Page 8 of Go, Rogue

Chapter

3

“CATTTTHHHHHEEEEERIIIINE!”

She startles awake. The dratted man is bellowing at her. Sure, she’s a stowaway aboard his ship, and she’s taken his cabin, a fact she presumes he hasn’t yet discovered. But there is still no cause for bellowing.

She has every right to be on this ship. She’s paid for it, after all. Or some of it, in any case.

Catherine rises from where she fitfully slept on his bed, another nugget of information he isn’t yet privy to, and looks askance at the gold glitter now spread out on his linens.

Nothing to be done about that now.

She’ll have a bath as soon as she speaks with him. She looks down at her bedraggled wedding gown, still damp and torn from last night’s storms. She’ll also change her clothes as soon as she can.

She hasn’t brought any others because there wasn’t time to retrieve them, but she’s sure there must be an extra set somewhere aboard.

She reaches behind her to tighten the stays she wiggled loose last night, only to find that stays are harder to re-tie than to loosen. Especially when one’s fingers are trembling with cold.

Drat.

She can still hear McGann causing a ruckus above deck. She ought to go and see the man before he alerts the whole Atlantic Ocean to her presence. Not that her fiancé—well, he isn’t that anymore, is he?—will mind.

She’d done the Honorable Henry Pembrooke quite the favor when she left him at the altar. Given some time to reflect, she’s certain he’ll see it that way as well. The man is deeply in love, and not with her.

And frankly, just because she’s his father’s choice—an earl’s daughter with a plentiful portion—she doesn’t think she’s ever been his. So, as far as she’s concerned, she’s given Pembrooke just the push he needs to go make his future his own.

Just as she’s done. Or she’s in the process of doing it, anyway.

She just needs to handle this immediate concern first. Not her former fiancé; her immediate concern is the ornery Scotsman still yelling at her from above deck.

She picks up her soiled, disheveled skirts and finds a coat in the wardrobe that she shrugs herself into. The warm wool is far too large for her—McGann is approximately the size of a mountain—which makes her, now that she thinks about it, the size of a molehill.

Not a flattering comparison.

She puts it out of her mind and straightens her shoulders in the oversized peacoat; she’ll just have to project larger than she is if she’s going to have the conversation with him that she needs to have.

Because Catherine West is staying on this ship whether Andrew McGann likes it or not. And all immediate evidence tells her he isn’t going to like it.

At least the woolen coat covers the loosened stays of her gown. And it envelops her in a warmth she’s grateful for. Along with a smell that she isn’t. His smell, that particular heady scent of pine and peat and rain and flowers that she wishes she didn’t immediately recognize with a jolt of electricity. But she does.

Not that it matters in the least. Andrew McGann has made his disinterest in her clear enough.

“CATHERIIIIINNNNNEEEEEEE!”

My goodness, does sound carry on a ship.

Or he’s just that loud. She supposes he probably has lungs larger than most men. He certainly has hands larger than most men. And forearms. And thighs.

Stop!

His thighs are none of her concern.

This is to be a business arrangement and nothing more.

She pins up her dirty, knotted, glittery hair into the best coiffure she can manage and examines her slippers. Originally made of a lovely, embroidered, white satin, they’re now ripped and muddied beyond repair.

Much like my reputation.