Seeing that she needed sleep more than anything else, Travis snuggled her under the covers before taking a cigar and going up to the top of the quarterdeck to smoke it.
“All settled in?”
Travis turned to the captain behind him. “We’ll make it, I guess.”
The captain watched Travis as he leaned on the railing, a long cigar hanging out of his mouth. “What’s wrong, boy?” he asked seriously.
Travis smiled. The captain and Travis’s father had been friends for years, until cholera took the older man. “What do you know about women?”
“No man knows much,” the captain said, trying not to smile, glad there was nothing seriously wrong. “I’m sorry I didn’t get to meet your bride. I hear she’s a beauty.”
Studying his cigar, Travis took a moment before answering. “My bride, yes. I’m just having some trouble understanding her.” He wasn’t a man to share confidences, and this was as much as he could say. Straightening, he changed the subject. “You think that furniture will be safe in the hold?”
“It should be,” the captain said. “But what do you need more furniture for? You haven’t added a wing to that mansion of yours, have you?”
Travis chuckled. “No, at least not until I have about fifty kids to fill all the rooms I already have. The furniture’s for a friend. I did buy some land, though. I’ll put in more cotton this year.”
“More!” the captain gasped before gesturing toward the deck in front of them. “This is all the space I need. I couldn’t keep up with—how many acres of land do you own now?”
“About four thousand, give or take a few.”
The captain gave a snort of disbelief. “I hope that little bride of yours is a good housewife. The place took all your mother’s talents, and you’ve nearly doubled it in size since your father died.”
“She can handle it,” Travis said confidently. “Good night, sir.”
In their cabin again, he undressed thoughtfully before climbing into bed and drawing Regan to him. “The question is, can I handle her?” he murmured just before he fell asleep.
It took Regan exactly twenty-four hours to learn that Travis was completely correct about what an awful job it was dealing with seasick people. From early morning until late at night she did little more than wash vomit from people and belongings. The passengers were too sick to hold their heads over the porcelain basins she held toward them and too ill to care what happened to the contents of their stomachs. Mothers lay in their narrow bunks, their babies crying beside them, while Regan and two other women cleaned, tried to comfort, and worked long, hard hours.
As if the seasickness weren’t enough, the condition of the passengers’ accommodations appalled Regan. There were three dormitories, one for married couples, and two for single men and women, and the discipline enforced by the crew to keep unmarried men and women apart was strict. Sisters were not allowed to speak to brothers, or fathers to daughters, and each worried about the other in these first few days of illness and misery.
In each dormitory were many narrow rows of hard, small bunkbeds. In the close aisles were the passengers’ belongings: trunks, boxes, parcels, baskets, containing not only clothes and what goods they needed for the New World but also the food for the voyage. Already some of it was beginning to decay, the smell aggravating the passengers’ nausea.
Regan and the other women ran in and out of the women’s cabin, trying to get over the trunks, having to walk up and down, over and around for every step they had to take.
By the time she returned to her own cabin, which by contrast looked like a room in a palace, she was more exhausted than she’d ever imagined she could be.
Travis put down his book immediately and gathered her into his arms. “Was it difficult, love?” he whispered.
She could only nod against his chest, so glad to be near someone healthy and strong, glad to be away from the squalor and poverty she’d seen today.
Relaxing against him, half-asleep, she was hardly aware when he put her in a chair and went to answer the door. Even when she heard water splashing, she didn’t bother to open her eyes. After all, she’d heard little else all day when she’d washed clothes, babies’ diapers, and dirty chamber pots.
Smiling deliciously, she relaxed as Travis’s hands began to unbutton her dress. It was nice to be taken care of instead of the other way around. When he gathered her naked form in his arms, she was pleased to be going to bed, but when her bottom hit the hot water, her eyes flew open.
“You need a bath, my smelly little mate,” he laughed at her surprise.
The hot water, even if it was sea water, felt wonderful, and she leaned back, letting Travis wash her.
“I don’t understand you,” she said softly, watching him, feeling his hands, soapy and strong, run over her body.
“What’s to understand? I’ll tell you what you want to know.”
“A few weeks ago I would have said a man who kidnapped people was evil and should be put in jail, but you….”
“I what? I kidnap pretty young ladies, ravish them, yet I don’t beat them? Not too often anyway,” he smiled.
“No,” she said seriously. “You don’t, but I believe you’re capable of anything. I don’t understand a man like you.”