CHAPTER TWELVE
Nathaniel eyed Nettie first and then the Howdah pistol she’d brought aboard the Terebellum with her. The sidearm lay on the desk in the captain’s quarters. Nettie, fortunately, wasn’t within reaching distance. Instead she stood at the small cabinet where the brandy and port were kept. Port sloshed out of the glass as she poured from the decanter with a shaking hand.
Combat fatigue. He recognized the signs; he suffered them himself. His own hands were steady, but bolts of muscle spasms ratcheted up his back periodically, coming and going in a rhythmic echo of the thump-crack from the Dahlgren guns each time he fired at the horrifics. Not only that, but his body refused to shed his armor in favor of the soft vicar cloth. No matter how he willed it, the armor didn’t soften and melt back into his skin. He only hoped that as things continued to calm aboard the Terebellum, his body would recognize the lack of threat and relinquish its defensive shell.
Nettie gulped down her port and stared at him with hard eyes. “You step foot again on any ship I captain, and I’ll have you shot on sight,” she vowed in a shrill voice. Her pupils were wide and dark.
Nathaniel didn’t take offense. “I’m fine, Nettie. No worse for wear.” He held out his arms and pivoted in a slow rotation so she could see all of him. “Not even a scratch.”
Such couldn’t be said for everyone. With the exception of four, most of the Terebellum’s crew had escaped injury. That was a blessing as her sick bay was currently bursting with the wounded and the dying from the three damaged ships. Because her speed topped that of the Gatria and the Bellatrix, the Terebellum was chosen to transport the injured and the dead back to London while the others trailed behind, towing the disabled ships.
Victory celebrations had been brief as the crews on all ships bent to their tasks of transferring people from one ship to another and coordinating plans for the return trip home. And all had paused to commemorate and mourn the loss of the Castra and her crew with the sounding of eight bells and a prayer from Nettie.
He’d listened to a last watch commemoration more times than he ever cared to. Britannia had lost a lot of men, women and ships to the Redan over the decades, along with all the other nations with coastlines bordering the Atlantic. No matter how often you heard eight bells, they never sounded any less mournful.
Their sad pealing made Nathaniel itch to hunt down Lenore, yank her into his arms and hold her until her body melted into his. No amount of reassurance from Nettie or even confirmation with his own eyes when he saw her running back and forth between sick bay and captain’s quarters calmed his fears. He’d only be satisfied when he actually held her.
“What if Lenore wants a permanent place aboard the Pollux? Or even the Terebellum?” He’d heard about Lenore’s help in the forecastle. The master mechanic had even remarked to any who’d listen “Bricky girl, that Kenward. I’d be happy to train her up as a mechanic.”
Nettie downed another round of port. “I’ll have her shot too,” she snarled.
Nathaniel held back a grin, both amused and delighted by her answer. He braced a hip on the edge of the desk and watched Nettie pace. “Well that would put Jane Kenward into the dither you’ve always wanted to see.”
“That girl is going straight back to her mother as soon as they tie this ship down for repairs in Maldon.”
He hoped not. At least not permanently. He wanted her to come straight to him—and stay. He’d caught her wide-eyed stare in the battle’s chaotic aftermath, when the crew had breathed a collective gasp of relief that the fighting was temporarily over. She’d mouthed his name—Nathaniel, not Colin. The expression on her face had been an odd combination of anger and yearning. Commands and tasks separated them, and they hadn’t crossed paths since. He was desperate to see her, to hold her. To explain.
“You’re still the best damn gunner in the fleet, dead or alive,” Nettie said, interrupting his thoughts. “But worrying over you will kill me faster than any tussle with a horrific.”
A knock at the door made them both turn. Nettie cast him an enigmatic look, put away the port and tucked the Howdah into her belt. “I know that knock,” she said. “Looks like you have some explaining to do. I’ll leave you to it. Don’t drink all the brandy while I’m gone.”
Butterflies bashed themselves to death against his ribs when he spotted Lenore standing at the threshold. What would she say now that she knew?
Lenore inclined her head as Nettie eased past her. “Captain.”
The older woman grasped her shoulder in a brief display of affection. “Go in, Lenore. He’s waiting.” The door closed behind her, leaving Nathaniel alone with the person most precious to him. He waited, letting the silence bloom until she was ready to speak.
She clasped her hands in front of her and looked down for a moment before settling her gaze on him once more. “I knew,” she said softly. “Somehow I always knew, from the first moment I saw you again.” Her lips flattened against her teeth, and her eyes turned glossy. “Were you ever planning to tell me?”
He edged closer to her. Tension made her entire body quiver, and she balanced on the balls of her feet as if she’d bolt if he moved too swiftly. “Not at first,” he admitted, hoping she heard the apology in his voice. She flinched. “Look at me, Lenore.” He sketched an invisible line down his torso. “This isn’t even my body. It belonged to a comic droll stabbed to death for the three crowns in his pocket. What was left of me wasn’t worth saving. Harvel’s experiment might be viewed as miraculous if it weren’t so heinous.”
