“With our lives,” Hayes vowed. “And when we are all safely ashore,” he asked Nathaniel, “what . . . then?”
In other words, what would happen between Nathaniel and Cassia? It was a question only one he was closer with than even his own brothers would dare ask. Nathaniel scraped a hand down his face. “I . . . don’t . . . know.” Because he didn’t. If she were with babe, he’d marry her. Absolutely. That was not in question. He cared about her. More than he’d ever believed it possible he could care about anyone, but there were the expectations his family had for Nathaniel, ones that had direct implications on his future in sailing, and as a result, all those who relied upon him.
Nathaniel stared out at the sea, where the lap of the ocean waves had always brought solace and calm. Now there was none. “The duke is determined I . . . fulfill my duties as marquess.” He proceeded to explain the circumstances that had led to their hasty departure, and the implications Nathaniel’s marriage to Cassia would have on the ship and crew. When he’d finished, understanding dawned on Albion’s face. “Ah.”
There was a stretch of silence between them as they stood and stared out at the sea. A silence that Hayes broke. “You’re a capable leader. I’ve fought with you in some of the bloodiest battles, faced some of the most ruthless pirates. And I do not doubt you can make your father see reason.”
Nathaniel managed his first laugh of the day. His friend had more confidence in him than he deserved. “Even if he did not interfere and I was permitted to sail again, there is a w . . .” Wife. His mouth went dry, and he could not manage to squeeze the word out.
“A wife,” Albion drawled. “I believe the word you are looking for is ‘wife.’”
Only, she wouldn’t be just any wife. It wouldn’t be a formal arrangement with no feelings involved; there’d be genuine affection and real emotions, emotions like fear at what could happen to her, were she to become his wife. “Cassia,” he whispered, willing them to understand those feelings he couldn’t explain. Not even to these two closest friends. “There is . . . her.”
“And?” the other man asked. “She is comfortable on the sea. There is no reason she can’t sail with us in the future,” Albion pointed out. “Why does it have to be the end?”
Nathaniel frowned. “I’m risking her life now because there was no choice.” Because there’d been no safe port in which to leave her and Hayes. “I’ll not do it in the future.” Certainly not if they married. “Her security and well-being would fall to me.”
Hayes chuckled. “The lady seems entirely resourceful. She found her sea legs, so much so that she passed herself off as a more-than-competent deckhand when she did, and was so good at what she did, she earned your appreciation and Carlisle’s wrath.” Nathaniel growled, and his quartermaster rushed to add another thought. “She can also swim better than even Albion here.”
“Hey, now.” The navigator tossed an elbow.
“Which is saying a good deal, as Albion is quite the skilled swimmer,” Hayes said, blunting that slight. “I trust she’ll be just fine at sea.”
Nathaniel stared incredulously at his quartermaster. Did he not recall just how they’d discovered how skilled a swimmer Cassia was? She’d been tossed overboard by a damned sailor.
As if he’d read Nathaniel’s thoughts, Hayes cleared his throat. “That is . . . with our usual crew, who is honorable and loyal, who would appreciate her presence as I, Shorty, Albion, Little Ron, and the others do. Either way,” he went on, “I’m not suggesting you bring the lady on future missions. Wars don’t last forever,” he reminded him. “Eventually they end, and when there’s peace, the allowances granted privateers, even those of a duke’s son, come to an end. You can convert your shipping to new endeavors. Ones not fueled by war.”
“Don’t all shipping ventures ultimately involve war?” Nathaniel pointed out. If they weren’t acquiring their enemies’ resources at sea, they’d be waging battles in distant parts of the world, where England had exerted her control over unwilling peoples.
“There is no reason you can’t deal in exports . . . wool and other textiles to the Americas . . .”
“The same America we are still at war with?” Nathaniel drawled.
Hayes smiled. “As I said . . .”
“I know,” he muttered. “Wars do not last forever.”
Marriage, however, did. Every muscle in his body coiled tight at the reminder. The only responsibility he’d ever foreseen, the only future he’d imagined, had been one at sea. Not . . . not . . . the prospect now before him. Nathaniel cursed. “You can say I’m a damned fool.” Hayes and Albion could say it for the both of them.
“I wouldn’t presume,” Hayes said, his features even. “Women have driven any number of men to decisions that they wouldn’t have ordinarily made.”
A tinkling bell-like laugh rang out clear across the deck, the gentle sea breeze drawing that siren’s sound closer, and like one of those hapless sailors, Nathaniel’s gaze slid over to Cassia.
Whatever words Shorty had spoken had put a healthy bloom in her cheeks, and with the wind toying with the errant curls that had escaped the latest plait he’d made her, she was a sight he’d never forget, this slip of a woman who’d fit so effortlessly onto his ship and amongst his crew and into his life.
With a word of thanks, Nathaniel dismissed the two. After they’d gone, he shifted his focus back to the imp on his deck. At some point, she’d swapped out her charcoals for playing cards that Shorty, having sat beside her on the floor of the deck, dealt between them.
Engrossed in whatever the old sailor was saying, Cassia sat with her legs crossed, alternately nodding and stopping Shorty and putting a question to him.
Unlike his elder brother, Nathaniel had never much thought about the woman he’d one day marry. It hadn’t been a thought he’d needed to have, and so he hadn’t. Until he’d reached his twenty-eighth year and his brother had taken a fall from his horse. From that moment, Nathaniel had known everything had shifted. He’d known because his father hadn’t even permitted Nathaniel the opportunity to mourn Marcus’s passing before he was summoning Nathaniel and putting all manner of orders to him about his future and the ducal expectations that now fell to him.
Even when he’d known the duke would not relent until Nathaniel committed himself fully to the Roxburghe title, he’d still not considered the unknown lady who’d ultimately become his wife.
Now, he found his gaze drawn to the woman with her legs crossed before her, and like it were the most natural thing in the world, she chatted amicably with the burly old sailor Nathaniel had rescued from the gallows almost a decade to the date ago.
He’d not imagined a wife who’d sneak aboard ships to see the world, or don trousers, or challenge him at every turn. For the simple reason . . . he’d not known there was or could be a woman like her.
And he certainly didn’t know what to do with a wife who was innocent and sweet, and incapable of anything more than a laugh or smile, and who prattled on as long as the longest summer’s day at sea.