Page 65 of Cocky August Rake

Reginald looked faintly pleased by that.

The carriage jolted over a rut but kept moving. Lining the road, an endless line of masts rose thick as a forest, some bare, some rigged, some half-dismantled.

“But you were afraid,” she guessed. “After.”

He met her eyes and nodded. “When the men were counted. When I saw the damage by daylight and understood how close we’d come.”

He let out a sound that wasn’t quite a laugh.

“A captain may be afraid afterward,” he said. “Not during.”

There it was again.

A certainty that was different from his brother’s ducal authority. This had not come to him through birth or title.

It had been earned.

“The body survives first. The fear comes once the danger is gone.” The words escaped her lips even as Rose stared out the window.

“You’ve weathered a few storms yourself.”

Rose blinked. Losing her grandmother had been a storm. Living in the workhouse. And then, on the streets…

For one uneasy moment, she thought he expected an answer.

Then the carriage slowed and rolled to a halt.

Lord Reginald turned toward his window. “There she is.”

Something changed in his face. Pride, certainly. But there was affection too.

Rose leaned forward and followed his gaze.

There, held high in dry dock with her wounded bow exposed and men swarming about her like ants, was The Phantom Gale.

For a moment, Rose forgot the heat.

The ship looked enormous out of the water. Larger, somehow, than she’d imagined it would look floating free.

Reginald stepped down first, and when he turned and reached for her, there was something almost boyish in the way he offered his hand. As though he could hardly wait to share this part of himself.

Rose didn’t hesitate placing her fingers in his.

“Steady now,” he said as her slippers touched the ground.

It had been warm in the carriage, but this heat, rising from the wood and tar, struck much harder than it had in Mayfair. There was a slight breeze, faint with a breath of salt, but even that lacked any coolness when it hit her skin.

Reginald seemed unaffected by it.

“The damage is along the starboard bow,” he said, nodding toward the ship. He didn’t release her hand and Rose didn’t pull away. “There, where the copper has been stripped. They will have to replace more planking than I hoped.”

Rose looked where he pointed.

She saw wood. Men. Tools. Rope. A great many things that meant nothing to her.

But she noticed the ease in his voice again, none of the careful restraint she’d noticed at The Domus. As he spoke of his ship, and how he’d shore her up again, he was simply a man with a problem—a problem he knew how to fix.

Rose tried to listen.