“Yes, well, if you’re going to saddle me with the name MacKay, then you shall wear that horrible one, too,” she vowed.
Saints on Sunday, she’d managed to circle them all the way back to their latest—earlier—argument.
Do not engage her. Do not engage her. He fell back on more lyrics.
“I’ll go no more a-roving with you, fair maid,
A-roving, a-roving, since roving’s been my ruin,
I’ll go no more a-roving with you, fair maid.”
“If you’re a MacKay and I’m a MacKay,” he said, after he’d calmed his mind, “it would mean we were relations, and we are decidedly not related.” Because men didn’t kiss family members the way Nathaniel had, and desperately, against all better judgment, still wished to kiss the infuriatingly tempting woman before him.
“Well, then.” Cassia looked at him with a stricken gaze, and the pain in her eyes hit him square in the stomach.
What in hell had he said this time?
Cassia drew into herself. “I will leave you to your very important responsibilities, then, Nathaniel, and see to entertaining myself. I’d ask you to go kindly on Lieutenant Albion. He was just being nice.” With that, Cassia turned and stormed off.
Mayhap it was the briskness of that movement, coupled with the sharp gust of wind that ripped across the deck, but the lady’s cap went flying.
Nathaniel made a frantic dive at the same moment Cassia did—colliding with the lady’s smaller, slender frame, and he shot his hands out reflexively, catching her just as they went crashing to the floor of the ship. In one swift motion, he rolled, reversing their positions so he took the brunt of the fall.
Only, he didn’t feel any of it.
Her.
He felt only her.
Her soft, supple frame perfectly molded to his body.
She was a mermaid. A sea nymph. A siren. A veritable Amphitrite.
And every last thought fled as desire raged through him.
“Nathan,” she whispered, her voice breathless. “You are quite crushing me.” Laying her palms on his chest, she gave him a slight shove, also managing to push back the desirous musings he had no place having, and certainly not here of all places.
Silently cursing, he jumped up, and even as he helped her back on her feet, Nathaniel frantically searched the deck for that article.
Alas . . .
Near a half dozen of his crew formed a line near him, their eyes concentrated over the side of the ship. His stomach sinking, Nathaniel followed those stares to the distant scrap of black bobbing in the water.
Cassia moved past him and gripped the rail, leaning over. “My cap,” she bemoaned. “I loved that article. It was my lucky”—Nathaniel instantly slapped a palm over her mouth, muffling the remainder of that pronouncement—“hapf.” She still managed to squeeze a close iteration out.
Catching her by the arm once again, Nathaniel proceeded to tug her along, pausing only long enough to grab the art supplies she’d come with before guiding her down the deck. “Here.” He stuffed the pad into her spare hand and held her charcoal in his.
“Will you slow down?”
No, he absolutely would not.
He could not.
He felt her annoyance. It was as real and as palpable as the joy she so often wore.
He didn’t stop until they reached the station he’d set up for her.
Nathaniel pointed to the makeshift seating. “Sit.”
“Sit,” she mumbled. “I’m not a dog, you know. And you needn’t be so annoyed at my losing my cap. Why, imagine how I feel. That cap has been in my family for some time. It belonged to a stable master from the MacKay clan, who absconded with it and came to join my family because he’d fallen in love with—”
“It’s bad luck.”
“Falling in love with a McQuoid?” she scoffed. “I assure you, it’s not.”
He briefly closed his eyes. “Losing a hat over the side of a ship. It signifies that the voyage will be a long one.”
“And that is a bad thing?”
“It is when . . .” He immediately closed his mouth.
Cassia cocked her head. “When?” she prodded, urging him to finish his thought.
The last thing he could afford, however, was to reveal the precise manner of shipping venture he ran. The day they closed in on the French vessel, the Renard, he’d see her below deck and . . .
And do you really think she isn’t going to have more questions for you?
“Nathan?” she urged a second time, her perfectly formed, reddish eyebrows coming together.
“It is a bad thing when one is overseeing business.” There. He’d keep it as vague as possible for—
“What kind of shipping venture do you run?”
Christ. His was a prayer. “A lucrative one.”
She wrinkled her nose. “Well, that is vague. First Lieutenant Albion, and now you.”
“If you want to remain above deck, then I suggest you sit, now.” Nathaniel jammed a finger to the spot he’d had the quartermaster set for her. “And just . . . stay away from the side of the ship, and don’t . . . do anything else that’s going to cause trouble.”
“Do you truly think I wanted to lose my lucky cap?” The tenacious minx slipped her hands onto her hips and scowled. “Because I assure you, I didn’t. I could have asked you to try to return for it. But I did not.”
“Casssia,” he said warningly, squeezing an extra syllable into her name.
“Fine. I’m sitting, I’m sitting.” And with an impressive toss of her head, her braid whipping him on the arm, she sailed onto the seat the way a queen might take a place at her throne.
She looked up, the sun bathing her face in a soft glow, the sight of her briefly stealing the breath from his lungs and the thoughts from his head.
“Are you going to join me?” she asked, her voice hopeful.
And through the dazed state she’d put him in, it hit Nathaniel: she actually wanted him about . . . It was unfathomable and unfamiliar. Most feared him, and certainly the ladies in London dropped their gazes when he passed. And oddly, Nathaniel found his chest rather light at her response. It made him wish he might stay. Which was, of course, utter madness. “I am on duty,” he said, and the way her entire expressive face fell, damned if he didn’t wish he could call back that admission.
He shot a hand up, and Shorty immediately moved over into position beside Cassia.
“Do not let her out of your sight,” Nathaniel instructed the other man.
“Aye, Captain.”
And before he did something utterly ridiculous, like surrender his duties for the day and remain with her, Nathaniel turned on his heel to go—
When she started to whistle.
He stopped midstride and closed his eyes.
Bloody hell.
Nathaniel turned, and instantly shifted course.
Cassia had already turned her attentions on her sketch pad. All the while, she whistled a cheerful tune he couldn’t name.
With a growl, he stomped over the remaining way. “What the hell do you think you’re doing?” he asked, his tone surlier than he intended, but the one he adopted with all.
Cassia glanced back up. “Nathan!” she exclaimed as if they’d only just met after a long time apart. “You’ve b—eep!” Her voice dissolved into a high-pitched squeak as he plucked her up and set her on her feet. “What are you doing?” she demanded, jumping out of his reach when he attempted to take her by the arm.