Page 3 of Hooked by a Hero (Tales from the Brotherhood #4)

Two

N ever in all his years of traveling and exploring the world had Caspian had such strong feelings about a man from the moment he laid eyes on him.

There was something unendingly charming about Dr. Elias Pettigrew which he’d noticed from the start.

Not only was he handsome, with sandy blond hair and strong cheekbones, he had a certain innocence about him that sent Caspian’s heart soaring.

“How does a woman as young and apparently foolish as this Lady Eudora think the two of you are to be wed?” he asked as he led Elias across the deck to the forecastle and up the steep stairs so that they could look out onto the busy Thames.

Elias laughed without humor as he climbed after Caspian, then shook his head. “I was as foolish as she was,” he said. “I knew she and her mother were attempting to trap me into a marriage and I walked right into said trap.”

“Like a lobster,” Caspian said with a nod.

Elias blinked and stared at him for a moment. A smile slowly spread over his shapely lips, scattering Caspian’s concentration. “Yes, I was a lobster,” Elias said, then laughed.

The way he lowered his head self-effacingly had Caspian’s heart beating faster. Truly, he had never reacted quite so strongly to a man before. It puzzled him in the best way possible.

“What is a marriage trap?” he asked bluntly before he could stop himself.

Elias’s laughter stopped, and once again, he stared hard at Caspian. “I take it you are not an Englishman,” he said.

“No, I am not,” Caspian said, heat rising up his neck to his cheeks. He had not been that obvious, had he?

“Where are you from?” Elias asked, a look of charming interest in his hazel eyes. “I do not recognize your accent, and, if you will forgive me, your coloring is most unusual. Are you Scandinavian?”

Caspian flushed harder. “No,” he admitted slowly. “I’m from the other side of the world.”

“Ah.” Elias nodded as if he understood. “I take it you are a descendant of the earliest explorers to that part of the globe? May I assume that your fair complexion is some sort of albinism?”

Caspian had never heard of albinism, but for all he knew, Elias could have been correct. “Yes,” he said, then quickly went on with, “You did not answer my question. What is a marriage trap?”

Elias huffed. “English society is fickle and strange,” he said. “If a woman is importuned in any way, she must marry the man who sullied her or face social outcast.”

Caspian’s heart sank. He’d been so certain Elias was attracted to him. “Oh,” he said. “I did not realize you sullied the woman.”

Elias blanched, and not for the first time in his life, or even that day, Caspian feared he’d accidentally violated some unspoken rule of how Englishmen spoke to each other. In his home, everyone was so much more forthright.

“I did not compromise the young lady at all,” he said, a bit defensively.

“She cornered me in a parlor and forced the compromise all by herself. Her mother was standing by, and before I knew it, I’d been called in front of the entire house party and accused of villainy.

I was tricked into an engagement with Lady Eudora. ”

Caspian nodded slowly, his smile returning.

Not because he found Elias’s circumstances funny, but because it meant the alluring man standing in front of him, sunlight catching in his hair, the breeze blowing up the river making his face pink and wafting his soapy scent toward him, might be of the same mind as him after all.

“I was not aware it was standard practice in England for women to catch a husband that way,” he said, happy to have learned something new.

“It isn’t,” Elias insisted, standing taller. “It was a gross violation of my personal freedom.”

Caspian frowned again. “Could you not have simply said no to the woman?”

Elias seemed to wilt. “I could have,” he sighed, brushing a hand through his hair. “But despite the wickedness of the trap that was set for me, I did not wish to irreparably damage Lady Eudora’s reputation with a harsh ‘no’.”

Caspian’s chest squeezed. “You are kind, sir,” he said, admiring the man.

Elias grunted. “Too kind. Although I’m uncertain how kind it is to run away to Australia, leaving the woman to fend for herself. At least this way she can still claim to be engaged, or she could accuse me of abandonment or spread the rumor I am lost at sea, I do not care.”

Caspian blinked a few times in surprise. “You do not care what the young woman says about you in your absence?”

Elias winced. “No,” he answered truthfully. “I suppose I should, but?—”

“You there!” the elderly gentleman who had been waiting to board the ship just in front of Elias called out, drawing both Caspian’s and Elias’s attention. “Have a care with those trunks. Valuable cargo, you know.”

It was clear at once that the man was not shouting at either Caspian or Elias, but Caspian decided it was best if he and Elias ended their conversation to spare Elias any further embarrassment.