She crossed her arms, rubbing them briskly as if she stood before him with no coat and the windows open. “You’re still Nathaniel.”
What faith she had in him, this resolute, loyal girl. “No, I’m not.”
Her arms dropped to her sides, back straightening with an indignant snap. “Yes you are. I knew it the moment I saw you again at Highgate, leaning on that cane and scaring the mourners.”
He sighed. “Lenore...”
“Don’t ‘Lenore’ me. Even before you were dropping hints a blind man could see, I knew it was you. Everything inside me that broke when they said you’d died suddenly healed.” She dragged her braid over her shoulder to worry it between her fingers. “I didn’t recognize what it was at first. Maybe if I weren’t grieving my father, I might have figured it out sooner.”
She’d have to be stubborn to defy her strong-willed mother. He shouldn’t be surprised Lenore refused to budge in her assertion he was the same man he’d been five years earlier.
Nathaniel inched a little closer, close enough to hear the sudden hitch in her breathing. “I can hear and speak to the dead, love. I don’t need to eat or drink or sleep. I can lust; we’ve both ascertained that.” He grinned when she blushed. “My blood is poisoned with gehenna, and the changes it wrought are obvious. I am no longer the man you knew.”
His eyebrows lifted at the low growl rumbling from her throat. This time she narrowed the distance between them until they were toe to toe. His armor made a dull tink-tink sound when she tapped him on the chest.
“Where it counts most, you are. The soul, the mind, the heart. The body might not be yours and changed beyond comprehension, but the small things you do—the way you tip that invisible topper, how you tilt your head when you’re considering a question, even the pitch in your voice when you’re impatient. Those things belong solely to Nathaniel Gordon.”
His grin coaxed one out of her. “You plant your feet when you believe in something don’t you?” It was one of her many charms that made him fall in love with her a lifetime ago.
She considered him for a moment. “I was more than suspicious when you told me your name was Colin, but the surname threw me off, not to mention the improbability that you weren’t actually dead. Who is Whitley?”
His dear Nettie. She’d guffawed when he told her the name he’d assumed to hide his identity from Lenore. He hadn’t missed the pleased blush that flagged her cheekbones. “That secret isn’t mine to tell. Maybe one day the person who possesses it will.”
Her hand splayed across his chest, fingers dancing up to his neck and down to his abdomen, undaunted by the hard armor. He felt her touch all the way to his bones. A hot shiver replaced the fading spasms in his back. He choked back a surprised laugh. While his protective shell might not obey his every command when he wished, Lenore’s touch had beguiled it the same way she had beguiled him. The armor began to thin and soften in random spots, transforming to fabric.
“Even the way you kissed me was Nathaniel Gordon.”
He captured her hand and pressed her palm flat over his heart. “I never thought I’d be fortunate enough to taste you again,” he said in a voice gone low and thick. Lenore’s eyelids lowered to half-mast. “Especially in a graveyard or on an airship.”
“You should have told me,” she said. “I suspected but to hear it confirmed over the Terebellum’s speaker tubes by Nettie threatening you?” She shook her head.
He pressed her hand even harder to his chest. Her eyes grew wide when the armor collapsed there and transformed to cloth. “I could live with your first rejection, Lenore, because there was hope. I wasn’t giving up, despite your mule-headed insistence on me claiming an inheritance I didn’t want.” He closed his eyes, forcing back the fear that reared a cobra’s head inside him. She had kissed him and welcomed his embrace when she thought him nothing more than a Guardian. Surely, now that she knew all, she wouldn’t turn him away? “Were you to reject me a second time, it would have been because of who I’d become, not what I was born to. In that, I found no hope.”
Lenore lifted her free hand to trace the contours of his face. Cheekbones and jaw, eyebrows and forehead, the blade-thin bridge of his nose and curvature of his nostrils. Did she see a reflection of the old Nathaniel in the black expanse of his irises and scleras? She grasped his chin and tugged him down to her. “I hate Harvel for what he did to you.” Her breath caressed his lips. “Yet I’d thank him if he were alive because he gave you back to me.”
In this moment, with all his dreams sparking to life at Lenore’s words, Nathaniel thought he’d thank Harvel too—then disembowel him later.
Lenore freed her other hand from his grasp and slid both into his hair to cup his head and hold him in place, looming over her. “Nathaniel Gordon,” she declared in a fierce voice, “I will love you until I’m one of those spirits who whispers in your ear and bores you with my repetition.”
He laughed and gathered her into his arms, no longer armored but garbed in fabric that welcomed the press of Lenore’s body against his. He nuzzled his nose against the side of hers. “Love, by then we will be dust together.”
Lenore’s laughter chorused with his. “That’s because when my mother finds out my Nathaniel is back and keeping company with the dead, she’ll immolate us both with a single, well-aimed glare.”