Page 59 of Go, Rogue

Chapter

23

Catherine falls back asleep, her body sated and boneless, with McGann’s arms wrapped around her. She’s enveloped in his warmth and his safety and his smell. That hint of floral, whatever it is. She turns over and buries her face in his chest, breathing him in.

When she awakes again, it’s to his voice murmuring, “Good morning,” in a way that’s low and sleepy and sets her insides aflame once more. She wants to wake every morning like this, with her limbs wrapped around him and her face cradled in the curve of his neck.

It stuns her for a moment as her mind clears the sleep away, to realize how close she’s come to living a life without these feelings of warmth and desire and satisfaction. Had she married Pembrooke, she thinks with a jolt that nearly sends her tumbling out of bed, she would never have known desire at all. She would have never known him.

Good heavens.

But she didn’t marry Pembrooke, she reminds herself, which soothes her; lets her melt into his body once again and relax.

She’s Eve with her apple, Pandora with her box, and the cat with its cream all at once; let in on some cosmic secret and finding it delicious. She brushes her thumb across his nipple just to hear him groan.

“Menace,” he mutters, but his arms tighten around her all the same. “What are you doing?”

She lifts her head from where she’s buried it in his neck. “Exploring.” She grins at him. “Would you like me to stop?”

“Nay,” he says and groans again as she begins to kiss his neck. “Nay, but I’ve got to—”

“Captain!” The knock on the door is insistent and loud, cutting through his words. “Captain! It’s an emergency!”

“Aye!” he calls roughly. “I heard ye the first time!”

She feels the loss of him when he pulls away from her and struggles back into his shirt and trousers, a chill where his heat had just been.

“You’ll be the death of me, lass,” he whispers before he presses his forehead against hers and kisses her. “Promise me you’ll stay put?”

“Andrew,” she begins but is cut off by the shout, “Sail ho! Off the port bow! Bearing down fast!”

“Bloody hell!”

And then the door slams behind him and she’s all alone.

She rises, listening to the sounds on the deck above her. Boots thumping. Men yelling. Some dratted whistle blowing and blowing. She doesn’t know what it indicates, but she knows it isn’t good. Worse possibly than the fires from the rushing cadence of footsteps.

What could it—oh!

She’d read that book on naval warfare while she’d been stuck in this room. Before she’d known how marvelous it could be to be stuck in this room.

She knows what that whistle means. It means piracy.

She dresses quickly, re-binding her breasts and slipping on her new, mostly leather shoes. She feels her head where her bandages are. Her skull is still tender and bruised but it’s better. And she’ll be more careful this time.

She pats the pocket that still holds the key. Whatever is happening outside of this room, she’ll protect herself and Andrew McGann however she can. She isn’t certain, of course, that it’s the key they’re after, but she has her suspicions: the navigation errors to draw McGann away while the fires were laid; the knock on her head and her removal from their cabin so it could be searched; her nose and throat irritated by the fires she must have been near before she was dumped in the hold. And most of all, the way McGann’s skin had gone gray when she’d mentioned the key.

And—

She glances around the space. It’s off. She’d had a vague notion of something amiss yesterday when she noticed the Robert Burns book of poetry she’d been reading had been moved from where she’d left it on the nightstand. McGann could have easily put it back, but somehow she doesn’t think he has. She looks around again and, now that her face isn’t pressed into his chest, really examines the space.

The bookshelves don’t seem quite right. Nor does his desktop. Both give her the feeling they’ve been shuffled around slightly. The thought of it sends a spasm of worry up her spine. The cabin—their shared space—has been invaded by someone else. She knows it; she can feel it.

She goes to the desk first and opens the drawers, one after the other. As she suspected, the neat stacks of McGann’s belongings have been rifled through. The edges are sloppy and misaligned, completely unlike the precision she encountered the first time she opened those drawers searching for a needle and thread.

Then she turns her attention to the bookshelf. There, the even rows of books are almost as she left them, except that the spines are no longer perfectly aligned. And the volume of Robert Burns’ poetry she was reading before has been reshelved in the wrong place. Not on the top shelf where she’d retrieved it from, where McGann keeps his novels and poetry. And his secret keys.

No, the Burns volume is now on the bottom row with the books on naval warfare and tactics. As if someone tried to reset the room to rights quickly and not paid attention to where things properly went.