Week Three Excerpt
His eyes, though, she remembered his eyes.
Opening hers, she grinned. The Atlantic Star no longer swayed, and the cabin was blessedly silent. For the first time in weeks, no, it had been months now, her obnoxious cabin mate, Mrs. Pettigrove, wasn’t rattling the walls, and the berths themselves, with her resounding snores.
Sharing a cabin with a stranger as difficult and demanding as Mrs. Pettigrove had been taxing. But no other cabin had been available when Yvette had fled Massachusetts in the middle of the night with only her stuffed valise, gun, and dagger. Several of her smaller belongings had gone missing during the voyage, and Yvette had found them hidden amongst Mrs. Pettigrove’s possessions.
No, Yvette couldn’t wait to part company with her.
Just then, Mrs. Pettigrove rolled over, and the bunks groaned and shook with her labored movement. She grunted, passed a large expanse of wind, and grew silent once more.
Oh, good Lord! Yvette quickly smashed a pillow across her face as the results of Mrs. Pettigrove’s digestive disruptions drifted upward. She removed the pillow almost as fast. The cloying material was intolerable. “How can she sleep when it’s this blasted hot?” Yvette wiped beads of moisture from her upper lip with the back of her hand. “I don’t remember June ever being this warm.”
Were the other passengers suffering as much as she? Or did they somehow manage to sleep in the dreadful heat? How they could was beyond her. A shiver of unease whispered across her. She pursed her lips and released a slight huff of breath.
One of the other passengers, Nigel Collingsworth, had caused her no small amount of disquiet during the Atlantic crossing. He was tall, muscular, and oozed cool confidence. But his shrewd, dark gaze shifted everywhere, watched everyone, missed nothing. On several occasions, Yvette had caught him staring at her with a peculiar, assessing glimmer in his eyes.
Hoping to get some relief from the oppressive heat, she flipped to her side and plopped an arm and a knee over the edge of her bunk. The new position didn’t bring her much respite. Brows puckered, she frowned. Mr. Collingsworth unnerved her.
During one of their first meals in the Captain’s sparse, but tidy stateroom, Mrs. Pettigrove asked, “Mr. Collingsworth, what brings you aboard the Atlantic Star?”
Mr. Collingsworth stared at her, his expression unreadable.
“Business?” Her mouth full of biscuit, she persisted. “Pleasure?”
He drew his thick brows into an intimidating scowl before his lips flattened into a thin, annoyed line.
“What is the nature of your occupation?” Mrs. Pettigrove probed, a dollop of butter trailing over her chins.
He finally muttered, what Yvette determined to be, a reluctant reply. “I’m an insurer of sort.”
After answering Mrs. Pettigrove’s question, his unsettling gaze had traveled to Yvette. She had sucked in a sharp, stinging breath and looked away from his piercing black eyes.
