Want to dive into something entirely new? Then join me on the high seas with with a lady scientist and a duke-turned-sea-captain in Seahorses & Sensibility!
***
Chapter 1
Lydia Pemberton had exactly forty-seven seconds to board the Intrepid before the ship set sail, and she was wasting them analyzing the captain’s shoulders.
In her defense, his shoulders were exceptional. Perfect load distribution, the deltoid engagement suggesting someone accustomed to carrying weight without complaint. From a purely anatomical standpoint, remarkable. From a practical standpoint—she forced her eyes away—entirely irrelevant to her current mission.
Forty-one seconds.
The captain turned, the edge of his smile doing something peculiar to her rate of respiration. Irritating. She had far more important matters to focus on.
After all, she’d studied tide tables and the timeline of other ships’ departures. She’d memorized the Intrepid’s crew-rotation schedules, had bribed a dock worker to learn Captain Ashworth’s sailing protocols, and had paid to have necessary supplies stowed aboard. Lydia had not, however, planned for a captain whose profile made her pulse forget its usual rhythm.
Thirty-two seconds.
The sailors would be loosening the final ropes soon, at which point every gaze on deck would be directed toward the bow and open water. She’d observed this pattern across seven separate departures over the past month. The moment of casting off created a reliable blind spot at the stern—approximately twelve seconds during which the aft deck went entirely unobserved.
She couldn’t wait any longer.
She moved.
Her boots found purchase on wet cobblestones as she sprinted between dock workers and their cargo. A male voice shouted something behind her, likely about procedures she had no intention of observing. But she was already calculating angles, velocity, the precise mechanics required for what came next.
The gap between dock and deck was widening. She didn’t let herself think about the consequences of misjudgment or the dratted bulk of her skirts.
She jumped.
For one suspended moment, the world held its breath. Water beneath her, sky above her.
Then her hips struck the deck and she was rolling, petticoats tangling, palms scraping against salt-rough wood. Momentum carried her behind a stack of crates lashed near the stern rail—the same cargo she’d noted during her reconnaissance, tall enough to conceal a crouching woman from anyone forward of the mainmast.
The captain’s voice rang out from somewhere near the bow: “Cast off!”
The Intrepid lurched away from shore with the inevitability of a door closing. Lydia pressed herself against the crates, her heart hammering in her chest at what felt like twice its usual pace.
She’d done it. She was aboard. She was committed now.
Irreversibly.
The word echoed strangely in her mind. And for the first time since she’d conceived what her mother would have called another odd notion, doubt crept in like bilge water through a cracked hull.
What if she’d miscalculated? What if the captain was the sort of man who’d clap her in irons and turn back to London out of spite? What if her mother’s furious disappointment was fully justified?
What if this is the worst mistake of her life?
She could almost hear her mother’s voice: You’ve gone too far this time, Lydia. Even for you.
But the dock was already receding, the gap between ship and shore widening into something uncrossable. There was no undoing this. She would simply have to make it work—the way she’d made everything else work since realizing that waiting for permission to be herself meant waiting forever.
Her mother would seethe, of course, but at least she wouldn’t worry. Because Lydia had left a note. Not an apology—she’d done enough apologizing for wanting more than watercolors and morning calls in her five and twenty years. Instead, Lydia had merely penned an explanation that would arrive three days after her departure.
“Secure those lines!” the captain called, his tone exuding easy authority.
Lydia risked a glance around the edge of the crates. The deck stretched before her—perhaps sixty feet of worn planking between the stern where she hid and the raised quarterdeck at the ship’s waist where Captain Ashworth stood with his back to her. Beyond him, the crew swarmed the rigging, hauling on ropes and unfurling canvas with practiced efficiency. A dozen men, she estimated, none looking aft.
She waited until the crew was fully engrossed, then crept toward the hatch—a square opening in the deck just forward of her hiding spot. Below, everything was dim and cramped, reeking of tar and unwashed bodies. But the corridor led away from curious eyes, toward what her research suggested would be the captain’s quarters.
It was the optimal place to hide, at least for the critical first few hours. Because Captain Ashworth was reputed to be a hands-on leader. He’d spend the departure window on deck, overseeing every aspect of the ship’s transition to open water. Which meant his cabin—the single spot no one else was likely to enter—would sit empty.
All Lydia had to do was remain concealed until nightfall, then she could negotiate from a position of strength. The ship would be too far from shore by then to turn back without significant hassle. She hoped, at that point, years of accumulated pin money would make her presence into an inconvenience rather than a crisis.
Now, Lydia slipped inside the captain’s cabin, closed the door behind her…then froze.
