Free Elizabeth Grayson by Moon in the Water

Chase stopped to laugh. “I’d know you were here if I were deaf and blind. Are you really going to be able to ignore me if we’re living in these two little rooms together?”
    Ann’s eyes went wide, as if she hadn’t fully considered what their living arrangements were going to be.
    “Perhaps you have a vacant cabin,” she suggested hopefully.
    “Not a one.”
    She hesitated and pressed her fingers to her lips as if she were casting about for an alternative.
    Just then the bell in the steeple of St. Louis Cathedral began to toll. It was four o’clock.
    Chase straightened like a shot. He didn’t have time to argue with this woman who, in a moment of utter insanity, he’d made his wife. He had his duties to perform.
    “I’m going to spare you the humiliation of carrying you bodily off this boat,” he began, “but don’t imagine for a moment this arrangement is permanent. I’m flagging down the first steamer we pass that’s heading downstream and sending you back to your father.
    “Now, before we cast off—should I send word to him that you’re here with me?”
    “I left a note.”
    “Good enough,” he answered and slammed out of the cabin.
    He took the steps to the pilothouse three at a time. Rue was at the wheel when he arrived.
    “I didn’t see Ann leave,” the younger man observed with the slightest of smiles. “Did I miss my chance to say good-bye?”
    Chase scowled at his brother and took one last look at the charts. “Whether Ann left the
Andromeda
is none of your concern.”
    “Well, you have to admire her gumption,” Rue went on, “storming aboard this afternoon and demanding passage.”
    “I can’t imagine why I should admire that,” Chase shot back. “Now, will you sound that damn whistle to let everyone know we’re leaving?”
    As Rue blew a single long blast to signal their intentions, Chase made his way down to the hurricane deck. He paused to take one last look at St. Louis, at the cobblestoned levee and the rows of big, brick warehouses rising in tiers beyond it. Then he shouted down to the mate who was waiting on the foredeck.
    “Mr. Steinwehr, single up the double lines.”
    Gustave “Goose” Steinwehr gave the order to his deckhands, and several men scrambled up the levee to loose the ropes that bound the
Andromeda
to big iron links set into the cobblestones.
    “Let the stern and aft lines go.”
    As the hands dropped more of the ropes, the stern of the steamer began to drift out into the current.
    Chase turned and called to Rue. “Signal the slow bell ahead and give me some left rudder.”
    Rue rang the engine room and muscled the wheel around. As the
Andromeda
eased closer to the levee, Chase directed that they drop the bow lines.
    Then, once the hands were aboard, Chase signaled for three sharp blasts of the whistle and gave the order for backing down. Graceful as a ballerina, the
Andromeda
eased away from the bank and turned out into the brisk Mississippi River current.
    A hot tingle of satisfaction sizzled from Chase’s scalp to his toes. He was in command now; the riverboat was his.
    “All stop,” he sang out once they were well beyond the line of boats tied up at the bank. Facing upstream to the north, Chase sensed the steamer drift a little beneath him and took an intoxicating sip of the river’s power before he gave the order.
    “Right rudder, full ahead.” The
Andromeda
homed to the main channel like a swallow to its nest.
    For a long, shining moment Chase stood alone on the hurricane deck and let the cold March wind tear at him. It plastered his clothes against his body and yanked at his hair. It made his cheeks sting and his eyes water. Never had he felt more alive than he did at this moment, like the world was his for the asking. Like he was a man who’d proved himself.
    With a whoop of pure elation, Chase spun on his heel and strode back to the wheelhouse.
    Once inside, he nudged Rue aside and wrapped his hands around the wheel’s elegantly