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Panic.
Wicked panic surging through her veins as she sat upright before her eyes could even open. A sudden mercy, a pot was shoved into her chest just as the first heave hit.
Her hands wrapped around the chamber pot, her eyes closing tight as she retched, emptying what little was left in her stomach.
Damn Poley. She didn’t eat late in the day specifically for this reason, yet the dinner the ship’s cook, Poleson—Poley they called him—had made had been surprisingly good last evening and she had been famished, finishing her plate without a worry into the future.
Her heaves waning, her eyelashes lifted open and she saw Mr. Lipinstein in his white linen shirt, trousers and bare feet kneeling on the floor next to the bed, his dark grey eyes studying her.
Her hand lifted to her forehead, pushing back the errant strands of hair that had loosened from her braid during the night. Full consciousness filtered into her mind and her hand stopped. She was worried about how she looked. In front of him, of all people. The bastard.
Her fingers dropped from her forehead.
“You are done?” he asked.
The spasms easing in her stomach, she nodded.
He handed her a handkerchief. It was wet and she looked at him, her eyebrow cocked.
“To wipe your face.” His thumb flicked over his shoulder to the basin of water in the corner of the room. “I just dipped it and the coolness should help to calm.”
When he’d had time to dip a kerchief and find a chamber pot to toss into her lap, she didn’t know.
His look centered on her. “Tell me of them. Of your family.”
She shook her head, her stomach seizing upon itself as her words came out in a whisper. “No. I cannot. Not to you.”
He gave a slight nod, not pushing the topic. Instead, he pulled the stopper on a bottle of brandy and shoved it into her hand. “Here.”
She took a sip, swishing the sting of the amber liquid in her mouth, then spit it into the chamber pot.
“Do you ever speak of them?”
He asked the question low, so casually and without any expectations attached that her mouth opened before she could think on it.
“I don’t talk of them. It is the only way I can stay in the present. Not wallow in what was. I had to make a choice when I left Vinehill Castle—when I was well enough to leave—to not think of them. To not think on what was lost.”
His head tilted slightly forward. “I understand.”
“You do?”
A flash streaked across his eyes—a flash of sadness so visceral it sent pain radiating into the air between them, enough to twist something deep in her chest.
He blinked, and the flash was gone. “There are lifetimes worth of sins I want to forget. When I can forget, I can move forward. When I remember, I stay still. I drift backward.”
Before she could reply, he took the chamber pot from her grip and set it beneath the bed. The pot removed from her lap, she realized how exposed she was. Only in her chemise for the heat in the cabin, the skin of her bare arms and upper chest were in full display.
She held the brandy bottle out to him, encouraging him to take it and leave the room, but he flipped his palm to her up. “And take a swallow for your belly as well.”
“It’s early for it.”
“It will also calm your breath, your heartbeat.”
“What could you possibly know of my heart?” Her heartbeat was thundering in her chest, but there was no way he could know that.
He lifted himself high on his knees, to the height where he was almost eye level with her. “This vein along here.” He reached out a finger, stroking up along her bare neck with the slightest whisper of a touch. “It is throbbing, screaming with every crazed heartbeat you’re having. It is usually still, almost imperceivable as it measures the beats of your heart. But not now.”
She stilled in place, her gaze locked onto his dark grey eyes. As much as she knew she should, she couldn’t move away from the touch of his finger. From the prickle of heat radiating from his fingertip.
