I wear? With only the crew to look at me—no one to boss me, no one to judge—there would be no more need for this shabby uniform. I imagine taking off my white bonnet and letting it float down from the deck railings into the ocean below. The sharks can eat it, for all I care.
So pleasant is it to daydream, unhampered, that I do not notice the man coming close to me until he is almost at my side.
It’s him. Not my chestnut-haired man—the older one with the Vandyke beard. I know now that he is indeed the same one who accosted me the night before. Nor is this merely awkward coincidence—his gaze focuses on me, and his jaw is set.
“So, you like to listen to other people’s conversations.” His voice is a deep bass rumble, and the words are accented in a way that is unfamiliar to me—Russian, perhaps? The Lisles entertain foreign nobility too rarely for me to be certain. “Last night, and again this morning! That is a good way to hear many interesting things, but very bad manners. Very bad manners indeed.”
It’s almost a relief to think he’s nothing other than an obnoxious man who dislikes eavesdroppers. This close, I can see that he, too, is a handsome man—or would be but for the unnatural chill in his pale blue eyes. “I beg your pardon, sir. I overheard nothing, sir. Please, I beg your forgiveness.” Don’t tell, don’t tell.
“You overheard nothing? Again? And yet you were paying such close attention this time.”
“The room was very loud, sir. Beg your pardon, sir.” Some-times, if you make a slip like this (whether real or imagined), all the aristocrats want you to do is eat dirt for a bit, humble yourself until they feel suitably powerful, and there’s an end of it. But the more I apologize to this one, the angrier he seems to get. The energy around him is increasingly dark, and I feel even more profoundly unsettled than I did before. At least I have already reached the Lisles’ cabin—all I have to do is calm him down long enough for me to get to the other side of that door.
His eyes travel down to the box I hold. “What a heavy burden you carry.”
“It’s all right, sir.”
“The crest of the Lisle estate—am I correct?”
It’s not so unusual that one member of the nobility would recognize the heraldry of another. “Yes, sir.”
“I thought so.” He steps closer to me—too close—and I can tell that his natural scent has a hint of wood smoke about it. His smile is small and tight within the black spade of his beard. There’s something odd about his teeth. “You must be very tired. Will you not allow me to help you?”
He speaks almost kindly, which is more frightening than before. Though I cannot say what it is about this man that distresses me so, I trust my instincts and step away. “No, sir. Thank you, sir.”
“That won’t do at all.” Now anger simmers beneath the surface of his words. One of his black-gloved hands grips an iron handle, and I pull the box back in the split second before he would have snatched it away.
I stumble backward until the cabin door presses against my shoulders. I want to shout for help, but I see no one else, and—I am a servant girl. This is a gentleman. In any dispute between us, he will be believed, and I will not. But why would a gentleman be attempting to commit robbery?
His grin widens. “It would be just like a nasty, thieving maid to try to rob her employers at such a time. Give them an inch—isn’t that the expression in English? Service in the great house takes you out of your humble home and your settled ways. Your proper position in society. So you turn into a conniving little thief.”
“Sir, you are mistaken.” It’s such a foolish thing to say, but I cannot think of anything else. Even now, I must not offend him. “I’ve stolen nothing. This is my employers’ box, and I must put it away, sir. Please excuse me.”
“What would they think if they opened their safe and the box were not there?”
I must assert myself, but how? I’d like to kick him in the shins, but there are no words for the trouble I would be in if I assaulted a gentleman. “Sir, that will not occur. I believe I must now fetch a steward.”
“I do not think he will arrive in time to rescue the little servant girl,” he croons. The bastard is having fun. “Give me the box, girl. Or I shall deeply enjoy taking it from you.”
He lifts his black-gloved hand and strokes one finger down the side of my face. When his eyes bore into mine, fear slices into me—not mere nervousness, but real terror.
These were the eyes that followed me on the dock. Even before I saw him with the young man from last night, he had seen me.
This is the hunter. And he is still hunting me. He has caught me.
Give him the box, I think. Give him the box, and tell them it was stolen, and even if they don’t believe you, they won’t put you in jail. Or will they? Is that all I’ll ever see of America—a jail cell?
But scared as I am, I can’t give up so easily. Lord, but I hate a bully. “No, sir,” I say, and I lift my chin, daring him to do his worst.
He takes the dare.
His hands grab my shoulders and yank me forward so that I’m off balance and his face is close to mine. His breath smells like he recently ate undercooked meat. Then he shoves me back against the door, hard enough that it slams painfully against my head. For one moment, I smell blood.
He hisses, “What scares you the most?”
“Get off me!” I try to shove him back, but the heavy box in my hands makes that difficult.
“Being sacked and turned out to starve?” Although he’s still gripping my shoulders tightly, his thumbs make circles as they press into my flesh—a caress meant to bruise. “Being hurt? Someone you love being hurt? Whatever it is, I can make it happen.”
I don’t know what to say to him. I don’t know what to do. I just know that I hate him. So I spit in his face.
The saliva dribbles onto his beard, and the ice-blue eyes suddenly blaze like fire. My fear deepens as I realize that this really wasn’t the worst he could do—he’s about to do that now—
Then a voice calls, “Stop this.”
We turn to see him—the other, the younger man, the one who saved me last night and is saving me now. I sag against the door in relief, and the bearded man’s face distorts, as though his displeasure were melting him like wax. “Leave us, Alec.”
Alec does nothing of the sort. “This is neither the time nor the place for your games, Mikhail. Leave the poor girl alone.”
The hunter—Mikhail—responds, “Someday you’ll learn that it is never a bad time to enjoy our birthright.” But he lets go of my shoulders. Something passes between them then: some kind of shared knowledge I cannot guess at.
Are they friends, then? How can that be possible? Mikhail terrifies me, but Alec—his effect on me is something altogether different. Should I be as afraid of Alec as I am of Mikhail? Beauty is no guarantee of goodness; Lady Regina is proof enough of that. I don’t know, and want nothing so much as for this to be over.
Mikhail gives me another look that makes my stomach clench, then tips
