The Other Miss Bridgerton (Rokesbys #3)(45)

Well, maybe just twice. Any more would be ridiculous.

But the point was—

She paused. She had no point. Or if she did, she no longer knew what it was.

He did that to her sometimes. Jumbled her thoughts, tangled her words. She, who prided herself on her gift of conversation, her ready supply of wit and irony, was rendered without speech. Or at least without intelligent speech, which she rather thought was worse.

He turned her into someone she didn’t know—but only sometimes, which was the most baffling part. Sometimes she was precisely the Poppy Bridgerton she knew herself to be, quick with a rejoinder, mind sharp. But then other times—when he’d turn to her with a heavy-lidded blue stare, or maybe when he walked too close and she felt the air around her grow warm from his skin—she lost her breath. She lost her sense.

She lost herself.

And right now? He had disarmed her with a kindness, that was all. He knew that she was desperate to leave the cabin. Maybe he was even just doing this to butter her up for some future injustice he would commit. Hadn’t he once said that his life would be easier if she wasn’t spitting mad?

She’d told him she never spit. That was Poppy Bridgerton. Not this scatterbrained peahen who couldn’t find her own shoes.

“Is something wrong with your laces?” he asked.

Poppy realized she’d stopped tying her laces halfway through her left boot. “No,” she blurted, “just lost the thread of my thought.” She finished up quickly and stood. “There. I’m ready.”

And she was. Somehow, with her sturdy shoes on her feet, she had regained her balance. She gave a little jump.

“Your boots look very practical,” the captain said, looking at her with a combination of amusement and curiosity.

“Not as practical as yours,” she said, with an eye toward what were surely custom-made tall boots. Such well-crafted footwear did not come cheap. In fact, all of the captain’s attire was exquisitely made. Privateering must be more lucrative than she’d imagined. Either that or Captain James came from a lot of money.

But that didn’t seem realistic. He was certainly wellborn, but Poppy doubted his family was rich. If they were, why on earth would he have gone into trade? And such a trade. There was nothing respectable about his profession. She could not even imagine her parents’ reaction if one of her brothers had done the same.

Her mother would have died of shame. Not literally, of course, but she would have declared her death by shame often enough that Poppy would have feared her own demise by repetitive aural torture.

And yet, Poppy could not see anything within the captain that warranted such disappointment. True, she did not know the nature or extent of his business dealings, but she saw the way he treated his men—or at least Billy and Brown and Green. She saw the way he treated her, and she could not help but think of all the so-called gentlemen of London—the ones she was supposed to adore and admire and want to marry. She thought of all the cutting remarks, the cruelty and unkindness they displayed toward the men and women who worked for them.

Not all of them, but enough to make her question the strictures and standards that declared one man a gentleman and the other a rogue.

“Miss Bridgerton?”

The captain’s voice wiggled its way into her thoughts, and she blinked, trying to remember what she’d been talking about.

“Are you ready?”

She nodded eagerly, took a step, and then grinned so suddenly it took her by surprise. “I haven’t worn shoes for days.”

“You will certainly need them on deck,” he said. “Shall we be off?”

“Please.”

He tipped his head toward the door. “After you.”

After they exited the cabin, she followed him up the short flight of stairs to the deck. They emerged into a covered area, and he took her hand again to guide her forward.

But Poppy was not so easily led. “What is this?” she asked, just steps into the open air. She tugged her hand free and touched what looked like a lattice of ropes—something she might have tried to climb when she was a child.

Actually, she’d try to climb it now, except that it didn’t look like it was meant for such a thing.

She turned back to Captain James, and he said, “Rope.”

She smacked his shoulder, and not lightly. He wore a cheeky grin on his face, making it clear he’d said that to needle her.

“It’s called a shroud,” he said, smiling at her impatience.

She touched the ropes, marveling at the strength and thickness of the fibers. “A shroud?” she asked. “Not the shroud?”

“Very astute,” he said. “It is one of many. They are part of the standing rigging, used to support the mast from side to side.”

Yet another nautical term she did not know. “Standing rigging?”

“As opposed to the running rigging,” he told her. “The standing rigging refers to the ropes that do not generally move. The ropes that do move—or rather, the ones we move in order to control the sails—are called the running rigging.”

“I see,” she murmured, although in truth she did not. She had seen only one small portion of the ship, and already there were so many unfamiliar mechanisms and gadgets. Even the items she thought she knew well—ropes, for example—were being used differently than she was used to. She could not imagine how long it took to truly master the art of sailing.