Page 63 of Cocky August Rake

Rose looked at his hand.

Then at him.

“You’ll show me your ship?”

“It’ll be my pleasure.”

She placed her hand in his, and Reginald’s fingers closed around hers.

He had meant only to help her into the carriage.

Instead, for one brief, unforgivable moment, he held on as though he had been waiting all four of those days just to touch her again.

THE SHIP

Rose had been to the docks before. Dozens of times, in fact.

As the carriage turned onto Commercial Dock Road, the old smells reached her first. River mud. Tar. Wet timber. Fish.

Men who had worked too long beneath the sun.

She had come here as a girl because desperate people went where there were crowds. Where coins might be dropped, errands might be paid for, and scraps might be found near tavern doors after dark.

She remembered the hunger most clearly.

That, and the way men looked at a girl alone near the river.

Rose smoothed her hands over her lap and exhaled a slow, even breath.

She was not that girl now.

The carriage rolled on, passing warehouses, countinghouses, ropewalks, and yards crowded with timber. Men, stripped to shirtsleeves, moved everywhere, shouting to one another over the dull knock of hammers.

Then she saw the ships.

Not gliding proudly along the river, but lifted and exposed in dry dock, their great hulls braced like wounded beasts.

Beside her, before she even glanced over, she felt Lord Reginald change.

A different energy moved through him now. His shoulders eased, but his eyes brightened. His gaze went from one dock to another, taking everything in. But he was not merely looking.

He was understanding.

“How was your ship damaged?” she asked.

His attention came back to her, but not all of it. Part of him remained outside.

“A storm,” he said. “Last spring, a few weeks before I returned to London. We made what repairs we could and believed they would hold. But it was only ever a temporary solution.”

“That must have been a dangerous storm.” Rose knew absolutely nothing about sailing.

“It was. We had warning enough to reef the sails, but not enough to outrun it.”

“Reef?”

“Shorten them.” His mouth curved slightly, as though he had forgotten she would not know the word. “Too much sail in a high wind can tear a ship apart.”

“Is that what happened?”