Page 29 of Go, Rogue

Chapter

12

By the time McGann enters the cabin several hours later, again holding two glasses and a bottle of wine, Catherine’s temper has cooled. She’ll try to make peace with him. He was only trying to help, even if he went about it in the most arse-headed manner possible.

She can see that with some distance. He doesn’t know this crew. He said so himself. And they will be a lot less likely to act on any wayward impulses if they think her married to their captain. Marriage is how society keeps women safe.

Except that isn’t true, is it?

It wasn’t for her mother. Nor for many other women she knows. Marriage only locked them into unsafe situations they couldn’t escape from until they died. Or their spouse did.

Drat it all.

Everywhere she turns is a locked door, physically or metaphorically, and she’s tired of them. It’s not that she doesn’t know Andrew McGann meant well. Of course she knows that.

It’s sweet the way he wants to protect her. But given the choice of protection and safety over freedom… right now, she chooses freedom.

However, she can be more thoughtful in how she approaches that conversation with him. He surprised her earlier, and she didn’t have time to think. But she does now. She can learn to think before she speaks and not after.

“Good evening, Captain,” she says.

“Your ladyship.”

He sits heavily at the table while the cabin boy lays down their dinner and scurries away quickly.

“Why did you do that?” she asks, her brows beginning to furrow. “Call me your ladyship?”

Thoughtful, she reminds herself. Be thoughtful.

“It is your title, is it not?”

“It is. But you only call me lass. Or Menace.”

Which isn’t exactly true. He called her Catherine when he discovered her aboard the ship yesterday. And he called her by her title exactly once before; six months ago, right before everything went pear-shaped.

She watches him, waiting, but he says nothing else. Just sucks air in between his teeth and begins to eat his food. She hates it, the way he won’t even so much as look at her while he’s doing it.

“Your supper will get cold,” he says after a while when she hasn’t started eating. “And there won’t be any sending it back to the kitchen either.”

She takes a deep breath. She’s hurt him, and that’s why he’s acting this way. She thinks of Violet again and wonders how often she’s gone around unintentionally hurting people.

“I really am sorry,” she says, “for earlier. I just don’t want to pretend about anything any longer. Can you understand that?”

He only grunts in reply.

“That was an apology,” she adds.

“Aye. I know what it was.”

She frowns. “I take it you don’t accept?”

He only grunts at her again.

“I really do not care to fight with you.”

“It seems to me,” he replies, “that you want to fight with everybody. With your father. With that solicitor. With Chester. With the ruffian in the street. With Violet, if she knew half of what you keep from her. With your fiancé, the poor bloke. Do you ever do anything but swing your money and station about, bludgeoning people with it?”

All she can do is stare at him. That was… well, it was… mean.