No one had comforted Camilla like this since Papa died and Mama had held her while she wept. Marcus had been off losing his fortune when Mama gave up on life without Papa. But this sometimes brusque and always kind stranger, whose coat smelled of leather, woodsmoke, and some of those spices he carried, whose speech was common and whose livelihood bore no resemblance to the gentility of the sort of persons with whom she had always associated, curved his big hand around the back of her neck, his arm around her shoulders, and held her. He held her until she managed to get her bout of weakness under control. He held her even after the sobs subsided and her breathing returned to normal. He held her when she wanted to run and hide from the sheer mortification of him holding her. Wanted to, but remained motionless, preferring the comfort of being cared for by another person.
Then the creak of the pilothouse steps drew her attention to the silence of the boat with the engine shut down, the paddle wheel still. Everyone on board must have heard her sobs. Anyone around could see her in Captain Black’s arms.
Perhaps she could crawl into the space that housed the rest of the wheel and hide there for about fifty years. Her mortification might subside by then.
She drew away and pulled a corner of her shawl over her face. “I am so sorry. I do not know what came over me.”
“Don’t you?” Black tucked his hand under her chin and tipped her face up. The kindness in his eyes nearly set her off again. “You set your heart on getting to Albany, and now it doesn’t look like that will happen.”
“It is more than my heart.” She glanced at the steps in time to see Billy backing down the steps. “It’s my future. Even after my brother started running through the family wealth, Mama kept saying the Lord would provide. But it seems like he’s taken more than he’s given, and my faith is wearing thin.”
He pulled a strand of now damp hair off her cheek and smoothed it behind her ear. “I wish I could say I didn’t understand, but I do. This little trick of Lancaster’s may have scuttled both our plans.”
“Then what does a body do? I mean, I wasn’t raised to take care of myself, to be honest.”
He smiled. “Seems to me like you’re doing all right at it. Or are English ladies of the manor taught to leap onto moving boats to get their way?”
“Walking into Almack’s was worse, believe me.”
“Almack’s?”
“The highest-priced market for wives in my . . . er . . . former social sphere.”
“But you survived, and you will. You don’t know that your friend won’t be in Albany, or that another boat won’t come this way in time to get you to Albany by tomorrow.”
“Won’t that need to be soon?”
“Within the next three to six hours, I expect.” A cloud dimmed the bright green of his eyes. “And if one doesn’t, we have to keep believing even when our faith turns as thin as river mist.”
“Why, Captain, that is downright poetic.”
He grinned, though a faint flush rose under his sun-darkened skin. “I, uh, might have left home at fourteen, but I do still read. Sometimes there’s not much to do aboard a boat. And speaking of not much to do, I think I should take you ashore.”
“Will we not miss a boat if it comes?”
“We’ll hear its whistle and get back in time.”
“I look rather disreputable.”
“Go wash your face, and you’ll do just fine.”
She wouldn’t. She didn’t need to see her reflection to know her eyes were puffy, her gown hopeless, and that uncovered head. But she washed her face and donned the crumpled cloak so she could pull the hood up in lieu of a hat.
She never should have worn her hat in the rain, but her valise was full to bursting, and she simply could not go about without something on her head. It was her last vestige of a claim to being a lady.
And now it was gone along with her social standing. She was going ashore with a riverboat captain as her escort, and looking forward to doing so. “You need not accompany me. I am quite certain you have work to do.”
“And I’m just as certain that I don’t.” His voice was tight, a little hard. “I can’t repair my boat without the right parts. My paperwork is complete. And if I stay here, I just might think up ways to scuttle Riley Lancaster.” They reached the lower deck and he took her arm. “In short, Miss Renfrew, I need a distraction.” Suddenly, he laughed.
Two crewmen, who looked as though they were standing watch, turned and stared, mouths agape as though hearing their captain laugh was unusual.
Camilla glanced up at him. “May I be in on the jest?”
“I didn’t want you aboard because women are too much of a distraction. They cause trouble.”
“Do we now?” She stuck her nose in the air.
“Indeed.” He guided her down the shaky gangway to the wharf. “You’ve seen that missing tooth of Billy’s? He got it because of a female passenger. She was a flirt and teased the men mercilessly until she provoked a fight between two of them. Billy’s now scarred for life, and I lost a good crewman.”
“D-dead?”
“No, he left the boat with the female and I was an engineer short that trip.”
She tilted her head and shot him a glance from the corner of her eye. “I do not flirt with crewmen.”
