The Other Miss Bridgerton (Rokesbys #3)(48)

It was as if he had never touched a woman before.

It was strange how content he was simply to gaze upon her face. Poppy watched the sky, and he watched her, and it was perfect.

No. Not perfect. Perfect was complete. Perfect was done .

This wasn’t perfect. He didn’t want it to be.

And yet he felt perfectly wonderful.

You , she’d said, when he’d asked what she felt.

His fingers slid forward, perhaps an inch, just enough so that his steadying grip became something closer to an embrace. Just enough to pull her against him, if he dared.

You , she’d said.

He wanted more.

You .

He was not a romantic man, or at least he hadn’t thought so. But the moment had become a poem, the wind whispering its lines as the water rose and fell in mysterious meter.

And if the world beneath his feet had become a sonnet, then she was the sublime.

Had she become his muse? Surely not. Poppy Bridgerton was vexing, exasperating, and far too clever for his peace of mind. She was an inconvenience wrapped in an impending disaster, and yet when he thought of her—which was all the time, damn it—he smiled.

Sometimes he grinned.

He told himself that she was a thorn in his side, that she was worse than that—the equivalent of a damn stab wound—but it was hard to maintain his own lies when all he wanted at the end of the day was to sit down with his supper and a glass of wine and see what he could do to make her flirt with him.

Maybe that was why he’d finally brought her above deck.

He’d just wanted to see her smile.

And in that pursuit, in that mission . . .

His success had been absolute.

She had not stopped smiling, not from the first moment he’d pulled her through the doorway and out of the cabin. She had smiled so hard and so well that it might as well have been a laugh.

He had made her happy, and that had made him happy.

And that should have been terrifying.

“How many stars do you think there are?” she asked.

He looked down at her. She’d opened her eyes and was now gazing up at the heavens with such intensity that for a brief moment he thought she might be intending to count.

“A million?” he said. “A billion? Surely more than our eyes can see.”

She let out a little noise, something like a hum, if a hum could be crossed with a sigh and then colored with a smile. “It’s so big.”

“The sky?”

She nodded. “How can something be so unfathomable? I can’t even fathom how unfathomable it is.”

“Isn’t that the definition of the word?”

She kicked him lightly with her heel. “Don’t be a spoilsport.”

“You would have said the same thing, and you know it.”

“Not here,” she said in a voice that was almost dreamy. “And not now. All of my sarcasm has been suspended.”

This he did not believe for a second. “Really.”

She sighed. “I know it can’t always be this lovely and wonderful on deck, but will you lie to me, just this once, and tell me so?”

He couldn’t resist. “What makes you think I haven’t lied to you before?”

She poked him with her elbow.

“It is always this lovely and wonderful on deck,” he parroted. “The sea is never turbulent, and the skies are always clear.”

“And your men always comport themselves with propriety and discretion?”

“Of course.” He adjusted his pressure on her hips, turning her just a little to the left. “Do you see that?” he asked, nodding toward a hole in the decking ahead of them.

“See what?” She turned her head to peer up at him, and he motioned again, this time making sure she could follow his gaze.

“That round opening, right there,” he said. “It’s a privy.”

“What? ”

“Well, we call it the head,” he clarified. “I told you we had our own language on board.”

She jerked a little, although not enough to dislodge her from his grasp. “Right here? A privy? Out in the open?”

“There’s one on the other side too.”

She gasped, and Andrew was brought back to all the times he’d tortured his sister with things creepy, crawly, and repulsive.

It was just as good now as it had been then.

He brought his lips a little closer to Poppy’s ear. “You didn’t think we all have lovely and wonderful chamber pots in our cabins, did you?”

He was very glad that he’d tilted to the side so he could see her face, because her lips bent and stretched in a marvelous expression of hygienic horror before she finally said, “You’re telling me you just squat down and situate yourself over—”

“I don’t,” he interrupted, “but the men do. It’s an ingenious design, really. The hull of the ship curves inward, of course, so the waste just drops straight down into the ocean. Well, unless there’s a particularly strong wind, but even then—”

“Stop!” she squealed. “It’s disgusting.”

“But you’re always so full of questions,” he said with all innocence. “I thought you wanted to know how the ship worked.”

“I do, but—”