Page 8 of Miss Wylde and the Wynd

She lifted a dark eyebrow again and smirked. “Then I suggest you have them replaced because they did a poor job of it.”

Damian could not accept that a mere woman had managed to find her way onto one of their ships without notice, let alone remain there for the duration of the trip, without being discovered.

“Who helped you?” he demanded.

“I told you. No one.”

“Then how did you manage to remain undiscovered?”

“When?” she asked innocently. “When I boarded your ship or while it sailed?”

Somehow, she had turned the demands on him and Damian did not like it at all. “Both!”

“I watched through the night and finally made my way up the gangplank in the early morning hours when your sailors were relaxed and tired. I was in all black and kept my face hidden. It helped that it was a new moon so there was very little light to reflect off the water. I then made my way below, found a quiet corner, out of the way and behind the marble, and waited.”

“You never came up? Not in three weeks?” It was not possible she could hide for so long.

“There was the occasion that I was in need of food and fresh water, when the provisions that I had brought with me were gone, and sometimes simply fresh air.” She reached into her satchel and produced her purse. “I will pay for the food I stole from the galley.”

Bloody hell!

Damian shook his head and walked behind his desk and sat down and studied Georgie. What was he supposed to do with her? She was a stowaway that required punishment. She stole from the galley, which was a crime. It also wasn’t so simple, either. A female, who he was beginning to suspect might be closer to eight-and-ten, still too young to be on her own, did not sneak upon a merchant ship to stowaway without good reason.

“Why?”

Georgie blinked at him. “Why?”

“Yes, why?” he repeated.

“Why what?”

Damian drew in a deep breath. “Do you know how dangerous it was for you to be on the docks in Italy, alone, in the early morning hours?” Good God, anything could have happened to her. “Then to sail on a ship of only men.” Such would see her ruined if anyone learned. “Why the Charlotte Rose?” Maybe there was a reason she chose his ship, or had it simply been luck?

“I knew that it was a Trade Wynd ship returning to England.”

“How could you know that?”

“I live in Carrara and I know the ships that regularly dock,” she returned.

“Ours could not have been the only ship sailing for England.”

“It was leaving the earliest and I needed to arrive in Southampton, not London.”

She knew more about their trade than he realized.

“Why Southampton? Are you from here?” She spoke English clearly, but her accent was odd, not fully Italian nor English, which made him wonder which was her first language, or if it was another language.

“I was born and raised in Carrara,” she answered.

“You are Italian?”

“Yes.”

“Your English is without error in translation or hesitation,” he observed.

“My father is Irish. I heard and spoke both Italian and English from birth.”

That certainly explained the odd accent.