The Other Miss Bridgerton (Rokesbys #3)(6)

Andrew stared at her for a full second, idly taking in her thick chestnut hair and greenish-brown eyes. He let his gaze wander down to the rest of her—she was a woman, after all—and smiled.

“A present?” he murmured. “For me?”



If she got out of this alive, Poppy decided, she was going to kill every damn man on the ship.

Starting with Green.

No, Brown.

No, definitely Green. Brown might have let her go if she’d had a chance to talk him into it, but Green deserved nothing less than a permanent pox on his house.

And that of his every last descendant.

Hmmph. That assumed the odious man could find a woman willing to procreate with him, which Poppy sincerely doubted was possible. In fact, she thought rather viciously, it was going to be physically im possible by the time she got through with him. Four brothers taught a woman a great deal about how to fight dirty, and if she ever managed to get her ankles unbound, she was going to plant her knee right in his— Click .

She looked up. Someone was coming in.

“Before you go in there . . .” she heard a familiar voice say.

The door swung open, revealing not Green, and not Brown, but a man at least a dozen years younger, and so blindingly handsome that Poppy was quite certain her mouth would have dropped open if she hadn’t been gagged.

His hair was a rich warm brown, sun-streaked with gold and pulled into a devilish queue at the back of his neck. His face was quite simply perfect, with full, finely molded lips that tipped up at the corners, leaving him with an expression of permanent mischief. And his eyes were blue, so vividly so that she could discern their color from across the room.

Those eyes traveled the length of her, from head to toe, and then back again. It was quite the most intimate perusal Poppy had ever been subjected to, and, damn it all, she felt herself blush.

“A present?” he murmured, his lips curving ever so slightly. “For me?”

“Mmmph grrmph shmmph!” Poppy grunted, struggling against her bindings.

“Er, this is what I was trying to tell you about,” Green said, sliding into the room beside the mysterious stranger.

“This?” the other man murmured, his voice silky smooth.

“Her,” Green amended, the single syllable hanging heavy in the air, as if she were Bloody Mary crossed with Medusa.

Poppy glared at him and growled.

“My, my,” the younger man said, quirking a brow. “I scarcely know what to say. Not in my usual fashion, but fetching nonetheless.”

Poppy watched him warily as he came farther into the cabin. He’d uttered barely a handful of words, but it was enough to know that he was no lowborn sailor. He spoke like an aristocrat, and he moved like one too. She knew the sort. She’d spent the last two years trying (but not really trying) to get one to marry her.

The man turned to Green. “Any particular reason she’s lying on my bed?”

“She found the cave, Captain.”

“Was she looking for the cave?”

“Don’t know, sir. I didn’t ask. I think it was an accident.”

The captain regarded her with an unsettlingly even expression before turning back to Green and asking, “What do you propose we do with her?”

“I don’t know, Captain. We couldn’t just leave her there. It was still full of our haul from the last voyage. If we let her go, she’d’ve just told someone about it.”

“Or taken it for herself,” the captain said thoughtfully.

Poppy grunted at the insult. As if she were unprincipled enough to resort to stealing.

The captain looked at her with an arched brow. “She seems to have an opinion about that,” he said.

“She has a great many opinions,” Green said darkly.

“Is that so?”

“We took her gag off while we were waiting for you,” Green explained. “Had to put it back on after a minute. Less, really.”

“That bad, eh?”

Green nodded. “Got me in the back of the head with her hands too.”

Poppy grunted with satisfaction.

The captain turned back to her, looking almost impressed. “Should’ve bound her hands in back,” he said.

“I wasn’t going to untie her long enough to redo it,” Green muttered, rubbing his head.

The captain nodded thoughtfully.

“We didn’t have time to unload the cave,” Green continued. “And besides, no one’s ever found it before. It’s valuable even without anything in it. Who knows what we might need to hide there.”

The captain shrugged. “It’s worthless now,” he said, crossing his powerful arms. “Unless, of course, we kill her.”

Poppy gasped, the sound audible even over the gag.

“Oh, don’t worry,” he said, rather offhandedly. “We’ve never killed anyone who didn’t need killing, and never a woman. Although,” he added, idly rubbing his chin, “there have been one or two . . .” He looked up, blinding her with a smile. “Well, never you mind.”

“Actually, sir,” Green said, stepping forward.

“Hmm?”

“There was that one in Spain. Málaga?”

The captain looked at him blankly until his memory was jogged. “Oh, that one. Well, that doesn’t count. I’m not even sure she was female.”