Page 16 of Go, Rogue

And whatever happens to her when he puts her on a return ship back to England, well, that’s her problem, isn’t it? He didn’t ask her to show up here, dynamiting her marriage and social standing and family and whatever other asinine values she holds dear. That’s her doing and hers alone.

Although—and he has to work hard to suppress the smile that arises from his next thought—the mayhem that must have erupted in the church when they found her missing would have been a sight to behold. A magnificent thumb in the air to the peerage.

Wee bloody menace.

He pushes the smile away and is making his way back up to the main deck when he hears the faint, tinkling sound of her laughter. And then the deep guffawing of his crew. He doubles his pace, racing up the remaining ladder treads and back on deck to look for her. It doesn’t take long to find her.

Jesus wept, lass.

She’s standing barefoot among the rigging blocks, asking questions about sailing that Rogers is happily answering while the crew parades back and forth in front of her. Showing off like a pack of giggling schoolboys. McGann watches for an amazed moment, his ragtag crew of hardened men may as well be in leading strings for all the discipline they’re showing.

They don’t mind a damned woman on board after all.

Not that he can blame them. He only needs one look at her to know how they became a gaggle of foolishness. Somehow, the torn and tattered dress and the disheveled golden hair glinting in the sun, combined with her bare feet and straight back and wide blue eyes make her look less like a woman than a goddess.

Like Elphame herself, alighting on the prow of her namesake ship to wreak havoc on mere mortal men. It makes no sense, but there it is. He wonders if anything about her will ever make sense.

“Enough!” he calls out. At this rate, they’ll never make it to Boston.

“Hoist the sails, men. And you,” he says to Catherine, “come with me.”

She gives him the barest curtsey and an, “At your command, Captain,” before she faces him with a smile of such genuine, radiant delight that he damn near trips over his own feet.

He blinks, as if he’s looked directly into the sun. But he recovers quickly enough, growls an, “Aye” at her, and turns to lead her below deck.

Catherine follows McGann’s broad back down the ladder and through the passageway to his cabin. Her cabin now.

He’s taut as a bowstring. She can see the tension in the line of his spine and hear it in the quick snap of his boots against the planks beneath their feet.

“Are you alright?” she calls as she follows his huge frame below deck via a ladder she hasn’t seen before.

“Aye.”

“I know you’re angry with me, but I can explain if you’ll give me a moment.”

“Nay,” he says. “I doubt you could explain, Menace. Because there is no rational explanation for your presence aboard my ship!”

“Don’t yell at me,” she says as he flicks open the door to his cabin and stomps inside.

“I am not yelling!”

“You are.” She steps toward him and points her finger at his massive chest. “And I won’t have it. As your investor, I have a place on this ship whether you like it or not. I understand the rules, and you are the one who is being irrational.”

“You,” he brushes her finger out of the way, “understand nothing. You threw money at me once, in your little lady’s tantrum, but that’s no more investing than pissing into the wind is a thunderstorm.”

She pauses and raises an eyebrow. No man has ever said the word “piss” to her before. But she is a woman of business now, aboard a sailing ship. She ought to become used to a certain level of vulgarity.

“I am sorry about that,” she says. “It wasn’t right of me. It was, well. I’d had a bad day, and it doesn’t excuse my behavior, but I apologize for it.”

She pauses and looks at him, waiting.

“I don’t need your apology,” he grumbles. “Not then. Not now.”

“Have it your way,” she says. “But make no mistake, Captain McGann, it was me who gave you the funds for this ship. The money that was delivered to you once a month by a different courier, all business conducted without faces and names and under the auspices of an anonymous man of affairs? Me. The first investments you had in this shipping and trading endeavor? Also me. A modest sum to be sure, but, to my understanding, all you had at the time.”

She cocks her head and stares at him, curious. “Where did you think it came from? Or does money typically fall from the sky and land in your lap such that the arrangements I made don’t seem at all strange to you?”

He turns away from her then, not answering that.