Bonus Snippet: “Captain”

Oftentimes I cut snippets of dialogue from scenes that don’t need those particular lines — usually when the lines are about something that, after writing the scene, I decide to reveal later in the story.  I has so much fun writing this bit of dialogue, then I discovered that the big word at the center of it wasn’t in common use until nearly a century later, so SNIP it went! 

The scene is from I Married the Duke, when Arabella in desperate straits meets Luc and blithely tells him her terribly inconvenient secret.  In the novel she doesn’t reveal this to him, instead when he discovers it accidentally he admires her all the more for her secret courage.  Arabella’s inconvenient phobia also led to one of the tenderest scenes I’ve ever written: the return crossing to England.  SPOILER ALERT: If you’ve not yet read the book, wait till you have to enjoy this snippet.

 

“You see, sir, I am thalassophobic. Do you know what that means?”

“Captain.”

She screwed up her brow. “No. It means—”

“You may address me as Captain.”

“Oh! You are… Of what are you a captain?”

“A ship.”

← Explore More of Katharine's Extras