Perhaps not crewmen, but she was flirting with the captain, a skill she had learned from watching a hundred other ladies. She hadn’t intended to practice it now. It slipped out, warm, teasing, a little too intimate for such a short acquaintance.
But then, after weeping all over his chest, she felt rather closer to him than such a short acquaintance should make them.
He caught her gaze and held it just a moment too long, then tucked her hand into the crook of his elbow and led her ashore. Once they skirted a row of warehouses, he paused and frowned down at her. “You don’t need to play games to get me to help you, Miss—” He sighed. “What’s your Christian name?”
“Ca-Camilla.” She swallowed against sudden dryness in her throat and tried again without the stammer. “Camilla Renfrew.”
“Of course. You wouldn’t have a nice normal name like Jane or Mary.”
“What’s wrong with Camilla?”
“Nothing. It’s just right for you.”
They reached the town with its inns and shops and neat houses before Camilla said, “Now who’s flirting with whom?”
“I don’t flirt with females.” He paused before the display window of a bakeshop exhibiting tender-looking pastries. “The last thing I need is a female thinking I’m interested in her.”
“Isn’t it about time you were married?” She caught her breath. “I am sorry. It is none of my concern.”
“No, it’s not, but I was hoping to be married by the time I turn thirty. But I won’t marry anyone while I have no choice but to be on the river twenty-five days out of thirty. I don’t think that’s fair to a wife or family.”
“Unless your wife traveled with you. Are you going to go in that shop or stand here staring at its goods?”
For response, he opened the door. The aroma of sugar and cinnamon, butter and apples wafted out like ambrosia. Camilla’s head spun.
“Captain Black, haven’t seen you in a while.” A matronly woman bustled out to stand behind the counter. “And you have a passenger?”
“More like a stowaway.” He rumbled the response, but his smile belied the severity of the words. “How fresh are your apple fritters?”
“You’d burn your mouth if you ate them right now. Shall I wrap some up?”
“Please, and a flask of coffee.”
The woman wrapped some round pastries in twists of paper, all the while casting glances at Camilla. The captain didn’t enlighten her. Camilla merely gazed back with the impassive stare she had perfected once she realized she didn’t want to marry any of her choices and discovered indifference sent them packing faster than words.
Black asked the woman about a few boats, if she had seen them recently. She had—days before. Everyone was going upriver, few coming down yet. Many were continuing on up to Troy. And still the woman stared at Camilla. Still Camilla folded her arms across her front and stared right back.
The instant the order was complete, Black paid the reckoning, scooped up the food from the counter, and bade goodbye. Camilla preceded him out of the shop, holding the door. She did not take his arm again once they reached the street.
“What,” she asked, “was that all about?”
“She’s never seen me with a female other than Marianne Spraig, who is older than my mother.”
“Your mother’s alive and you still left home?”
He smiled down at her. “Come. Let’s go eat these in Mrs. Spraig’s garden.”
“She’s in Albany visiting her sister. The house is empty.”
It wasn’t merely empty; it was abandoned with the windows boarded up on the ground floor and the garden barren of vegetation beneath the autumn sun. The garden might have been pretty even a week ago with colorful foliage on the trees. Now the trees stretched nearly naked branches to the pale blue sky, a carpet of soggy leaves at their base.
Camilla sank onto the top step, the stones providing warmth, and spread her wide skirts out like a fan, like a protective barrier, forcing the captain to sit on the step at her feet.
“How appropriate,” he murmured, as he lowered himself to the bottom tread. “Do you expect men to abase themselves at your feet?”
Only her brother had the day he made his horrible confession, the last day she saw him.
“Do you think I would be here if I did?” She shoved back her hood so the sun could warm her head.
Black handed her one of the still warm pastries. “Careful when you bite into this. It’s full of apples.”
“We fill our fritters with mushrooms.”
He gave her a look of disgust. “I prefer apples.”
She took a bite and had to agree.
“So tell me, Miss Camilla Renfrew,” Black asked her while her mouth was full, “what are you doing here?”
She swallowed, then cleared her throat. “I told you. Taking a position because my brother—”
“Yes, and you said no one wanted to marry an impoverished princess with only passable looks. But why isn’t that cousin you mentioned taking care of you?”
“Why is your family not helping you buy your partnership shares if they are doing so well selling horses to the canalers?”
“Good riposte.” He handed her the flask of coffee.
She savored the smooth coffee to which hot milk had been added. “I may be only passably pretty and twenty-five, but he is not yet wed and I could scarcely stay under the same roof without a chaperone he was unwilling to pay for.”
