Otherwise, for the rest of her days, she would have found herself confined to a London ballroom and parlor, never experiencing anything outside those rigid, unbending, and unforgiving walls, where tedium reigned and souls withered.
Pulling her cap lower over her brow, she made her way through the wharves.
Her heart thundered, and she stole furtive glances about as she walked.
Despite having bound her breasts and dressed herself in garments she’d filched from her younger brother, she expected someone would surely see. That someone would recognize her as the fraud she was, and cries of horror would go up. And she’d be dragged off until her parents were summoned and brought ’round to collect her. Only . . . there were no cries. Rather, the men and boys—of all ages, from the very young to the very old—remained engrossed in their own specific tasks and chores along the wharf.
With three docks sandwiched between Bridge Road and High Street, the area fairly vibrated from the bustling activity.
Cassia paused briefly to take in the sight before her. The scent of the salty sea air filled her nostrils, while cries and shouts of men at work carried around the wharf. It was, in short, everything Arran’s best friend, Captain Jeremy Tremaine, had regaled Cassia’s family with for years and years.
Jeremy had been as much a presence in her family’s household as an extra sibling in the noisy, eccentric McQuoid clan.
She knew him so well, in fact, that she could say definitively that her plan would have been met with nothing but resistance.
It was why, even now, she found herself searching for his ship, the Waltzing Dragon.
Cassia caught her lower lip between her teeth and worried at that flesh. Did boats carry their names painted upon them?
They must.
Otherwise, how else was a person to know the difference between any of them? They were all enormously soaring wood vessels with matching white sails. Hardly anything marked them apart. Nay, only a deliberately painted, clever name would ever help a person tell one from another.
She supposed she should have asked as much during Jeremy’s visit last week, when she’d hatched her scheme. After all, she’d come up with the idea during dinner, and there’d still been dessert for her to ask that necessary question.
At the time, however, she’d let her mind wander with just how she’d implement her plan and what she’d need to wear to disguise herself and how she’d find those garments and whether a woman in trousers looked the same as a man did in trousers and . . . well, there’d been so many of those important issues she’d not put proper thought into other, equally important ones . . . like how to tell which ship her brother and Jeremy sailed upon.
Or what she would do if her sack filled with books and charcoal and pencils for recording her adventures became too heavy.
And it had, since she’d made the long walk from the hired hackney that had brought her to the shipyards, become outrageously heavy.
Grunting, Cassia staggered slightly under the weight. The muscles in her shoulder screamed under the strain she’d placed on them, and . . . well, she’d never even known she had muscles there. Perspiration dotted her brow and trickled down into her eyes. She blinked several times to drive back the sting.
That was something else she did not know about: human muscles. Cassia paused to shift the bag onto her opposite shoulder; even as she did, she added a mental note to her list to find Captain Jeremy’s surgeon so that she might put questions to him about the human body. That was decidedly something else she wished to know about. And she knew Captain Jeremy Tremaine had a doctor aboard his ship because of the story he’d imparted about the time his ship had been wrecked. Yes, the surgeon’s presence would provide Cassia with an opportunity to expand even further on her knowledge.
Even more enlivened to continue her Edification of Worldly Matters, as she’d titled her studies, Cassia did a sweep once more of the wharf. Craning her neck back as she walked, she took in the magnificent sight of the towering ships around her. They were—
She encountered a solid, unforgiving rock wall in her path.
Cassia grunted as she collided headfirst with the immovable granite. The sack slipped from her grip as she went flying, soaring back, landing hard on her buttocks.
Pain instantly radiated and burnt all the way up her back, and she groaned in misery. A lady did not rub her buttocks. A lady did not even so much as say—or, for that matter, think—the word “buttocks.” Her mother and governesses had reminded her of those details as a child. But if ever there came a time to do both—rub and curse—this was decidedly that moment.
“Oi, ye got yer demned head in the clouds, boy,” a voice barked from above her, and she crept her eyes up.
Only, it . . . wasn’t a wall she’d collided with but, rather, a man.
He was a giant, clearly seven feet, at least. His chest was as big as the barrels being lugged aboard the ships by smaller men.
Attired in a black-and-red-plaid shirt and a pair of snug trousers that displayed bulging muscles, he was single-handedly the biggest and most unique-looking fellow she’d ever laid eyes on. His enormous bald head was so bright it nearly gleamed, like he polished it the way her family servants did the silver.
“Something wrong with yer blasted ears, too, lad?” he called over the din of the bustling wharf activity, and Cassia gulped hard. He jabbed a beefy finger down at her. “Ye got yer head in the clouds, then ye should be flying, not sailing.”
Flying?
“Pegasus is really just a legend, you know.” She felt inclined to educate the glowering ogre. “Although”—she wrinkled her nose—“I do suppose you’re referring to the hot air balloons,” she amended as understanding dawned and she thought about those colorful, egg-shaped spheres she’d witnessed take flight in London some years ago.
“Yes.” Cassia struggled to her feet, and as she spoke, she dusted her palms together. “I suppose I should have considered flying. Alas, the flight would likely prove less . . .”
Eyes entirely too small for the sailor’s enormous head bulged. “Are ye makin’ loight of me?” he thundered.
Cassia—and the dozen or so seagulls that’d been picking their way along the pier—jumped. Those grey-white birds squawked, flapping their wings wildly, and took hasty, frightened flight.
“No?” she managed to squeak out, and Cassia really did wish she’d the ability to fly, after all.
“Is that a question?” he barked, taking a warning step toward her, and she backed up into a hard surface.
Cassia startled as hands closed over her shoulders, and she glanced back at the person who held her.
“Have a care,” the kindly-eyed gentleman said, and Cassia crept her gaze back a fraction to the inches between her and the waters lapping against the dock. She’d not even known she had come so close to tumbling into the River Thames.
His smile slipped, and the man turned a scowl on the Mountain Man. “What’s the meaning of this, Shorty?”
Shorty? That was the man’s name? Why, the choice was as ridiculous as if England had been called “Land of the Sun.”
“Ran hisself roight at me,” the giant growled, and Cassia took a reflexive step backward, but her rescuer gave the shoulder he still held a light, reassuring squeeze.
The tall man, possibly in his early thirties with dark hair that had begun to prematurely silver at the temple, scowled at the Mountain Man. “You have work to see to before sailing, and that doesn’t include wasting your time bullying a mere lad, Shorty,” he admonished in the same tones Cassia’s younger siblings’ governess adopted when scolding the troublesome children.