Taking a deep breath, feeling like a bird let out of a cage, she left the cabin, standing for a moment at the bottom of the dark stairwell. When a door next to her opened, she jumped in surprise.
“I beg your pardon,” came a polite male voice. “I had no idea anyone was here.” When Regan didn’t answer, he continued, “Perhaps I should introduce myself since it looks as though we’re to be neighbors. Or am I being too presumptuous? Maybe the captain could do the honors.”
The young man’s formal manners were a welcome relief after the last few days’ complete suspension of anything resembling courtesy. “We will be neighbors,” she smiled, “so perhaps just this once we can suspend formalities.”
“Then allow me to present myself. I am David Wainwright.”
“And I am Regan Alena…Stanford,” she said as an afterthought, not wanting to reveal her true identity or let this man know the truth about her relationship with Travis.
Gently, he shook her hand, then asked if she’d accompany him up to the upper deck. “I believe they’re still loading. It may afford us some amusement to see these Americans among themselves, though I confess I sometimes have difficulty understanding their dialect.”
The sun was warm and bright on the deck, and Regan caught the feeling of excitement as people rushed around her everywhere. They emerged at the base of the quarterdeck, a partial additional deck at the fore end of the ship. Soon realizing they were in the way, she and David climbed the stairs to the top of the quarterdeck. Here they had a good, high view of the activities on the rest of the ship as well as on the wharf. And here, too, she had a view of David Wainwright. He was a small man with a plain face topped with straw-colored hair. His clothes were of good wool, his cravat perfectly white, and his slim feet were encased in soft kid slippers. He was the type of gentleman she’d always known—his hands made for the keys of a piano or to idly twirl a snifter of brandy. Looking at his long, slim fingers, she thought with disgust that an uncouth man such as Travis would probably hit two keys at once with his big fingers. Of course, she had to admit that those wide fingers sometimes hit the right chords.
As her lips curved in a secret smile, she looked away from David, who was explaining why he was going to such a heathen place as America, and searched for Travis.
“I can’t tell you how glad I am to be traveling with an English lady,” David was saying. “When
my father suggested I go and see to his holdings in that wilderness, I dreaded the journey. I’ve heard more than my share of stories about the place, and as if that weren’t enough, just meeting a single American can turn one against the country. Look at that!” he gasped. “That is just what I was speaking of.”
Below them, two sailors dropped the burdens they were carrying to the center of the deck, where another man carried them downstairs, and began shoving each other. Within seconds, one swung his fist at the other’s jaw and missed, but before he could strike again the second man slammed his fist into the first’s nose. Blood seemed to gush forth instantly, and the hurt, angry man began to swing wildly.
Out of nowhere, Travis appeared, grabbed the much smaller men by the backs of their shirt collars, and lifted them from the deck. There was no difficulty in hearing Travis as he told the sailors what he thought of their behavior and what he promised to do if they gave him any more trouble. Shaking them like puppies, he tossed them aside, told them to get cleaned up and return to work, as he carried both their bundles to the waiting sailor.
“That is an example of what I mean,” David said. “Those Americans have no discipline. This is an English ship with an English captain, yet that…that American lout thinks he has every right to enforce his will over the crew. And besides, the men should not have been let off so lightly. Their bad conduct should be made an example of. Every captain knows that the only way to stop insubordination is at the very outset of it.”
Regan agreed with him, of course. She’d heard her uncle say the same sort of thing many times, but the way Travis had handled the angry men seemed to her efficient and sensible. Frowning, she was puzzled by her thoughts, wondering who was actually right.
Her mind on other things, she did not at first see Travis waving at her.
“I believe that man is trying to get your attention,” David said, half in disgust, half in disbelief.
Trying to be sophisticated, Regan gave Travis a polite return wave before looking away from him. She had no desire to make a spectacle of herself as he had just done.
“I don’t think he was satisfied,” David said wonderingly. “He now seems to be coming this way. Perhaps I should get the captain.”
“No!” Regan gasped, her eyes turning to Travis and smiling in spite of herself.
“Did you miss me?” Travis laughed, sweeping her into his arms and swirling her around once.
“Let me down!” she said angrily, but her voice did not agree with the pleasure on her face. “You smell like a gardener.”
“And what would you know of the smell of a gardener?” he teased.
From behind her, David cleared his throat noisily.
Blushing, Regan managed to push Travis’s hands away from her. “Mr. Wainwright, this is Travis Stanford.” Her eyes looked up pleadingly at him. “My…husband,” she whispered.
Travis’s eyes didn’t flicker. Actually, his smile seemed to grow warmer as he thrust out his hand, enveloping David’s slim, smooth one. “I am glad to meet you, Mr. Wainwright. Did you know my wife in England?”
How smoothly he said the lie! she thought. Yet how kind of him to save her honor this way. She would have thought he’d laugh at her, as he did so often.
“No, we just met,” David said quietly, looking from one to the other, seeing Travis’s possessive arm about Regan’s small shoulders, seeing a refined, elegant English lady in the grasp of a half-savage, mannerless, working-class man. He very much wanted to wipe his palm where Travis had touched him.
If Travis saw the delicate curl of the small man’s upper lip, he did not show it, and Regan was too busy trying to regain some of her dignity by pushing Travis’s hand away.
“I was hoping you’d known her before,” Travis said, and ignored Regan’s look because his words had an odd ring to them, almost as if he wasn’t telling the truth. “I have to get back to work, love,” he smiled. “You stay up here and away from the lower deck, you understand?” He didn’t wait for her to answer but turned to appraise Wainwright. “I trust I may leave her with you?” he said politely, formally, but at the same time he gave the impression that he was laughing. Regan very much wanted to kick him.
Swiftly, he turned and bounded down the stairs, leaving Regan to wonder if he were jealous. Perhaps Travis was worried that he couldn’t compete with a gentleman of Mr. Wainwright’s quality.