“I will sleep easy again.” He lied through his bloody teeth.
He would not rest again until they were on land, and she was curled up in his bed, wearing nothing but Culross and his name.
Will you have any of that?
“Are we almost through it?”
He cast her a peculiar look. “What?”
“Oh my God. Are we sinking?”
Lost in his sins, Culross could not keep up with her.
“It’s something worse.” She sat up and swung her legs over to stand.
“No,” he said calmly. Culross pulled himself together. She deserved his strength. This was her first voyage at sea. “There is no storm, love,” he murmured.
Meghan scrambled away. “No storm?” Her voice was a threadbare whisper.
This he could reassure her on. August stood, went back to the windows, and threw them open. Blinding sunlight poured in. “See. Clear blue skies. Not even a—”
“No. No. No.” That single word rolled from her lips like a litany.
Lost, Culross pivoted his gaze between the view outside and Meghan.
“Do you want a storm?” he asked, his voice strained, as if she answered in the affirmative he’d swirl his ship until the sea churned up the tempest she wanted.
Sniffling, Meghan drew her knees up to her chest. “Why would I want a storm?”
The minx could talk circles around him on his steadiest day, even when he hadn’t been flipped on his ear by her.
“I am the worst sailor, August,” she whispered.
“Then you won’t sail,” he answered instantly. Anything that hurt her, he would remove. Even every last salt drop in the sea.
Meghan’s mouth trembled.
The sight cut through him.
“I’m getting the damned surgeon,” he gritted out. He didn’t care what she wanted. What she needed came before everything.
“I am not sick.”
That stopped him at the door.
Culross re-faced her.
“I was, but I am feeling b-better—”
A sound of impatience rumbled in his chest.
“That is not why I’m g-going to cry.”
“Then what is it, Meghan?” Those pleading tones were his?
He certainly didn’t recognize them as his own.
Because he had never before now had leave to use them, to beg.
