WHAT DO YOU MEAN IT SAILED!” Katey shouted at the dockhand who’d just told her she’d missed her ship.
“Cast off with the morning tide,” the fellow said with barely a glance her way as he went about loading crates into a wagon. “Most ships do.”
He was the only one standing near the berth she’d been directed to whom she could question. And finding an empty berth, she wasn’t exactly in a calm state of mind.
“Why wasn’t I told that! Why wasn’t it printed on these tickets?!”
“Did you look at the tickets?”
She snapped her mouth shut and marched off. No, she didn’t examine the tickets closely. She wasn’t accustomed to sailing. She’d only sailed once before! And she couldn’t believe she’d missed her ship!
“It’s really gone?” Grace asked hesitantly when Katey climbed back in the coach. The hesitancy came from hearing the door slammed shut as well as the shouting that had just taken place outside.
“Yes.”
“The sun’s only been out an hour. How early did we need to get here?”
“Too early. I see now why that ticket fellow had mentioned that we could board the night prior to sailing if we cared to. He shouldn’t have made it sound like a mere option. He should have stated that it was the only option.”
Grace sat back with a sigh. “So we’re back to the ticket office?”
“And another long delay? I think not. I’m going to find Boyd Anderson instead.”
“What for?”
“To rent his ship.”
Grace started to laugh. Katey didn’t. When the maid noticed that, she said, “You weren’t joking?”
“No, I wasn’t. He pretty much begged me at Haverston to give him a way to make amends. And I’m not talking about demanding the use of his ship without recompense. I did say rent it, didn’t I?”
“Yes, but you can’t just rent a ship and its entire crew at a moment’s notice.”
“I can if it belongs to him.”
“I’ll wager he won’t agree to something like that,” Grace predicted.
Katey remembered Boyd’s expression when he’d beseeched her to let him do something, anything, to make things right with her. “I’ll take that wager.”
They had returned to London early enough yesterday to collect the clothes that had been finished and delivered to her hotel—and to find a new hotel. Hers hadn’t had any rooms available. She’d left so early in the morning for Gloucestershire that she hadn’t thought about reserving her room for another night upon her return. But at least the hotel clerk had held her packages for her and directed her to another hotel.
She supposed that she was going to have to start paying better attention to these details if she was going to continue traveling around the world. Ship schedules, coaches, guaranteed hotel rooms, things she’d been taking for granted, well, things she just wasn’t used to arranging yet. She’d done well until they’d left Scotland, but then they hadn’t run into any obstacles on that pleasant tour, all of which had deluded her into believing that everything else would go just as smoothly—instead of steadily downhill.
Katey sighed. She knew she was letting what had happened in Gloucestershire affect her outlook on everything else. She was upset—well, she was more than that—but she was going to have to put it behind her. This horrible impatience, the anger that came with it—the hurt—these things were so alien to her, and she didn’t like how they made her feel.
She hadn’t given Grace a word-for-word account of that brief interview with her aunt. God, her mother had been so right. They really were snobs of the worst sort, the Millards, and that’s all she’d told her maid. She’d been too hurt to want to discuss it.
She’d never been called such a horrible name before in her life. She knew it could be used in a derogatory, nasty way, that it didn’t only imply illegitimacy, which in her case wasn’t the situation at all. So her aunt had called her a bastard just to show how little she thought of her. It still hurt. It hurt even more that the hopes she’d had about still having a family had soundly been dashed.
She wanted to get far, far away from England and these terrible emotions that she’d never experienced before she’d come to this country. Wait on another ship’s schedule? When she had another option?
Of course, there she was again taking things for granted. Grace could be right. Boyd might laugh at the suggestion that he rent his ship to her. The idea really was ludicrous if she cared to think about it. But if he did agree, she could be sailing in the morning, or even later today. If he did agree, she wouldn’t be seeing the last of him either, as she’d thought on her way to the docks this morning. That was a daunting thought, but, though she’d only admit it to herself, an exciting one, too. But she would insist that he not sail with his ship. That would be the smart thing to do. It wasn’t as if he captained it. That would be a much better arrangement, The Oceanus at her disposal and its owner left far behind in England.
And just to make sure that Grace couldn’t accuse her later of wanting to see Boyd again, she’d stop by the ticket office first. If she could get passage on another ship within the next day or so, then she would forget about involving Boyd Anderson.