Like one who’d overseen the task thousands of times . . .
That reminder played over and over in her mind like a stale ballroom orchestra’s use of the quadrille strains. Unwittingly, she’d conjured thoughts she didn’t want to have.
Of Nathan with . . . other women before her.
And worse, the women who’d come after her.
She scowled.
“You have experience plaiting.” She couldn’t keep the arch tone from her voice.
“Aye.”
He didn’t even seek to deny it. Jealousy, her color was green, but felt red and slipped around a person’s veins. “From your many lovers?”
“Boat lines.”
She angled another glance over her shoulder at him.
“I had to plait certain lines of the ship,” he explained, and she couldn’t help the giddy rush of relief that filled her. “And I’ve had many lovers, too.”
She scowled.
Nathan gave one of her curls a playful tug. “Whose hair I’ve not braided.”
And then it hit her. She widened her eyes. “You are teasing.”
“Don’t tell my crew. Though they wouldn’t believe you if you did. I also plaited my dog’s hair.”
A snorting bark of laughter slipped from her lips. “You jest.”
“Not on the latter. A bearded collie,” he added.
Something in that detail he shared was intimate, but in a different way from the act he now performed on her hair. Not only did he have a dog, but he’d braided the animal’s coat.
Oh, my. For if there was a man a woman could love, it was one who loved dogs.
“You have a dog,” she whispered.
“I had one. He passed on two voyages ago. I’ve not . . . come ’round to having a second.”
There was an aching sadness in that admission, and Nathan cleared his throat, as if embarrassed by that show of emotion, and she ached to turn and take him in her arms.
“I am so very sorry,” she said softly.
He grunted. “Loss is part of life.”
“Yes, it is, but the truth of that doesn’t make the reality of it any less painful.”
“What of you, Cassia McQuoid? Do you have pups of your own?” He put that question to her, and she’d have waged her left littlest finger he did so in an attempt to move them to topics safer and less painful. “Pugs? Terriers?”
“My family never had dogs. At least, not the faithful-family-pet sort. There’s only ever been hunting ones, who were always my father’s and brothers’. I’ve tried bribing them with treats.” She sighed. To no avail. The family dogs, just like her family and men everywhere, were wholly unmoved by her.
Unlike Myrtle . . . “Myrtle and the duke have one,” she added.
He paused mid-winding of the plait he now made.
“My sister and her husband,” she explained. “Surely I have mentioned them before. The duke has an enormous dog. More of a wolf, really.” In fact, when her mother had the idea to drag her next door to meet that lofty lord and attempt to arrange a match, Myrtle had been more excited at the prospect of having that dog, and not so much the duke. “He was our neighbor. Is.” She tacked on that reminder. Even all this time later, the shame and humiliation of that first meeting with her sister’s now husband coursed hot and fresh as it had yesterday. So why did she continue talking? Why did she continue to bare those most humiliating details to this man, who, for the length of time they’d known one another, was a stranger more than anything? “I paid a visit with my family, but he wouldn’t even open the door.”
“Ah.” There was a wealth of knowing contained within that slight exhalation, and she looked back, once again staying his efforts.
“What?”
“You were in love with your sister’s husband first, and that is why you ran away.”
Cassia scrunched up her nose. “Why must it be when a woman runs away to the sea that she is rushing to meet a man or running from heartbreak?”
“I . . .” He shook his head. “It’s not?”
She shook her head. “I’ll have you know, women, just like men, wish to see the world. We, however, aren’t afforded those same opportunities.” Cassia paused, her eyes lingering on the circular glass panels overlooking the ocean waters. The moon shone on the sea, bathing it in a bright-white light. “Except Myrtle,” she said softly to herself, as he resumed pulling the brush through her hair. “My parents sent Myrtle away to school so that she might have an education.”
Whereas Cassia? In Cassia, they’d not seen a daughter worth sending away to grow on her own. They’d not believed her capable.
And with every fiber of her being, she hated that, with the latest quandary she’d landed herself in, she’d proven them right.
This wasn’t a conversation he wished to have.
Or it was one he shouldn’t find himself wishing to have.
Just as he shouldn’t be brushing her hair, and yet, oddly, he found himself wanting to do both.
“And I take it you weren’t sent away to finishing school?”
Cassia hesitated. “Me? No.”
“And that’s something you would have wanted?” Even as he asked it, he already knew the answer, because he knew this inquisitive woman with a penchant for exploring would have only welcomed the opportunity.
“Yes,” she said softly, and then she propped her right fist under her chin, and even in silhouette as she was, he detected the wistful quality of that positioning. “They wouldn’t have ever sent me away. No one really has a high opinion of me. Including my parents. They always thought me flighty. You’d probably agree with them.”
Two days ago, he would have answered in an immediate affirmative.
Hell, even one day ago, his response would have been a resounding yes.
He could not, however, bring himself to utter that harsh concurrence.
“No, to my parents . . . They only ever saw me capable of one thing.”
Nathaniel paused midstroke.
“Marriage,” she explained. “And in the end, I couldn’t even manage that.” That sadly spoken pronouncement came so soft he had to strain to hear it, and when he did, the sound of her suffering kicked him squarely in the chest.
“The men in London are fools,” he growled. The lot of them dandies or rakes or scoundrels who all perceived themselves as larger-than-life figures.
“Yes,” she said bleakly. “Well, then, what does it say about me if even a fool won’t marry me? My brother-in-law isn’t a fool,” she added, raising her brother-in-law’s name once more.
This illustrious brother-in-law whom she insisted she hadn’t held a tendre for, and yet, if she didn’t, she sure spoke enough of the damned clod. Why did annoyance slither and twist inside?
“He didn’t marry you, though, did he?” he snapped, his tone harsher than he intended.
Cassia tipped her head in that endearingly confused way of hers. “No. I said as much. He married—”
“No,” he said impatiently. “I’m saying he’s a damned fool. For not marrying you and marrying your sister, instead.”
She laughed, that merriment as clear as the bell that, on occasion, rang on his ship, only shades lovelier for the slightly husky quality to it.