“May I not stay here?” She would feel more secure where she could still see land.
“Well…” The first officer looked uncomfortable. “The captain gave direct orders.”
“Where is he? Perhaps I could speak to him and ask permission to stay.”
“On the quarterdeck, ma’am, but I’m afraid he’s busy at the moment. There was a problem with a tackle…”
Wondering where the quarterdeck was, Selena glanced about the schooner. Only the scents of tar and brine were familiar to her. She was standing at the bottom of a seemingly confused tangle of ropes, cables and spars, while far above her head the great masts swayed in gentle rhythm against the clouds. The ship creaked and groaned alarmingly at the motion, and Selena was hard-pressed to refrain from turning around and fleeing back to shore.
She didn’t see Kyle, but it was not, Selena decided, noting the intense activity on board, an appropriate time to importune him. All around her, men scurried purposefully over the polished decks, seeing to the provisions—crates filled with chickens and barrels of salt beef and fish. Above, among the forest of masts and canvas, sailors swung from yard to yard, checking lines and raising sails.
At any event, her request to stay here would surely seem like cowardice to Kyle. He wouldn’t understand her fear of ships.
So she allowed Mr. Hardwick to escort below. As they negotiated a steep flight of steps he called the companionway stairs, Hardwick offered to take the parrot’s cage. Selena declined, though, feeling the need to cling to something familiar, even if it was only a bird.
She was given Hardwick’s own cabin. When she asked in surprise if she wouldn’t be displacing him, Hardwick, looking uncomfortable again, informed her that he would be bunking with the captain. The flush on his cheeks told Selena quite well that he thought the arrangements strange. Although it was quite common for married couples of means to sleep apart, this was stretching matters too far.
Yet Hardwick was obviously too well-bred to comment on it and too experienced a seaman to question his captain’s orders. At his awkward explanation, Selena felt a flush rise to her own cheeks. It was mortifying, this public acknowledgment of their troubled marriage.
But she stiffened her spine and handed Mr. Hardwick the governor’s documents. “Will you please give these to Captain Ramsey? And would you… ask him if I might speak to him—when it is convenient?”
Hardwick murmured an agreement and, with another brief bow, hastened from the cabin, closing the door behind him. Alone, Selena glanced about her warily.
There was a bed, she saw, built against one paneled wall, as well as a line of pegs for hanging clothes. Along another wall was a washstand with a commode and basin and a shelf that held a large lantern.
Selena hung Horatio’s cage on a peg and pulled off the covering. He blinked and ruffled his feathers. “How do you do? How do you do? Awk!”
“Not very well, I fear,” she answered with a rueful smile.
It was quite warm in the cabin, so she shrugged out of her pelisse. She glanced into the dark companionway, then went to the porthole window. From there, she could at least view part of the island. For a moment she watched a tern that was scooping up small fish from the bay. She tensed when there was a quick rap on the door.
It wasn’t Kyle. Swallowing disappointment and frustration, Selena stood aside as her trunks were delivered by the giant she recognized as Tiny, then returned to the window seat. A few minutes later, she heard the creak of timber and mooring cables and the snapping of sails as they caught the wind. Selena tensed again as she felt the ship begin to move, clenching her fingers around the edge of the porthole.
She wanted Kyle, she realized with a vague sense of surprise. She wanted him to put his arms around her and calm her fears. Yet he was unlikely to offer her the comfort she yearned for. Or even companionship. This was her wedding night, but she would spend it alone.
It seemed like an eternity before Kyle finally came. He had changed out of his formal attire, she saw when she opened the door at his knock. He wore breeches and knee-high boots and a collarless shirt that was open at the neck, showing the corded muscles of his throat and a glimpse of his powerful chest. His sheer size and vitality made the cabin appear even smaller as he strode in.
“What are you doing down here in the dark?” he asked at once. “You should have had Hardwick light the lantern. I’ll do it—”
“No, please…I would prefer not to stay here.”
Kyle’s grim expression as he met her gaze boded ill. There was no trace of the momentary warmth or amusement she had observed earlier in the afternoon. “I would prefer not to have women on board my ship, either, yet I had little choice in the matter.”
Selena’s heart sank at his uncompromising antagonism.
When she remained silent, Kyle took the offensive. “I expect you aren’t satisfied with the sleeping arrangements, but this is not a passenger vessel. I conduct most of my business in my cabin, and I don’t see a reason to change it for the short time it will take us to make New Orleans.” He had a much more pressing reason, of course; there was no way he could share a cabin with his lovely bride and still keep to his vow to maintain his distance. But he wasn’t going to explain that to Selena.
Even in the dim light, though, Kyle could see the wounded look in her eyes. His jaw hardened in annoyance at the guilt he felt. “Don’t you have anything to say, Miss Markham?”
Selena took a deep breath. “I don’t… care for ships.”
Kyle raised his eyes to the ceiling. “Why doesn’t that surprise me?” he asked in a sardonic undertone. “We’ve yet to agree on much.”
; “They frighten me, if you must know. My father’s ship went down in a storm.”
That made him pause. “I’m sorry,” he said finally.