The Other Miss Bridgerton

“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 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 what 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 captain said once he’d caught his breath.