthearted, cheerful fellow. He was the captain of a ship, on a privateer mission, now saddled with a damned woman.
God, she was either obstinate or absent of anything between her two ears.
“Do you have a brain in your head?” he asked flatly.
“I do,” she whispered, her voice miserable. “I wish, however, that I did not have a stomach. It is my stomach that is the real source of my woes.”
Nathaniel gawked.
He couldn’t help it.
“What in hell were you thinking?” he demanded. “That society wouldn’t notice a damned lady has gone missing? That your parents won’t?” Fury and panic made his voice pitch upward. And good God, what in hell did that mean of him, were they to find out she’d been with him—he, a marquess and a duke’s son?
“Well, they didn’t notice Myrtle went missing at Christmas for some several days or so, and by the time they did . . .” She prattled, and as she did, Nathaniel stared at her lips. The lady was a chatterbox. Because of course she was. “Well, you can imagine, they did everything possible to get back to Myrtle as quickly as they were able, but Myrtle was—”