“You’re traveling with me without a chaperone.” He kept his gaze on her face as he drank from the same flask, seemingly unself-conscious at the intimacy of sharing.
She shrugged to feign indifference at watching his mouth touch the silvery rim. “I am a lady in England. I am a nothing here.”
“You may be a number of things, Miss Renfrew.” He spoke in a rather husky voice. “A stowaway, a servant, an adventure-seeker . . . But you will never be a nothing.”
She certainly felt like something at that moment—either a hawk ready to take flight to the top of the nearest oak, or a rabbit ready to flee for the nearest warren.
He could not make her feel this way. They barely knew one another. Yet she had already spent more time with him than she had with either of the men who had come up to scratch and offered for her. Yet those were men whose pedigrees she had known before they met—their pedigrees and their rumored flaws, bad enough to have her father turn them down. This man had no pedigree.
As though hers had done her any good.
“I think,” she said, “I need a walk.”
“I think—”
The blast of a steam whistle cut off what he thought.
Camilla sprang to her feet. “A boat. If they have room for me and are going upriver, I might reach Albany in time.”
And escape these weird notions running through her head and squeezing at her heart.
She hastened from the garden, her hood forgotten, her skirts swinging. She retraced their steps at an unladylike speed. No matter. She wasn’t a lady. Not like she had been raised in the privileged sense. The notion was suddenly freeing, not a burden of loss. She could still conduct herself with the moral code drilled into her since birth and be honorable, without having to walk sedately no matter what the emergency.
A steamboat moored alongside the Marianne, dwarfing it with gleaming white paint and three flags fluttering from the jackstaff.
And a deck crammed with passengers with both two and four feet. Men, women, children, and a number of domesticated animals from a cat to a cow filled every inch of space on both decks.
Even before she found the captain hauling crates of something out of a warehouse, she knew what his answer would be.
“Sorry, miss.” He shook his grizzled head. “Not an inch to spare.”
“Do you have any buckets to spare?” Captain Black had come up behind Camilla.
“I saw your paddle wheel was damaged. What happened?”
“Deliberate debris in the river.” Black’s tone was curt. “Do you have any?”
“No, but Todd’s right behind me. He might.”
The man and his crewmen carrying crates trundled off toward the boat. Moments later, it backed from the wharf and into the midstream of the river.
Camilla pressed her hand to her lips as she watched.
“I can see that lower lip quivering through your fingers.” The captain drew her hand away from her face and held her fingers clasped in the shelter of his. “There will be other work if you miss your friend, you know.”
Work that would take her out of reach of the man who claimed she had borrowed ten thousand pounds from him and vowed he would stop at nothing to get it back?
She couldn’t confide that to Black. He would likely leave her behind for fear of getting tangled in her morass.
“Let’s go aboard the Marianne and wait for the next boat.” Still holding on to her hand, Black led her back to his boat. “I have some books in my cabin, if you’d like.”
“I would. I only brought a Bible and a volume of Shakespeare with me, and nearly have the Gospels and Mr. Shakespeare’s sonnets memorized.”
The crewmen left aboard to keep watch gave them knowing grins, then quickly turned away. Black ignored them and continued to his cabin.
The space, only a little larger than Camilla’s, sported a desk as well as the table. Above the former, a shelf held a row of well-worn books, beginning with a Bible and ending with a ragged copy of Samuel Johnson’s dictionary.
“Where did you get that?” She reached across the metal grille holding the books in place and plucked up the book.
He shrugged. “I found it in a shop of secondhand things a long time ago. As for the rest of the books? Much the same way.”
“And you have read them all?”
“Many times.” He plucked up a copy of Castle of Otranto, Horace Walpole’s gothic novel. “This one might be my favorite.”
“I liked it too, though it has been many years.”
He placed it in her hands. “You’re welcome to it.” He hesitated in the doorway a moment, then glanced toward her cabin. “May I read your Shakespeare? I’ve, um, never read Shakespeare.”
He had never read Shakespeare. A knot twisted inside Camilla’s chest, grief for a boy allowed to go out on his own too young yet struggling to get an education.
“Of course you may borrow it.” She retrieved the book and, by the time she returned to him, had made up her mind. “Poetry should be read aloud, though.”
Something like panic flashed in his eyes. “I’ve never read aloud.”
“And your accent’s all wrong.” She grinned. “I will read to you.”
Only when they were settled in the pilothouse and the book fell open in her lap did she think about the nature of most of the bard’s poems.