He had, as had become his custom, spent a few quiet minutes watching the children settle down to sleep. While Jonathan could fall asleep under any circumstances, the Captain knew Candy would be inclined to toss and turn due to the noise of the growing storm pounding on the walls of their room.
Perching near her bed, he quietly offered some silent suggestions that guided her more easily toward her dreams, and feeling quite content with himself, he disappeared to check on the master cabin.
To his surprise, he hadn't invisibly entered the quiet, darkened room, as he expected. Carolyn Muir, much earlier than normal, was already in the midst of getting ready for bed. He smiled, knowing it was her habit these days to change in the closet, but this night, that apparently was not her intention. Standing in front of the mirror, she just stepped out of her dress and pulled a nightgown from a drawer. Stunned, he watched her change, realizing that a gentleman would indeed depart, but found himself unwilling, and perhaps unable to do so.
Nothing salacious, nothing truly scandalous – yet that glimpse of thigh, hint of rounded breast and the tousled hair surrounding her lovely face, as the nightgown drifted down, stirred him in ways he had not allowed himself to feel for nearly a century. Unmoving, he watched her humming about the room and finally pulling on a robe, she tied it, and turning off the light, headed back downstairs.
"FOOL! Dishonorable, cur!" He paced furiously across the floor, berating himself for this moment of weakness. "How could I! No honorable man would ever. . ." he paused as if panting for breath. How could he battle his personal disgust, especially when this lapse had brought him closer to something, or rather someone he so clearly desired?
In the midst of his rant, he sensed the women murmuring below, and paying closer intention, he went to hear their conversation. 'So it isn't enough she destroys my piece of mind, my honor? The two of them are plotting to destroy my tree!" he fumed. In another wave of frustration, his anger poured around the room, rattling tables, dishes and capturing Carolyn Muir's attention.
Temper mounting, he appeared back in the master cabin at her call. The rational, reasonable part of his mind sat silently as he stalked about, shouting and threatening the woman who had unwittingly set his moral compass adrift. 'If I were alive,' he wished fervently, 'there'd be no hiding, no skulking about. I'd take her in my arms and make this right.'
Yet that wasn't possible, and to his dismay and her frustration, what he said, before disappearing in even greater fury was, "Be warned Madam, you'll have me to reckon with if you touch the mast of my ship!" Luckily, she was too angry to see his flash of recognition of the obvious double entendre he had let slip. "Your ship or our home?" "My ship Mrs. Muir, I am Captain here!"
Unable to bear the anger and frustration, he immediately vanished and reappeared in the attic. Slapping his hand to his head, he shouted to himself, "Touch my mast? TOUCH MY MAST?" Seething, he slumped into a chair, "It's going to be a long night."