Because the row of stern windows provided a view more expansive than any she’d ever seen before. The murky brown of London’s harbor was already giving way to something crystalline and alive, an impossible blue that seemed to stretch into infinity.
Creeping closer, she could make out ribbons of foam catching the afternoon light, the deeper color beyond suggested depths she’d only ever read about. Somewhere past those waves—beyond shipping lanes and mapped territories—the Sargasso Sea awaited. Acres of floating weed hiding species that existed in the gaps of human knowledge. Creatures living in ways no naturalist had ever properly documented.
Three years she’d spent preparing for this. Three years of evading marriage proposals, of being patted on the head and told to sketch flowers instead of dissect jellyfish. Of her mother’s disappointed silences every time Lydia rejected balls in favor of books.
She pressed her forehead against the cool glass. The view tugged something free in her chest, something that had been locked away by endless evenings in London drawing rooms. This was real. She was going to collect specimens and document behaviors and compile scientific observations rigorous enough to be taken seriously. She was going to make discoveries that would silence every dismissive comment, open every closed door, prove wrong every suggestion that her ambitions exceeded her sex’s capacity.
All she had to do was avoid getting thrown overboard in the meantime.
The light was changing, suggesting she’d been riveted for longer than anticipated. Her stays dug into her ribs as she leaned forward, still unable to tear her gaze away from the watery view. She should have found a proper hiding place minutes ago—behind the sea chest, perhaps, or inside the wardrobe she’d noted against the far wall. Instead, she remained transfixed, watching the colors change moment by moment as the ship moved deeper into open ocean.
One more moment. Just one more moment of letting herself believe this was possible…
A deep male voice came from behind her. “Well, well. What have we here?”
***
Chapter 2
Three hours earlier…
“You’re absolutely certain there’s nothing you want to talk about?” Edmund asked, adjusting his cravat for the fourth time in as many minutes. His handsome face made strangers trust him immediately, which was useful in politics and dangerous elsewhere.
Especially here and now when Dominic found his mouth had opened to answer without his permission. Glaring at his friend, he snapped his teeth together then offered a single sharp nod.
Because the view was too beautiful for airing dark secrets. The morning sun glinted off the Thames, one of those rare London days where the sky remembered it could be blue. Before them, the Intrepid waited among a forest of masts and rigging, the docks humming with their usual chaos: sailors hauling cargo, merchants shouting final instructions, gulls conducting their usual raids for dropped food.
It was a perfect day to sail. It should have also been a perfect day for Dominic to tell his friends the truth.
“Dominic?” Edmund prompted, abandoning his cravat to its rumpled fate. “You’re doing that thing where you’re about to say something and then decide against it.”
He was. He’d been doing it ever since he woke this morning. Since he reviewed the ledgers one final time and confirmed what he’d been avoiding admitting:
The voyage wasn’t just risky. It was desperate.
He’d chosen mahogany, one of the few American cargoes not built on slavery. But the market was brutal. Winner-takes-all.
And while his estate was finally self-supporting again, the Intrepid wasn’t yet fully paid off. The creditors had been patient only because he’d shown them signed contracts, and also he suspected because of the title he refused to acknowledge.
Being a duke, though, would do him no good if competitors reached Jamaica first and the cargo had already sold out—
In that case, his crazy experiment of recompensing his crew with shares of the profit would harm them rather than help them. Children would go hungry. Families would suffer.
And Dominic would have proven that, like his father, he made a terrible leader of men.
But when he opened his mouth to admit his terror to his closest friends, no words emerged. Instead, after a long swallow, all he managed was: “You’re imagining things.”
Edmund studied him with those too-clever eyes, then adjusted his cravat again. “When you’re done carrying the load alone,” his friend said quietly, “we’ll be here.”
Before Dominic could deflect a second time, Charles pressed a wrapped parcel into his hands. Where Edmund was all golden ease, Charles was angles and shadows. The third member of their trio rarely initiated contact, never spoke more than was strictly necessary. But his gifts always meant something.
So Dominic unfolded the paper. Considered the compass inside.
“For navigation,” Charles murmured. “Both literal and…metaphorical.”
From Charles, that was a monologue. Edmund was the one who slung one arm around Charles’s shoulders and elaborated.
“He means: whatever you’re carrying, don’t forget you exist underneath it.”
“Of course I exist beneath the load,” Dominic rebutted. That was the entire point. He existed because of the loads he allowed to settle onto his shoulders. He existed because he was keeping the ducal estate solvent and also keeping his crew afloat.
He hadn’t made the final point aloud, but something that almost looked like pain flickered across Charles’s face anyway. For a moment, Dominic thought Charles might finally reveal more of himself than the steadfast support he’d offered for the last fifteen years.
