The Other Miss Bridgerton (Rokesbys #3)(47)

And the captain laughed. He laughed like he couldn’t imagine anything better, with such joy that it almost felt to Poppy as if he’d been there, as if he’d seen the whole thing and was now remembering it with merriment rather than hearing it for the first time.

Had she told anyone about Roger’s antics before? She must have done, if only in good-natured complaint. But not recently, probably not since he’d passed.

“I think your brother and I would have been good friends,” the captain said once he’d caught his breath.

“Yes,” Poppy said, electrically aware that Roger had been her favorite brother, and Captain James might have been his finest friend. “I think you would have liked him a great deal. I think he would have liked you.”

“Even though I kidnapped his sister?”

It should have stopped the conversation, ground it to parched, insidious dust. But somehow it didn’t, and before Poppy gave it a second thought, she said, “Well, he’d make you marry me.”

She looked at him.

He looked at her.

And then, with astonishing nonchalance, she added, “But then he’d have been satisfied. He wasn’t the sort to hold a grudge.”

The captain’s fingers tightened around hers. “Are you?”

“I don’t know,” Poppy said. “I’ve never been wronged quite so dearly.”

She hadn’t said it to wound him, and she took no satisfaction when he winced. But it was the truth, and this was a moment that deserved no less.

“I wish it had not happened,” he said.

“I know.”

His eyes pressed into hers. “I wish you would believe me when I tell you I had no choice.”

“I . . .” Poppy swallowed. Did she believe him? She had come to know him over the past few days, perhaps not like someone she’d known for years, but certainly more than she’d known any of the gentlemen who’d courted her in London. More, even, than the man who’d asked her to marry him.

She did not think Andrew James was a liar, and she did not think he was the sort of man who would allow someone to be hurt in the pursuit of his own expediency and profit.

“I believe that you believe you had no choice,” she finally said.

He was silent for a moment, then said, “That is something, I suppose.”

She gave him a helpless shrug. “I cannot understand what you will not tell me.”

His nod was one of resignation, but he said no more on the subject. Instead he motioned with his arm, urging her a few more steps forward. “Careful,” he murmured.

Poppy looked to her toes. The deck came to an abrupt halt in front of her, its elevation dropping by several feet.

The captain hopped down. “The beakhead, my lady,” he said with a gallant wave to the triangular deck that formed the pointy front of the Infinity . He reached up and placed his hands on her hips to help her down.

But when she was steady, he didn’t let go.

“This is as far forward as one can stand on deck,” he told her.

She pointed to a spot a few feet ahead. “What about—”

“As one can stand safely on deck,” he amended. He adjusted their position so that he was standing behind her. “Now close your eyes.”

“But then I can’t see the stars.”

“You can open them later.”

She tilted her head to the left, right, and back again, as if to say, Oh, very well , but she closed her eyes.

“Now tilt your head up. Not all the way, just a bit.”

She did, and maybe it was that motion, or maybe it was just because she’d closed her eyes, but she felt instantly off-balance, as if something far greater than the ocean had stolen her equilibrium.

The captain’s hands tightened on her hips. “What do you feel?” he asked, his lips coming close to her ear.

“The wind.”

“What else?”

She swallowed. Licked her lips. “The salt in the air.”

“What else?”

“The motion, the speed.”

He moved his mouth closer. “What else?”

And then she said the one thing that had been true from the beginning.

“You .”





Chapter 13




Andrew wasn’t sure what devil had convinced him to bring Poppy up to the deck.

Perhaps it was simply that he couldn’t think of a compelling reason not to.

The sea was calm. The stars were out.

Most of the crew were below.

When he’d come down for supper and had seen her sitting by the window, he’d somehow known that she had been in that position for hours, staring at the sea and the sky, and never understanding how it felt to be truly a part of either.

It seemed a crime.

When he had reached out to her, and she placed her hand in his . . .

It was a benediction.

Now, as they stood at the very front of the ship, the wind riffling its salt and spray through their hair, he felt renewed.

He felt new .

The world turned endlessly on its axis—this he understood. So why did it feel as if it had just turned more ? As if it had taken a greater rotation, or the direction had reversed. The salt air was crisper, the stars uncannily sharp in their inky canvas. And the feel of her—the gentle curve of her hip, the soft radiant heat of her body . . .