Page 31 of Across the Star-Kissed Sea (Proper Romance Regency #1)

I knew that. Even with my mother and aunt beside me, I’d had to find my way along that path by myself.

Mama had had to help Aunt Byam through her grief and hadn’t had the capacity to support me as well.

I didn’t resent it. Aunt Byam had needed more care than I had, with it being the deaths of her own husband and son.

But it hadn’t been easy. Mr. Doswell knew what it was like as well as I did.

“I will try to find your cabin if the need arises,” I said.

His lips curled. “It is a little difficult to locate.”

With mounting dread, I realized how much I did not want him to leave. Even if we would be separated by only a flimsy wooden partition.

“Promise you will tell me if you need me?” he asked.

“Promise.”

He nodded once and bid me good night, leaving me alone for the chill to creep back in.

I removed my boots, my shoes now unusable after losing one in the storm.

Frank had most likely ripped it off when the wave had taken him.

My throat swelled as I climbed into my hammock and pulled the blanket over my head.

Life was cruel, taking away young men as lively and engaging as Frank and putting others on a pedestal too high to reach, such as Mr. Doswell.

Tears fell afresh. How were there more? I squeezed my eyes shut, trying to keep them in, and buried my face in my pillow. I breathed shallowly to keep the sound of my crying from carrying, in case Mr. Doswell was listening.

My body wanted nothing more than to sleep, but my mind had taken up its whirling again. The nape of my neck tingled where he’d touched me, a welcome whisper through the ache inside. I wouldn’t sleep at all tonight.

Curse Frank and all this sorrow. Curse Mr. Doswell and all his goodness. And curse these tears over them both.

Elias

I’d hoped throwing myself into God’s work would rid my mind of the previous night’s encounter with Miss Byam.

Unfortunately, the words to my sermon came slowly.

As I paced my cabin, attempting to find thoughts of comfort to share with the men on Sunday, I listened for any sound coming through the wall.

I didn’t want to force my presence on Miss Byam, but the more I thought on our moments together, the more I wanted to charge over to her cabin.

Bumbling fool.

She needed space to grieve her friend. Space that didn’t involve me, given the nature of my acquaintance with Mr. Walcott.

The man had been many things I didn’t like, but he deserved a period of mourning as much as any human.

He’d meant something to her despite her frustrations with him. As much as I meant to her? More?

I knelt and straightened the rug, which had skewed.

Comparing aided no one, but I couldn’t help it.

I ran a hand through my hair, which felt a little more windswept than I typically liked it.

Too much fussing with it today. I’d probably brushed it back a hundred times. Whenever I thought on Miss Byam.

The memories wouldn’t leave me be. I pushed myself to standing with a sigh.

My arms couldn’t forget the feel of her, how she’d clung to me, shaking.

Her soft hair splayed across my hands. Most poignant of all was the sense of her near me, a mesmerizing fire that could not be contained by the darkness.

I sought it everywhere I went on this ship.

I wandered toward the wall, a moth to candlelight, and nearly leaned my head against it but halted.

“Sermon. Focus, Elias,” I muttered, turning my back to the partition separating me from Miss Byam.

I retrieved my Bible from the lid of my sea chest and flipped to 1 Thessalonians.

Wherefore comfort yourselves together, and edify one another, even as also ye do.

I nodded. That would do nicely, reminding the men to comfort each other in their trials.

I slipped a pencil out from behind my ear and crouched by my sea chest to make note in my journal, awkwardly holding the book open with one arm while still keeping my place in the Bible.

“Now, to weave this into the introduction.”

“You talk to yourself while writing your sermons.”

I startled at her voice, dropping my pencil.

It skittered across the deck and caught on the rug.

“Miss Byam?” She sounded as though she were in the room with me, not speaking through a wall.

No shadow darkened the door’s window. Her voice hadn’t seemed to come from the gun room anyway.

What sort of mischief was this? The longings of a heartsick mind?

I glanced toward my tea box. Had I added something stronger than usual to my evening tea by accident? It hadn’t tasted any different.

