But Arabella had no attention for his teasing. The young sailor did not have a toothache. With the same keen sense of people that made her so good at her work, she knew it of this youth. He wanted something else in Dr. Stewart’s medicine chest. Something he could not simply ask for. He had lied.

THE SHIP GROANED against a swell of the sea, drowning out the rasp of Arabella’s breathing. The mattress was like a board. Lying rigid on it, she felt every sway of the ship, every wave, every tilt. She should have accepted the offer of a hammock. The crewmen slept perfectly well despite the poor weather, while for four nights now she had barely dozed.

She had not returned to the top deck since she boarded the ship, and she had seen the captain only from afar. That was enough. The ocean terrified her and the captain was large, unpredictable, and a little bit dashing, and she needed only the service of his ship, not teasing or intense scrutiny that made her think about him whenever she wasn’t preoccupied by the constant roll and pitch that seemed to bother no one but her.

Instead she should be thinking of the royal family to whom she was traveling. She should be making plans for Princess Jacqueline’s debut in London society. Her mind should be bent on how to win the prince’s attention despite her servile status.

The ship leaned and she clutched the edge of the bunk. Wind howled. The wall creaked like it would snap.

She squeezed her eyes shut. She was exhausted. But this simply must be borne. She was a world away from comfort now. But soon, hopefully, all the canings and scoldings and groping hands and even this heaving ship would be pale memories of a distant past.

Then, she would bring her sisters with her into her fairy-tale life. Eleanor could quit translating texts for the Reverend by the putrid light of tallow candles, and Ravenna could set up her own stable or kennel or even a physician’s practice if she wished. They would be together again.

She missed them. She missed the affection they shared, the secrets and confidences and embraces. She had lived too long among strangers, coming to know women barely younger than her only in order to set them out into the world as brides, then being sent off for another assignment, another debutante, another success.

She feared her turn would never come and that she was chasing moonbeams. A prince would be mad to look twice at a governess. Her journey to Saint-Reveé-des-Beaux would win her nothing but further distance from her family. She would be alone in a foreign world living among people who paid for her skills for the remainder of her life.

And she would never know the truth about who she was.

She turned onto her side, but her skirts tangled in the blanket. With no lock on the cabin door, she was afraid to undress for sleep. Her gown was a shambles. With an upturned nose Mr. Miles had offered to press it for her, but she had nothing else to wear in the meantime. And nothing else to wear to meet a prince. It was hopeless.

No. This was fear and weariness speaking. She would not accept defeat.

Wide-awake, she sat up, banged her head on the top of the bed and groaned.

This was insupportable. She had not survived years of canings then scoldings then gropings only to cower in fear and doubt, not now when she had never been closer to her goal.

She crawled over the wooden side of the bed and for a moment stood still in the cramped space, bracing herself against another sway of the ship. Then she pulled her cloak tight about her and drew aside the curtain door.

All was quiet. The door to the captain’s quarters was closed. In the other direction sailors slumbered in hammocks strung up between the massive cannons in the dark. A single lantern at the closest stairway cast a wavering glow. All smelled of brine, unwashed men, and farm animals from the hold below. But the faintest whiff of rain touched the air.

It had fallen steadily for three days already. Few sailors would be atop now, she suspected. Dr. Stewart had said that no storm threatened. And she needed the activity.

More than that, she needed to be brave.

Holding tight to posts and cannons against the ship’s gentle roll, she stumbled to the stairs and gripped the rail. Raindrops fell onto her hands, but she put one foot on the glistening step, then the next.

She climbed the narrow stair with her heart trapped firmly between her molars, wind grabbing at her hood and skirts.

Water puddled across the top deck and the sky was a thick darkness from which fell a steady, light shower. Rigging clattered in the wind. Far toward the bow lit by two bright lanterns, a pair of sailors huddled. Arabella held onto the stairway railing with both hands and made herself look up at the sails. Only a half dozen of them were unfurled, and they were stretched with wind.

A strange eddy of calm crawled through her.

She released one hand from the rail.

She took a slow, deep breath and felt her feet solid beneath her. The ship rocked. She bent her knees into it.

She could do this.

Her other hand loosened on the rail, then released it.

She did not fly up into the sky and nothing propelled her abruptly from the center of the deck and into the sea. She felt light, giddy, almost weightless. She looked up again and rain pattered on her cheeks.

Pulling in another breath, she moved one foot. Then the other. Then the other. She did not look at the darkness of the water beyond the main rail, only at her feet, at a trio of barrels nearby, at a line stretching from the railing to a sail above, at anything but the sea.

Finally she came to the main railing that ran all the way around the deck. Her fingers curved around it. It was solid and reassuring. She looked into the darkness.

The Atlantic roiled, tossing up whitecaps beneath the starless sky. Only lantern light from either end of the ship lit its surface.

She stared, dizzy and clutching the railing. Twenty-two years ago this ocean had swallowed everyone aboard a ship traveling from the West Indies to England—everyone except three tiny girls. It was a miracle, the Cornish villagers had said. God had saved them.

But God had not seen fit to save their nanny. And their names meant nothing to the villagers, nor to the distant solicitor in London that the village aldermen reluctantly hired to find their father. So, plucked from the horrors of the sea, the three little beneficiaries of a miracle had been deposited in a foundling home where they then learned other sorts of horrors altogether.

The black water churned. Arabella’s hands were ice on the railing.

She must conquer this. She would.

She sucked in air, fresh and tinny. After the closeness of below, it was a little scent of heaven.

Drops pattered on her hood and shoulders. The sleeves of her gown clung damply to her arms. She shivered. But she was standing erect and stable on the deck of a ship. She could not go below yet. Not until the nightmares were truly and thoroughly bested.

She released the rail with one hand and then pulled the other away from safety.

Her breaths came short. Panic washed over her. The deck seemed to spin.

She grabbed the railing.

“It is unwise to drench oneself while at sea, Miss Caulfield,” rumbled the captain’s deep voice at her shoulder. “One might remain drenched for weeks if the sun fails to appear.”

She turned, clutching the railing hard with both hands behind her.

His stance was square, his face dark in the shroud of rain. His height and the breadth of his shoulders garbed in a coat that reached to his calves shaped an austere silhouette in the light from the front of the ship. In the dark he seemed even larger than before, and powerful and dangerous and . . . mythic.

She was ridiculous to think it. He was just a man. But her thoughts were muddled, and he looked so solid and strong.