Flawed, complex, beautiful, dangerously enigmatic. She was very much afraid that she was…Her lids drooped.
‘Clem!’ Nathan’s hand fell from her shoulder as she woke with a start. ‘Time to wake up, nearly five bells.’
Her neck had a crick in it and she felt hot and sweaty. ‘Oh.’ She stretched. ‘Have you been to bed?’
‘No, I slept for half an hour, drank my nice cold coffee and altered the chart.’ He jerked his head towards the privy door. ‘I’ve finished with the cupboard.’
Last night’s moment of vulnerability had gone. This morning Nathan was all business, making notes, sorting through the rolls of charts, his hands rock-steady. Clemence took herself off to the cupboard and emerged, ten minutes later, considerably more awake.
‘Nathan?’
‘Mmm?’
‘Did you know there are prisoners on board?’
‘No.’ He put down a pair of dividers and stared at her. ‘Where?’
‘Down on the orlop deck.’ She explained what she had heard and seen.
‘But McTiernan doesn’t take ordinary seamen, he slaughters the lot.’
‘I know. So why does he want these? And some of them may be from my father’s ship. I can’t leave them down there.’
‘Oh, yes, you can. Unless you want to join them, that is.’
‘Nathan, please.’ She dragged a chair up and sat down, knee to knee, her voice wheedling. ‘You can do something, surely?’
‘Don’t you dare try that wide-eyed stuff on me, Clem,’ he warned. ‘It irritates the hell out of me at the best of times and, just now, it’s damned dangerous.’
‘Sorry.’ She didn’t know what had come over her. Normally that sort of eyelash fluttering, Oh, Mr Stanier, you are wonderful, won’t you do it for me? irritated her, too, when she’d seen other young women trying it on men.
Clemence knew she was hopeless at flirting; she always had been, feeling a complete idiot making eyes at boys she’d known all her life and pretending to be five foot one and a fragile little bloom when she was nothing of the kind. Attempting to deploy her inept feminine wiles on Nathan Stanier was madness. Feeling as she did about him was even madder.
‘I’ll see what I can find out,’ he conceded. ‘Come on, breakfast time.’
Street was frying yams when they made their way to the galley, the savoury smell making Clemence’s mouth water with longing. Nathan raided the skillet of bacon, peering into the pots that bubbled, their contents sloshing back and forth with the motion of the ship as they slid between the restraining bars on the range.
‘That’s surely not our dinner, is it?’ He dipped a cautious finger into one pot.
‘Nah, that swill’s for the cargo.’ Street grinned.
‘You are not much concerned with keeping them alive, then?’ Nathan sucked his finger clean, grimacing.
‘Not what you’d call a high-value cargo, field hands,’ Street remarked. ‘But I keep them alive, as much as food and water will do.’
‘It’s slaves down there, then?’ Nathan queried, pouring himself thin ale and draining the tankard.
‘They will be, by the time we get them to St Martin. The French’ll buy anything, they’re that short since the Peace, what with the trade being outlawed.’
‘So captive merchant crews are sold to the French islands and just conveniently vanish into the upland plantations out of reach of any English help? Good business idea.’
Clemence was positively hissing with indignation by the time she and Nathan found a deserted piece of deck to lean against the rail and eat.
‘The bastard! I’d like to—’
‘Quiet! At least we know he wants them kept alive. If they’re worth money, they’ve a good chance of getting off this ship. I was worried he was keeping them for sport—shark bait or something.’ Nathan tossed a piece of bacon rind over the side as though to make his point.
‘What? He wouldn’t? Alive, you mean?’