A Different Sort of Perfect by Vivian Roycroft

Author:Vivian Roycroft
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Tags: regency, clean romance, sweet romance, swashbuckling, sea story, napoleonic wars, royal navy, frigate, sailing ship, tall ship, post captain
Publisher: Astraea Press

* * * *

It was hot. Too hot to work. Too hot to think. To breathe.

It was certainly too hot to languish in the furnace below decks. Clara sat beneath her awning, sharing it with whoever came to call; she didn't have the energy to turn away a highwayman, much less a quiet officer or mid on slippered feet. Pounding heat poured over her, bathed her in sweat, in itself. It leached the willingness to move from her, leached out all her tension and worries, and left her empty, a steaming vessel waiting to be filled.

Perhaps some people would call Captain Fleming handsome, with his polite, earnest eyes, patrician nose, grooved smile lines sculpting his tanned cheeks. Those gull-winged eyebrows, with their sharp fold in the middle and flaring ends, gave him a distinguished appearance, certainly. When he worked — and he was amazingly durable, he worked even in this heat — sweat plastered his cunning frilled shirt to his chest and back, so that it flexed when he moved. The material was thinner than anything she'd seen a man wear before and the view bypassed immodest for indecent.

To her secret shame and even secreter enjoyment, she hadn't let that stop her. Diana's influence must finally have taken hold, leading to her new appreciation for male bodies. Well, something had to have caused it.

Mr. Abbot wasn't as tall. His shoulders were broader, and the muscles in his arms pressed harder against the material of his shirt sleeves when he'd hauled on a rope in the ship's waist. If he wasn't careful, he could rip through the soft cambric of his frilled shirt. He worked on in the heat, as well, continuing his patient teaching of the landmen. He'd gone aloft to impart some lesson to the reefers, and he'd directed a repainting of the bronze cannons and anything that didn't move on the deck. If she wasn't careful, he'd have a team painting her soon. But it was too hot to bother fighting them off.

It was too hot even to maintain dignity. But it wasn't too hot to consider men. Diana would have been proud of her.

Something had made her horribly bold, amazingly shameless and immodest. The sea air, perhaps, or some unusual ingredient in Captain Fleming's well-stocked table, or something that had been imparted to the fresh water by its storage in the cask. More likely it was being surrounded only by men or doing a man's job that was making her so unfeminine. Aunt Helen wouldn't be proud at all, and Harmony's round face would form a perfect O from her dropped chin, if either of them ever learned of her brashness aboard.

Or perhaps it was a deeper appreciation of the closeness of life and death, with nothing between her and the hungry sea, and ultimately her Maker, except the frigate's fragile hull.

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