Marrying Christopher Read Online Free Page B

less than most who travel across the Atlantic.”
    “Less than them women coming aboard,” the lad said, staring past Christopher.
    Turning so he could walk sideways, Christopher caught sight of the procession coming up the gangway. Two men appeared at the top of the ramp, then four, then six, then eight. Each pair carried a large trunk between them, and piled on top of these trunks was an assorted array of parcels— paper-covered packages wrapped with string, fancy carpetbags, and hatboxes.
    The last pair of men, struggling with their load, stepped aboard the ship as two ridiculously feathered hats appeared behind them, bobbing up the ramp above their owners. Christopher turned away before the faces beneath the hats came into view. He hurried his step. The last thing he wanted right now was to be around women— especially any as frivolous as it appeared these two must be.
    He loved his sisters fiercely and had done his best by them, but now— at last— it was his time. Time to pursue the life he’d dreamed of for as long as he could remember. And he refused to do any little thing that might risk complicating it. Women, in his opinion, tended to complicate a man’s life. Some day far into the future— after he owned his own land and established a successful farm, when he’d built a fine house and had a solid bank account, then he might be interested in a complication of the female sort. But that time was years away. Today he was gloriously single and free from all worries over any female.
    And I intend to enjoy it. He might only be twenty-one, but he’d not had the youth others were afforded. He’d been shouldering responsibility since he was old enough to wander away from home and find his way back again— practically his whole life.
    Marc paused as they came to a door. Holding his side of the trunk with only one hand, he reached his other toward the knob. “Which cabin would you like?” he asked as he pulled the door open and started inside. Christopher followed, careful to duck beneath the low doorway as they stepped down into a long saloon lined with a good two dozen doors on each side and tables and benches running down the entire length of the middle.
    “Which cabin is farthest from the women’s quarters?” Christopher asked.
    “Over there.” The boy inclined his head toward the end of the row on the opposite side. “It’s the one closest to the captain as well.”
    “Perfect,” Christopher said. “I’ll take it.”

The coach rolled to a stop, jarring Marsali from a troubling dream in which she was back at her aunt and uncle’s house. The carriage rocked as the driver hopped down, and Marsali winced as her head— tender already from hours of knocking against the side— hit the carriage wall again. Thoroughly awake now and grimacing, she pulled the curtain back, eager for her first sight of the wharf.
    But instead of a bay full of ships at anchor, her eyes met a dirty and rather deserted street corner. Lime Street and Pembroke. She did not recognize either name and supposed the coach must be stopping to take on another passenger. The two gentlemen and the lady who had been her traveling companions for much of the journey had disembarked at the last stop, somewhere in the heart of Liverpool. She had guessed that her own stop at the docks would not be long after.
    The carriage door swung open, and the coachman poked his head in. “Last stop. All out.”
    “You must be mistaken,” Marsali said. “I am the only one left, and this is not my destination.”
    “Docks’r over there.” The coachman pointed through the carriage to the window on the other side.
    “Oh. Of course.” Marsali hurriedly climbed down, embarrassed at not having thought to look out the other window. Somehow she had expected the scene to be different— louder and busier, full of people all as excited as she was, eager to be leaving behind this forsaken island.
    “That’ll be another shilling for your trunk,” the