HAPTER THREE
“Please. Tell me everything, Commander Wallace.”
“I will, but please, call me Jackson.”
Strong and masculine, his first name suited him.
“All right, Jackson. Thank you. And you can call me Vivian.”
“Not Belvedere?”
I made an involuntary little gasp. “Excuse me?”
His eyes were twinkling. I couldn’t believe it. I couldn’t believe what he’d said.
“Or, Miss Laundryhousen, if you prefer.”
Now he had me thoroughly riled. He’d crossed the line. I felt embarrassed, and this feeling somehow quickly turned into anger.
In response to what he’d said, I briefly clenched my jaw, folding my arms across my chest. “You know what? How dare you taunt me when I’ve been... ill, or whatever the hell I’ve been. And I know that’s what you’re doing... you’re taunting me. You’re making fun of the fact that I’ve been so tired, and spacey, and clueless. You’re actually making fun of the fact that I made a goofy wild guess about my own name last night, when I was nearly falling over with sleepiness. You should really be ashamed of yourself.”
“You’re right, and I’m sorry. But in my defense, I wasn’t taunting you. Maybe teasing you, yes.”
His eyes still held the faintest trace of amusement, and I didn’t like it.
“Well, then, teasing me. Whatever. Bottom line, you shouldn’t have done it.”
“You’re right, and again, I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have teased you.”
“You’d think a commander would be more mature.”
“You’re right. You’d think so. And I really am sorry.”
He actually looked like he meant it.
“And I hope you can forgive me, and won’t hold this against me.”
Though my arms were still folded tightly across my chest, I felt myself softening just slightly.
“Well... swell, maybe.”
Jackson leaned forward, elbows on knees again, looking up into my eyes, and once again, the position made butterflies riot in my stomach.
“Tell you what, Vivian. Maybe you’ll be able to forgive me if I tell you a story about a time when I thought up a somewhat funny name while under pressure, so that you can tease me, and pay me back a little. If you want to hear the story, that is.”
Softening just a tad more, I nodded. “I guess so.”
His deep, resonant voice was making me feel like I might even be content to sit and listen to him read the phone book.
After giving me a fraction of a grin that turned my insides to jelly, he sat back in his chair once again, folding his arms very loosely over his chiseled chest. “All right, good. Well, the story begins when I was seventeen. I was trying to escape from some very bad men in a very bad place, and at first, I thought I could do this by sneaking out the back way, so to speak. But then, to make a very long story short, it became clear that would be impossible. I knew I was going to have to go out the ‘front door’ and I’d need a fake passport to do that. I’d need a fake passport identifying me as a diplomat of sorts.
So, fast forward to me in a seedy den of criminals and counterfeiters, trying to pass myself off as a grown man who might actually have a chance of passing as a diplomat. But, because I was only seventeen, and didn’t look more than a year or two older than that, at best, I was sweating bullets about my appearance, just standing in front of the counterfeiters. And when one of them asked what name should be put on the phony passport, I just froze. I hadn’t thought that far ahead yet. And in my panic, I just blurted out the first name that came to mind.”
Now with my own arms only very loosely folded across my chest, I leaned forward almost imperceptibly. “And what was the name you blurted?”
Jackson paused for a long moment. “Mr. Archibald Shufflebottom-Hogwood.”
I burst out laughing, completely unable to help myself. “No.”
“Yes. In my mind, for the couple of seconds I was trying to think of a name, it struck me as very dignified. Very mature-sounding. A name like a diplomat might have. But then the second I said it out loud... well, I knew it wasn’t a name that would even remotely match my youthful looks. Or even a modern diplomat.
I realized it was a name maybe better suited to a diplomat from Great Britain hundreds of years ago. Didn’t matter, though. One of the counterfeiters was already scrawling the name on my new fake passport, having a hearty laugh, having already taken my money. I was stuck with the passport.”
“And what happened then?”
“Well, to make another long story short, and maybe needless to say, the passport was zero help in getting me out of the bad place I was in. And in fact, it was immediately suspected of being fraudulent, which just put me in even worse of a position than I was already in, and made the task of getting out of the bad place even more difficult.”
“So, how did you do it?”
“Well... I’ll just say I had to fight my way out, literally. Which was no easy feat for a seventeen-year-old kid, but... well, I did it with all the ferocity that a man named Archibald Shufflebottom-Hogwood could muster.”
I giggled briefly and then fell silent, smiling. Jackson was smiling, too, revealing straight, white teeth. For a long moment, we just looked at each other, and my heart seemed to do a little stutter-step.
“So, Vivian, now you have some ammo for your revenge, so, go ahead. Tease away.”
I smiled even harder, a little warmth in my cheeks joining the rapid beating of my heart. “Sorry, but I don’t think I can, Mr. Shufflebottom-Hogwood. Your name’s so bad it almost teases itself.”
Jackson shrugged, giving me a half-grin that made me feel as if I might melt right into the hospital bed. With his strong, square jaw, mesmerizing eyes, and thick, dark hair, he was devastatingly handsome, and even that description didn’t seem to do him full justice.
“But, in any case, Archibald, I think I can manage to forgive your teasing of my made-up name.”
Still grinning, he opened his mouth to respond, but before he could, a man in a black military uniform similar to Jackson’s suddenly came trotting into the room, making me nearly jump out of my skin. He whispered something to Jackson I couldn’t quite catch, no more than a few words, then he dashed back out of the room just as quickly as he’d come in.
Grimacing, Jackson was up and out of his seat in a flash. “So sorry. Something urgent has come up. I’ll be back to continue our visit as soon as I’m able, though that may not be today. So very sorry.”
And with that, he was off, striding out of the room, leaving me in a state of startled confusion. Though even in that state, I still couldn’t help but think about how he was just as handsome wearing an expression of stern seriousness and urgency as he was wearing an amused half-grin. Maybe even more so.
I also couldn’t help but think about how he moved like the commander he apparently was, which was to say with purpose and complete confidence. He moved in a way that made his probably six-foot-three or four frame seem even taller, even more imposing. All this was not exactly off-putting to me.
Not long after Jackson left, Irene came in and ushered me out of bed and over to the windows. “Trouble in the north today; some Gorgolians attacking one of our outposts, which isn’t good at all. But at least now you’ll be able to see Commander Wallace in action as he leads his men out of the city.”
Not a moment after Irene had finished speaking, I saw Jackson and his dragons. But really, the only one I saw was him. And Irene didn’t even have to tell me it was him; I just knew. He was the largest of a group of maybe about a hundred actual winged dragons speeding across a pale blue sky, high above even the tallest skyscrapers, their mighty wings beating the air. Jackson was also just a few body lengths ahead of everyone else. It was somewhat hard to see with complete clarity from a distance, but his body appeared to be the same deep, dark, almost blackish midnight blue as his eyes.
With the sense of surreality I’d been experiencing at different times now returning full force, I watched him lead his men away to the north until they disappeared.
Then, I turned to Irene, struggling to find my voice. “This is... this is all real, right? Whatever happened to me, however I got so cold, and however I got so far away from America and everything else I know about the world... this is still all real, right? Just, dragons and everything. I’m not in some sort of a really strange and extended dream?”
Smiling, Irene shook her head. “No. It may feel like it for a while, but it’s not a dream. Everything here is very real. And after a while, things probably won’t feel even remotely strange to you anymore.”
I hoped she was right.
I slept for most of the day. And the next. Jackson still wasn’t back. I realized that I was more than a little anxious to see him again for some reason. Little did I know that our next meeting wouldn’t be quite as pleasant as the previous one had been.