She beamed. “Do you think so?”
“I know so.”
Cassia carefully tore the page out along the seam and handed it over. “Then it is yours.”
“Mine,” he whispered, his always deep voice made all the deeper for the emotion in it.
“Well, well, well. Look wot we’ve ’ere. Yer playing nursemaid to the damned witch.”
She and Shorty looked up as a small gathering of the crew formed a half circle around them. Carlisle, the deckhand Oliver, and Turner, each of a varying height, thickness, and age. They looked back, their equally hard stares locked on Cassia.
She shivered, and despite herself hunched back in her makeshift seat. “Gentlemen,” she greeted, forcing that word out in a chipper voice she certainly did not feel.
Shorty frowned. “Get on with ye now. Yer new to the crew, but ye already know the captain doesn’t take to his men bullying anyone, especially not a lady. So just leave the lass alone.” And then, balling a meaty fist, the old sailor beat it against his opposite, open palm.
Carlisle locked his gaze in a silent battle with Shorty. “Don’t think we will.”
To give her trembling fingers a task, Cassia closed the pad and set it down behind her.
She hopped to her feet. “Is there something I might help you with?”
Carlisle glared at her. “Ye and yer fancy talk and fancy ways. Ye’ve been nothing but trouble since ye stepped on this ship.”
The way she saw it, in her excelling at her chores when she’d been disguised as a deckhand, he’d been the one responsible for all the problems. Cassia, however, knew better than to say as much.
“What do you want, Mr. Carlisle?” she said calmly, in coolly composed tones she did not feel.
He narrowed his eyes. “For ye to leave.”
“I intend to,” she promised, using a cadence of speech that had never failed to calm even her youngest siblings and cousins. These men, however, remained completely unmoved. She forced a small laugh. “Given our current location, I can’t very well leave now.”
Except, instead of ushering in any amused chuckles, the trio of men stared blackly back.
Only the small deckhand, Oliver, shifted and swallowed loudly, his gaze falling to the deck.
“Get ye gone now,” Shorty snarled, and positioned himself directly in front of Cassia, and never had she been gladder that Nathan had assigned her the old sailor’s protection. “Before ye get yerself into trouble with the captain.” He trained his focus on Oliver. “Ye know the captain won’t like what yer up to here, boy.”
Oliver swallowed wildly, but his jaw remained resolute.
Carlisle chuckled, a cool, mirthless laugh that, despite the warmth of the sun, sent gooseflesh rising on Cassia’s arms. “The captain’s dealing with a problem below.”
She shivered. They’d orchestrated a diversion. They’d deliberately seen Nathan leave his post at the deck.
Shorty took a step forward, and Carlisle matched his movements, jutting his chin out at the bigger, bulkier sailor. “Whose side are ye on?” Carlisle demanded.
Shorty glared. “She’s just a wee lass.”
“Ye’ve only ever been on the side of the crew, and now even ye’ll be swayed. She’s a witch, she is,” Carlisle snapped.
“Yer just angry because Captain punished ye good for harassing the lady when ye thought he was a lad.”
“Lad or lady, she’s still a fancy sort, living her comfortable life while the rest of us toil. They’re all the same.” He shot another glare Cassia’s way.
Shorty scoffed. “The captain hisself is a nobleman. Ye’ve got a problem with ’im, too?”
The protracted silence and lack of a reply were the only answers necessary. Carlisle was a man who’d a problem with the peerage, and after hearing the tales Nathan and Shorty had both shared of men who’d nearly hanged because of their hunger, she could understand why.
Carlisle jerked his chin Cassia’s way. “Brought nothing but trouble to us, she has. We’ll die out here.”
“Och, it’s a single day without wind,” Shorty protested. “Hardly reason enough to go get yer craw up.”
As they debated, Cassia swung her gaze between the two men.
“She’s a damned fancy lady who don’t give a shite about anything or anyone but herself, and worse?” The other man jabbed a finger at Cassia. “She’s a jinx, and she’s a distraction the captain doesn’t need.”
“Like ye know what the captain needs!” Shorty growled. “Ye’ve been ’ere for not even a whole voyage, and Oi can tell ye, after this, ye won’t be ’ere for a second one. The captain expects loyalty from his crew.”
Before they came to blows, Cassia hurriedly inserted herself between them. “Oh, I assure you, I’m not a distraction,” she swiftly interjected. “Nathan is quite capable of seeing to multiple tasks, and we—”
Several sets of angry stares swung her way, and she made herself stop talking.
Shorty grunted. “Let’s get ye below deck, lass,” he said, sidling left, and she matched his steps, keeping herself close to the big sailor.
And then the men converged, three of them, one bashing a pan over the old sailor’s head, and Shorty went completely still, and then his eyes rolled to the back of his head.
His body hit the deck, hard.
Cassia widened her eyes, momentarily stunned into silence, and then she quickly fell to her knees. “Shorty!” she exclaimed, tapping his cheeks firmly. Alas, he remained completely motionless.
Then . . . she registered the complete quiet.
Slowly, Cassia picked her gaze up from Shorty’s prone form, and she found three sets of hard eyes trained on her.
She dampened her mouth. “G-gentlemen,” she said with another forced smile, climbing to her feet, and at the lethal menace penetrating from their eyes, terror compelled her forward. With a scream, Cassia sprinted past the angry lot of sailors.
She made it no more than four paces before one wrenched her back and slapped a beefy palm over her mouth, stifling the remainder of her cry. Her heart hammering away with terror, she bit at the hand suffocating her.
With a curse, the sailor holding her yanked his hand back.
She let fly another scream.
Her captor—Carlisle—stuffed a rag in her mouth and drew it tightly behind her head.
She glared at the wiry fellow, Turner.
The young man’s enormous Adam’s apple bobbed. “Get it done, quick,” he urged in a frantic whisper.
Get it done? Oh, God on Sunday. Dread slithered around her insides. She thrashed her head back and forth, undulating wildly, her efforts in vain, as someone dragged her, kicking, over to the rail. In one effortless movement, he caught her about the waist.
Cassia jammed the heel of her right foot backward hard into the shin of the one holding her.
He grunted. “Stop fighting, you witch.” And this time, he wrapped the arm around her middle more tightly, making it impossible to drag in a breath, and stars darted behind her eyes.
A thunderous roar went up around the ship, a primal shout belonging to a warrior of old and centuries past, and at the sound of it, her captor loosened his grip on her waist.
Her heart pumping with relief, Cassia whipped her head sideways.