“A privateer,” he grated. “This isn’t the time.”
“What is the difference?”
“Cassia,” he said tightly, and looked again to his second-in-command. “Get her below deck. Stay there with her.”
Stay with her?
“Every hand will be needed on deck,” Hayes protested, pausing long enough to sluice a black look her way.
“Those are orders, Hayes,” Nathan barked, and the menacing ice in his eyes managed to chill even Cassia.
Nathan would remain here and face a crew of ruthless pirates. Images darkened her mind, of him taking a blade through the heart. Her insides twisted, and she gripped his arm. “I don’t want to leave . . .” You. I don’t want to leave you. Or lose you.
He slid his gaze over her face, moving it like the softest of physical touches. “I will be fine,” he said gruffly.
Her eyes smarted. “You don’t know that.” He hated tears, and she hated for him to see them. Especially now. Cassia looked away, back out over the horizon, to that increasingly larger ship bearing down on them.
Nathan cupped her cheek, angling her face back to his. He traced the winding trail left by her teardrops with the rough pad of his thumb.
She sniffed. “You hate tears.”
“I hate to see you cry,” he corrected, and the unexpected tenderness in that clarification only made more tears well. “I need you to go below, Cassia,” he said quietly. “Having you above deck is a distraction. Knowing you are here, that you are here even now, prevents me from being clearheaded, and I need to be focused.”
And she needed him in her life. She knew that now. She loved him so hopelessly and so desperately, she’d take him in the only way she could have him. It didn’t matter that he’d felt obligated to offer for her. He loved her and she loved him, and that was what mattered most.
Cassia gave a shaky nod. “Nathan, I . . . will.”
“Good.”
“No . . . that is . . . I will.” She wetted her lips.
He pinned that intense stare on her.
“Marry you,” she clarified. “When this is over. That is, if you still—”
He leaned down and swallowed the rest of that pronouncement with his kiss, robbing her of those words of love she’d speak and of the very air in her lungs.
It was over too quickly, done before it had begun.
Dazed, her lashes fluttered.
Nathan looked over to a stony-faced Hayes.
And reluctantly, she allowed that other man to escort her back to Nathan’s rooms. They reached the stairs, and she paused to look back.
Nathan stood at the center of the ship, shouting orders to every sailor. He was a breathtaking sight of a man in full command, a towering figure who, with his tone and quick orders, inspired confidence, and it was impossible to imagine anyone defeating such a raw, powerful figure . . .
Only, despite that strength, he was real and human and flesh and blood, and flesh could be pierced, and blood spilled.
A tortured moan slipped from her lips.
“Cassia?”
Hayes’s impatient query startled her back to the present, and Cassia yanked her attention forward and followed him.
When they’d reached Nathan’s cabin, he pressed the handle and motioned for her to enter, following in close behind.
Once inside, Hayes locked the door, blotting out the din from the activity above.
There was an unnaturalness to the quiet, a hum of silence which mingled ominously with the muffled shouts and clatter of footfalls overhead.
Restless, Cassia stared out the back window. Within the lead panes she caught sight of Hayes, pacing restlessly back and forth. Disquieted when she’d only ever seen him calm, and the sight of him so sent panic swirling inside her breast.
“You were much calmer at our first meeting,” she remarked, needing to fill the void of their silence.
“That’s when I thought you were a green boy, new to sailing, and before I discovered you are, in fact, a lady out to explore the world.” He smiled, and that grin felt strained, distracted.
Shouts went up from above deck, the men’s voices so clear and loud, as if they were right outside, they brought her attention to the ceiling.
“It will be fine, Cassia,” Hayes said quietly. “This is . . . normal.”
She managed a nod. It was a normal she didn’t like or know. “I trust Nathan and the men.”
Cannon fire exploded over the waters, and the ship swayed violently. Hayes managed to keep standing, even as Cassia was knocked from her feet, landing hard on the floor. The force of that fall pulled a sharp cry from her lips as pain shot from her hip up to her right shoulder. All around them, Nathan’s papers and maps went flying, his always orderly desk thrown into a chaos to match the tumult outside. Ivory vellum rained about the cabin like the stream of fire trailing from the sky painted black in battle.
With a curse, Hayes marched over, as easily as if he were striding across a ballroom, and extended a hand to help her up. “Are you—?”
“I’m all right,” she interrupted. She’d suffered a small fall. The men outside, however, shouting and crying, were battling for their very lives.
Another explosion sent the ship rocking, this time knocking Hayes onto his buttocks beside her.
“Are you all right?” she asked, glancing over.
His mouth twisted wryly. “I’d feel eminently better if I were out there.”
As one, they looked to the opposite window; the rectangular windows framed a horrific tableau unfolding on those waters, and Cassia’s stomach pitched again.
Nathan was out there. While cannonballs exploded and shots were fired, he was in the midst of it.
Squeezing her eyes shut, Cassia bit the inside of her cheek hard, focusing on the pain, searching for a distraction and finding none. Because in this instant she imagined a world without Nathan in it. She saw him being cut down and his life ended. Her breathing grew raspy in her ears.
“Fiiire,” someone shouted, and more shots were fired, staccato reports of muskets and pistols that went on forever, so different from the times she’d used one of those weapons while hunting with her brothers and Jeremy. She’d never hunt again. Not with now knowing the terror the animals had faced in those moments.
She dimly registered Hayes sliding over to take up a place alongside her on the floor.
“Cassia,” Hayes said again, this time with a firm insistence that forced her to open her eyes. “He will be fine. I’ve fought alongside the captain since we were just boys out of Oxford. There isn’t a more skilled, capable sailor than he.”
“I believe that,” she whispered. And yet, she might be naive and innocent in the ways of life and war, but she was wise enough to know that war was unpredictable. That anything could happen. “Nor is it just Nathan,” she confessed. So many men on this crew mattered to her. “Shorty is out there and Little Ron and Lieutenant Albion and—”
“Do you know what I always find helpful during a battle?”
She glanced over. “Fighting?”
He snorted. “Fair enough. Yes, well, on the eve of a battle, then. A sailor is always prepared, and yet in the days or night leading up, the mind can have a tendency to wander to the darkest end of what’s to come. But worrying? It doesn’t fix anything, Cassia,” he said, his voice earnest. “It doesn’t lessen the danger or end the battle any quicker.”