Chapter 10
“The stop knot is too loose, madonna,” Angelo said in his soft Italian. He dropped to one knee and with light, sure tugs, adjusted the tension. He grinned as he handed it back to Cassie, shaking his dark head. “A lady as a sailor, I never would have believed the day. You’ll do, madonna, you’ll do.”
“Grazie, Angelo.” She flushed slightly at his rare words of praise.
He nodded and turned away from her at the shouted command of Mr. Donnetti. In the next moment, he was agilely climbing the rigging of the mainmast.
Cassie watched his graceful ascent. Squawking seabirds soared in wide circles above, hoping, she supposed, for some stale crusts of bread. She rose slowly and dusted her knees, an unnecessary gesture, since the deck always sparkled from the continual efforts of the Genoese sailors. She gazed to port. In the hazy afternoon sun, she could barely make out the coastline of Spain, some twenty miles distant.
“Ye can’t see much from here.”
She turned to Scargill, who was shading his eyes with his hands, looking toward land.
“Ye’ll turn dark as a blackamoor, if ye don’t have a care.” He indulgently eyed the light sprinkle of freckles across the bridge of her nose.
She raised her golden-tanned face toward the sun, disregarding him. “We will put into port, Scargill?”
“Nay, madonna, it’s hardly likely.”
At the tightening of her lips, he added lightly, “If ye know yer politics, ye’ll realize that the Spanish are no friends to the English.”
“His lordship does not have a Spanish flag?”
Scargill shook his head at her ill-disguised sarcasm.
She doubted that the earl would put into port in any case, unless, of course, she thought bitterly, he were to lock her in the cabin for the duration. At least this wasn’t the case as long as they were at sea. The earl had given her free run of the yacht, though he forbade her the wearing of breeches. “I think it would be unwise,” he had said one evening, grinning at her crookedly, “to tempt my men more than they already are. The sight of you in breeches would doubtless encourage them to mutiny.”
She looked midway up the mainmast at Angelo’s perched figure and sighed enviously. Her skirts billowed in the sea breeze, and she slapped them down, her illhumor mounting.
As though he had read her thoughts, Scargill said gently, “Ye know that his lordship is in the right, madonna. To see such a figure as yers climbing the rigging would surely cause the men to forget their duties. Ye wouldn’t wish to be the cause of a man having the skin flailed off his back. It would be the lightest punishment his lordship would mete out, ye know.”
“I daresay that such a display of viciousness would well fit his character.”
Cassie bit her lip as the earl’s voice boomed out behind her. “Perhaps, Cassandra, but then I have never informed you what your punishment for such disobedience would be.”
She whirled about. “Is it also your habit to eavesdrop on other people’s conversations, my lord?”
“There’s no need to get yerself all a-twitter, madonna,” Scargill said easily, raising a placating hand. “Ye know his lordship is the captain and thus must keep himself apprised of all that goes on.”
“And just what would my punishment be, my lord?” Cassie demanded coldly, ignoring Scargill.
“What do you think would be just?”
“I would say, my lord, that the punishment I have received already at your hands is sufficient for anyone’s lifetime.”
The earl waved Scargill away, a signal that the valet obeyed with alacrity. He took a step nearer to Cassie, and she held her ground, her expression forbidding. His voice dropped to a caressing murmur. “It is no way my fault, Cassandra, that you have felt punished for our four days of abstinence.”
“How dare you?” Angry and embarrassed color mounted her cheeks.
“How dare I what? Remind you that you are a woman and not a sailor to be climbing over the rigging dressed in breeches?” As the gleam of fury did not abate, he added placidly, “If we have another storm, I will approve the breeches for its duration.”