as she accepted it. When he spoke again, his voice was lower. “Three years in the cook-room of the next ship. Nearly got trapped there.” He sat across from her and took up his glass of wine.
“I can understand that! This is absolutely delicious.” She looked up and nearly choked on the mouthful. He was not eating or drinking, but leaning back in his chair, arms loosely crossed, half-lidded eyes intent upon her. She scooped another forkful. “How, then, did you escape a future as a ship’s cook?”
“Bought an officer’s bunk.” He cocked a half-smile. “Some advantages to being a son of a baronet, even a fifth son.”
“I should think there are many advantages,” she said, wiping her lips with a towel. “But son of a baronet or not, you cannot purchase your way into commanding a ship of the line.”
“Can’t you?”
“You excel at your profession, Captain.”
“If you say so,” he murmured. “Finished?”
“Yes. Thank you. You have not eaten so I suspect that you pretended your hunger to make an excuse to cook for me.”
“Did I?”
“And I admit that I was in need of dinner. My situation seems less hopeless now, though I am not at all certain how I will wrest free of this trouble.”
“You won’t,” he said. “We will.” He came to his feet and went to the door.
She reached for her plate. “I should—”
“Elle,” he said with the deviltry in his eyes that made her feel delectably light. “Baronet’s son. War hero. I cook. I don’t clean.”
She followed him up the stairs and into a chamber furnished with masculine accents: wood-paneled walls, a modest writing table, and a comfortable leather-covered chair arranged across from a sofa before the unlit hearth.
Her gaze got stuck on the sofa. And every thought, wish, and fantasy of kissing him crashed into her imagination at once.
She could feel him watching her. Her eyes sought something else—anything else—anything safe. It found a large bound volume lying open atop the writing table.
“Oh! This is a captain’s log, is it not? I have heard of such books, of course. But I have never actually seen one. You are the first ship captain—”
Then he was beside her, shutting the book and standing far too close.
“—I have ever met,” she finished haltingly. “May I see it?”
“Only a draft,” he said, taking it up and shelving it behind the desk.
“I should like to see it, nevertheless. You know, of course, about my interest in books.”
“This one’s got nothing interesting in it.” He stood with his broad shoulders blocking the shelf. “Day after day of clear horizons, endless skies, sailors bored to pieces. Dull as caulking.”
“You misunderstand,” she said with a smile, reaching around him. “It is not the content that interests me so much as the format.” She plucked it out again and opened it. She studied a page, then flipped it and studied another. “I had no idea captain’s logbooks underwent rewriting and editing in this manner. I always assumed they were like diaries. Is this sailors’ shorthand that you employed in haste, and this”—she pointed—“the text that you rewrote when you had more time? Or perhaps this part is secret code. How thrilling!”
“No.”
She glanced up. His handsome face was stony.
“Oh.” She closed the book and reshelved it. “I beg your pardon. I never meant to pry into naval secrets.”
“No secrets in that log. Nothing anybody can’t read,” he said stiffly.
“Then I apologize for—well—for—I don’t know. What have I done?”
“Nothing. You’ve done nothing wrong.” For an extended moment he simply looked down into her eyes. Then he pulled out the logbook again and opened it. “This”—he pointed to the rows of neat, carefully penned sentences—“was written by my first lieutenant.” His voice was tight. “And this”—he pointed to the shorthand—“I wrote.”
“I see,” she said hesitantly.
“You don’t,” he said. “It’s not shorthand or code. It’s nonsense.”
“Nonsense?”
“Look.”
She studied the writing. The hand was firm. But it was not indeed shorthand. It was English—barely. Words were misspelled, even transposed with each other. Other words were missing or simply wrong, and letters were occasionally scribed backward, like the letters on type. Slowly she made sense of the prose, just as the transcription did in the margin above each line.
“I do not understand,” she said.
“That makes two of us.” His gaze was on the page. “Madness of it is, sometimes I can’t even read what I’ve written.”
Her heart was beating so hard she could hear it in the stillness.
“Did you never learn—that is, did you not study?”
“Endless school, Elle. When that didn’t