A man could listen to that voice all day. Mellow and well-modulated, the tones rose and fell with a cadence oddly intense yet soothing. After a while, she grew a little hoarse, and he left the wheelhouse, where they sat for the sake of the sunshine and propriety, to make her tea from the stores he had always kept for Mr. Spraig, who abhorred coffee. She thanked him with a smile that melted something inside him he hadn’t realized was frozen, and continued to read the tender, mocking, and passionate verses.
Not until his stomach growled and the warmth of the day began to leach from the air did he realize how much time had passed—time without any sign of James Todd’s boat.
“I think,” he said when she paused to take a sip of tea, “we should go find some dinner.”
“It is rather late.” Her gaze flicked from the setting sun, to the empty river, and that vulnerable lower lip quivered. “The other boat hasn’t come.”
“No.”
“Why?” She slapped the book closed and flung it onto the bench. “Why? Why is God doing this to me—to us? I am certain you must be losing money on this, and Joanna will not wait for me forever.”
“I don’t know. I’m trying not to ask myself the same thing.” He rose and went to the wheel, staring out at the river shimmering and dark in the falling light. “I can’t say I chose an easy way of life on the river, but believing God was with me, taking care of me, loving me as my earthly father never did, hasn’t been hard. Until Ralph Spraig died. Since then, I can’t seem to succeed in any of my plans. First I had to find the money to buy out Spraig’s shares, then Lancaster decided the partnership should go. He said he’d get his way, but I never thought he would until now. The river would never be this empty except everyone is waiting in Albany for the canal to be officially opened all the way to Lake Erie. And I’m sitting here like a bird with a broken wing, while everything I’ve worked for disappears.” He gripped the wheel so hard the healing cut on his right hand opened and a trickle of blood ran warm over his fingers.
“And I have not worked for anything in my life.” She was there beside him, taking his hand in both of hers and pressing a lacy handkerchief, probably one of the few she owned, against his injured palm. She gazed up at him, her eyes luminous in the dusk. “I had everything and did not appreciate it. I thought it my due for being born a Renfrew. And now I have nothing. Worse than nothing, for if I lose the belief that God is in control of my life, I—well, what else is there in life?”
“We keep believing then, no matter what.” Her gentle touch, her honest words, calmed him, set a light, small but bright, glowing inside him. He raised his other hand to her cheek, marveled at its smoothness. “Thank you.”
“If I had not delayed you, you would not have encountered Lancaster and this would not have happened.”
“Maybe. Maybe not. I suspect he was lying in wait for me, and his boat is a side-wheeler. They go a bit faster through turns than this one can. Besides, I’m not sure I regret you being aboard.”
Her hands tightened on his. Her eyes widened, her lips parted. That lower lip so full, so soft, so kissable looking, puffed out in invitation.
He looked away and clasped his hands behind his back. “Let’s go get some supper.”
“I think perhaps we should.”
In silence, they descended to the cargo deck and back into town. In silence they found themselves at an inn where hot venison stew and crusty bread was served on long tables full of other people. They sat across from one another and avoided one another’s eyes. When they both reached for bread at the same time, their eyes met and held, and Nathaniel admitted to himself that he hoped she was forced to find work in Albany, not in the western territories. He could see her then, court her properly.
And torture himself with the fact he had no future to offer a female if the partnership died.
He returned to food that tasted like charcoal. He finished it because he needed the nourishment. Across from him, Miss Renfrew seemed to be doing the same thing—choking down her last bite. He rose and removed her cloak from a hook on the wall. Ralph Spraig had always held his wife’s cloak for her. Nathaniel did the same for the sort of woman he would have chosen for a wife and allowed his hands to rest on her thin shoulders for just a moment longer than necessary.
She tilted her head back and smiled at him. “Thank you.”
If they had been alone in that moment, he would have done something really stupid like kiss her. Instead, he released her and strode away, waiting only long enough to hold the door for her. He didn’t offer her his arm on the way back to the boat. On the cabin deck, he wished her a brusque “Good night,” and closed his cabin door before she reached her own.
He leaned against it, his fingers shoved into his hair. What was God doing to him? Giving or taking? He had known the lady for little more than a day, yes, a twenty-four-hour period in which they had spent more time in one another’s company than not, but still, too short to feel this longing to turn twenty-four hours into twenty-four days and twenty-four months and—
The blast of a steam whistle was beautiful music to his ears. He charged to the cargo deck in time to see a boat docking nearby. In moments, he was at the other gangway, one thought in his head—get the paddles replaced so he could be on his way and rid himself of foolish dreams that could never be.
His adage remained true—females were nothing but trouble aboard.
A crewman directed him to the boat’s captain, not a man he knew. “How are things upriver?”
“Too crowded for me. Can’t get a mooring to save your life.”
They talked over coffee and negotiated the price for one paddle. “All I can spare.”
“It’s a start.”
Despite a nearly full moon, he couldn’t work on the wheel in the dark, so he returned to his cabin, noted a light under Miss Renfrew’s door, but forced himself to close his own. He had enjoyed less than two hours of sleep in the past forty hours and needed to rest while he could. Sleep would clear his head of ridiculous heart notions.
But in the morning, when he came face-to-face with the lady, he knew the sleep had done nothing but emphasize his attraction to her, especially when she gave him a tremulous smile and peeked at him from beneath her lashes.
“Did the boat that came in last night have any paddles?” she asked.
“Just one. I’ll get to work on it as soon as I get some breakfast. Have you eaten?”
“Billy made me some tea.”
“He’s more of a gentleman than I sometimes. Shall we?” He held out his hand without thinking.
She took it and he tucked her fingers into the crook of his arm. “So Albany is overcrowded with boats, I learned. I expect by tomorrow, the river will be teeming with boats coming down while we’re still heading up.”
“I wonder where Mr. Lancaster is.” Her fingers were tense on his arm.
“Causing more trouble, no doubt.”
“Do we have to make more stops along the way?”
Too much he liked her use of “we.”
“Just one. Poughkeepsie.” They reached the inn, and he held the door open for her. “I’ve cargo to unlade and fuel to take on.”
For a female who had been brought up to dine in the finest houses in England, she slid onto the bench as though she had done that all her life. “Why fuel?”
“It’s cheaper than buying it in the city, and I can carry more cargo if I don’t take all the fuel I need at once.”
“Well, then, how can we make this go faster? If you have the Poughkeepsie cargo—that’s a rather odd name, you know—if that cargo is sorted ahead of time—”
So while he, Billy, and two other crewmen worked on replacing the paddle called a bucket for its scoop shape, she directed two other crewmen in organizing the cargo. Though he concentrated on the precarious work of affixing a new paddle securely to the frame, part of him listened for her voice, commanding without being strident, insistent without being shrewish, calling to him, calling, calling, calling.
They finished installing the paddle. Nathaniel cleaned up, donning a fresh shirt, and went to find her. He found her nearly upside down trying to read the label on a crate someone had set down facing inward.
“You should get the men to move that for you.”
She jumped, banging her head on another box. “Ow.” She dropped to her knees on the deck and pressed her hand to the top of her head.
“Are you all right? Let me see.” He crouched before her and tugged her hand away from the injury. “Looks like you’re going to have a goose egg, but no skin’s broken.” He tilted her chin up. “Can you see one or two of me?”
“No concussion then. But maybe you should go lie down.”
“No, I am all right. It just hurts some.”
He leaned forward and kissed the swelling bruise, then started back as though burned.
She gazed up at him with her big cat eyes full of confusion.
He wished he were confused. He wished too clearly he didn’t realize that if one could fall head over heels in love in two days, he had done just that.