Skies of Fire (12 page)

“True. Typical women don’t react to a marriage proposal by running off on a mission without leaving even a damned note.” He kept his body still, but he stared at her. “D’you know, I didn’t find out where you’d gone until Admiral Davidson told me at a briefing. That you were overseas for an indefinite period of time. Apparently, you’d begged him for the assignment and left that very day.”

Her gaze dropped away. “That wasn’t . . . well done of me.”

He snorted.

“But, Christopher,” she said, spreading her hands, “I didn’t know what to do when you asked.”

“If you didn’t want to marry me, you could have said no. Better that than running.”

“I know you, Christopher. If someone says no, you redouble your efforts. You don’t stop until you get exactly what you want. I’m just as stubborn.” She struggled to find the words, fumbling through the chaos of her own emotions. “We would’ve battered against each other until we were nothing but dust.”

“There’s such a thing as compromise.”

Her brows rose. “Since when has either of us compromised?”

“You didn’t even goddamn
try
.”

“It’s true. I was . . . a coward.” She stared down at the tools now resting in her lap. So simple, so elegant, these tools. If she faced a mechanical problem, it was a matter of working the situation out, slowly, thoroughly, until a solution was found. “A coward in many ways. I was . . . afraid. To say no to your face. Afraid you’d change my mind. Afraid that if you did, we’d just . . . make each other miserable.”

Fear gripped her now. Could she ever make things right between them? They could never go back to what they had before, but they couldn’t go on this way. Neither friends nor enemies. A volatile mixture of both.

He set the paper with the filings on the table before swinging around to face her. “I was so goddamn happy being with you. And you were happy being with me. Where in any of that did you see a future of misery?”

“Marriage changes people, changes how they see each other, treat each other.” Restless, she put her tools and spectacles aside, and walked tight circles around the perimeter of the magazine. How to articulate her feelings to him when she didn’t fully understand them herself?

“I’ve seen it so many times,” she continued. “The courtship and the first years after a wedding—everything’s wonderful. The love between the couple is a palpable thing, hot and alive and shining. But then . . .” Words and fears smashed against each other. A struggle to break free, to verbalize what she only now could fully comprehend. “ . . . that love changes. Withers. Or dies altogether.”

He shot to his feet. “It doesn’t have to. Yes, maybe it does change, but not into something worse. Into . . . something different.” Like her, he wrestled with words. “Something perhaps even better than that consuming fire. There’s trust . . . and comfort. And strength.”

“What of passion? You say that trust, comfort, and strength are better, but I couldn’t live without passion.”

“Did we ever lack passion?” He stalked close. “Could something so bright fade?”

He wrapped one iron-hard arm around her waist, and brought his other hand up to cup the back of her head. His gaze raked her for a moment, eyes bright as blue fire. They had both exhausted the limitations of words. Action was far more articulate.

His mouth came down onto hers.

At the first touch of his lips to hers, need tore through her. She clung to his shoulders, one of flesh, one of metal, yet she felt all of him at once. The long, unyielding length of his body. His large hands holding her tightly. The sensation of his mouth, hot and demanding. She knew him, his mouth, had tasted countless of his kisses, but he was different now. Taller. Tougher. Angrier.

There was a consuming hunger as he kissed her, as his tongue swept into her mouth. Yet she wasn’t cowed into submission. She met his kiss with her own demand. It had been so long. Since she’d shared this with him. Since she had burned from the inside out. She gripped him, hard, pressing herself against him.

He tasted of whiskey, tobacco, and regret for what could have been.

She wasn’t aware of being walked backwards until the racks of shells rattled against her back. At the sound, he abruptly released her and stepped away. Her hands hovered in the air for a moment before she slowly lowered them.

Now the only sound in the magazine came from them as they panted, fighting for breath and sense. Her breathing slowed, but sense didn’t return. She was alight with desire. Her yearning body knew him, wanted him, and so did her heart.

His face was dark, either from anger or arousal or both. The great mass of his body shuddered.

She said, “I have to—”

He held up a hand, silencing her. “Don’t.”

