The Other Guy's Bride by Connie Brockway

Owens. “I am well acquainted with bumps and bruises.”
    “I’m sure you are, and no,” Mr. Owens replied from where he sat with his back against the mast, reading something. It was just coming on daybreak, light enough to make out his expression, which remained even more uncommunicative than usual. “Thank you.”
    She wondered what he was reading but didn’t think she ought to ask. He seemed out of sorts with her, which was a shame because it was going to be a lovely day. The air felt fresh, the wind was steady, and even the gloomy Nubian crew seemed cheerful.
    But then, why shouldn’t they? They’d taken yesterday off.
    The day had begun badly. The captain had gotten thoroughly drunk the previous night and by morning was passed out in his squalid little cabin, making it impossible for him to give the crew orders. That had left Mr. Owens, who didn’t know a word of Nubian, to pantomime commands. As she couldn’t very well sit by while the miscreants took advantage of the situation by pretending not to understand his directions, she had suggested Mr. Owens draw pictures.
    The suggestion had not been well received.
    So, she had taken it upon herself to draw very specific images of what was required and show them to the crew. Rather than carry out her illustrated orders, the despicable dogs had pretended to think she’d instructed them to run the felucca aground. She knew this because they’d done their plotting right in front of her, not realizing that she could understand— and speak —Nubian.
    Of course, she couldn’t report this to Mr. Owens. Instead, she’d been forced to make loud and, as it turned out, ineffectual statements about “feeling” that the crew was “up to no good,” which Mr. Owens had dismissed as rampant racism even after they ran the boat onto the sandbank and spent the rest of the day lolling about, drinking and eating and making infrequent, perfunctory attempts to dislodge the boat. She had retired to the far end of the sandbar feeling most ill-used and put upon.
    It had been late in the day before the captain had finally sobered up. When he’d seen what had become of his boat, he’d started shouting. Ginesse, never one to back down from a fight, had shouted back. And then Mr. Owens had entered the fray, and while he was trying to pacify her, the captain had taken a swing at Jim—or so the captain later claimed. Frankly, she suspected the captain been swinging at her—and had hit Jim purely by mistake.
    Since then, the pleasant camaraderie they’d enjoyed the first day had disappeared. When she caught his eye, Mr. Owens’s gaze held the same uncertainty one sees in the eyes of a man watching the approach of a feral dog.
    She rose and wandered to the side of the boat to watch the landscape emerge from the predawn darkness. A silvery papyrus marsh materialized along the river’s west bank. On the river itself, scores of boats appeared, pushing out of the thick mist rolling over the water: graceful feluccas and long, luxurious dahabiyas ; dhows and serviceable little dories; and an occasional steamer belching smoke as it carried its passengers upriver to Luxor.
    She wondered what those passengers thought when they saw an English girl standing at the bow of a ship under the watchful eye of a tall, stern man. They might think they were sweethearts, or newlyweds, or eloping. She might be anyone.
    That was the one real unexpected joy she’d found in her masquerade: she’d shed her name and past and all the assumptions and expectations that went along with them. She’d never realized before how oppressive a family’s belief in one could be, how much of a burden their confidence.
    James Owens had no expectations of her. He didn’t think of her as one of the female oddities at a male educational institution, or Harry Braxton’s trouble-causing daughter, or Dizzy Braxton’s changeling, or Sir Carlisle’s awkward great-granddaughter, or a djinn , or an afreet .
    It was