And yet, after Nathaniel had sworn to stay away, to eat his meal with his crew as he should, he’d thought about Cassia . . . and ultimately, he’d decided to join her so she wasn’t alone. Not having known or expected that she wouldn’t be. That she’d be smiling and conversing so easily with Hayes.
Hayes, who was affable and charming and everything Nathaniel wasn’t, and hadn’t really cared that he wasn’t. Until now.
“You’re needed at starboard, Hayes,” he snarled, knowing he was being deuced unreasonable, unable to contain the biting fury in his voice and unable to explain why.
Nay, he knew. It was because the lady was a distraction to all who crossed her path. She’d made nothing but a headache of herself. Granted, a headache Hayes seemed to mind not at all.
The other man stood, and then dropping a bow, he said some quiet words intended for Cassia’s ears, words that Nathaniel strained to hear.
She nodded, that little movement sending the bountiful curls that had escaped her plait these past days bouncing about her small shoulders.
When his tall, charming quartermaster swept past, Nathaniel pushed the door panel shut with a firm click.
“I’m not looking to have you distract my crew,” he said the moment he and Cassia were alone.
“I’m not a distraction.”
“You painted my ship,” he said, taking a step forward.
“That was before I realized what you expected of me.” She paused. “And I really feel those paintings were an improvement, Nathan.”
“You were nearly killed.” And that had been before the crew had learned she was, in fact, a female.
A scowl fell over her heart-shaped face. “I think it should be pointed out that your crew nearly killed me.”
All his muscles coiled, tensed, and contracted at the memory of that day she’d been grabbed by Carlisle and lifted high above the deck . . . and how very close she’d come to . . . Nathaniel forcibly thrust those torturous musings to the furthest corner of his mind. There was no point or good in thinking of what had almost happened. He steeled his jaw. It was far more important to think about why it had almost happened.
“I don’t want you speaking to the crew.”
“This might be a poor time to bring up Mr. Hayes’s suggestion that I—”
“No.”
Cassia stamped her foot. “You don’t even know what I was going to say.”
“You were going to say he advised you to walk the deck and receive fresh air.”
She wrinkled that freckled, pert nose of hers. “Very well, you do know. You are being unreasonable.” He opened his mouth, but she didn’t so much as draw a breath to allow him that word edgewise. “There is absolutely no reason—”
“Every reason.” He managed to squeeze just two words in.
“—for you to make a prisoner of me.”
In a bid to make himself heard, Nathaniel raised his voice. “There is every reason for that, too.”
Alas, the chit spoke even louder, over him. “Unless it is your explicit plan to punish me for my clear accident by confining me to your dark rooms.”
Good God, she was unshakable. Nathaniel gritted his teeth and tried again. “There are windows.”
“And forbid me from speaking to anyone.”
“They are working, and they do not have the time to be distracted with talks of the English weather.”
“Why do you think I’m going to speak with them about the English weather?” Exasperation lent her words an upward pitch. “It always rains.”
“I know that. But it’s what the proper English sorts talk about.”
“Nathan.” Cassia gave him a look. “I sneaked off, stowed away on what I thought was my brother’s best friend’s ship. Do you truly take me as ‘the proper English sort’?”
She had her first valid point there. “No.” That changed nothing, however. Instead, Nathaniel clung to one not-so-very-small detail of what she’d said. “I don’t want you to speak to them about anything, and I don’t trust for one moment that you are capable of even a moment’s silence or peace.” His booming voice echoed off the walls of his “dark rooms,” as she’d called them.
Cassia glared mutinously at him, and he saw the visible restraint she showed. In the taut lines her plump rosebud mouth made in the corners as she flattened her lips. The effort she made to say absolutely nothing. And she didn’t.
For a moment.
“I am absolutely capable of moments of silence,” she said on a rush, as if in getting the words out as quickly as possible, the speed of saying them somehow negated her losing the point.
“That is the thing, Cassia: you are not.” He raised his voice to a near shout, and frustration coursed hot through him at that lack of restraint on his part when he was always restrained. Just not around this troublesome woman, and because of her. “You cannot not say anything. You talk to yourself when you’re suffering through seasickness.”
“It made me feel better.”
“By God, you can’t even be silent when you sleep. You mutter to yourself the whole night through.”
Cassia swept over in a glorious display of defiance and fury and stopped the moment her bare toes touched the tips of his shoes. She tipped her head back and, angling her hands upon her gently flared hips, glared an impressively black look at him.
“If I’m soo miserable to be around, Nathan, then do not force me to force you to keep me here,” she said, flicking both hands in his direction, as if she’d found his company contemptible.
“Force me to force you to keep me here,” he mouthed. “That doesn’t make sense.”
“It makes perfect sense,” she cried, throwing those expressive hands which, just as her words, she wielded like rapiers. “I certainly don’t want to inflict my company on anyone who does not want it.”
“Well, it seems that’s precisely what you did when you stowed away on my blasted ship,” he bellowed, knowing he was being a beast but unable to contain that shout. She was, in short, the first and only person who’d ever made him lose his damned head. Or distracted him. He dragged a hand through his hair. And yet, neither did he want to be a bully who made her cry, and he braced for the materialization of those crystalline drops.
Instead, this time, for the first time, there was only a fiery blaze of fury to match his own. “Well, you may rest assured, Nathan, we are well matched in one thing, for you are the absolute last person whose company I would ever seek out.”
And as she prattled on in her outrage, in her show of bold defiance, it transformed her from interesting beauty to mesmerizing goddess of fire and fury. And he found himself annoyed for being the manner of weak fool to be captivated by the bright rush of color in her radiant cheeks. “And your boat the last one I’d have ever climbed aboard, had I known—”
“It is a ship,” he said, wrapping an arm about her waist and drawing her close.
And it was impossible to say who was more stunned by that tender hold.
Cassia’s eyes reflected back his own surprise and more: a like passion glittered in her eyes that revealed oh so much.
He immediately released her, unfurling his fingers, flexing them. “Forgive me. I . . .” Nearly lost control. Had a momentary lapse where all I wanted was to kiss—