They waited even longer for the engine to cool to a temperature that wouldn’t cook her hand off her wrist. The mechanic tapped his foot impatiently. “We’re an easy target while that engine is down.”
“I’ll be quick, sir,” she said, eyeing the spot in the gearbox where the splinter jammed the gears.
She eased her hand inside. The metal was still warm, but not so much that it burned her skin. The blunt teeth scraped her knuckles, pressing shallow depressions into her arm as she reached for the shrapnel piece. Sweat poured down her torso under her clothes and trickled down her neck.
Her fingertips gripped the splinter, earning a slice across her index finger for her efforts. “Got it!” she called to the mechanic. She growled under her breath as the metal, wedged hard against the gear, refused to dislodge. “Bloody hell,” she snapped. She didn’t have all day for this. Neither did the Terebellum.
Blood from her wounded finger made the metal slippery, but with more cursing and careful joggles of the splinter first one way and then the other, she managed to pry it loose. Mr. Jupiter’s whoop of triumph when she straightened to show him her prize made her grin. No bigger than a bodkin tip on a practice arrow, the sliver had nearly caused a catastrophe. That something so small could cause such problems!
She turned the sliver over to Mr. Jupiter who pocketed it with an approving nod before returning to the shaft. This time she heard him clearly when he ordered the junior to relay the command to start up the engine again. Both he and Lenore wilted in relief when the powerplant coughed back to life and set the propeller in a proper rotation speed. He grinned and shook her hand. “Good work, lass.”
“Thank you, sir.” She might have been more elated if it weren’t for the knowledge that a man she loved and thought dead was once again playing a game of suicide on the weapons platform. But she didn’t have the luxury to worry. She climbed the shaft ladder back to the hull, returned the junior mechanic’s cap to him with a word of thanks and raced back to the sick bay.
Voices crackled over the speaking tubes from the control room, following her as she made her way to the keel corridor—Nettie’s, strong and sure, her boatswain’s equally commanding, a few stray remarks overheard behind the commands, one that made Lenore pause and clench her fists until her nails dug into her palms.
“That bonekeeper is a crackin’ good shot! Just blew away two of that horrific’s eyes!”
“Please,” she prayed—to God, to Nathaniel, to Fate, to anyone or anything who’d listen. “Give me a chance. Please give me a chance to say yes.”
There were two crewmen in sickbay when she arrived, one with minor wounds, another clutching an arm split down to the bone by the sharp edge of a broken girder. The doctor tended to him as his assistant dealt with the other. Lenore doused her injured hand in carbolic solution, wrapped her finger in a stretch of gauze and took over the assistant’s tasks so he could help with the more seriously injured man.
She’d just finished cleaning her patient’s last cut when the deafening barrage of artillery fire suddenly halted. The silence hung weightier than a lead bell on a thin rope. Lenore caught herself holding her breath. She glanced at the others in the room. Like her, they didn’t breathe.
Nettie’s voice, still so calm and so sure, carried a lilt of triumph. “All hands stand down.”
Static cheers poured out of the speaking tubes and erupted in the sick bay. Lenore’s patient impulsively embraced her and just as quickly apologized, though his grin continued to stretch across his face.
A wave of relief, so strong it nearly knocked her to her knees, crashed into her. Her shoulders slumped, and her eyes filled with tears. “Nathaniel,” she whispered. Her leg muscles tensed with the urge to bolt from sickbay and race for the weapons platform.
The sick bay door flew open once more. Nettie’s boatswain’s mate, Mrs. Markham, filled the entrance. “Brace yourself, Sawbones. We got wounded coming in, six deep.”
Reunions would have to wait.
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.”