“You have valuable cargo, sir?” he asked, crossing to the starboard side of the forecastle to see what the older man was carrying on about.

Elias smiled slightly, as if he knew Caspian had allowed the interruption so that he did not have to answer any further, embarrassing questions, and crossed the forecastle with him.

The elderly man and the young woman standing beside him turned to regard Caspian and Elias. “My entire fortune is contained within those trunks,” the older man said.

“How do you do,” the young woman said, sending the older man a quick, gently scolding look. “I am Miss Ruby Ferrars, and this is my grandfather, Mr. Nelson Ferrars,” she made the introductions.

“I’m Caspian,” Caspian said, offering his hand the way Englishmen did. “And this is my friend, Dr. Elias Pettigrew.”

“A physician, are you?” Mr. Ferrars said, shaking Elias’s hand instead of Caspian’s. “I should be happy to have you aboard for this journey. I have lived these eighty years in the picture of health, but one never knows when one’s heart will give out at last.”

“That is why I am with you, Grandpapa,” Miss Ferrars said with an affectionate smile, taking her grandfather’s arm. “Grandpapa always says I keep him young.”

“That you do, my dear and precious Ruby, that you do.” Mr. Ferrars smiled back at his granddaughter, patting her hand on his arm, then spotted something over the side of the ship.

“I say, have a care for those trunks!” he repeated his earlier admonishment, turning back to the ship’s railing. “That chest in particular.”

Caspian sent Elias a smile and was pleased beyond telling when the handsome doctor grinned back at him, as though the two of them shared a joke at the expense of Mr. Ferrars. There was most definitely something special about Elias.

The two of them moved to the railing with Mr. and Miss Ferrars and glanced down over the side.

Sure enough, the crew was hoisting a pallet stacked with trunks and wrapped in a net of rope to keep it safe from the dock below onto the ship.

It looked to contain mostly traveling trunks and other things belonging to the passengers, but one compact chest with multiple locks sat atop the pile.

“I live in terror of the ropes breaking or the contents of the pallet hifting and spilling my treasure to the dock below,” Mr. Ferrars muttered.

“That small chest is packed full of cash, gold, and jewels, and if it were to fall and break and scatter the contents, every guttersnipe and dock rat from Westminster to the Isle of Dogs would scarper off with my fortune.”

“Grandpapa,” Miss Ferrars scolded the man. “You do not need to let everyone along the entire Thames waterfront know how much money you have with you.”

“What?” Mr. Ferrars snapped. “I’ve done no such thing.”

Miss Ferrars sent Caspian and Elias a long-suffering look, as though they had all been friends for years and knew just how impossible Mr. Ferrars could be.

Caspian found the woman, and Elias, and the absolutely lovely situation he’d found himself in all of a sudden, after months of exploring England, to be perfect in every way. He was certain his return home would be one of the most pleasant experiences in his recent memory.

Although perhaps not for Elias.

“Dr. Pettigrew!” Lady Eudora’s voice sailed up from the dock. “You cannot do this to me!”

“Oh, dear,” Elias sighed, backing away from the railing.

Lady Eudora and an older woman Caspian assumed was her mother had pushed their way all the way to the end of the dock, nearly directly below the forecastle.

Several dock workers were trying to pull them away, and two gentlemen who looked to be of a higher class appeared to be attempting to coax them into leaving as well, but to no avail.

“Do not worry,” Miss Ferrars called down to the two ladies. “I will take good care of him until we reach Australia.”

There was something cheeky in the way Miss Ferrars made the promise, and sure enough, Lady Eudora squeaked in indignation.

“I am uncertain that will help,” Elias murmured, backing farther from the railing.

Miss Ferrars turned to him and laughed, then placed a gloved hand over her mouth for a moment. “I am truly sorry if I have caused more trouble for you, Dr. Pettigrew,” she said.

“You must forgive my granddaughter,” Mr. Ferrars sighed. “She has always been of high spirits, ever since her mother passed when she was but a babe. I have done my best to raise her to be a sweet and sober woman, but she has too much of her mother in her.”

“And I am proud of it,” Miss Ferrars said instead of bowing her head at her grandfather’s scolding. “Which is why I convinced Grandpapa to take me to Australia so that I might establish myself as a leader of business or industry in a new and exciting place.”

“How very intriguing,” Caspian said, then turned to Elias. “Do you not find that very intriguing, Elias?”