Danielle’s eyes flew open and she scrambled up, her back against the luxurious pillows, instinctively pulling the covers to her chin even though she was still fully dressed. “Wha-what?”
Cade stood over the bed, his hands on his hips, laughing. “Sorry to wake you so suddenly. I didn’t mean to startle you.”
Danielle rubbed the sleep from her eyes and glanced around. It was dark outside the windows and only moonlight and the brace of candles sitting on the desk illuminated the room.
Had she truly slept all day? “What time is it?”
Eight bells sounded. “It’s the dog watch,” Cade said with a grin.
“Eight o’clock,” she whispered.
“No,” he replied, still grinning.
“Surely it’s not twelve?” Her eyes went wide.
His brows rose. “You know time on a ship?”
She rolled her eyes. “I already informed you that I know quite a lot about ships.”
“You did.” His grin was positively wolfish. “And yes, it’s twelve.”
“I can’t believe I slept all day,” she said.
“Well, we didn’t exactly get much sleep last night.”
She eyed him warily. “Don’t say it like that.”
“Like what?”
“Like we … spent the night together.”
“Didn’t we?”
“No! Not like that. You know we didn’t.”
“Ah, that’s right. You only told me you wished it had been like that. Right before you took off to stow aboard my ship.”
She scrambled off the bed and stood next to it, sheepishly, her feet bare and her hair, which had come free of the cap, streaming over her shoulders.
“You look absolutely nothing like a boy right now, by the by,” he informed her. “What do you think would happen to you if you were in the bunks with the others?”
“If I were a cook’s assistant I wouldn’t have been asleep. I’d have been working.”
“A convenient answer.”
“A truthful one.”
He sat on the far edge of the bed and began shucking off his boots. “Would you like to help?” he asked. “I seem to remember you have some experience in this quarter.”
“You’re endlessly amusing,” she shot back.
Ignoring that, he stood and began to take off his shirt, unbuttoning it and pulling it over one shoulder.
Her eyes flared. “What are you doing?”
His grin was wicked. “Undressing. Care to help?”
“No!”
“You’re not a particularly helpful cabin boy.”
She smirked at him. “About that. I thought you said you didn’t need a valet, yet you have a cabin boy?”
“A cabin boy is entirely different from a valet,” Cade replied.
“How so?”
“Less picky. Less exacting. Someone you can yell at to bloody well get out and leave you alone when you choose.”
“You have an answer for everything.” She rolled her eyes.
“Of course I do. At any rate, unlike you, I don’t sleep fully dressed and don’t intend to begin now to accommodate you.”
When he began to unbutton his breeches, Danielle spun around and crossed her arms over her chest, facing away from him. She waited a few minutes, trying not to imagine him undressed. “Finished?” She hated the fact that her voice shook.
“Not until I’m nude,” he replied in far too jovial of a tone.
Her mouth fell open. And went dry. “Am I to understand that you—” She snapped her mouth shut again as his breeches came flying past her shoulder to land in a heap on the wood planks in front of her.
“You’ll see to those, won’t you, boy?”
Danielle gritted her teeth. “Yes, Cap’n.” She grabbed the breeches from the floor, still facing away from him, and spent an inordinate amount of time shaking them out and folding them. They smelled like him, spicy cologne and a hint of soap. Nom de dieu. Why did they have to smell like him? If they didn’t, she’d have a much easier time ignoring the fact that the man who owned them and had recently occupied them was standing five paces behind her completely naked.
“Are you decent?” she finally asked in a much sharper voice than she’d meant to.
“I’m never decent,” came his laughter-tinged reply. “I thought you knew that about me.”
She closed her eyes and pinched the bridge of her nose. “I meant are you clothed?”
“No,” came the succinct reply.
“No?” she echoed. Before she had a chance to inquire as to whether he meant to stand there unclothed all night, he continued, “I sleep in the nude.”
“You sleep in the—?” A string of French curse words flew through her head.
“However, I am covered, if that’s what you’re worried about, though I can uncover myself again if you’d like.”
That was it. She was through playing word games with him. She’d seen a lot on ships. A naked man wasn’t about to intimidate her. She would call his bluff. She spun on her heel to face the bed again. He was in it, covered by the sheets from the waist down. From the waist up, however, the man was fully, gloriously undressed. The bare expanse of his chest was on display. His muscled arms were crossed behind his head and he had a roguish grin on his face.
Danielle had seen her fair share of male chests before. Working on ships, she’d been careful to keep herself covered, but she’d seen and heard it all. Every inch of the male anatomy and every word they used to describe their … parts. And there were a great many words, to be sure. Nothing in her experience had prepared her for the sight of Cade Cavendish’s bare chest. Broad, muscled, ripped, hairless. She longed to run her fingers across the smooth expanse of skin. Her mouth watered. She pressed her lips together and forced herself to drag her eyes away from his chest and meet his gaze.
“Care to join me?” He patted the empty space next to him.
She ignored the invitation, instead marching past the bed to open the wardrobe and carefully set the breeches inside. She located his discarded shirt and shook it out before hanging it in the wardrobe, too. Next, she gathered his boots and made her way to the cabinet where she’d located the polishing items earlier. She set about dusting the boots with a horsehair brush.
The entire time he watched her with an unabashed grin on his face. “Hmm. Seems you do know the duties of a good cabin boy.”
She forced herself to bite back the I-told-you-so on her lips. Finally, she finished her ministrations and faced him again. “Where does—did—Martin sleep?”
“In here.”
“Where?” she bit out. He wasn’t about to make this any easier for her, was he?
“If you’re asking where you should sleep, may I suggest the bed?” He blinked at her innocently and patted the empty space next to him.
“Will you be in the bed if I sleep there?”
“Of course I will. It’s my bed.” His grin was unrepentant. “It’s far more comfortable than where Martin slept, however.”
She tapped her booted foot on the ground. “Which was?”
Cade sighed and pointed. “On a pallet on the floor in the corner.”
She hadn’t seen a pallet during her earlier explorations. “Where is it?”
“Look, Danielle, I won’t touch you. I promise. No one needs to know we share this bed. I can’t stand to think of you sleeping on the floor.”
“Where’s the pallet?” she asked calmly.
He sighed again. “In the cabinet near the bookshelf.”
She marched over to the cabinet, opened it, and knelt down to pull out the pallet. It consisted of a small pad filled with old hay by the smell of it, and a rough woolen blanket. No pillow. She wrangled it out of the cabinet and spread it on the floor nearby. It was perfectly acceptable. She’d slept on worse. Many times.
Cade got up to blow out the candles. She turned her head to the wall and concentrated on trying to get comfortable on the pallet. A pillow, the one she’d used at Lady Daphne’s house, came sailing through the air and landed near her. The man was a good shot. She smiled and pulled the pillow close, snuggling her head upon it. It was nice to have this one memory of her time at Lady Daphne’s. She wondered how much Mary and Mrs. Huckleberry hated her now, and what Lady Daphne thought. She hoped the poor woman didn’t think her brother-in-law and her maid had run off together. Only they had. Sort of. Mon dieu, it was complicated. She’d think about it tomorrow.
The last words she heard before she fell asleep were, “Good night, Cross. If you change your mind, the bed remains available.”