She shrugged and downed the rest of her brandy before setting it on the nearby table with thump. “It doesn’t matter. What I want to know, lad, is if I need you to shoot at something, will you do it? Can you do it?”
His stomach jerked taut against his backbone, leaving him queasy. The shuddering ship.
The Nathaniel Gordon of five years ago had earned a reputation within the airship fleet as a gunner both accurate and precise with his shots. The Nathaniel Gordon of now hadn’t fired so much as a slingshot in five years. For all he knew, he couldn’t hit the back end of a coster’s cart.
“You already have a senior gunner aboard with three juniors under his command. You don’t need a second senior.”
“Who says I have to ration gunners? Why limit myself to one senior when I have two on board?” She raised a hand to halt his reply. “I don’t need you telling me how rank protocol works. I’ve been doing this a lot longer than you have, mate. Owens is a capable gunner with a good eye, but you have more experience in a turret, not to mention fighting at the Redan.”
That Nathaniel would agree was a foregone conclusion. Short of assassinating Lenore for her, which was a ludicrous idea, he’d do anything Nettie asked of him. “I’m rusty,” he said. “I might miss.”
Her disbelieving snort made his lips twitch. “They’re horrifics, Nathaniel, not hummingbirds.”
The reminder of the peril they’d face when they reached the Redan killed what little humor Nettie’s sarcasm had kindled inside him. “Lenore...”
“Is a crewman aboard this ship. No better, no worse and no different from anyone else serving.” Nettie squeezed his forearm, her lined features softening. “Lad, don’t think I don’t worry for her. For both of you. Arthur’ll haunt me until I’m dead if something happens to his daughter, and I still wake up in a sweat some nights remembering when you fell from the Pollux.” She was pale but resolute—the Nettie he’d always known. “But I’m not stopping or turning around to let one crewman off. Besides, Lenore would refuse. You know that.”
Nathaniel abandoned his half full snifter next to Nettie’s empty one and scraped his hands through his hair. “This is a nightmare.” His great relief at learning that Lenore would sail on the Terebellum on a peaceful test flight and supply run had shredded with the wind rising off the ocean waves.
Nettie nodded. “It is and no avoiding it,” she said flatly.
He stood in the shadows as Nettie informed the crew of their new orders, his gaze on Lenore. The blood slowly drained from her face, leaving her ashen. Her pupils had expanded with her fear, turning her brown eyes black. Some of the brasher crewmen whistled and cheered at the chance to taste battle. Others less cocky and more experienced stared at their captain with grim, determined faces. Nathaniel suspected if someone suddenly held up a mirror to him, he’d see that same expression stamped on his features.
Nettie answered several questions from the crew before dismissing them. She sought out Nathaniel’s gaze and jerked her head toward Lenore’s retreating back. “Follow her, idiot,” couldn’t have been clearer if she’d yelled it in his face.
He tracked her to the berth she shared with another female crewman. Only Lenore occupied the space at the moment, and Nathaniel closed the door, locking it behind him. She didn’t startle or even look at him. Instead, she stripped the sheets off her tidy bed and began remaking it.
“Are you frightened?”
She paused at his softly uttered question and stared down at her pillow. “A little,” she replied. They both stared at the hand she raised. Her fingers twitched and trembled. Lenore’s smile was sheepish. “A lot.”
He gathered her into his arms, words hovering on his lips. He was frightened as well. They would face something that made even the most hardened crewman’s stomach drop through the floor. The horrifics’ colossal size alone induced open-mouthed terror, their appearance straight out of an opium-eater’s hallucination of Hell. Nathaniel had fought at the Redan in more than a dozen battles, and each time he’d nearly pissed himself at his first sighting of a horrific.
Lenore shook in his arms, her face pressed into his shoulder. She mumbled something he couldn’t make out. Nathaniel leaned back and tilted her chin to look at him. “What did you say?”
“Do you think me weak for being scared?”
Her skin was hot satin under his fingers, her body a sliver of paradise in his arms, and he wished her anywhere but here aboard this ship. “No. Fear can be a good thing. It keeps you sharp and alert. It isn’t a weakness when it benefits you.”
She cupped either side of his jaw with slender hands. He bent at her coaxing, his moan low when her lips gently teased his open and her tongue slipped inside his mouth. He lifted her in his arms, reveling in the feel and scent of her as gehenna blood roiled and bubbled in his veins.
Lenore’s fingers slid into his hair to massage his scalp. She ended their kiss with a soft sucking tug on his lower lip. Her breasts pressed against his chest in a shallow rise and fall. “When this is over and we’re home safe again, I would like another glass of pomegranate wine.”
He set her down and loosened his embrace. The ashen pallor from earlier had faded. Her cheeks were rosy and her mouth full and red from his kiss. “We will share a glass in a winter graveyard,” he promised.
“And you will recite verse to me.” Her lips turned up, and the corners of her eyes crinkled.
“Then kiss you under the moon.” He traced the contours of her corset stays beneath her bodice.
“It will be terribly improper.” Her hand glided down his arm.
He captured her hand and kissed her fingertips. “We won’t care.”
“No, no we won’t.”
A last kiss, urgent and hot enough to send the blaze of a blush from Lenore’s cheeks to her neck. Even her ears were pink. She left the berth before Nathaniel, her work boots tapping a quick rhythm on the gangway as she headed for sick bay to help prepare for receipt of the injured from the crippled ships.
He watched until she turned a corner, disappearing from view. He would share the wine and recite poetry and for a second time, put his heart on a plate before her. “This time, Lenore, tell me yes instead of no.”
They reached the Redan in record time, the Terebellum’s engines proving their worth and Nettie’s statement proclaiming the ship’s impressive speed. None cheered over their speedy arrival. Crewmen stood at their posts, faces tight with resolve or slack with disbelieving horror.
One crewman spoke, his voice high and thin as if he squeezed the words out of a constricted windpipe. “Blood o’ Christ, would you look at that.”