The Other Miss Bridgerton (Rokesbys #3)(28)

Poppy stifled a smile. “I’m sure it will be delicious.”

“I’ll come back for the tray at— Well, no I won’t,” Billy said with a frown. “I don’t know when I’ll come back for the tray, seeing as how I don’t know when the captain will be eating.” He thought for a moment. “Don’t worry, I’ll figure out something.”

“I have every faith in your powers of deduction,” Poppy said gamely.

“I don’t know what that means,” Billy said with great enthusiasm, “but I think it’s good.”

“It’s very good,” Poppy said with a laugh. “I promise.”

He gave her a friendly nod and let himself out. Poppy just smiled and shook her head. She could hardly believe he was the same boy who wouldn’t even look at her the day before. She considered it a personal victory that she’d got him to speak to her. A rather fortunate personal victory considering that Billy was now her only friend on the ship.

“Be glad you have a friend,” she admonished herself. This could be worse. That was what she had been telling herself all afternoon. Back in England, her entire life might already have fallen apart—she wouldn’t know for sure until she returned—but for now she was in good health, unmolested, and—she took the lid off the serving dish and took a whiff of her supper—being fed remarkably well.

“Chicken in brown sauce,” she murmured. It was as good a description as any. She put a piece on her plate, along with a serving of an unfamiliar rice dish, then set the lids back in place so that the food would remain warm for Captain James.

Not like her eggs. Or her tea.

That wasn’t his fault , she reminded herself. There was a preposterous number of other things that were his fault, but she could not blame him for her breakfast.

She ate in silence, staring out the window at the fathomless sea. There must have been a moon, because she could see its ethereal reflection on the waves, but it didn’t do much to illuminate the night. The sky was inky dark and endless, with stars peeking through like pinpricks. The heavens felt huge out on the water, so different from at home. Or maybe it wasn’t different at all, and it was just that right now she felt so very much more alone.

How different this voyage might have been under more auspicious circumstances. She tried to imagine taking to the sea with her family. It would never happen, of course; neither of her parents cared for travel. But Poppy imagined it all the same—standing on deck with her brothers, laughing as the wind and the waves set them off balance. Would any of them have grown seasick? Richard, most likely. There were any number of foods that did not agree with him. In their childhood, he’d thrown up more than the other four put together.

Poppy chuckled to herself. What a thing to think about. If she were home, she’d say as much to her mother, if only to hear her shriek. Anne Bridgerton did have a sense of humor, but it did not extend to bodily fluids. Poppy, on the other hand, had been far too influenced by her brothers to be so fussy.

Roger had been the worst. And of course, the best. He was her fiercest protector, but he’d had far too much mischief and humor to ever be stern. He was clever too, as clever as she was, but he was the oldest, and his extra years of experience and education made it impossible for the others to keep up. For example, he would never just leave a toad in his brother’s bed. That would have been far too pedestrian.

No, when Roger turned to amphibians, he made sure they fell from the sky. Or at least from the ceiling, and onto Richard’s head. Poppy still wasn’t sure how he’d managed that with such accuracy.

Then there was what he called his crown jewel. He spent six months secretly tutoring Poppy in false vocabulary, and she dutifully complied, writing such things in her primer as:

tinton, noun. The delicious crust made by burnt sugar on a pudding.



and

fimple, adverb. Almost, nearly.



He declared his life complete the day she approached their mother and asked, “Is the apple cream fimple out of the blackbox? You know how much I chime when it gets a tinton.”

Her mother had fainted on the spot. Her father, upon learning the extent of Roger’s preparation, mused that he was not sure he could bring himself to mete punishment for such a well thought-out plan. He’d even opined that perhaps such diligence ought to be rewarded. Indeed, Roger might have received that new epée he’d been coveting had not Mrs. Bridgerton overheard. With strength no one knew she possessed, she smacked her husband on the back of his head and demanded, “Have you heard your daughter? She’s talking to the maids about plumwort and farfar!”

“She’s especially fond of plumwort,” Roger said with a smirk.

Mr. Bridgerton turned to him with a sigh-crossed groan. “You realize now that I have to punish you?”

Poppy was never quite certain just what punishment her father had chosen, but she did recall that Roger smelled remarkably like the chicken coop for several weeks, and, proving that punishment occasionally did fit its crime, her mother had required him to write, “I will not farfar my sister,” one thousand times in his primer.

But he’d only had to do so nine hundred times. Poppy had sneaked in to help him, taking the quill and doing a hundred lines for him.

He was her favorite brother. She would have done anything for him.

She wished she still could. Even now, after five years, it was so hard to believe he was gone.