Cade sighed. It was a story he’d heard before. Often. Most ofThe Elenor’s crew had been on the wrong side of the law, himself included. Cade was more worried about O’Malley hiring the boy sight unseen. What if he was an opium addict or riddled with vermin?Thatwouldn’t do for a cook’s assistant. “Very well,” Cade replied. “Tell O’Malley it’s on his head if the lad is of no use.”
McCummins nodded. “He’s here now, Cap’n. O’Malley says he’s a right energetic thing, ready and willin’ ta work hard.”
“Is that so?” Cade stood looking out the window above his bed. “What’s his name?” he asked, not particularly interested in the answer.
“I believe it’s Cross,” McCummins replied. “Yeah, that’s the one. Cross.”
“Cross?” Cade narrowed his eyes at the skyline. Cross? LaCrosse. He shook his head. Damn. Was he to be plagued with thoughts of that woman forever? Would everything remind him of her? For how long? Bloody nuisance.
Dawn was beginning to break. It was time to leave. He grabbed up his spyglass from a hook on the bulkhead and focused it onThe French Secretanchored far across the harbor but still within view. The French ship was hauling up its anchor. Cade spun around. “Weigh anchor!”
“Aye, aye, Cap’n.” McCummins headed for the door to issue the orders across the ship.
“McCummins,” Cade called.
The older man paused, his foot on the first step leading up the ladder. “Yes, Cap’n?”
“Not too close toThe French Secret.Give it a sizeable lead, then…”
McCummins nodded. “Yes, Cap’n?”
“Bring the new cook’s assistant to me.”
CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE
“Then there was the time the captain gave the order to throw half the guns over the starboard bow and focus the rest on the masts of theDevil’s Joke. Why, we routed those blighters in less than an hour and they took off toward Portugal with a busted mizzen, limping like a three-legged dog.” Danielle listened attentively as this diatribe was proudly uttered by the first mate, a man named Danny McCummins.
It was yet another in a parade of stories featuring the captain’s heroics. In her short time onThe Elenor, she’d already learned that these men were loyal, committed, and completely adoring of their captain. He had apparently fought traitors, saved helpless children, and even rescued a wounded dog from an enemy ship during hand-to-hand combat in the middle of the sea. The only thing she hadn’t heard so far was a tale about the captain wrestling a shark—though she’d little doubt that particular story would soon be told if she listened long enough.
She didn’t mind the stories. They served to distract the crew from asking her questions about herself and that was exactly how she wanted to keep it.
Bells sounded and Danny and the rest of the crew raced away. Danielle was left alone with the cook, a middle-aged man of few words who possessed a nearly bald head, a sturdy paunch, and spent most of his time rattling around in the pantry. She sat on a stool at the rickety galley table and dropped her head into her hands and allowed herself to expel her breath. It was the first moment she’d had alone since she’d been rowed out to the ship in a dinghy manned by Sean O’Malley, the second mate.
“I’ve never known an Irishman ta be second mate afore,” she’d said as she and O’Malley rowed towardThe Elenor. She’d been attempting to make small talk with the man but it was true. She’d never known an Irish second mate, not on an English ship, with their prejudice against the Irish.
“Then ye’ll be even more surprised when ye learn the first mate is also an Irishman. McCummins is ’is name. Ye’ll be meetin’ ’im soon enough.”
“Is the captain Irish, too?”
O’Malley snort-laughed at that. “Nah, Cap’n is an English bloke. Oakleaf’s ’is name.”
Oakleaf? That sounded solidly English. Not that Danielle cared one whit. She’d been treated badly by both the French and the English at times. She knew the sting of prejudice. The captain ofThe Elenorseemed more kind to Irish than some of the French had been to her poor mother.
Danielle enjoyed her moments alone, for surely they would be brief and rare. All the other moments since she’d arrived on the ship had been fraught with tension as she hoped the crew believed she was a boy. Despite all the years she’d spent successfully pretending to be a boy and her familiarity with the role, she always experienced that moment when meeting a new person when she feared he’d see through her disguise and recognize her for a young woman instantly. Thankfully, that hadn’t happened after her advent toThe Elenor. They’d all believed she was a lad. She’d held her breath at first. But she’d found over the years that most men didn’t stare too long or too closely at grubby little urchin boys, and the ones who did she’d long-ago learned to keep her distance from.
She’d spent the last hour after they’d got underway being regaled with distasteful jokes by the cook and a rotating cast of other crew members who made brief appearances in the kitchen after seeing to their chores. The galley, she learned, was the social hub of this particular ship. It was also hot as Hades with a constantly boiling pot over an open fire and a cookstove that belched black smoke into the air. The smoke leisurely dissipated through a dark hole that obviously wasn’t large enough in the deck above. The crew seemed a friendly, if bawdy lot and she’d already begun to feel she might fit in.
The door swung open and O’Malley came barreling into the galley. “Get up, Cross,” he barked at her. “The cap’n wants ta see ye.”
Danielle’s head snapped up. She’d expected to meet the captain eventually, of course, perhaps at dinnertime when she was serving him a meal, but to have a request for a private audience… that was rare. Her stomach dropped. Captains were often the most astute people on ships. If this one wasn’t just meeting her quickly in passing, but actually studying her, asking her questions… she didn’t even want to think about what might happen.
“Yes, yes. O’ course,” she replied in her best deckhand’s voice, using the common English accent she’d perfected over the years. She had a penchant for mimicking language that had served her well. She’d simply listened to a few of the younger males on a ship for a while and then said what they said just as they’d said it as if she were a quick-witted parrot. She’d blended right in.
“Come with me,” O’Malley said, gesturing over his shoulder.
Danielle followed him out of the kitchen, up the ladder, over the deck, and across the planks into a gangway where they descended another ladder into a darkened, cool space near the aft of the ship. Danielle pulled her sweaty shirt away from her tunic. No matter how this meeting went, at least she’d have a few blissful minutes away from the searing heat of the galley. Grimaldi was going to get an earful about forcing her to pose as a cook’s assistant.
O’Malley rapped twice upon the large wooden door to the captain’s cabin.
