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“Since you haven’t spent any time in my company, I don’t know how you could possibly be sure you won’t enjoy it.”
    Meg’s flush deepened. He was making her feel like a difficult child, when she was making a perfectly reasonable request to be left to her own devices. “This is a pointless conversation,” she said, turning back to the window and her book. “If you have business in this cabin, then please get on with it. If you don’t, I would ask you to leave me in peace.”
    He shrugged. “Please yourself. I’ll tell Biggins to bring you some luncheon.”
    “G’bye . . . g’bye . . .” Gus chanted as the door closed behind the captain. He hopped off his perch and over to the window seat. He flew up onto the cushion beside Meg and began to preen himself, muttering incomprehensibly as he did so.
    “Don’t think I find your company flattering,” Meg said to him. He looked up from his grooming and she could have sworn one bright, beady eye winked at her.

Chapter   3
    C osimo was annoyed and that very fact increased his irritation. He was very rarely put out but Miss Meg Barratt had needled him. He made his way to the galley, where he knew he’d find Biggins. A pot of coffee bubbled fragrantly on the range and the cook was chopping up a large slab of beef for a stew. Biggins was sitting companionably at the table with a mug of coffee, whittling on a piece of ivory. Both men stopped what they were doing when the captain loomed in the narrow doorway.
    “Anything I can get you, sir?” Biggins asked, wondering why his usually equable captain had such a frown on his face.
    “Yes, take some bread and cheese into my cabin for Miss Barratt, will you, and then bring me some on deck. A carafe of the burgundy too.” He turned to leave, saying acidly over his shoulder, “And make sure you knock loudly and get the lady’s permission before you open the cabin door. She’s rather sensitive on the issue of her privacy.”
    “Didn’t sound too happy, did he?” the cook observed after a discreet minute as he fetched a wheel of cheddar from a shelf. “Something’s put him out.”
    “It’s that Miss Barratt, I’ll lay odds,” Biggins stated, filling a carafe of red wine from a barrel. “Summat’s not right there.”
    “We
was
expecting a lady passenger,” the cook pointed out, slicing cheese deftly before attacking a loaf of barley bread.
    “Aye, but not this one,” the other man stated with a significant nod. “I heard captain and the surgeon talking last night. Right mystery it is, Silas.”
    “Well, if you ask me, everything’s a mystery when you sail with the captain,” Silas stated. “You got any idea where we’re goin’ this time?”
    Biggins shook his head. “Course not. No one does. It’s just like always.”
    “Well, he pays well,” Silas said with a shrug.
     
    Cosimo returned to the deck, where the wind had done nothing useful in his absence and the tantalizingly distant outline of land was barely visible. He leaned on the railing and stared down at the flat surface of the sea. His present mood puzzled him. There was no denying that Meg Barratt had somehow got under his skin. Her stubborn refusal to respond to what he had fondly thought were his own rather charming attempts at gaining her confidence had definitely irritated him. Which was unusual. Ordinarily minor miscalculations of that kind ran off him like water off an oiled hide. He simply returned to the assault with fresh ammunition and new tactics.
    He swung away from the railing with an air of resolution. There was nothing so special about Miss Barratt that she couldn’t be won over by some technique or another. He would try again. He hastened back to the galley, where Biggins was just setting a shiny red apple on a tray with the bread and cheese.
    “I’ll take that,” Cosimo said, lifting the tray from the table. He frowned at it. “Wine,” he said. “A glass of burgundy.”
    “Aye, sir.” Biggins, with a raised