Page 2 of Miss Wylde and the Wynd

“So, no woman can be on one of your ships?”

“Not unless they are passengers such as you and your mother were.”

“Then why do you have a woman sailor?”

“We do not have any women sailors. Only men,” he insisted.

“Then where did she come from?” Olivia pointed to a sailor walking away from the Charlotte Rose, hat pulled down low on his head.

Damon was more concerned with why the sailor was leaving before all the cargo was unloaded than if the person was a woman, because he knew such was an impossibility.

“What makes you think that is a woman?” he asked to humor her.

“You can tell from the bum.”

Damian nearly dropped his spyglass. “What did you say?”

“The earl said that a woman cannot hide in a man’s clothes. All you have to do is look at the bottom.”

“He told you this?” Damian practically sputtered.

“He told momma. I just overheard him.”

He would need to tell Sterling to make certain that Livia was not about when he was having private conversations with his wife. “He liked my momma in trousers. He sketched it and I found it hanging in his dressing room.

Damian gaped at the child. “What were you doing in the earl’s dressing room?”

“I was looking for Momma.”

It was a reasonable explanation, he supposed.

“Momma found me there and then scolded the earl for putting the drawing where anyone could see, but he said that the only people who knew it was there were him and his valet, to which Momma said that it was one person too many and insisted that he take it down. The earl then told Momma that it was a reminder of the perfect day that they had climbed Table Mountain and she said that if he liked her in trousers so much that she would start wearing them. The earl liked that idea very much, but Momma just stomped off and said the earl was infuriating.”

Damian could only stare at Livia as she regaled him with what had transpired, and he was fairly certain that she hadn’t even stopped long enough to take a breath.

“Do you want to know how you can tell?” she asked innocently.

“Tell what?” he asked.

“If it is a woman,” Livia answered, her voice bordering on exasperation that one would associate with someone much older. “So, do you?”

Damian could form a guess but since he had never seen a woman in trousers, britches, or anything other than a skirt, or naked, he was not certain he would know, and he was not going to ask a child. However, he was nearly certain that the sailor Livia pointed to was no more than a lad of thirteen or so, slight and not quite fully matured. Likely a cabin boy or someone who was working his way up in rank to one day be an officer.

“A gently rounded bum,” she answered with confidence and a nod of her chin.

If Damian hadn’t been so shocked, he might have laughed.

Those were also words that Sterling would use and not a six-year-old girl.

“Just like that sailor.”

It was impossible that there had been a woman on one of his ships, but Damian lifted the spyglass to get a closer look so that he could point out to Livia where she was wrong.

“You cannot even see a bottom, not that I should be looking anyway.”

“Because she fixed her coat. I could see it when she bent over to pick up her valise and when she straightened, she tugged at the back of her coat to cover her bum.”

Damian focused on the sailor walking away, certain that it was a lad, whom he needed to identify and possibly sack for leaving before the cargo was unloaded.