“Nettie, I know the risks, but I’ve wanted this all my life—before I met Nathaniel, before Papa’s death. You saw me when I was a child, how I’d pretend to be you.” Lenore didn’t miss the faint blush warming the older woman’s cheeks and pressed her advantage. “Other women serve under you on thePollux. Will you not consider it?”
Nettie took a long swallow of her beer and wiped her mouth with the back of her hand. “Brilliant with his inventions, your papa. Not much of a sailor or crewman. Got airsick each time he went on a night run with us, but he loved it all the same. Said you would too had you been old enough to accompany him.” She scowled at Lenore. “I’m not sayin’ aye, but I’m not sayin’ nay either. I want to think about it.”
Lenore’s shoulders sagged, and she slumped in her chair with relief. “Thank you, Nettie. For what it’s worth, you might well save me from a slow death of needlepoint, alphabets, and smelling salts.”
“And put you in harm’s way with a quick death from a stray bullet.” Nettie pointed an accusing finger. “Don’t play the savior card with me, missy. If I say no, you keep your dignity, accept my decision and walk out of here without argument. Understood?”
Lenore saluted. “Aye, Captain.” She didn’t dare smile.
“We sail in three days’ time for the Redan, providing escort for theAndromeda. It’s a month out and a month back. You’ll have your answer then. No sooner.”
The Redan. Lenore’s heartbeat stuttered. She’d been raised on tales about the defensive perimeter. Bordering the length of Atlantic coastline from Hammerfest in Norway to the Strait of Gibraltar, the buffer protected the continent from the horrifics that sometimes erupted out of the dimensional fissure. Many airships, along with their crews, had been lost fighting at the Redan. Nettie had almost lost thePollux,and Nathaniel had died there. If she joined the crew, it was a guarantee she’d see it first-hand.
“You’ll be careful, won’t you, Nettie?”
Nettie shot her a reproachful look. “Not much choice. We’re playing nanny to a cargo lifter loaded with flyers and munitions.” She gestured to Lenore’s untouched glass. “You might not want to let that get too flat. It turns bitter.”
Accustomed to the captain’s pragmatic view of her job, Lenore didn’t expound on her concern over this latest mission. She rose from her chair. “No more for me. I’m off to visit Papa, then home. I need my wits sharp to face Mama’s tirade. She won’t soon forgive me for sneaking away.” She didn’t hide her distaste. “I missed Aunt Adelaide’s weekly one o’clock visit, along with her atrocious piano playing.”
Nettie’s chuckle was less than sympathetic. “Better you than me, ducks. I’ll take a good battle at the Redan over that nonsense any day.” She stood with Lenore. “You’ll give my best to your papa when you visit, yeah?”
Lenore gathered her shawl and reticule. “Always.” She paused, remembering the funeral and the Guardian who vowed to protect her father’s grave. “Did I tell you I met the Guardian of Highgate?”
The other woman’s eyes widened. “Did you now? And how did you manage that? They’re not known for socializin’ with the living.”
“He revealed himself once the sextons bricked Papa’s grave. I approached him…”
Nettie’s bark of laughter interrupted her. “You’ve a backbone tough as those corset steels you wear, girl. Guardians scare the lights out of most people.”
Lenore’s cheeks heated at the compliment. “He had a fearsome aspect. Tall, dressed in black armor—and the strangest eyes, as if he looked back on eternity.”
“You make him sound like a right ‘andsome bloke.”
She shrugged. “He was, in an odd way. Very gentlemanly as well. He promised none would disturb the grave, and he’s kept that promise. The bricks are as they were laid.” She didn’t mention the sense of recognition that struck her at their first meeting. Even now, weeks later, his image burned darkly in her mind’s eye, along with the unwavering certainty she knew him. “I haven’t seen him since then, and I go to the cemetery weekly.”
“A good thing, I think.” Nettie escorted her out of the captain’s quarters and into the corridor that ran the length of the keel. “He’s one of Harvel’s experiments. Who knows what terrible things those poor souls suffered and how much it changed them—for the worst I’ll wager.”
They bid each other farewell at the gangplank. Donal McCullough, Nettie’s master rigger, escorted Lenore to the omnibus waiting at the depot. “Sure you don’t need me to take you to the station, miss?”
“I’m certain, Mr. McCullough. Thank you.” She boarded the omnibus and found a seat next to a woman cradling an infant. She returned McCullough’s wave as the driver pulled away and settled in for her journey to the train station.
CHAPTER FOUR
Nathaniel groaned under his breath at the sight of Lenore strolling down one of the cemetery paths to her father’s grave. Hidden by an ancient elm bedecked in ivy, he consumed her with his gaze, taking in the bombazine gown of unrelenting black, the upswept hair that revealed her pale neck and highlighted the line of her jaw.
She tortured him with these weekly visits to her father’s grave. Pulled from the opposite side of the sprawling cemetery as if by a lodestone, he sensed her presence the moment she passed through the entrance archway. Coves of hanging ivy and the shadows cast by crypts kept him hidden from view as he admired her profile and listened to the easy pitch of her voice.
She conversed with her father at each visit as if he were standing before her, his eyes bright with the avid curiosity he’d passed on to his only child. Nathaniel could have told her that Arthur’s spirit didn’t linger the way some did, that it had crossed the ethereal barrier; the body beneath the bricks had been an empty vessel at burial. Nathaniel was not, however, a cruel man. He recognized her need to hold onto some remnant of her loved one, to accept her sorrow and gradually let it go. Other mourners did the same. The difference was he didn’t eavesdrop on their conversations with the dearly departed.
Many might say he breached every form of courtesy in listening to her one-sided conversations with her father. He invaded her privacy, but he couldn’t stop or bring himself to feel any shame. He’d thought his love for Lenore Kenward had been ripped out of him along with his humanity. His first glimpse of her at her father’s graveside had re-ignited emotions once lost in the hazy memories of a distant life. Seeing her again had been an ecstasy. Knowing she was forever out of his reach an agony. He concentrated on her words and closed his eyes as a wave of homesickness washed over him.
“I visited with Nettie today, Papa. She sends her regards. ThePolluxwill be in port at Maldon for a few more days, then Nettie is taking her out. I’m to understand she will act as escort for theAndromeda. They will face the Redan.”
The Redan. The dimensional fissure. Images flashed behind Nathaniel’s closed lids.
He’d never get used to seeing it, never lose the terror that churned his guts and sucked the air from his lungs. The black tide of roiling clouds pounded the protective barrier, searching—always searching—for the one weakness that would allow it to breach the wards woven by Her Majesty’s best guild mages and rip the fissure even wider.
The nebula writhed and twisted, illuminated by flashes of sour yellow lightning that revealed the monstrous things surfing its waves—colossal maws baring teeth the length of cathedral spires, segmented legs of insectile abominations bristling with spiky black fur, and slick tentacles that whipped from the fissure to tongue the wards with a barbed stroke.
