To Catch a Bride by Anne Gracie

Author:Anne Gracie [Gracie, Anne]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Publisher: Penguin USA, Inc.
Published: 2011-10-03T09:51:16+00:00

For the next three days he hardly saw Ayisha at all. The likelihood of that on such a small ship—it was almost as if she were avoiding him. She certainly took rules seriously. He supposed you would, given the rules she’d grown up with. The pasha’s rules were serious indeed.

As were those of England, he reflected. Perhaps they didn’t cut people’s hands off, but they did hang them, or transport them to the other side of the world. She’d just confused the difference between the rules of polite society and the laws of the land, that’s all. And he’d explain that to her, if she ever let him get close enough.

She seemed to have glued herself to the young vicar and his wife. And when she wasn’t with them, she was with the three witches. Who were actually being quite friendly to her, he admitted when he saw one of them sitting with her on deck, teaching her to knit.

Even the sailors had taken to her. Normally they wouldn’t have anything to do with passengers, but the kitten broke down barriers.

Ayisha took Cleo on deck each morning and afternoon to give the kitten some fresh air, and soon sailors and passengers found reasons to be in the vicinity as the tiny creature explored and played.

First she’d simply sniffed her way around, staying close to Ayisha, hiding under her skirts when anyone approached . . . only to leap out and attack their shoes and ankles. But slowly, as Cleo became accustomed to the place, she got bolder.

One day she tried to climb the mast and got stuck six feet up it, and wailed in fury to be rescued. Another time she had a fight almost to the death with the hanging end of a coil of rope.

At first it was funny, but as the kitten grew bolder and more adventurous, Ayisha became anxious. The kitten would disappear down any hole she found, wriggle into any dark corner, leap up onto any looming surface.

The day Ayisha had turned to see Cleo, her head sticking out through one of the drainage holes in the gunwales, peering down into the sea, was the day she stopped the deck excursions forever. “She’s got no sense,” she explained the next day when people asked her where the kitten was. “I wouldn’t put it past her not to try to pounce on a wave or a passing dolphin.”

The next day one of the sailors presented her with a kitten-sized rope harness attached to a long thin lead. “That’ll stop ’er falling overboard, miss,” the sailor said.

For the rest of the day the entertainment was in watching Cleo fight her harness. She fought it, rolling and growling and getting mightily tangled. She tried to run away from it and turned around, spitting furiously when it followed. She resisted it, planting paws and bottom firmly on the deck and refusing to budge when Ayisha tried to lead her. “It’s like taking a loaf of bread for a walk.” Ayisha laughed.

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