Page 39 of Lord of Temptation
“Yes, of course. I’m sorry.” She rose up, placed her foot on his.
“There we go,” he murmured. “Now, just relax and climb with me.”
Relax? With him cocooned around her, with her clinging to him as much as she was to this cylinder of wood?
“If you’re afraid of heights, I’d advise you not to look down,” he added.
She didn’t think she was afraid of heights, but then she’d always looked out through a window. This, she realized as they slowly made their way upward, was a very different kettle of fish.
His foot slipped, she screeched. He snaked an arm around her waist, held her tightly against him, as his other arm wrapped around the mast. She was breathing heavily while he seemed not to be breathing at all.
“I won’t let you fall,” he said quietly.
She nodded jerkily. “Yes, all right.”
“Calm your breathing.”
“How can you not be rattled?”
“Because I’ve done this a thousand times.”
“Taken a woman up to the crow’s nest?”
He had the audacity to laugh. “No, you’re the first. But I’ve climbed often enough that I’m intimate with every knothole. I know the rough grain, where to place my hands and feet for the best purchase. I’ve never fallen, Princess. I’m not about to today. Besides we’re almost there.”
She glanced up at the basket high above her. “I’m not certain you have a clear understanding of the term ‘almost.’ ”
He chuckled low. “Come on, up we go.”
He guided her with gentle murmured words, his hands, and his feet. Before long, she was scrambling over the side of the basket and into the crow’s nest. What surprised her was how small it was, how inconsequential it seemed. Especially when he joined her. She thought that she should have felt as though he were crowding her. Instead, she found that she simply wanted to lean into him.
She also discovered that she wasn’t terribly afraid of heights, especially when such an incredible vista swept out before her. The deep blue water melting into the light blue, billowy white cloud-filled sky.
“Oh,” she said as her breath escaped. “It’s stunning. What is that shadow over there in the distance?”
“England.”
Her stomach nearly dropped to the deck. “We’re almost home.”
“Tomorrow evening, most like.”
“Tomorrow.” Holed up in her cabin, mourning, filled with sadness, battling regrets, she’d lost track of the time. One day had rolled into the next and she’d not been counting. The purpose of this journey was to prepare her for reentering Society. She would be expected to attend balls, to embrace gentlemen’s advances, to encourage their interest in her. To engage in flirtatious banter. To place herself back on the marriage block. “I don’t know if I’m quite ready.”
“Say the word, Princess, and we’ll sail right on by.”
She tilted back her head to study him. It was a lovely thought, but she couldn’t do that to her family. Become a vagabond, a gypsy. To turn her back on what was good and proper. Regretfully, she shook her head. “No, that would accomplish little except to confirm that I’m a coward.”
“A coward would not have hired me to take her to a place with a past tainted by horror in order that she might say good-bye to someone she cared for.”
“Someone I loved,” she felt a need to point out. But not enough. If she’d loved him enough, she would not now have so many regrets. “I thought it would heal this terrible hole in my heart, and yet at times I still feel as though I’m drowning in the sorrow.” Tears stung her eyes. “I wish I could have brought him home. I hate that he’s there.”
Gently, he touched her cheek. “What do you see when you look out?”
“So much water.”
“All the way to the horizon and beyond. When a man dies on a ship, he’s given to the sea. Over the years, Anne, I’ve learned that it matters not where a man is buried. It matters only where he is remembered.”
She thought she’d cried her fill in Scutari, but it seemed she had more tears to spill. They rolled over onto her cheeks and he gathered them with his thumbs.
