Mayhap it was that he’d never been near a woman so small, and certainly not this innocent.
Mayhap it was that he didn’t want to give her the opportunity to dissolve into yet another blubbering mess.
“Fine,” he relented, and if he’d been a better man, or a different one, he’d have managed gentler tones than the snappy ones he currently gave her. As it was, however, he’d already made more concessions for Cassia McQuoid than he’d any other person to come before her, and any who would come after her. “When we’re alone,” he added.
The lady stilled, then rolled slowly back over, facing him. “What are you saying?” she whispered, searching his face.
“I’m saying you can refer to me as Nathani—Nathan.” He tripped over that unfamiliar substitution. “Just not in the presence of the crew.” Which he’d no intention of allowing her to be, for that matter. Given her show of defiance over his form of address, he thought better than to say as much given this moment.
Tears flooded her eyes and he blanched. “Why in hell are you crying now?”
“Because I’m happy.” With that outlandish admission, she sniffed, then dabbed at the corners of her eyes.
“That doesn’t make a lick of sense. You don’t cry when you’re happy.”
In fact, the people in his life didn’t cry at all. The closest he’d come to it had been just prior to his departure from London, when tears had welled in his mother’s eyes. But even then, she’d not let them fall.
“I do,” Cassia said. “Lots of people do.”
“Who?” he shot back before he thought better of it.
“Well, I do, for one.”
“We’ve already ascertained as much.”
What in hell was happening to him? He, a laconic man who valued silence above most anything else, found himself bickering and bantering with her?
“And my mother.”
God help him, madness must be contagious, and he’d caught it from this one. “That’s two.”
“My sister Myrtle.”
But he was hopeless and helpless to stop himself. “We’ve confirmed all the McQuoid females are given to tears.”
“That’s not all the McQuoid females. There’s my other sister, Fleur.”
Oh, Lord in heaven, and his was a prayer—there were more of her.
Only, she wasn’t done. “And my aunt Leslie, cousins Andromena and Meghan.” She paused. “And Linnie, too.”
“Aren’t those all McQuoids?”
Cassia pointed her eyes skyward. “I know what you’re suggesting.”
“Do you?” Because he rather thought if he pointed her on her way with a map, she’d not a clue. About anything.
“You’re thinking only female members of my family cry.”
She’d pieced it all together, then.
“But I’m absolutely certain if there are eight McQuoid women who do when happy that there are many other non-McQuoids who do, as well.”
Eight.
There was a lot of eight chattering, troublesome, given-to-tears-even-when-happy women running all around London. It was enough to make a seafaring captain consider docking his ship in some distant harbor and never returning to rainy old England.
If Nathaniel had the use of both his hands, he’d have happily jammed them against his temples. Which only brought his attention back to the entire reason he’d come to visit.
He glanced down at the likely now lukewarm drink in his hands. “Here,” he said, thrusting it at her. “It’s laced with peppermint and honey, and it’s been known to help those who fare poorly with the motion of the sea.”
Tears again shimmered. “You brought this for me?” she whispered.
Nathaniel resisted the urge to scratch at his suddenly tight collar. She was making more of his actions than there was. Wasn’t she? Why . . . he didn’t do things, any things an innocent lady would ever consider even remotely romantic. “Please, do not cry again,” he begged, because at this point, well, even he wasn’t above begging.
He pushed the cup into her fingers, and this time, she took it.
Cassia edged herself backward until she rested against the solid back of his bedding. And this time, she didn’t defend those drops or debate him; she just sipped at the tea. “Thank you, Nathan,” she said softly.
There it was, again.
Nathan.
Nothing more than a form of his name, but wrapped in her euphonious voice. Slightly musical, and even more slightly husky, hers were the inviting tones all sailors were long taught to steer their galleons far away from.
And Nathaniel—Nathan—proved as weak as those poor-fated fellows, for he remained rooted to the edge of the mattress as she drank. She sipped, and while she did, she looked about his rooms the way a patron of London’s premier museums might, taking in the details with a curious eye. She lingered her focus on the row of swords fixed to the wall.
“Better?” he asked, incapable of anything more than the usual graveled quality.
Cassia pulled her gaze away and shifted that wide-eyed stare back over to him. “No, but I thank you for caring.”
Thanked him for caring? Disquieted, Nathaniel shifted on the bed. He didn’t care. Not about people’s comforts. Why, he didn’t even think about them.
That was, aside from his mother, and much of that came from a place of love and maternal pity for the miserable man she found herself hopelessly devoted to, a man as incapable of loving as Nathaniel himself.
Thrusting aside those unnerving thoughts, he brought himself back to the reason for this exchange. “I have Cook boiling lentils. They’ve also been known to help with the ailment. The oceans, however, are rough. You’ll find your stomach settling some when the seas do.”
The boat leaned to the right, then rapidly straightened.
Tea sloshed over the side of Cassia’s cup, and she held it out. “I don’t think I can drink any more.”
Nay, she sounded one more word away from heaving what little lingered in her stomach back up.
Nathaniel collected her cup, bringing it back to the tray, and returned.
“Let me see your arm,” he said as he reclaimed his seat.
She didn’t fight him or launch into a thousand questions about her arm and what the uses of the appendage were, as he would have expected from her.
Only, the moment he’d her small wrist in his larger hand, his mind went blank. The slender, snowy-white limb, soft as satin, bore a hint of faded freckles, as if the lady were a woodland nymph afforded only a short time in the sun, but who’d been marked forever by her love of that light.
“What are you doing?” she asked softly in an entirely too trusting, and certainly more trusting than he deserved, voice.
What was he doing, indeed? Nathaniel swallowed hard. Losing his bloody mind. That was what he was doing.
“The people in ancient China use a technique for healing and relieving the human body of pain. There are different points,” he explained, shifting his fingers into position.
Under his touch, he felt the telltale beat of her pulse.
“This is the Nei guan,” he explained, making himself speak aloud those details about the points and what he did, to keep from focusing on the satiny-soft texture of her cream-white skin.