“Don’t cry,” he whispered in the dark. “It will be over eventually. These storms blow up, then they peter out.”
“It’s more than a storm, isn’t it?” Her fingertips worried at one of his buttons, then she gave a small shriek as the ship pitched violently. “I’m afraid we’re going to sink. What will happen to us if the storm flips us over?”
“Darling.”
“What will happen?” Her voice was barely a whisper. “What will happen to us if this vessel sinks? We’ll drown, won’t we? What will it feel like to drown? Will it hurt? What if a shark or whale tries to eat us? I think that would hurt very much. How big are their teeth?”
He didn’t wish to scold her, but her increasingly panicked questions brought up scenarios he didn’t wish to imagine. If only he had some laudanum to give her, or even a stiff drink to calm her, but he had nothing at hand and the ship was rolling too hard now for him to walk about in search of it. Her heart raced in her chest. He could feel it beating against his. She breathed too hard, too fast.
“Listen to me, love. You’ll drive yourself mad imagining what-ifs. Take a breath for me, will you? A long, deep breath, softly in and softly out.”
He felt her try, only to revert back to anxious panting.
“Slow breaths, Rosalind. In and out.” He used his sterner voice this time and she obliged, though her long, slow breaths hitched now and again as if stuck in her lungs.
He didn’t know how he was to calm her. He couldn’t bear to feel her shaking with such fear. Curse him for running away to India and drawing her along on his ill-thought-out caper. He ought to have stayed in safe London, or safe Oxfordshire. Or he could have run to the Continent and nursed his sorrows there. But no, he’d had to set out for India on some injured, heartsick whim, even though his mother had warned against it.
He could have remained in England and made the best of things. He and Rosalind could have remained friends. Now he feared they’d spent their last precious weeks together. If he was to lose her now, those weeks had come at too high a cost.
He pulled her closer, taking steady breaths of her familiar, flowery scent, tracing her well-loved features though it was too dark to see her face. That was for the best. He didn’t want to see how afraid she was. He didn’t want her to see that he was afraid too.
“Let’s think about happy things.” He had to put his lips right by her ear to be heard over the storm outside. “Let’s distract ourselves with pleasant imaginings.”
“I love my horses,” she said. “Zelda and Sheba, and sweet old Goldilocks. I wish I could be riding now.”
“I miss the cinnamon buns my cook used to make me every Sunday. I can’t wait to have them again.”
“I miss Elizabeth and Hazel. Oh, if Elizabeth was here, she could tell us whether everything would turn out all right.”
“Elizabeth does have a strange facility for knowing things, doesn’t she?”
“She is a fun friend too, and a true one. I didn’t even tell her goodbye. I was afraid she’d tell Mama and Papa about my scheme and stop me from going. My dear parents! What if I never see them again?”
This was not going well at all. His idea about pleasant thoughts had turned into an avalanche of maudlin feelings. He thought of the friends and family he’d not see again if the storm didn’t let up. His mother and father, yes. His sisters Ella and Amelia, and his brother Dennis. His lifelong partners in crime, August, Wescott, and Townsend, who’d put up with his immature wildness and never made him feel bad.
And Rosalind, who’d made him wish to grow into a better man.
“Don’t say your goodbyes yet,” he said, an edge of resistance seeping into his tone. “I’m not ready to give up yet.”
The ship swooped and shuddered as if to mock his false bravado. He held on to Rosalind, cradling her with their fronts pressed together, one of his legs wrapped about hers to help her feel more secure. It was the one happy point in their current situation, for he never could have held her like this back in England. He couldn’t have held her like this if the storm wasn’t raging. He’d been so careful not to take advantage of her proximity until they were married. Well, aside from the self-indulgent spankings.
“I’m so afraid,” she said in a shuddery whisper. “I wish I had more courage. I’m so panicked.”
He knew a way to distract her from her fears, a fail-safe way to pass these life-or-death hours. Would it be honorable or dishonorable to do so?
Did that really matter anymore?
“Darling Rosalind,” he said, tilting her head up in the darkness. “May I kiss you?”
“N-now?” she stammered. “In the storm?”
“In the storm. In the calm. Anywhere on heaven or earth. I always want to kiss you. Perhaps it will make you feel less scared.”
“I wish it would. I suppose you might try.”
Her voice softened on the last words, as if she might almost be smiling. Silly, to think a kiss could solve anything.
Silly to want to kiss her till his very last breath.