Elsie groaned. “That cannot be how people get in.”
The boatman scratched his jaw. “If they want to embark, it is.”
“Miss,” Elsie whispered, “I don’t think you ought to attempt that.”
Marguerite tightened her glove. “Nonsense. I have negotiated worse.”
She had not, strictly speaking, negotiated worse. But Naples waited beyond that ladder. Warmth waited beyond that ladder. A new life waited beyond that ladder. And if fate had chosen to make her future accessible only by damp rope, then fate would have to tolerate the sight of her ankles.
She gathered her skirts, reached for the side rope, and placed one slipper on the lowest rung. Just then, a wave struck the hull, burst upward, and splashed freezing water over her calves.
“How invigorating,” she said, reconsidering every decision since birth.
Elsie clutched the side of the boat. “Come back down.”
“I have only just begun my ascent.”
“You have gone three rungs.”
“All great enterprises are mocked in their infancy.”
She climbed two more. Her knee knocked the rope once, then twice, and she pretended not to notice. The ladder shifted under her weight, alive and untrustworthy. Her shoulders had crept nearly to her ears, and the damp wind had found every gap in her clothing with the curiosity of a badly raised child.
Then she looked down. It was a diplomatic error. The water opened and closed below her, a giant mouth waiting to swallow Naples-bound ladies. Her heart gave one enormous thud and then began hammering at her ribs.
“Miss?” Elsie called.
She shut her eyes tightly. “I am conducting an internal inventory and shall move momentarily.”
Somewhere above, a sailor laughed and called, “There’s a mermaid caught in the ropes!”
Marguerite would have objected to the classification, but speech had become ambitious. Her arms trembled with the effort of holding still. Yet, she could not make them release, could not make her foot rise, could not make her body understand that remaining suspended between sea and sky was not a plan.
Well, then, this was where she died. In the Channel, frozen to death.
Just as she was condemning the lack of poetic justice, the ropes jerked. The rung beneath her slippers dipped a fraction,and her stomach dropped as if it had been cut loose. She made a sound she would later vehemently deny.
“Do not look down,” said a voice near her ear.
“I had concluded as much,” she managed.
“Good. Then look at my hand.”
“I beg your pardon?”
“My hand. Above yours. Look at that, and nothing else.”
She opened her eyes a slit. Indeed, a hand held on to the rope, a few inches from her face.
“Breathe in,” he said.
Salty air entered her nostrils, and she gasped.
“There,” he said. “Again.”
She knew that voice. Marguerite turned her head as far as she dared. Mon Dieu! The pirate from last night braced against the ladder. His chest rose and fell behind her with a steadiness that seemed indecent under the circumstances.
“Easy, Moon. I had hoped to see you again, but not caught in a fishnet.”
