“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 this 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?”