The Other Miss Bridgerton (Rokesbys #3)(64)

“Force?”

“Of the earthquake. If you can spread it out”—he made a motion with his hands rather like Moses parting the Red Sea—“it’s less likely to cause major damage.”

“I suppose that makes sense.” She frowned, trying to envision the concept in her head.

But the captain clearly wanted to make sure she understood. “Think of it this way. If I pull your hair—”

She jumped back. “What?”

“No, bear with me, I promise there’s a physics lesson in this, and didn’t you recently bemoan your lack of study in the field?”

She rolled her eyes. Trust him to remember that. “Very well. Get on with it, then.”

“Right. It’s all about the distribution of force. If I pull just a small lock of your hair, it will hurt quite a bit.”

He reached up and pinched a lock between his fingers. It wasn’t hard to do, what with her inexpert work pinning it up.

“Wait, are you actually going to pull my hair?”

“Not any harder than your brothers likely did.”

She thought back to her childhood. “That does not reassure me.”

The captain’s face came a little closer to hers. “I will not hurt you, Poppy. I promise.”

She swallowed, and she wasn’t sure whether it was the earnest look in his eyes, or the fact that it was the first time he had used her given name, but she believed him. “Carry on.”

He gave a little tug, not so that she felt pain, but just enough that she knew she would have done, if he had yanked harder.

“Now,” he said, “imagine that I grabbed a whole hunk of your hair.” His hand curved and made a claw shape in the air, as if approximating the amount of hair she was meant to imagine.

“Oh no .” There was no way her coiffure could survive that.

“I won’t do it, don’t worry,” he said, displaying his first ounce of sensibility all afternoon. “But imagine that I did. It wouldn’t hurt.”

He was right. It wouldn’t.

“That’s because the force would be spread across a larger area of your scalp. Therefore, each affected spot receives less of the tug. And consequently, less pain.”

“So what you’re also saying,” Poppy said, “is that if you wished to cause equal pain you would need to pull much harder if you had a larger amount of hair in your hand.”

“Exactly! Well done.”

It was ridiculous how pleased she was by his compliment, especially since she was the one who now had an errant lock of hair jutting out from the side of her head.

“Now,” he continued, oblivious to her attempts to subtly pin her hair back into place, “you can’t just erect any wooden framework and expect it to work. I beg your pardon, I suppose anything would be better than nothing, but if you apply the laws of physics, you can create a structure that is incredibly strong.”

Poppy could only stare as he went on about St. Andrew’s crosses and braces and trusses and someone named Fibonacci who she thought was probably dead, but the captain was so involved in his explanation, Poppy couldn’t bring herself to interrupt and ask.

As she watched him—and the truth was, she was doing far more watching than listening; he’d lost her when he started talking about geometry’s golden ratio—she realized that he had become a different person, right in front of her eyes. His entire bearing changed. She’d seen him as the captain, standing with complete confidence and authority, and she’d seen him as the rogue, all lanky limbs and smooth motions.

But now his arms moved through air as if drawing pictures and plans, and he practically hopped in place as he illustrated his invisible canvas and drew equations in the air. Poppy hadn’t the slightest idea what he was talking about. Honestly, she couldn’t follow a word.

But he was magnificent to watch.

He wasn’t the captain, and he wasn’t the rogue. He was just Andrew. That was his given name, wasn’t it? He’d told it to her that first day. “Captain Andrew James, at your service,” he’d said, or something similar. And she’d not thought of it since, not thought of him as anything but Captain James or “the captain.”

“Do you see?” he asked, and she realized it was actually important to him that she did.

“I—no,” she admitted, “but I lack the imagination to picture such things in my head. If I saw it on paper, I think I might understand it.”

“Of course,” he said, looking almost glum.

“I think it’s very interesting,” she said hastily. “Revolutionary, even. You said no one has done such a thing before. Think of how many lives might be saved.”

“It will work, too,” he told her. “There has not been another earthquake of the same force, but if God forbid there was, these buildings would stand. The engineers tested it.”

“How could they possibly do that?” It wasn’t as if they could snap their fingers and summon an earthquake.

“Soldiers.” Andrew’s eyes widened with excitement. “They brought in hundreds and had them stamp about.”

Poppy thought her mouth might have fallen open. “You’re joking.”

“Not even a little bit.”

“They had the soldiers stamp about, and that shook the ground well enough to approximate an earthquake?”