And Charles did say a little more, although it wasn’t about himself. “Some loads you can’t put down even when you want to,” he murmured. “Make sure this isn’t one of them.”
The words sounded like they came from somewhere deep and personal. Somewhere Charles never let anyone see.
Dominic wanted to dig into that. But one of Dominic’s loads currently needed to sail with the tide.
Which meant it was time to take his leave. “Edmund, try not to cause any political scandals while I’m gone.” A back-slap, a grin. “And Charles, try not to waste so many words.”
A flash of teeth as the latter laughed—a rare enough occurrence that Dominic tucked the memory away as a true success. Then Dominic walked up the gangplank, feeling Edmund and Charles’s faith at his back like ballast. At least he had friends waiting at home.
And he had crew on the ship who were the next best thing to friends also. His first mate was checking cargo with the fierce focus of a man whose grandchildren’s future depended upon every barrel. His bosun was overseeing rigging with the intensity of someone who’d learned the hard way that carelessness cost blood.
Twelve families counting on a voyage Dominic hadn’t admitted—even to his closest friends—might be the ship’s last if one single thing went wrong.
He drew a breath, forced a smile. “Report?” he said to his crew at large.
“All in good order, Your Grace,” called the man who’d served as Dominic’s valet for years before following his lord to sea. The formal address was automatic, a remnant of their former life together.
It was also the exact wrong thing to say aboard ship.
Bennett—his first mate—caught Dominic’s eye. At sixty-three, Bennett had been sailing twice as long as Dominic had been alive, and his wisdom showed in every line of his weathered face. Years ago, he’d spoken warnings such as the one he and Dominic were both remembering:
“The men need to know which version of you is standing on this deck. The duke or the captain.”
Now, all it took was a look from his first mate before Dominic corrected the mistake. “Captain will do, Thompson.”
“Right. Sorry, Captain,” came his ex-valet’s red-cheeked answer.
It wasn’t the sort of misstep that would derail the voyage. Yet Dominic’s shoulders tightened anyway. There was no room for blunders on this trip.
Still, the departure proceeded smoothly after that. Sails catching wind with satisfying snaps of canvas. The Intrepid gliding away from the dock as if she’d been yearning for the water. By the time they reached open ocean, Dominic could almost breathe normally again.
Almost.
Still, after ensuring the crew had everything well in hand, he made his way to his cabin. He needed to not think about what depended upon this voyage for five minutes. He needed a moment alone to…
Opening the door, his thoughts and his steps stopped short.
Because sunset poured through the wester-most windows, turning everything golden. And there—silhouetted against all that light—stood a woman.
Long hair half-unpinned as if she’d slept on it…or done something far more interesting. Dress well made but scuffed and dirty. Curves that would have drawn a wolf whistle out of his crew.
She turned her head just a little, and he caught a glimpse of a sharp nose that might have been called unfortunate in a ballroom. Here, backlit by the Atlantic, it looked like the prow of a ship. Built for cutting through resistance. For pointing toward horizons.
It wasn’t the exteriors, though, that made his breath catch.
Instead, it was the way the woman’s face turned back to press against the glass like she was trying to swim through it. Her fingers traced patterns on the window—measurements, maybe? Or calculations?
The fading light continued to catch in her hair, making her profile ethereal. And his heart turned a back flip in his chest.
Any ordinary sea captain would have locked this problem away and handed her off to someone else at the nearest port. It was definitely a complication Dominic couldn’t afford. Not on this voyage.
But he recognized that desperate focus. He’d seen it in his own reflection at seventeen—the look of someone who’d staked everything on a single long-shot chance. He wouldn’t have survived that gamble without his friends’ help. And this woman appeared to be entirely alone.
Well, not precisely alone. Dominic was here. He could help her the way his friends had helped him.
Which didn’t mean he couldn’t tease her a little first.
“Well, well,” he said, unable to stop his smile. “What have we here?”
***
Chapter 3
Lydia spun around to find the captain—Ashworth, that dockworker had told her—in the doorway of her cabin.
Well, technically his cabin. Which she had commandeered. And now she’d been taken off guard without time to marshal her arguments.
The situation was definitely sub-optimal.
Perhaps that’s why she found herself staring. Up close, Captain Ashworth was even more formidable than she’d observed from the dock. Tall—approximately six feet based on the door frame he’d ducked beneath to enter—with curly, dark hair longer than fashion dictated and warm gray eyes that were currently studying her with an intensity that made her pulse jump.
She could feel his regard in her throat, her wrists, behind her ears…
“I can explain,” she said, pleased that her voice emerged steady.
One corner of his mouth curved upward in what appeared to be genuine amusement. “Can you? I’m fascinated to hear it.”
Fascinated. He’d said fascinated. Not with that particular inflection that meant amusing little woman. Just…fascinated.
