Collision Course Read Free

stateroom B-56 swung wide.
    “Julie?” queried the voice of the seventeenth Earl of Glamford.
    “My father!” Juliana hissed urgently.
    Before Paddy could respond, Sophie pushed him back down into the drawer and slammed the captain’s bed shut.
    “Hello, Papa.” Juliana stepped into the doorway in an attempt to block the goings-on with her slender figure. “How was your card game?”
    “Excellent,” he replied briskly, although his sour expression and the dark circles beneath his eyes told a different story. The earl’s fondness for gaming was exceeded only by his lack of skill at it. Nowhere was the situation more dangerous than on a long ocean voyage. There was an abundance of wealthy players and precious little else for them to do.
    He looked beyond his daughter to Sophie in the bedchamber. “Miss Bronson,” he acknowledged with barely a nod.
    “Your Lordship,” Sophie said, nodding back.
Uh-oh
, she thought. He seemed to be slurring his words. Julie had said that her father drank when he was losing at cards. More likely, he lost at cards because he was drinking. There was an expansive light-brown stain on his shirt. Liquor. She was sure of it.
    His bleary eyes shifted from Sophie to the linens piled on the bed. “What on earth? Am I to assumethat the chambermaid left those? Ring for the steward at once! When I travel first class, I expect it to be so.”
    “Oh, Papa,” Juliana giggled. “It’s but the work of a moment to set it right.”
    “You forget your position, young lady,” the earl said sternly. “
You
are not the chambermaid. You are the daughter of a peer, and you would do well to remember it.”
    Juliana dropped her gaze. “Is there something I can do for you, Papa? You don’t normally leave the lounge so early.”
    “I came to change my shirt. I spilled — tea all down the front. Walmsley will be here directly to assist me.”
    The girls exchanged a worried glance. If Walmsley the valet didn’t get here soon, Paddy was going to suffocate in that drawer!
    “You are no longer a child, Julie,” the earl went on. “Do you think I don’t notice how you fraternize with that Alfie boy?”
    “He’s our steward!” Juliana protested, shocked.
    “I’m delighted that you know it. You are a member of a family that stretches back for centuries. Your position is hardly enhanced by such an acquaintance.”
    Stung, Juliana dared to strike back. “I’m impressed that you observe so much from a card table in the lounge.”
    Sophie was amazed that tradition-bound Juliana would stand up to her father in this manner. At that, she was less surprised than the earl himself.
    He was just about to rattle the walls with his outrage when Walmsley let himself in, bearing a selection of fresh shirts from the laundry. The valet and his master retired to the other bedchamber and shut the door behind them.
    In a flash, the girls pulled open the drawer and helped Paddy out.
    “Quickly,” Juliana whispered. “You need to leave before my father finishes dressing!”
    Paddy looked at her, eyes wide. “Your father is a proper piece of goods, he is! He speaks to you like no loving parent.”
    “How dare you!” Juliana demanded. “He is protecting my reputation, as is his responsibility.”
    “Is that how you explain it to yourself?” he asked cynically. “Maybe I wasn’t born in your mansions, but even a poor boy has a nose. I can tell when something smells, I can.”
    “What are you insinuating?” Juliana’s voice grew shrill.
    “To your high-and-mighty father, a junior steward is something to be used, like a cane or a footstool. All that blather about your reputation — what I’m saying, miss, is there’s something not quite right about it.”
    “You are speaking of the Earl of Glamford!” Juliana seethed. “You will show him the respect he is due.”
    “I am,” Paddy said simply.
    “Would you two stop bickering?” Sophie broke in. “What are we going to do with Paddy? We have to get