“Go,” the menacing stranger said through his teeth, that gravelly order more ominous than had he thundered it.
As one the boys clicked their heels and scurried off, and proving a coward, relief swept through Cassia as she started after the children.
“Not. You.”
That curt command brought Cassia to an abrupt stop. Still hopeful that she wasn’t the one left to face the towering captain’s wrath, she glanced around the now empty hall. “Not me?”
“Not. You,” he rumbled.
And here she’d thought only storms and angry dogs capable of that deep, resonant, and more than slightly terrifying sound.
Oh, drat and dash.
Alas, as her governess had oft said, “Charm them all with a smile.”
Mustering her courage, Cassia donned a smile and faced the foreboding gentleman. “Captain . . . ?” She stared at him, pausing deliberately so that he might supply his name.
He stared darkly back at her. “Captain Ellsby.”
“Captain Surly-Breeches” suited him better. “I was wondering if you might fetch the other captain, as there is something I desperately need to speak with him about.” She had quite a few things to say to Jeremy about this one.
“The other captain?” he repeated in that slow, bearish way.
She nodded. “Jeremy,” she clarified. After all, what if there were even more than two captains aboard a boat? Jeremy would be far safer to speak with first than her brother traveling with him. Arran would be beyond livid. Jeremy, however, would manage to calm down her—
“You think Jeremy is a captain?”
Jeremy . . . wasn’t? The bottom dropped out of her stomach once more. “He isn’t?”
“He’s the cook.”
She gawked at him. “The . . . cook?” All these years, it’d been a lie? Why? Why had he lied? Except . . . “Of course,” she whispered to herself. “It makes complete sense.” Lying about his rank aboard the sailing vessel had been the only way his stern father, the Earl of Westmorland, would have countenanced his sailing. Cassia jammed her fingertips against her temples. What else had been a lie?
Understanding dawned in the captain’s eyes. “You were hired by Jeremy.”
It wasn’t a question, and she felt as dazed as when she’d caught a pall-mall ball to the head and come to on the court to discover a sea of McQuoids staring back at her. She blinked just as slowly. “Hired by Jeremy?” A nervous giggle slipped from her lips that she disguised as a cough. “You might say that.”
“I just did,” he said bluntly, and not taking his gaze from her, he shouted, “Oliver?”
Almost instantly, a tiny, waiflike boy appeared. “Aye, Captain?”
“Fetch Jeremy,” he ordered, and the child clicked his heels together and dashed off, leaving her and Captain Surly-Breeches alone.
A surly captain who was Jeremy’s superior, and also . . . her brother’s superior? Which meant that Jeremy was decidedly not responsible for the vessel. And what, exactly, did that mean for her and her place aboard the boat, and—
The rapid rise and fall of approaching footsteps cut into the swirl of questions in her mind.
A moment later, a short fellow with an impressively gleaming head, bald of all strands but for two tufts of white curls on either side, approached. Dread threatened to swallow her whole. “Who is this?” she blurted.
Both men ignored her.
“You wished to see me, Captain?” the shorter, older of the pair asked, pushing his round, wire-rimmed spectacles back on his nose.
“You hired this deckhand, Jeremy?”
This was Jeremy? Cassia’s heart thumped at a sickeningly slow beat. Oh, dear.
“He is not my Jeremy,” she whispered. “My family’s Jeremy is tall and young and—” Handsome. Except, she was supposed to be a man, and men didn’t call other men handsome. How did men refer to other men? “He is not . . . ugly.”
This Other Jeremy turned a scowl on Cassia.
Oh, God. Could she muck up any of this more than she had?
“Not that I mean any offense,” she said, her throat as dry as her mouth. And the words felt thick on her tongue, and to her ears as they left her lips, they sounded just as heavy. “You’re just not . . . the Jeremy.”
“And who, exactly, is your Jeremy?” Captain Surly-Breeches pressed.
Nay, not just any captain. This was not Captain Jeremy Tremaine. Rather, the bad-tempered man before her was the captain of this vessel.
The vessel she’d mistaken for Jeremy’s, which meant her elder brother was also not aboard. At least you won’t have to face Arran’s wrath. No, instead, she’d have to face the wrath of a furious stranger. Panicky laughter built in her chest.
No. This was all a mistake! Of course. Her brother and Jeremy had gathered what she’d done and were merely seeking to scare her, to teach her a lesson.
Those assurances didn’t help.
“What is the name of your vessel?” She managed to squeeze out that question between her frantic breathing.
By the deepening glower on the captain’s sun-bronzed skin, he wasn’t one who took well to being challenged.
“The Flying Dragon, and I am Nathaniel Ellsby, her captain.”
Her heartbeat thudded to a slow, sickening stop. “That is . . . different from the Waltzing Dragon.”
“Waltzing Dragon? That’s a bloody foolish name for a ship,” the Other Jeremy, Cook Jeremy, was saying. His words, however, droned on in her buzzing ears, every other one coming in and out of focus.
The Waltzing Dragon was decidedly different from the Flying Dragon. Which would also mean she’d landed herself on a boat filled with strangers. At that, ones who were angry-eyed, and who’d been not at all friendly. Her heart knocked wildly against her rib cage. She, a lone female without so much as a chaperone or a companion, had landed herself aboard the wrong boat. There was no angry Arran, just this furious stranger.
No. Not just a furious stranger. She looked to Not-Her-Jeremy and the captain.
Cassia’s eyes slid shut.
Ruined.
She would be completely ruined. But then, was there really anything other than complete ruination?
And her ruin would come only if she survived. If.
Her stomach churned, and not for the first time, it threatened to revolt. And this nausea, unlike all the times before, had nothing to do with the swaying boat and absolutely everything to do with the peril she found herself in.
Why . . . ? Why had she come up with this scheme?
Except, no, that wasn’t right. She knew precisely why she’d set out. To see the world. To see and experience something, anything other than the monotony of a tedious world she already knew, and one she’d remained invisible to. It had all sounded so exciting and glamorous when she’d crafted the plan in her head. She’d told herself Arran and Jeremy would keep her secret and protect her reputation. She’d let herself believe that no one would ever discover the adventure she’d gone on, and that even if they did, it wouldn’t matter because she’d already accepted she wasn’t going to marry and was destined to be an old-maid spinster. She had come to peace with that reality.
Or . . . she’d thought she had.
Only now, when fully confronted with the actual reality, with what she’d done and what her fate and future would be, were it discovered—when it was discovered—she realized she’d deluded herself.