Page 26 of Across the Star-Kissed Sea (Proper Romance Regency #1)

I nodded. A guilty person tainted his family, however innocent the rest of them were.

The authorities would have taken everything from her.

My chest ached. She must have endured so much.

How many friends had turned their backs on the Byams?

And then to lose her uncle and cousin in a matter of months .

.. No wonder she faced the world with such fierceness.

She’d been forced to in order to survive.

“But you are not in England anymore,” I said, nodding to the map. A warship might not have been the best choice as a sanctuary, but it would get her far away from the troubles of home. I’d come for the same escape.

She regarded the papers thoughtfully. Then she nudged my knee with hers. “You distracted me.”

I raised my shoulders. “Not intentionally.” Talking about her past was much safer waters than talking about mine.

She tipped her head toward me, playing with the ends of her plaited hair, which fell over her shoulder from under her soft linen cap.

“If you do not wish to tell me, I will not hold it against you. I only thought ...” She bit her lip.

“That perhaps I could help the next time if I knew why it affected you so.” Her voice diminished before she ended her thought, and she looked away.

Then she stood swiftly. “Good night, Mr. Doswell.”

Without thinking, I grabbed her hand as she started away. Her skin was cool and smooth against mine. “Wait.”

She halted, tense.

How did I put into words the warmth that rushed through my veins at her care and concern? Dared I tell her how she had reignited the spark of life I’d thought lost? I softly tugged on her hand, and after a moment, she sat.

“I’ll tell you,” was the best I came up with.

She didn’t release my hand as she waited for me to speak. The low-burning candle flickered, sending wispy shadows undulating across her face. Her dark blue eyes, nearly black in the dimness of the gun room, regarded me without judgment.

I took a breath. For some reason, I wanted to tell her.

“In my first battle, I witnessed a friend—a mentor, really—blown to pieces by grapeshot. Just steps from where I stood.” Visions of the gruesome scene flashed through my head with such sharpness, such clarity that I couldn’t speak for a moment.

I glanced down, half expecting to see my stockings splattered with Mr. Riddley’s blood as they’d been that day.

Miss Byam’s hand tightened around mine, and I clutched it, my lifeline in the torrent of memory.

“So many fell.” Each one remained branded into my mind, from the coxswain to the sailing master to the ship’s boys.

I’d mourned, for the lives cut short and for the families shattered.

The inability to perform my duties had led to punishment, humiliating to both me and my first-lieutenant brother.

“I couldn’t put my head to rights. The dreams. The terrors.

Every gun drill was paralyzing purgatory.

When we made port for repairs, my brother set me in a coach bound for my father’s vicarage.

We both knew I wasn’t fit for the navy. Much to my father’s regret. ”

How pathetic . I straightened, blinking against the deprecating voice in my head. “And now you can see what a coward I am.” I tried to laugh.

Her thumb rubbed back and forth across my fingers, cutting off the laugh. Almost cutting off my breath. “I told you before—I think you are very brave,” she said. “You kept going, even with the world against you. I dare someone to discredit that.”

I stared at her lips forming the words that slowly swelled in my heart. She didn’t care that I lacked Captain Peyton’s charisma or Frank Walcott’s incorrigible pluck. The weakness that had immobilized me throughout my life, she’d turned into a commendable strength.

“I think we could use a few more people who care as you do, Mr. Doswell,” she said.

What she didn’t see was that she was the one who did a better job at caring than I did. She stood her ground in people’s defense, even when the odds were not in her favor. Sometime while she spoke, I’d leaned closer. Or had she?

“I’m not sure how many would agree,” I said.

“What does that matter?” Her grip on my hand tightened. “I believe it. And so should you. If we believe, who else is needed?” Her voice slowed as she spoke.

We . My head buzzed, not making sense of her words but loving the sound of them all the same. She talked as though something connected us, and sitting here with her in the darkness of night— Marianne ’s lulling creak the only sound besides the pounding of my pulse—I desperately wanted that.

Her eyes flitted to my mouth, then slowly back up. Was I imagining her rapid breathing?

This is ludicrous. Burned time and again and you still go back for more.

This was different. I pulled her hand closer to me, and she didn’t resist. Her face neared mine.

You always think that.

A crash rattled the partition between the gun room and the rest of the deck. I startled, and Miss Byam jerked away from me, jumping to her feet. Wailing like that of a wounded animal pierced the quiet we’d enjoyed.

