Page 64 of Cocky August Rake

“We lost two sails. The foretopmast stay parted during the night, and the topmast sprang. The starboard bow took a pounding as well. Several seams opened.”

Rose turned from the window to face him. “But you reached London.”

“We did. Even replaced the stay, strengthened the mast, and recaulked the seams.” Reginald shook his head. “But when we took her downriver for a sea trial this summer, we hit a patch of bad weather and the bow began taking water. Some of the frames beneath the planking had shifted. The repairs would never have held through another crossing.”

So that was where he had gone.

And the Phantom Gale was why he had returned.

“We turned back,” he said. “She’s been in dry dock ever since.”

“Were you afraid?”

He appeared surprised by the question.

Then he shook his head. “Not then.”

That seemed impossible to her. How could he not have been? “I don’t believe you,” she said.

“I really wasn’t.” He chuckled, as though he struggled to believe it himself, but in the next moment, he’d sobered up again. “When there’s trouble like that, there’s no time for it.”

That answer should not have made sense, but somehow it did.

His gaze shifted back to the yards, but his voice became quieter. More certain.

“Kept her nose where it needed to be. Took down what canvas we could. Had the pumps manned.” His jaw tightened slightly. “Had one man go overboard when a line snapped.”

Rose’s fingers curled in her lap.

“Did he drown?”

“No.”

The single word came quickly. Firmly.

“We threw him a grating and a line,” Reginald said. “He couldn’t get to it.”

“Then how–?”

“I went in after him.”

She stared at him. “Into the sea?”

“That’s where he was.” He smiled at that, as though he were speaking of stepping into a puddle rather than hurling himself into a storm-black ocean. “Nothing worth fretting over. Sam had a line on me. After that, it was only a matter of reaching Barnes before the current took him under. He was half-drowned by the time we hauled him back, and furious with me afterward because the rope cracked two of his ribs.”

Rose could not seem to look away from him.

“And you?” she asked.

Reginald’s brows drew together. “What of me?”

“Were you hurt?”

His mouth shifted. “I swallowed enough seawater to put me off soup for a week.”

Rose stared.

Then, despite herself, she laughed. Not because it was amusing, but because he had made it impossible to do anything else.