Never had he met a woman like her. Nay, never had he met a person like her.
One who was absolutely fearless of him, boldly commandeering his name the way he’d taken over lesser men’s vessels. Cassia was as bold as brass, all spitting fury one instant; the next, her eyes wider than the big moon that hung overhead and filled with tears, which made him want to plead with her to stop, and not out of sheer annoyance—which it should be—but rather because the sight of her hurt was something he didn’t know what to do with. He just knew he didn’t like it, and it left his chest feeling a way it had never felt before.
And she was even so brave as to challenge him on his own ship.
Or stupid.
She could be that, too.
Nathaniel stopped at the bow of the ship, and gripping the gleaming wood rail, he stared out at the whitecaps breaking on the sea.
Only, she wasn’t stupid.
Cassia McQuoid was a fine lady, one who didn’t get the workings of a privateer ship. And why should she? With even finer manners and refined speech, she was the type of woman a respectable gentleman married, and certainly not the manner of woman who sneaked aboard a ship with a crew full of men.
He didn’t know what to make of her.
She left him all tangled up in knots when he was never so twisted up, not even by his bloody interfering, all-powerful father.
A figure sidled up to him. “A bout of seasickness?”
Nathaniel stiffened. Hayes’s entirely-too-amused-for-Nathaniel’s-liking query came just beyond his shoulder.
Aye, he was seized by some malady. It was one inflicted not by the sea this time, but rather by the woman upon those waters with him.
He straightened. “I’m fine,” he bit out.
“Is that why you are out here after putting Albion at the helm?” the other man asked with his unwelcome, sportive sense of humor.
“Is that what you’ve sought me out for?” Nathaniel scowled. “To play at nursemaid and order me abed?”
“I’ve come to speak about your passenger.”
“I don’t have a passenger,” he muttered. “I have a stowaway.”
“She’s an English lady who speaks as refined as you and me,” the other man said with his usual bluntness. That directness was one of the traits Nathaniel had always appreciated in the quartermaster, since the moment he and Nathaniel had worked alongside each other on their first naval ship. “So that tends to set her apart from the normal stowaway.”
“It doesn’t,” he said tersely. Only, as Hayes shot him a look, he knew the inherent lie in the words he spoke. “Say what it is you want to say, Hayes.”
“The lady needs fresh air.” Nathaniel was already shaking his head. “It’s been more than a week. You can’t keep her locked in your cabin for the length of the voyage.”
That was precisely what he intended to do.
He looked incredulously back at the other man. “Surely you aren’t suggesting I grant her the freedom to walk the decks?” Why, the minx couldn’t stay out of trouble if the good Lord had given her a book with instructions on how to do so. She’d cause a mutiny in a minute.
“She is suffering from seasickness.”
“She’s much improved,” he said grudgingly. “Is she not?” he asked, suddenly concerned. “Did she seem like she’s taken another turn—”
“No. She is much better, but she’ll be that much more improved if she’s able to use her legs and accustom herself to the roll of the ship and breathe the fresh air and feel the sun.”
An image flitted forward. Of Cassia, the ocean breeze tugging at those auburn curls of hers, looser than a corkscrew and relaxed as the lady herself as she strolled the decks. The wind plastering the fabric of that white lawn shirt to her supple form.
He flexed his jaw. “No.”
“You’re being unreasonable,” Hayes said in an infuriatingly calm tone. The affable quartermaster, who’d looked altogether too comfortable with the lady.
And that same niggling of annoyance that had hit Nathaniel when he’d seen the pair playfully chatting seized him once more. Nathaniel slanted a sharp glance at the other man, who’d become as close as any brother to him. “Why are you so concerned with her?” he snapped.
Good God on Sunday. What in hell was wrong with him? He dragged a shaky hand through his hair, and then midway through that gesture registered that disquieted motion. Nathaniel forcibly lowered his arm to his side.
“The better question is, Why aren’t you?” Hayes asked quietly, and Nathaniel felt heat climb his neck.
“I am concerned. That is why I want the lady to stay below deck and out of sight, because . . .” Nathaniel bunched his hands at his sides and forcibly buried the unwanted thoughts swirling of all manner of harm Cassia could and would find herself out at sea.
“Never say you don’t trust the crew to honor your word that harming the lady in any way is forbidden?”
“They aren’t all my usual crew. You know that,” Nathaniel said curtly, reminding the other man of the circumstances that saw them with a skeleton crew. “There are many who are new, men who we have only just hired for this mission, and as such, I cannot say definitively that she’ll be safe with them, as I could about our usual crew.” That much was true. It was also safer than admitting his desire for the lady and the inexplicable pleasure he found in her company. He tried again. “Anything can happen to her above deck. She could land herself in any manner of danger, falling over the side, getting washed over the side, hell, jumping over the side to follow a damned dolphin”—for all he knew about the troublesome magpie—“and then there is the matter of the crew’s superstition about women on board ships, and there is the matter of the lady’s reputation to consider. Not that I think a single man would say a word about her being here, gainsaying that order and . . .” He caught the knowing glint that emanated from Hayes’s eyes, and Nathaniel made himself stop. But he blanched. Good God, the chit’s ramblings were contagious. “I will take your advisement into consideration,” he said tersely.
Hayes inclined his head, but by his expression, there was more he wished to say.
“What else, Hayes?” Nathaniel asked impatiently.
“You might try to show the young woman more compassion. She’s found herself alone, at sea, away from everything that is familiar—”
“A choice she made on her own.” And for it, nothing had been the same for Nathaniel. He’d not share the truth, that he read to her or sat and discussed their families. It was better the other man not know those truths, ones that discomfited Nathaniel.
The other man persisted. “Her decision doesn’t erase the fact that she is eighteen or nine—”
“Twenty-one.”
Hayes stared.
Shite.
“That is, I . . . suspect she’s twenty or twenty-one,” Nathaniel mumbled. He knew it. But he’d be goddamned if he said as much.
“Regardless,” Hayes went on, “she’s far from her family and comfortable life, and with a ship full of men who are nothing less than terrifying to most grown men.”
Nay, Hayes was correct on that score. Cassia had believed she was boarding her brother’s best friend’s passenger ship and instead had found herself on one of the most notorious privateer vessels, made up of a sea of crew members from all walks of life, men who were more pirates than commonplace sailors.