A muffled giggle from her cabin trickled through the partition. I took my lantern off its hook and moved toward the back of the cabin in the direction of the sound.

“There’s a crack in the wall,” she said.

After a moment, I found a sapphire eye peeking through the wood a few feet off the deck.

She flinched at the light, and her eye disappeared.

So, that was why she’d sounded like she was in the room.

I rubbed the back of my neck, face heating as I pulled the lantern back a little. “When did that happen?”

Her eye appeared again. “I found it at the start of the voyage.”

My skin crawled at the idea that I’d been mistaken in having privacy all this time. “And it’s never been changed out when they’ve put the partitions back up?”

“I’ve found it every day.”

Gracious, what had she seen? Me making a fool of myself, pulling faces and conversing alone? I adjusted my grip on the lantern, not wanting to think of other possibilities.

“Not to worry,” she said almost too quickly, “I’ve ... I’ve never peeked.”

Except for tonight? I forced a smile. “The carpenter’s crew could have fixed it.”

She leaned away, the crack darkening. The partition’s boards creaked as though she leaned against them.

I internally kicked myself. Carpenter’s crew. Walcott’s comrades. I dropped to the deck beside the hole. “Forgive me. I misspoke.”

“There’s no need to apologize.” She paused. “They brought me one of his neckcloths today while they were preparing his belongings to be auctioned. I don’t know why they did that.”

I swallowed. Sometimes a memento or two were saved for dear friends or sweethearts.

The rest of a dead sailor’s belongings were auctioned off to crew mates and the money collected for the deceased’s family.

Walcott’s friends would have known what she’d meant to him.

“That was very kind of them,” was all I could think of to say.

“It wasn’t as though Frank had feelings for me.”

I very seriously doubted that. My chest tightened.

I’d seen the way he’d looked at her when she’d walked by.

It had started as the same distasteful gaze he’d bestowed on Miriam but had heightened as the weeks had passed.

I chewed on my lower lip. No, I wouldn’t think so ill of the dead.

Walcott must have appreciated Miss Byam for more than her looks. I had no proof that he didn’t.

“I was a terrible friend,” she said, voice pinched.

“Of course you weren’t.” She’d had the patience of Job with that man.

“You heard how I scolded him. That was the last conversation we ever had.” Her voice wobbled. “I can’t apologize to him now.”

Without thinking, I leaned against the partition, just like she was. “Death rarely lets us wrap up our lives in pretty bows. You mustn’t hold it against yourself.” Never mind Walcott had deserved every second of her scolding.

She sniffed. “I was so angry at him. I shouldn’t have let myself get furious.” Was she crying? How I wished this wall were gone.

I traced the grain of one of the boards with a finger.

“Don’t let your regret withhold you from appreciating the time he was in your life.

” I opened my mouth to expound, but images of the past overwhelmed me.

My mind flipped through moments with Miss Somer and all the others I’d given my heart to.

Happy moments, painful moments, moments of hard lessons learned and reluctant growth.

I’d let them all sour, drowning myself in the bitterness of things I’d wanted but could never have.

It didn’t have to be that way. Perhaps each broken heart I’d suffered had progressed me toward a happiness I couldn’t imagine.

With someone I hadn’t foreseen. I slid my finger closer to the break in the wood.

“I feel like they dropped an anchor on my chest,” she said, voice unsteady, as though speaking through tears. “I’ll never be able to lift it.”

I nodded, even though she couldn’t see me.

It would feel like that for a time as we all rebuilt our lives around the vacancy our missing shipmate left.

For those who truly loved Mr. Walcott, the sensation would never fully go away.

They’d learn to carry it. But I didn’t tell her that now.

“You do not need to lift it by yourself. I’ll help you.

” Somehow, my tender thoughts toward her had infused themselves into my words, raw and unmistakable.

If only I could see her face to know how she took them.

After a short silence, she said, “I’m glad you’re here.”

I swallowed, heart leaping. Whether from terror at starting this journey again or excitement at the trust lacing her words, I did not know. The one thing I did know—I would be here. For as long as she needed me.