little
next floor, and having watched him fumble with the key for two minutes, she opened his door for him. She locked it behind them. “Have the bunk,” he slurred, sitting down against the door, assegai in hand.
She slid into the bunk, bit her lip, and slipped her dress over her head. She lay there for a few moments in the darkness, gathering courage. Finally, she said, quietly, “Cay. I . . . I’m cold.”
There was no answer.
Cautiously she leaned over the edge of the bunk. The moonlight from the porthole showed him slumped over sideways, still holding the assegai. He gave a gentle snore.
Shael sighed and lifted her eyes to the uncaring ceiling. “I thought I’d been prepared for everything that could happen on my first night in a man’s bed,” she muttered. It was a long, long while before she drifted off into an uneasy sleep.
The vessel was full of noise and moving folk when she awoke. It was also crisp and cool now. It had been anything but cool in this stuffy little cabin before she’d fallen asleep. She’d been going to dress again . . . but it had been too hot. Now the porthole was open. And somebody had thrown a blanket over her. That somebody was still lying under a blanket on the floor. How was she to know that he’d stood there looking at her in the small hours? The light of the sinking moon had streamed in through the porthole, and bathed the bunk in its brightness. It had taken him a very long time to decide to turn away and open the porthole, before covering her curves gently, ever so gently, with a blanket out of his sea chest.
Hastily she slipped on her undergarments and her spangled dress. She got up, stepping over Keilin, waking him as she unbolted the door. With luck she could be safely back in her own cabin before anyone noticed . . .
She listened. All quiet. She stepped out boldly, to find at least three people coming down the passage. She fled, her ears burning at the sound of Beywulf’s Wagnerian laughter. “And I was just going to start looking for her.”
“So you say they were definitely looking for her.” Cap eyed them with more disfavor than the rejected pieces of bacon gristle on his plate.
Keilin nodded. “No doubt, sir.”
“Any