Page 15 of Go, Rogue

Chapter

6

That goddamn wee bloody menace.

He’s hard as a rock inside his trousers. He spanked her for Christ’s sake. Andrew McGann, bastard Scotsman in every sense of the word, spanked the daughter of an English earl. On the rear.

And she liked it.

He could tell because the heat was rolling off her in waves, despite the cold December day. And how she baited him into doing it again, despite their circumstances. It’s absurd. The whole thing is absurd. Yet here she is, aboard The Elphame, making him absurd too.

What in bloody hell am I to do now?

The obvious, he supposes. Give the lass some clothes. Find her some shoes. She can’t very well go about barefoot in this weather.

If her feet get wet, which they of a certainty will, she’s more likely to freeze to death than make it to Boston. He can’t have that—the thought of something happening to her making him angry. As angry as when he first met her in that alleyway six months ago: the carnage of a carriage crash all around her and the coins in her reticule clanking together loudly enough to attract the attention of every ne’er-do-well in Covent Garden.

Menace.

She’s going to be the death of him one way or the other.

He stops by his former cabin on the way aft to the upper deck to gather what she might need. And to give himself a few moments alone to calm himself. He can’t very well walk around with a cockstand, can he?

But there’s no time to take himself in hand as he might want to. As he definitely wants to. So, he wills his excitement away instead.

He thinks of England. When that fails, he thinks of Barclay. The image of his arsehole half-brother is more than enough to settle him down. And thank Elphame, too, because he has work to do today. There is no free ride on a sailing ship, not for the captain, anyway. Nor for any member of the crew.

He rummages in his wardrobe and his trunk and finds the smallest pair of trousers he has, along with a linen shirt. His clothes won’t fit her. They won’t come within a nautical mile of fitting her, but it’s the best he can do. Did she think there would be a wardrobe full of ladies’ clothes just waiting for her aboard his ship?

Spoiled lass probably did. Menace. He shakes his head.

He could ask one of the crew or, Elphame help him, the cabin boy to give up their own clothes, but he won’t. Even if they have shirts to spare, which he doubts, he’s not going to inconvenience them for her lack of planning.

His clothes will do fine.

Ten days will be fine.

It will all be bloody fine. It’s less than a fortnight!

And then—what in hell will he do with her then? She said she was going to become a Yankee, but he can’t just leave her alone in Boston unattended. The woman is a goddamned beacon for danger.

And she said she was his investor! Whatever in hell she meant by that.

She’s not his investor. Crawford’s family is.

Although… she’s Crawford’s family too now, isn’t she? She’s Violet’s cousin. Hell’s teeth, Crawford must be worried sick at her disappearance. And Violet even more so.

A slow smile spreads across his face as realization dawns. Catherine is Crawford’s family by marriage. She’s Crawford’s responsibility, not his. All he has to do is send a message to the man as soon as they reach port and put her on a return ship to England.

Where she bloody belongs.

And then he can go about his business. He’s got a hold full of whisky that needs to be sold to keep his sister’s tavern afloat. And then he needs to load that same hold full of goods from the Americas to be traded back in England. His and Crawford’s livelihoods, and Esmee’s too, depend on a successful first voyage of The Elphame.

He can’t lose his way because of a wayward Sassenach aristocrat. And now he won’t, because he has a solution. One that will work if he stays as far away from her as possible until they reach Boston. She’s not going to like that, though. He knows she won’t. She’s going to fight him every step of the way.

McGann sighs. It would be so much easier to do what needs to be done without her aboard. But easy is not his lot in life, not for a bastard like himself. Easy is for the bloody peerage and the arseheaded Sassenachs. For his father and his brother and Lady Catherine West; they get easy choices, good choices. But never him.

What he has instead is patience and planning. And he knows he’s going to have to use both over the next ten days to get the lass off his ship and out of his life.