But she wouldn’t be silenced. “I have to apologize. I’m sorry, Christopher. So sorry.”

“I’m not sorry I kissed you.” His eyes seemed to glow.

“I’m not either.” She, who never cried, blinked back tears. “But I am sorry about what I did three years ago. I made a mistake. I ran, when I shouldn’t have. I didn’t give us a chance. Now . . . I don’t know what to do.”

He smiled mirthlessly. “I’ve flown this ship through storms that had our compasses spinning. Captained a sea ship that was blown thousands of miles off course by a hurricane. But I’ve never been as lost as I am in this room.” He eyed the distance between them. “In this, we’re both adrift.”

Chapter Seven

C
HRISTOPHER STAYED CLOSE. The heat of their kiss kept him in Louisa’s orbit. If questioned—which he wouldn’t be—he had a convenient reason to remain near. There was no way to know how much telumium she would need for the bombs, compelling him to remain with her in the magazine as she conducted her experiments. She tried various amounts of the metal, making small adjustments as necessary, and taking more filings from his implant.

In truth, he might have insisted she take a larger amount of telumium at once, thus enabling him to leave the magazine and find work elsewhere in the ship. God knew he had enough to do. Yet he remained with her as the afternoon edged toward early evening. Every five minutes, someone in his crew popped his head in and asked him different questions. If the crewmen thought it strange that the ship’s captain sat shirtless in the magazine with a woman from Naval Intelligence, they wisely kept their mouths shut. Around him, anyway.

He watched her work, fascinated by the process that only she seemed to understand. Her hands were nimble, precise, and a small line appeared between her brows as she concentrated. She’d always frowned when working out a puzzle. In the few years since they’d been apart, the line had grown a little deeper, become more permanent. Tiny lines fanned out in the very corners of her eyes. She hadn’t needed the spectacles three years ago, either.

She was a woman. A woman who subtly aged with the passage of time. Who made mistakes, and admitted to them.

He didn’t know if it made it worse or better that she’d done so. A few words couldn’t undo the damage she’d caused. Yet the fact that she had understanding and courage enough to own up to her actions helped solder shut the giant fractures in his heart.

One thing he
wasn’t
comforted by: the knowledge that she desired him still. He’d tasted it in her kiss. Felt it in the grip of her hands on him, how her body molded to his. His own body still tightened in readiness. His appetite had been whetted. But it was a hunger that had to go unsatisfied. This was not the time. Not the place.

He might go to his death wanting her.

To occupy himself in between her taking more telumium, he picked up and studied whichever tool she wasn’t using. Turned them over and over in his hands and felt their wooden handles, their metal pieces.

“A wondrous age of mechanical marvels, this is,” he murmured. “When I was a boy, no one had heard of
aurorae vires
, nor telumium. Ether, too, was just a subject of speculation.”

Still bent over her work, she added, “Tetrol was only a rumor, also. Wild stories told by visitors to China. Vast soya bean fields being turned into fuel that burned faster and cleaner than coal. Who’d have believed it?”

“Now all of it’s real.” He spun a screwdriver on the tip of his finger. “My very existence proves it.”

Reaching over, she snatched the screwdriver away with a single, deft move, and used it to make adjustments on the bomb. “Wonder what the next few decades will bring.”

“Something marvelous, or terrible.”

“Or both.”

“Can something be both marvelous and terrible?”

She gazed at him. “Love.”

He made a soft snort of agreement. “Perhaps we should send a telegram to Dr. Rossini. Suggest she study the scientific properties of love. She could power half of London’s electricity if she found a way to harness love’s energy.”

“It wouldn’t be a very reliable power source.” She turned to him and ran the rasp over his implant, one hand on his arm. It didn’t matter that she’d touched him thusly half a dozen times in the past few hours. One brush of her fingertips against his bare skin and his pulse raced like a turbine.

“Maybe not.” He stared down at the crown of her head, where the lamplight turned her hair to gleaming mahogany. “But there are always new fools falling in love.”

After a few passes of the rasp, she hunched over the worktable again. “We’ll have to find another scientist to conduct the experiments. Dr. Rossini is a bloody hard woman to find.”

