The Captain of All Pleasures (Sutherland Brothers #1) Page 26

Abruptly, Chancey stood. “I’m gonna confront him today.”

She exhaled loudly and reached for a small branch of table grapes. “We’ve been over this. The last time someone ‘confronted’ Sutherland, he landed in jail indefinitely!” With effort, she softened her tone. “I can’t risk losing you, too, even if you are miserable. And think about it—we’re safe here. This is the last place Sutherland would ever look.”

“I’m not hidin’ any longer. And he needs to pay for yer hurt honor.”

“My hurt honor?” she cried. She looked around the room and dropped her voice. “One more time—I was not compromised. Even if I were, would you see me leg-shackled to a wastrel forever?”

He bunched his lips together and contemplated the ceiling before answering in a definite tone. “No, ye’ll marry like ye promised yer gram.”

“Exactly.” Would he finally cooperate?

“Still don’t like not tellin’ yer pa .”

They continually fought about the decision not to tell her father what had happened on Sutherland’s ship. She’d ultimately persuaded him that her father would go mad not being able to get at Sutherland. And what if he did catch up with him in the future? They’d kill each other this time.

They had enough problems with that man as it was. He’d already been furious with her before he’d been knocked out, because he presumed she’d not only want to marry him, but would scheme to do so. The arrogance! She wanted to pull his ear to her lips and scream that hell would freeze over before she married him, and that Chancey had only been protecting her. As Chancey said, they’d merely “bonked his head and tweaked his nose.” It wasn’t as if they’d killed him.

Yet because of him, they’d gone to ground in, well, Mayfair. Even visiting her father became a concerted effort, since Sutherland’s crew regularly checked the jail for her.

She was furious with Sutherland. So why did their time together remain constantly in her mind and plague her nights?

In his bumbling way, Chancey had tried to get her to stop dwelling on the man. What he told her chilled her to the core. She’d known Sutherland was a rake, but she’d thought the way he’d kissed and touched her so intimately had been special.

For him, what they’d shared was a nightly occurrence. She’d been just another notch in a rake’s bedpost .

Her thoughts were interrupted when Chapman knocked on the parlor door. He looked apologetic as he said, “Your grandmother would like to know why you ordered a carriage brought around to the front.”

“I’m about to go see my father.”

Chapman nodded gravely. “If that was your answer, I am to instruct you to order the carriage to the mews instead.”

Nicole crossed her eyes, and Chapman immediately had to cough.

“Tell her I will next time. And thank you,” she called as he exited the room. She began to fuss with the costly veil she wore when she visited her father. None of Sutherland’s hirelings would ever think the regally gowned woman arriving at the jail was Nicole.

“Listen, Chancey—”

“Christina Banning!” her grandmother shouted from the door, her black skirts rustling to a stop. Anger radiated from her, and though she was a small woman, she seemed to fill the doorway.

“My name is Nicole Lassiter.” They’d been through this moniker skirmish a hundred times already. Her grandmother wanted Nicole to use her middle name and her mother’s maiden name, so no one could connect Jason Lassiter’s sailing daughter with Evelyn Banning’s granddaughter until after she was safely married.

The old woman narrowed her eyes; Nicole knew the battle was on. Strangely, she was coming to look forward to these willful contests between them.

“If you can’t abide by my rules, then don’t bother coming back to marry because no one will have you. If they found out who you are, it won’t matter that you’re pretty or dowered—no man of consequence will take a woman with your history to wife.”

“Do you really think I’m pretty?” Nicole simpered with what she knew was an irritating smile.

Her grandmother ignored her. “It simply can’t be known. I’ve worked for two decades to hide your wayward life. Nicole Lassiter is a sailor—in my residence you are Christina Banning.”

They argued back and forth for several minutes, until the dowager said, “Mark my words, child. I’m not doing this for me—I’m doing this for you! You do not want to enter my world with one hand tied behind your back.” With a glare at Chancey, she swept out of the room.

He shook his head, his eyes wide. “Like I always said about ye—ye got more pluck than sense. She’s a terror, that one.”

Chancey was miserable here at Atworth House under the dowager’s constant censure. Between that and his agreement to keep a secret from her father, which he didn’t differentiate much from lying, he appeared near his breaking point. She arrived at her own breaking point that afternoon when they visited her father. It began when he told her he wouldn’t be released in time for the race.

“So the Bella Nicola ’s sitting idle in the greatest race ever?” The thought made her feel like crying. She glanced from one man to the other. She noted Chancey was about to buckle the small stool he covered.

Chancey cast an anxious look at her father before meeting her gaze again. “No, we’ve decided I’m goin’ to sail the race without Jason. Yer father’s worked too hard for this line to have it die for naught. I’ll captain the ship.”

Nicole eyed him. “You don’t have papers.” Chancey was a born seaman, but he wasn’t certified as a captain because he couldn’t read or navigate.

“I’ve got experience with the ship, and I’ll find somebody to help me with my shortcomin’s.”

“Like me.” She spoke arrogantly, as though it were a foregone conclusion.

Lassiter spoke up. “Forget it, Nicole.”

“Then who will navigate?” she asked in exasperation.

Silence from both.

“Who?”

“Chancey and I have thought about it—Dennis will have to do.”

“Dennis!” she exclaimed, picturing the carefree helmsman of their ship. “You can’t be serious. He better have improved since I’ve been away, or the ship’s driftwood. Surely there’s someone else—someone from one of our other crews?”

Lassiter stood and paced. “No, all our ships are at sea. And any navigator worth his salt around here is already engaged.”

“Father, you know I’m better than Dennis.”

“No doubt of it.”

“Then why not me?”

“Because you’re my daughter, and these are the most dangerous seas on earth!”

“But, Father ” Even after her pleading progressed into threatening, neither man could be moved. She was to stay with her grandmother while Chancey and the crew made way.

“You’re absolutely holding firm?”

He pressed his lips together. “I absolutely am.”

She didn’t know whether to cry or howl in her frustration. He could not be swayed. For someone used to getting her own way, it seemed as if the whole world had teamed to thwart her.