The Other Miss Bridgerton

“Mostly?”

“I try not to think about what else might be in there. I had enough of it when I—”

He stopped.

“When you what?” Poppy asked. He did that sometimes—started to tell her something, then cut himself off.

He set down his fork. “Nothing.”

And that was what he always said when she probed his silences.

But Poppy kept asking. It wasn’t as if she had anything better to do.

Captain James stood and walked to the window, hands on his hips as he gazed at the indistinguishable horizon. “There’s no moon tonight.”

“I had wondered.” She’d been sitting by the window for hours, and she’d not seen one drop of moonlight flickering along the waves. It made for a slightly different seascape than the previous evenings.

“It means the stars will be staggeringly brilliant.”

“How nice of you to let me know,” she muttered.

She was fairly certain he’d heard her, but he did not react. Instead he asked, without turning around, “What time is it?”

Poppy shook her head. Was he so lazy that he could not twist his neck to look at the clock? “It is half ten.” Your Highness .

“Hmm.” It was a rather short hmm , one that said he accepted her words as true and was now pondering a related issue.

How she knew how to interpret his grunts, she did not know, but she would have bet real money that she was correct.

“Most of the men will be below by now,” he said. He turned back to face her, leaning against the spot where the wall met the windows. “They work in shifts. They each get eight hours for sleep, but more than half take it at night, from nine to five.”

It was interesting—she liked these sorts of details—but she could not imagine why was he telling her this now.

“I think,” he said with a slow, deliberate tilt of his lips, “that if I were to take you up to see the stars, it would not cause such a large commotion.”

Poppy went very still. “What did you just say?”

He looked at her, something in his expression hinting at a smile.

And something hinting at something more.

“You heard me,” he said.

“You need to say it,” she whispered. “You have to say the words.”

He took a small step back, just enough so that he could offer her a courtly bow.

“My dear Miss Bridgerton,” he murmured, “would you like to join me on deck?”

Chapter 12

Poppy set down her book, never once taking her eyes from the captain’s face. She had the strangest notion that if she did, if she broke that contact for even a moment, his suggestion would pop in the air like a soap bubble.

She made the tiniest of nods.

“Take my hand,” he said, reaching out.

And even though everything within her that was sensible and true screamed that she ought not touch this man; she ought not let her skin even so much as brush against his . . .

She did.

He was still for moment, looking down between them as if he couldn’t quite believe she’d done it. His fingers curled slowly around hers, and when their hands were truly clasped, he brushed his thumb against the tender skin of her wrist.

She felt it everywhere.

“Come,” he said. “Let’s go above.”

She nodded dumbly, trying to make sense of the strange sensation that was unfurling within her. She felt light, as if at any moment her heels would rise from the floor, leaving her tiptoed and ungrounded. Her blood seemed to fizz beneath her skin, and she tingled . . . not where he touched her—her hand felt warm and secure in his—but everywhere else.

Every spot of her.

She wanted . . .

Something.

Maybe she wanted everything.

Or maybe she knew what she wanted and was afraid to even think it.

“Miss Bridgerton?” he murmured.

She looked up. How long had she been staring at their hands?

“Are you ready?”

“Do I need a shawl?” she asked. (Then realized the irrelevance of her question and blinked.) “I don’t have a shawl. But do I need one?”

“No,” he said, his voice warm with amusement. “It’s quite mild. The breeze is light.”

“I do need shoes, though,” she said, pulling her hand from his. She paused, for a moment forgetting where her short black boots even were. She had not bothered to put them on since she’d arrived. When would she have needed to?

“In the wardrobe,” the captain said. “At the bottom.”

“Oh yes, of course.” How silly of her. She knew that. He’d put them there on her second day, after he’d tripped on them three times.

She grabbed her boots and sat down to lace them up. She’d sworn to herself—just this evening!—that she would not feel gratitude to any of the men on the ship, no matter how kind they were, but she could not seem to quell the traitorous urge inside her to throw her arms around him and gush thank you thank you until . . .

Well, maybe just twice. Any more would be ridiculous.

But the point was—

She paused. She had no point. Or if she did, she no longer knew what it was.

He did that to her sometimes. Jumbled her thoughts, tangled her words. She, who prided herself on her gift of conversation, her ready supply of wit and irony, was rendered without speech. Or at least without intelligent speech, which she rather thought was worse.

He turned her into someone she didn’t know—but only sometimes, which was the most baffling part. Sometimes she was precisely the Poppy Bridgerton she knew herself to be, quick with a rejoinder, mind sharp. But then other times—when he’d turn to her with a heavy-lidded blue stare, or maybe when he walked too close and she felt the air around her grow warm from his skin—she lost her breath. She lost her sense.

She lost herself.

And right now? He had disarmed her with a kindness, that was all. He knew that she was desperate to leave the cabin. Maybe he was even just doing this to butter her up for some future injustice he would commit. Hadn’t he once said that his life would be easier if she wasn’t spitting mad?

She’d told him she never spit. That was Poppy Bridgerton. Not this scatterbrained peahen who couldn’t find her own shoes.

“Is something wrong with your laces?” he asked.

Poppy realized she’d stopped tying her laces halfway through her left boot. “No,” she blurted, “just lost the thread of my thought.” She finished up quickly and stood. “There. I’m ready.”

And she was. Somehow, with her sturdy shoes on her feet, she had regained her balance. She gave a little jump.

“Your boots look very practical,” the captain said, looking at her with a combination of amusement and curiosity.

“Not as practical as yours,” she said, with an eye toward what were surely custom-made tall boots. Such well-crafted footwear did not come cheap. In fact, all of the captain’s attire was exquisitely made. Privateering must be more lucrative than she’d imagined. Either that or Captain James came from a lot of money.

But that didn’t seem realistic. He was certainly wellborn, but Poppy doubted his family was rich. If they were, why on earth would he have gone into trade? And such a trade. There was nothing respectable about his profession. She could not even imagine her parents’ reaction if one of her brothers had done the same.

Her mother would have died of shame. Not literally, of course, but she would have declared her death by shame often enough that Poppy would have feared her own demise by repetitive aural torture.

And yet, Poppy could not see anything within the captain that warranted such disappointment. True, she did not know the nature or extent of his business dealings, but she saw the way he treated his men—or at least Billy and Brown and Green. She saw the way he treated her, and she could not help but think of all the so-called gentlemen of London—the ones she was supposed to adore and admire and want to marry. She thought of all the cutting remarks, the cruelty and unkindness they displayed toward the men and women who worked for them.

Not all of them, but enough to make her question the strictures and standards that declared one man a gentleman and the other a rogue.