As soon as he noticed her presence, the captain turned from his work. “Miss Ashby,” he said, bowing.
“Captain,” she replied with a curtsey. “I … I was wondering…” Her heart, she realized, was hammering in her breast. How could she be so nervous? She swallowed, straightened, took a breath. “I was wondering if I might have a word with you. A word in private.”
“Of course.” He made his excuses and led her up the gangplank.
How familiar these lower decks were, and yet how strange! Only two weeks ago Diana had been her home, her place of work, her whole world. Now Arabella had departed from the ship and returned to her family home, leaving her to realize just how truly extraordinary her months aboard had been. Yet her home, too, and seemingly the whole planet Mars, had been entirely transformed, leaving her with no place she could truly call her own. In a sense, Diana was now the only home she had.
As she ascended a ladder, she ran her hand along the rail beside it. How many times had she waxed this handrail? How many others had waxed it before her, and since?
She brought the hand to her nose and breathed in. Khoresh-wood and wax; brass and gunpowder. Charcoal. The sweat of honest airmen.
She continued up the ladder to the great cabin.
*
The captain closed the cabin door behind himself, clasping his hands behind his back and straightening as he had done so many times before. “I must thank you again for your continued hospitality, Miss Ashby,” he said. “The men send their best regards as well.”
“You are welcome, sir, for as long as you wish to stay.”
Her heart still pounded as though she had run a mile—a hard mile across the desert at night. She had, she told herself, no right to be so anxious.
It was a simple enough request, though highly unconventional.
The worst he could do would be to say no.
She had faced kidnap, battle, mutiny, and insurrection. She could face this.
“Sir, I…” She swallowed, took a breath, began again. “You know that I hold you in the very highest regard.”
“As do I you, Miss Ashby.”
For some perverse reason that encouraging statement made it even harder to continue. “I have never met,” she managed after a pause, “a man so intelligent, so brave, so steadfast. I have seen you guide this ship through every manner of crisis without ever once losing your aplomb, never mind your temper. And, despite my … necessary deception, with regard to my sex, you have never failed to treat me with any thing less than honor and respect.”
He bowed. “It was, I assure you, far less than you deserved. Your own intelligence and, especially, creativity are far in excess of my own. You have found solutions to problems of navigation and, dare I say, administration that I can imagine no other man … no man, I should say, could have conceived. Your handling of the mutinous Binion resolved the mutiny without the loss of a single additional life. And as to bravery, your simple presence in the crew from day to day speaks to a degree of bravery that most men never find within themselves even in battle.”
She would not cry. She would not cry. “Captain Singh,” she began, then paused.
He looked at her, his deep brown eyes so calm and intense.
“I … I know this is … quite an extraordinary request to make. But my, my … situation, is quite extraordinary.” She stopped again, took a breath, then spat out, all in a rush, “Would you be so kind as to do me the honor of becoming my husband?”
He raised one eyebrow. Then the other.
“I—” He paused and looked away.
Somewhere among her many strong emotions, Arabella found a tiny particle of pride that she had managed to crack the captain’s inviolable composure.
He stared out the window for a long time, contemplating the house, the rolling sands, the stands of khoresh-trees. Every thing that could be seen from this window, all the way to the rocky horizon, was part of Woodthrush Woods.
“As you know,” he said at last, “it was because of a … refusal of betrothal that I found myself in the Honorable Mars Company in the first place.” He had not turned to face her.
Arabella’s breath caught in her throat. “I do recall that.”