by Julia Quinn
“Miss Bridgerton?”
The captain’s voice wiggled its way into her thoughts, and she blinked, trying to remember what she’d been talking about.
“Are you ready?”
She nodded eagerly, took a step, and then grinned so suddenly it took her by surprise. “I haven’t worn shoes for days.”
“You will certainly need them on deck,” he said. “Shall we be off?”
“Please.”
He tipped his head toward the door. “After you.”
After they exited the cabin, she followed him up the short flight of stairs to the deck. They emerged into a covered area, and he took her hand again to guide her forward.
But Poppy was not so easily led. “What is this?” she asked, just steps into the open air. She tugged her hand free and touched what looked like a lattice of ropes—something she might have tried to climb when she was a child.
Actually, she’d try to climb it now, except that it didn’t look like it was meant for such a thing.
She turned back to Captain James, and he said, “Rope.”
She smacked his shoulder, and not lightly. He wore a cheeky grin on his face, making it clear he’d said that to needle her.
“It’s called a shroud,” he said, smiling at her impatience.
She touched the ropes, marveling at the strength and thickness of the fibers. “A shroud?” she asked. “Not the shroud?”
“Very astute,” he said. “It is one of many. They are part of the standing rigging, used to support the mast from side to side.”
Yet another nautical term she did not know. “Standing rigging?”
“As opposed to the running rigging,” he told her. “The standing rigging refers to the ropes that do not generally move. The ropes that do move—or rather, the ones we move in order to control the sails—are called the running rigging.”
“I see,” she murmured, although in truth she did not. She had seen only one small portion of the ship, and already there were so many unfamiliar mechanisms and gadgets. Even the items she thought she knew well—ropes, for example—were being used differently than she was used to. She could not imagine how long it took to truly master the art of sailing.
Or was it the science of sailing? She didn’t know.
Poppy walked on, a few steps ahead of the captain, craning her neck to look up the length of one of the masts. It was amazingly tall, stabbing the night so majestically she almost thought it could pierce the sky.
“This has to be why the Greeks and Romans devised such fanciful tales of the gods,” she murmured. “I can almost imagine the mast breaking through to the heavens.”
She looked over at the captain. He was watching her intently, his every attention on her words, her face. But this time she did not feel self-conscious. She didn’t feel awkward or embarrassed. Or reminded that in games of flirtation, she could not compete with this man.
Instead she felt almost buoyed. Maybe it was the ocean, or the salt breeze on her skin. She should have felt tiny under the vast starry sky, but instead she was invincible.
Jubilant.
More herself than she had ever been.
“Imagine the mast rips a hole in the sky,” she said, waving her hand toward the dark night above. “And then out fall the stars.” She looked back at Captain James. “If I lived in ancient times, with no notion of astronomy or distance, I might have devised such a myth. Surely a god could create a boat so tall that it touches the sky.”
“A clever theory for the birth of the stars,” he mused, “although it does make me wonder how they came to be spread out so evenly.”
Poppy stood beside him, and together they gazed upward. The stars did not make an even pattern, of course, but they were scattered to every corner of the sky.
“I don’t know,” Poppy said thoughtfully. She kept her eyes on the stars, taking in the vastness of it all. Then she bumped him with her elbow. “You’ll have to come up with that part of the story. I can’t do all the work.”
“Or,” he said dryly, “I can sail the ship.”
She could do nothing but grin in return. “Or you can sail the ship.”
He motioned toward the bow, urging her forward, but instead she pressed her palm against the mast and swung around, like a ribbon on a maypole. When she was nearly back to her starting point, she peeked over at him and asked, “Is it made from a single piece of wood?”
“This one is. Actually, all of ours are. But we are not such a large vessel. Many of the navy’s ships have masts constructed from several pieces of wood. Come,” he said, urging her forward. “This is not even our tallest mast.”
“No?” She looked ahead, eyes wide. “No, of course it isn’t. That would have to be one of the center ones.” She skipped forward, but he was faster, and by the time she’d reached the tallest mast, he had to turn around to offer his hand.
“Here,” he said, “come with me. I promised you the stars.”
She laughed, although not because it was funny. Just because she felt joy. “So you did,” she said, and once again, she placed her hand in his. But they’d gone only two steps before she saw yet another interesting object. “Oh, what’s that?”
The captain didn’t even bother to look. “I’ll tell you later.”
Poppy grinned at his impatience and let him pull her forward, past yet another mast (the mizzenmast, he’d told her without breaking his stride). They went up a short set of stairs, and then forward still.
“The view is best up this way,” he told her.
Her face was already tipped to the heavens, even as she stumbled along behind him. “It’s not the same everywhere?”
“It feels best on the beakhead.”
“On the what?”
“Just come with me,” he said, tugging her hand.
She laughed again, and it felt marvelous. “Why is part of your ship named after a chicken?”
“Why are you named after a flower?” he countered.
She considered that for a moment. “Touché.”
“The beakhead is the foremost part of the deck,” he explained as he pulled her along. “Slightly lower in elevation. It’s where the men stand when they work the sails of the bowsprit.”
Beakhead? Bowsprit? “Now you’re just making things up,” she teased.
“Life at sea has a language all its own.”
“Let’s see, I’ll call that”—she didn’t actually point to anything—“a winchknob. And that over there shall be a mucklebump.”
He paused for just long enough to give her an admiring glance. “It’s not a bad name for it.”
As Poppy hadn’t been referring to anything in particular, she had no idea what it he was talking about, but she nevertheless asked, “Which one? The winchknob or the mucklebump?”
“The winchknob, of course,” he said with a perfectly straight face.
She chuckled and let him tug her forward. “You would certainly know better than I.”
“I shall treasure that statement. I’m not likely to hear it again.”
“Certainly not!” But she said it with a grin, her cheeks nearly hurting from the joy of it. “I’m very good at making up words, you know. It runs in my family.”
His brow crinkled with good humor and curiosity. “I can’t even begin to imagine what you mean by that.”
She told him about her brother, about tintons and farfars, and sneaking into Roger’s room to write lines and help him complete his punishment, even though she was the one he’d wronged.
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 ca
ptain 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 . . .
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 th
is 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—”
“I assure you, such matters are most critical to the successful running of a ship. No one ever wants to talk about the unglamorous. It’s a common downfall of would-be architects and engineers, I tell you. It’s all very well and good to design the elegant bits, but it’s the things you can’t see in a structure that make it truly great.”
