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Once again her stomach clenched with an awareness she shouldn’t have felt, and she bent her head as she muttered, “Thank you.”

He didn’t respond, but nodded, and his focus shifted away from her again. She glanced at him now that he wasn’t looking at her. He had a hard line to his very defined jaw and an equally tight quality to his clamped lips. They were full, though. She could tell that despite the annoyance that lined his face.

He didn’t seem troubled by the roiling of the boat. Her stomach rose and fell, but he didn’t even have an increase in breath. Damn him. She really didn’t want to make more of a fool of herself than she already had, but nausea was rising by the moment as the sea grew heavier and wilder away from the coast.

It had been such a long night, filled with such disappointment and fear. She had hardly eaten anything since afternoon tea and now all she could think about was that food and how much she hated everything she’d ever put into her mouth.

Rook cocked his head and looked at her. “Miss Shelley?” he said softly.

But she didn’t answer. All she could do was lean over the side of the boat and cast up her accounts as she cursed every decision she’d made since three o’clock that afternoon. Including the ones that had put her in the boat with a stranger, vomiting in front of him.