“Gracious,” she hissed, leaning to one side to see through the doorway.

I seized the lantern and held it toward the commotion. The wailing turned to whimpering as something shuffled around the floor. Lantern light caught a blond head.

“Harvey?” I asked, moving around Miss Byam. The lad moved fitfully on hands and knees. I knelt beside him and placed a hand on his shaking shoulder. “Harvey, what are you doing?”

I received only mumbles in answer.

“I don’t think he’s awake,” she said. She helped me get the boy to his feet, and he immediately collapsed against my side. I wrapped my free arm around him before he fell. Poor boy. He blinked against the light, but no comprehension cleared his eyes.

Miss Byam glanced around as stirring rippled through some of the gun room cabins. A sharp voice muttered beyond the partition.

“I should get him back to his hammock before Mrs. Hallyburton comes,” I whispered, trying not to let disappointment taint my voice. Whatever spell our time alone had cast was broken.

She nodded quickly, wrapping her coat more tightly around her and avoiding my gaze. “I should return to mine as well.” She slipped away, pausing at the door of her cabin. “Good night.”

I bobbed my head toward her. My shoulders sagged as her door clicked shut. That wasn’t a very nice trick fate had decided to play.

“Come, Harvey.” I hung the lantern on a hook on the wall, not wanting to wander through rows of sleeping men with a light, and guided him toward the occupied hammocks. I had to hold his shoulders with both hands to keep him from swaying like he’d downed too much grog.

That was fortunate.

Hardly. My lips twitched, eager for the kiss they hadn’t received.

Have you no sense of self-preservation, Elias?

I sighed, correcting Harvey’s course again and attempting to banish the image of Miss Byam’s candlelit face. Clearly, I did not.

May

I ascended the ladder to the gun deck with more vigor than I had the whole of our journey.

Perhaps it was Mrs. Peyton’s renewed health or that I’d finally grown used to sleeping in a hammock after more than a month at sea.

I brushed down my skirts as I came off the ladder.

It could also be the fresh rations or the fact that we were once again underway toward our next destination, Malta being only a brief stop to deliver correspondence.

I knocked on the great cabin door and entered at Mrs. Peyton’s answer. She sat near the window, sketchbook open, which she had started doing more frequently the last several days.

“I finished mending the hem on this yellow gown, ma’am.” I laid the gown I was carrying on the hanging cot.

“That is the white gown,” she said, head cocked.

I glanced down. So it was. This gown needed a stain on the hem treated, and I hadn’t seen to that yet. I’d snatched the wrong one on my way above. Gracious.

“Byam?”

I blinked. “Yes? Forgive me.”

“I asked if you wished for me to treat the stain. I am not busy at the moment and do not mind the work, if you have other things to attend to.”

“Oh.” Did I have other things? Memories of the shadowy gun room and Elias’s lulling voice had cleared all thought of duties from my mind.

“Are you well?” my employer asked. “Perhaps you should rest this afternoon.”

“I am quite well, I assure you.” More than well. It was just that my mind had been a muddle of wonderings all morning. Perhaps speaking with Mr. Doswell for a moment would clear my head. “I do have a question for Mr. Doswell. Might I be excused to find him?”

Brows knit, she nodded and motioned for me to go. I left the gown on the cot and hurried from the captain’s quarters toward the opposite end of the ship, in the direction of the place I knew the chaplain liked to hold his classes.

The gun deck glowed with midmorning light coming through the larboard gunports, illuminating the scene of boys encircling Mr. Doswell near the galley.

I’d passed this sight innumerable times since we’d set sail from Portsmouth, but today, it made my heart skip.

How strange that one evening conversation surrounded by sleeping shipmates could cause such a reaction inside me.

I slowed myself and took on a pretense of mindless wandering as I approached the lesson.

A boy asked a question, and Mr. Doswell removed his spectacles, twirling them back and forth between his fingers as he listened intently.

When he answered, he spoke slowly, without any air of haughty authority.

At a following question from the ship’s boy, he dipped his head as though trying to hide a smile, but he failed miserably.

A dimple creased his cheek as he fought a laugh.

Mercy. My heart melted like lacy frost at the touch of a spring sun. That dimple would be the undoing of me. The corners of my lips turned upward like his, but I was no better at hiding my grin than he.