“I heard her flying city was last seen over the coast of West Africa.”

“And I heard she’d been spotted over Brazil,” he said. “She and that group of rogue Man O’ Wars that believe her some kind of god, or queen, or both. She doesn’t disabuse them of the notion, or so I’ve heard. The
Hera
had a run in with that flying city of hers. The ship was almost shot from the sky.”

“The price of genius is often madness. Me, I’d rather have just enough brilliance to keep everyone in awe of me, but not so much that it chips away at my sanity. And I do think that this qualifies as a work of brilliance.” She straightened, pushing her hair out of her face, and gestured to the device on the table.

“This can’t be a big enough bomb.” It was a metal box nearly the same size as a cannon shell for one of his four-inch guns, covered by a lace of wires and tubes. A clock face had been welded to one side of the box, with wires connecting it to the device. “Looks too damned small.”

“Never underestimate the small things.” She stood and stretched, bracing her hands against the small of her back and arching. A series of small pops traveled up the length of her spine. She sighed, and when she caught him staring at her outthrust breasts, she chuckled.

“Are you ready?” she asked, her voice a husky murmur.

He dragged his gaze up to her face. His brain had slowed to a cruising speed. “For what?”

She patted the bomb. “Let’s put this chemistry of ours to the test.”

C
REWMEN GATHERED AT the starboard rail of the ship. Those that couldn’t make it topside pressed against the starboard portholes. Still, there wasn’t room enough for everyone, and so news was being relayed from man to man as new developments occurred. Right now, they were silent as Louisa made final adjustments to her bomb.

Those who could see what she was doing whispered to one another. Christopher didn’t need his heightened hearing to catch what the crew said.

“Ain’t possible for that puny thing to do no decent damage on a ground target.”

“What’s she going to blow up with it? A dollhouse?”

Christopher kept his concerns to himself. By the hard set of her mouth, he could tell Louisa felt the pressure of hope and expectation. Everyone needed the bomb to work, for the sake of the mission. Adding his voice to the chorus of doubt served no purpose. He merely watched and offered his silent support.

Turning to Pullman, he asked, “The ship’s in proper working order?”

“Aye, sir.” The first mate’s gaze moved over the deck, assessing. “Told the men we needed the repairs done on the double. They’re raising the anchor, too.”

He glanced toward where a crewman turned on a tetrol-powered crane to hoist anchor. The machine started with a high whine, and heat rippled out from the engine’s exhaust pipe. Steadily, the anchor went up.

“Give the crew my commendation, Mr. Pullman. And an extra ration of rum with dinner.”

“Aye, sir!”

Testing the bomb had several risks. The bomb itself could fail, or be unstable. It could detonate at the wrong time. And if it did explode, the concussion would give away the
Demeter
’s position to any Hapsburg ships possibly nearby. If they attracted the attention of the enemy, they’d need to make a fast escape, or else be prepared for a battle.

Christopher didn’t like the prospect of fleeing, but he needed his ship at her fullest capability and strength. A skirmish with an enemy airship was simply too risky.

He waited, hands clasped behind his back, as Louisa completed her adjustments. At last, she straightened, holding the bomb in her arms.

“We’re ready,” she said.

At Christopher’s nod, the master at arms shouted, “Make way!”

Crewmen stepped back, forming a path for her as she approached the starboard rail. She’d chosen the starboard side rather than port side because the mountains were tallest on the starboard, and could absorb the sound better.

She balanced it on the rail, then adjusted the dial on the clock. Christopher saw now that it was a timer, and she had set it for fifteen seconds.

“On my count,” Louisa said.

Everyone, Christopher included, held their breath. He, too, waited at the rail.

“Three, two, one. Now!”

She dropped the bomb over the side and immediately pulled out a stopwatch.

The bomb fell, fell. Crewmen with spyglasses followed the downward progress of the bomb. Christopher didn’t need a spyglass and did not lose sight of the small object as it grew even smaller in its descent.

Louisa glanced at her stopwatch, then shouted, “Brace yourselves!”