The Other Miss Bridgerton (Rokesbys #3)(79)

“My two older brothers, of course. Mostly Richard. Roger said I wasn’t worth the effort.”

“Too easy for him to beat you?”

“He was a full head taller,” she protested. “It could never have been a fair fight.”

“Good of him to bow out, then.”

She pressed her lips together peevishly. “He was hardly so gallant. He said he had more interesting ways to torture me.”

“Oh yes.” Andrew grinned. “He was the one who taught you a new language, didn’t he?

“A new language, indeed. You’d better watch out or I’ll farfar you.”

He snorted right into a laugh. “I wish I’d known your brother. I would have worshipped at his feet.”

“I wish that too,” she said with a sad smile, and he knew that what she really meant was that she wished Roger were still alive, still able to make new friends and, yes, devise new ways to torture his little sister.

“How did he die?” he asked. She’d never told him that, and until now it felt too intrusive to ask.

“Infection.” She said it so plainly, as if everything tragic had long since been wrung out of the word and the only thing left was resignation.

“I’m sorry.” He’d seen more than one man succumb to infection. It always seemed to start so simply. A scrape, a wound . . . his brother knew a man who’d worn an ill-fitting pair of boots and then died of a purulent blister.

“He was bitten by a dog,” Poppy said. “It wasn’t even a very bad bite. I mean, I’ve been bitten by a dog before, haven’t you?”

He nodded, even though he hadn’t.

“It didn’t heal properly. It looked like it was going to. It was completely fine for a few days, maybe just a little red. Swollen. And then . . .” She swallowed and looked to the side.

“You don’t have to finish,” he said softly.

But she wanted to. He could see it in her face.

“He had a fever,” she continued. “It came on overnight. He went to bed, and he seemed fine. I was the one who brought him a mug of hot cider, so I know.”

She hugged her arms to her body, closing her eyes while she drew a long breath. “He was so hot. It was unnatural. His skin was like paper. And the worst part was, it wasn’t even fast. It took five days. Do you know how long five days can be?”

It was one day less than her time aboard the Infinity . Which suddenly didn’t seem like very much time at all.

“Sometimes he was insensible,” she said, “but sometimes he wasn’t, and he knew—he knew he was going to die.”

“Did he tell you that?”

She shook her head. “He would never. He kept saying, ‘I’ll be fine, Pops. Stop looking so worried.’”

“He called you Pops?” Andrew tried not to smile, but there was something irresistibly charming about it.

“He did. But only sometimes.” She said that in a way that made him think this had not occurred to her before. She cocked her head to the side, her eyes tipping up and to the left as if she might find her memories there. “It was when he was serious, but he was perhaps trying to sound as if he wasn’t.”

She looked over at Andrew, and he was relieved to see that some of the bleakness had left her face. “He was rarely serious,” she said. “Or at least that’s what he wanted people to think. He was very observant, and I think people were less guarded around him because they thought he was a scapegrace.”

“I have some experience with that particular dichotomy,” he said in a dry voice.

“I would imagine you do.”

“What happened next?” he asked.

“He died,” she said with a tiny helpless shrug. “To the very end, he tried to pretend it wasn’t going to happen, but he never could lie about important things.”

Whereas Andrew had only lied about important things. But he was trying so hard not to think about that right then.

Poppy let out a sad little puff of a laugh. “The morning before he passed, he even boasted that he was going to massacre me in the egg roll at the next May fair, but I could see it in his eyes. He knew he would not live.”

“Massacre?” Andrew echoed. He liked this particular choice of words.

She gave a watery smile. “It would never have been enough just to beat me.”

“No, I expect not.”

She nodded slowly. “I knew he was lying. He knew I knew it too. And I wondered . . . Why? Why would he cling to his story when he knew he wasn’t fooling me?”

“Perhaps he thought he was doing you a kindness.”

She shrugged. “Maybe.”

She did not seem to have more to say on the subject, so Andrew went back to fussing with his pillow. It was both flat and lumpy, and it was impossible to get into the right position. He tried mushing it, pushing it, folding it . . . Nothing worked.

“You look very uncomfortable,” Poppy said.

He didn’t bother glancing up from his efforts. “I’m fine.”

“Are you going to lie to me like Roger did?”

That got his attention. “Why would you say such a thing?”

“Just come over and sit on the bed,” she said in an exasperated voice. “It’s not as if either of us will sleep tonight, and if I have to watch another moment of your fidgeting I’m going to go mad.”