Which was either promising or a trap. Possibly both.
She straightened to her full height. “I require passage to the Sargasso Sea. Your first mate refused to book a berth for me, citing a blanket policy against passengers.”
“We don’t allow passengers.” The captain could have stopped there, but instead he added, “Although usually I make final decisions of that sort. I suspect Mr. Bennett was protecting me from myself.”
Lydia frowned. His statement was nonsensical, so she ignored it and continued with her planned debate tactic.
“Given that this vessel is engaged in commercial trade rather than military operations, I calculated that negotiating from a position of fait accompli would prove more successful than continued requests through official channels.”
He blinked at her. Then his smile widened, and there was something in his expression that she couldn’t quite classify. Amusement, certainly. But also perhaps respect?
“Fait accompli,” he repeated. “Is that what we’re calling stowing away on merchant vessels nowadays?”
“It’s certainly more accurate than ‘stowing away,’” she countered, surprising herself with the sharpness in her tone. “After all, I fully intend to authorize my presence retroactively through appropriate compensation.”
“Retroactively.” He stalked toward his desk in a way that put her in mind of lions at the Royal Menagerie. The space abruptly shrank around her, and she fixated on his eyes to calm her thundering heart.
Their shade was the precise blue-gray of the ocean under storm clouds, her very favorite—
Stop it.
“And what exactly,” he said, settling one hip against his desk in a posture that suggested casual confidence, “are you planning to do in the Sargasso Sea that’s worth risking a merchant captain’s considerable wrath for?”
She met his gaze directly. Finally, a question she was prepared to answer.
“Research. I’m conducting a comprehensive survey of marine biology, with particular emphasis on species distribution and breeding behaviors in the Sargasso region. Current documentation is woefully inadequate, based primarily on dead specimens and secondhand accounts from sailors who lack proper taxonomic training. I intend to observe living creatures in their natural habitat and document previously unknown behaviors, preserving specimens as needed for proof of important findings.”
She could hear her own words spilling out too fast, but she couldn’t seem to stop them. “And the Caribbean itself,” she continued, “has remarkable botanical specimens beyond just the marine life. Haematoxylum campechianum—bloodwood—produces extraordinary dyes. The trees grow wild in hidden groves, completely free for harvesting. Though I understand the commercial viability is lower than mahogany.” She stopped herself. “But obviously the marine specimens are my primary focus.”
His expression didn’t change. He simply watched her. But suddenly, in her memory, his eyes were overlaid by the duller gray of George Perry’s. The words of the man she’d hoped would be her scientific mentor echoed through her head:
“Women lack the necessary rigor of mind for serious research. Their brains simply aren’t constructed for real scientific inquiry. Perhaps botanical illustration instead? Something suitable for young ladies of refined sensibility.”
She’d wanted to throw her preserved hagfish directly at Perry’s face. (Assault: illegal; deeply satisfying to contemplate; absolutely inadvisable in practice.) Instead, she’d decided to prove Perry wrong so thoroughly he’d choke upon his own condescension.
But first, she had to stay aboard this ship.
So she waited, bracing for the familiar words. Preparing her counterarguments.
“Collecting marine specimens,” the captain said slowly. “That’s quite ambitious for someone who just committed several crimes to get aboard my ship.”
“Technically only one crime,” she corrected, because precision mattered even in moments of impending humiliation. “Unauthorized boarding. Though I suppose one could argue trespassing was a separate offense, depending on how maritime law classifies private cabins within commercial vessels. That would require consulting legal precedent which I admit I haven’t…”
“Just the one crime then,” the captain interrupted, still smiling. “And you’re a naturalist?”
Here it comes, she thought. The part where he tells me that my ambitions are unsuitable for my sex.
“Yes.” She met his eyes directly, refusing to look away despite the discomfort of prolonged eye contact. “Though certain individuals in the scientific community would dispute that classification based solely on my sex rather than on my qualifications or the rigor of my methodology.”
Something shifted in his expression—a subtle change in the muscle tension around his eyes that she couldn’t quite interpret but that made her pulse accelerate again.
“Would they now,” he said quietly.
And then, in a tone that provoked the blossoming of something warm and impossible to quantify in her chest:
“How remarkably stupid of them.”
***
Keep reading in Seahorses & Sensibility!
The cage bars were too close together for even my wolf form to squeeze through, not that shifting would have helped. The last time a prisoner tried, electricity shot through her fur so fast the yelp still echoed in my memory.
Bones ground together as my wolf erupted without permission. My spine arched and shortened, every muscle twitching as they found a new shape. Pain lanced through me due to the speed of the shift, but worse was the fear thrumming beneath the agony.
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