The Madman's Daughter (The Madman's Daughter 1)

“The monkey,” I said, getting irritated. “It weighs too little to do any damage. The laws of physics—”

“Physics! Devil take you, lass! I’ll shoot the wretch down myself. And you, too, if you don’t mind your own business!”

I wasn’t used to being threatened by a bony drunkard, and it didn’t sit well with me. Anger stirred deep in my bones. At just sixteen, I had already had a lifetime’s experience with men like him. The last one ended up without use of his hand. The river of anger flowed from my capillaries into veins and straight to my heart, lodging there like a hardened bit of glass. Before I knew what I was doing, I’d brought my palm across his face.

The crew went silent. The captain touched his cheek, blinked twice, then stumbled toward me with black rage. Suddenly Montgomery was beside me. He snatched my hand and tucked the rifle under his arm.

“Is there a problem, Captain?” he growled. In an instant Montgomery had turned into a hulking animal, powerful and dangerous.

The captain’s bloodshot eyes steadied on the rifle. Montgomery casually adjusted it so it pointed at his gut. The captain hesitated, then spit a thin mess of tobacco a few inches from Montgomery’s feet. “Keep your little bobtail below where she belongs.”

I gasped at the insult, but Montgomery squeezed my hand so hard I couldn’t think of anything else. “Our apologies for the disruption,” he said, his blue eyes cold. “It won’t happen again.” He pulled me to the side, where I leaned against the rail, shaking with anger.

“Did you hear what he called me?” I said, face burning.

“He’s a liar and a drunk, so what he says is of no consequence to us.” His hand tightened over mine. “I’m less concerned with your reputation than your safety. Men like him are dangerous. He may be checked by Balthasar’s size and by my rifle, but he could do anything to us out here, Juliet, and no one would know.”

His large fingers swallowed my own. He could have let go, for we were quite safe now.

But he did not.

I cleared my throat. His presence had a way of making my anger dissipate, but in return it set loose a swell of other feelings. “I should thank you, then.” I didn’t know exactly what to do with myself. What to say.

He still didn’t let go of my hand. He took a step closer, interlacing his fingers in my own. I swallowed the nervous jitters rising in my throat.

“I suppose I’ve made this voyage very difficult for you,” I said. My voice shook, but the thought of silence was more frightening.

“As I said, I’m glad you came.” His eyes held mine, leaving little doubt as to his meaning. Montgomery wasn’t one for games.

My corset felt even more constricting than usual. I wanted to rip the stays apart and fill my burning lungs with air. His touch was thrilling. His whispered words, I’m glad you came, turned my insides molten. Emotions were a puzzle, something to be studied and fitted together carefully. But the edges of this puzzle didn’t fit within the lines I knew. I focused on the loose white thread on his cuff rather than on our intertwined hands.

“I’ve thought of you over the years, Juliet,” he said, his voice low as he brushed a blowing strand of hair out of my face. “More than I should.”

Juliet, he’d called me. He’d dropped the pretense of using my surname. I studied the waves beyond our hands, trying to work out the equation of my emotions. Since I’d seen him again, in that room at the Blue Boar Inn, there’d been a tightness inside my chest whenever he was around, like string lashed round my heart. I felt it tug at his little gestures that brought me back to our childhood. I felt it at his kindness to Balthasar. At the way circumstances had forced him to grown up too quickly. At the way he made me feel safe, for the first time in years, and yet passionately alive. It was something I could never have felt with Adam or any of those silly boys.

The waves’ caps blurred into a dizzying blue mass. I felt myself swaying and gripped the rail. My corset was bound too tightly. Blood wasn’t flowing to my brain. I didn’t know how to process these feelings. Safety. Warmth. Affection—God, I wasn’t a little girl anymore—maybe it was more than just affection.

I pressed my fingers against my eyes and looked back at the waves. A strange sight: a dark mass against the sea. I blinked to clear my head.

A hundred feet away from us a battered dinghy bobbed, half sunk. I squeezed my eyes shut.

“Juliet, are you all right? Did you hear what I said?”

But when I opened my eyes again, I saw that the dinghy was real.

So was the hunched body inside.

Eight

“CAPTAIN! THERE’S A MAN adrift,” Montgomery yelled. I dug my fingers into the chipped rail. The dinghy was quickly taking on water, sinking lower and lower.

“Could he be alive?” I gasped.

“Doubtful. Must have been drifting for days. We’ve been at sea nine weeks and haven’t seen another ship.”

The captain shuffled over, cursing loudly, and shoved me aside as he peered over the rail. “Bloody devil,” he muttered, and signaled to the first mate. “Turn us alongside her!”

A red-nosed young deckhand helped Montgomery lower some line, hand over hand, so fast that watching made me dizzy. As the ship swung to aft, the sinking dinghy drew closer until it knocked against the hull. The waterlogged body lay curled in the bottom, a hideous display. The tatters of a coat, bleached and salt-stained, covered his upper half. Torn trousers ended midcalf over bare feet that were scarcely more than bones. What would we find under the clothes? A bloated corpse? Bleached bones scoured clean by salt and sand? I found myself leaning dangerously far over the rail.

“Larsen, you’re lightest,” Montgomery said. The deckhand swung a leg over the side and disappeared. I waited tensely with the group of sailors. Even the monkey watched. A cloud passed overhead, stealing our sunlight. A few fat raindrops fell on my face.

Suddenly, a rough hand took my wrist and pulled me away. Balthasar. He led me to the sheepdog’s cage, where we could watch from a distance, sheltering us from the coming rain with a canvas cloth.

“Thank you,” I muttered, hugging my arms, though I still wanted to be watching from up close.

“Montgomery says a lady must be protected.”

I looked at him askance. If Montgomery and Balthasar thought I’d never seen a gruesome image before, they were mistaken. I wasn’t that kind of lady. I started to say as much, but Balthasar seemed proud, as if he was protecting a proper young woman, so I kept my mouth shut.