Beast (10 page)

"Does she like any of the men in particular?"

She raised one eyebrow. "The men?"

"Whom does she fancy? Anyone?" He added what he knew already, "Not the young Lieutenant Johnston."

Pia gave him a peevish look. "How am I supposed to know?"

"Come now. You are brilliant at this sort of thing. At whom does she sneak glances? Who makes her blush?"

"She's not the blushing sort." She frowned at him. "Why do you need to know this?"

He shrugged. "I don't. What's her suite number?"

"What?"

"Which stateroom? It's a midship first-class suite, but there seem to be about forty of those. Which one?"

"I don't know."

"Can you find out?"

She heaved another breath. "If I did. I'm not sure I'd want to tell you.'"

"Don't be difficult,
chérie
." He took her key out of her hand, about to pull the door closed and lock it for her.

But she grabbed at his hand as he touched the doorknob, whispering, a hissing sound, "Not with Roland in the next room!"

He blinked, confused. Then realized: She apparently had thought he was about to
open
the door, lead her
into
the room, and lock the door from the
other
side. Such foolery honestly hadn't even occurred to Charles. So he was nonplussed to hear her remonstrations go a step farther.

Pia said. "I won't go in there with you, Charles. Not there, not anywhere, not till you rid yourself of that little idiot. You go tell little Lulu Vandermeer and her whole family that it was a foolish notion, contracting to marry someone you don't know just for a lot of whale vomit."

When his dubious look said he thought this a pretty terrible plan, she tightened her mouth. "Well, whatever." she said. "Just don't come near me until you've done something. I mean it, Charles. I won't see you, not for a minute, not alone, not until you break this off. I won't have it."

The Far East has used ambergris for centuries for its presumed aphrodisiac properties.

Charles Harcourt, Prince d'Harcourt

On the Nature and Uses of Ambergris

By late afternoon, the
Concordia
had begun to creak, as if a huge bass fiddle somewhere low in the ship's bowels were bowing two notes slowly back—
gre-e-ek
—then forth—
gra-a-awk
. This plaintive two-note drone unnerved most of the passengers; all gay pretense abandoned, people clung to their rooms. Charles could have met the lovely Louise almost anywhere.

Almost
, however, became the operative word. Charles found the main saloon and dining room unsuitable for his purposes; the staff was optimistically preparing for dinner and dancing tonight. The gentlemen's smoking parlor harbored four hard-drinking fellows. An elderly woman, fit as rain, had staked out the library. In the vast game room, one single table was occupied by a threesome who whiled away the storm by playing cards. The Turkish bath was empty of patrons and staff, the boiler cold, but it was ankle-deep in water. The Pompeiian-style swimming bath next door, enacting its own indoor version of a storm-tossed sea, sloshed water that flowed over the marble floors throughout the entire area. Down the way from this, the children's playroom was locked.

All the public rooms seemed to follow this rule: They were either closed, uninhabitable, or occupied by some of the few passengers who, like Charles, endured the storm with ready balance and an unblenching stomach.

It delighted him to realize that among these passengers he could count his lovely Louise. And, for better or worse, since her run and stagger down the corridor after him, she had become
his
Louise, for he could not get over how enchanting he had found her. From her pettish demands to the contradiction in her less-than-innocent blue eyes to her simple, callow arrogance he should have found her obnoxious.

But this was simply not the case. It was more than her being the perfect butt for his joke (which she was, of course). It had nothing to do with anything sexual (though he was aware of a vaguely obscene curiosity he was developing for the youth-soft smoothness of her skin, a curiosity that sent a shiver through him whenever he dwelled on it).

No, he fancied aspects within her personality; her quickness, her confidence and stamina. He
liked
her, beyond the sexual, apart from it—his interest in her was much broader than merely a thirty-some-year-old man sniffing around the flounce of a young woman's skirts, looking for the missed opportunities of youth. (He had thought about the fact that he had never known a young woman, a really young woman, and for the first time this had made him puzzle over his younger self.) Most importantly, though, he had immediate rapport and sympathy for one of her defining characteristics: He sensed her deep fond attachment, conjoined with an animosity—it was a kind of love-hate—for the way she looked.

Charles hummed out loud as he pursued his quest, to find a safe. dry. private, dark point of midnight rendezvous for himself and this fascinating, if somewhat abrasive and misguided, girl. He hunted for someplace where he could control circumstances as much as possible. Not the ladies' parlor or writing room or the veranda cafe: not the gymnasium or squash court. In the end. he owed his choice to Pia; he would not have known the ship had kennels were it not for her mention of them. He searched for these, finding them finally on the top deck, where the ship's reeling was a regular carnival ride of motion.

Not a soul was around, save some frightened, baying animals. Here was a place where few would spend much time in rough weather and, even in good weather, would hardly visit at midnight. Moreover, Miss Vandermeer knew where it was.

Better and better, the kennel was completely internal, not a window to the outside, that is to say. not a window to catch so much as a reflection of light or attention from elsewhere. Its only disadvantage was its smell of disinfectant, which was preferable to what it could have smelled like, given there were several dozen dogs and cats and a monkey on board. Charles walked down a corridor between rows and towers of metal cages, most of them empty, though his passing brought forth the occasional burst of barking. Overhead, individual lights were spaced down the length of the walkway; he counted eight of them. He discovered these to be hardwired to a wall switch. If he intended that she should not be able to see him, he would have to disable the switch or get up there and unscrew all the bulbs. The latter was more tedious but ultimately more appealing, given his ignorance of the ship's wiring and his aversion to electrical shock.

Midway down this corridor of cages, he stopped before a crate labeled VANDERMEER. Bending down slightly, he came nose to nose with a puppy that looked more like a tiny polar bear than any dog he knew, a pudgy, fluffy, dirty white little thing. The fellow was friendly and immediately keen to be out.

Charles moved away rather than torment the dog with hope of the impossible.

He kept exploring. The floors were tile, with gutters and drains. Inconspicuously placed were taps and hoses, a sink. Some of the cages were still wet from having been recently doused The far door at the end of the corridor gave out onto the open deck, the dog promenade. But. more interesting, between two middle stacks of crates was a passageway into a gated area that dropped down several feet to run behind the starboard row of cages. An indoor promenade of sorts. Or just an area to play with one's free-roaming pet—a kind of carpeted, comfy pen. The only furnishings of this area were three round sofas, each encircling the cast-brass, hand-chased Corinthian column of a lamp stand. Each lamp wore a rather silly green silk shade beneath which was a single bright bulb. These three bulbs were the only light other than whatever came over the crates from the other part of the room.

In the pen or indoor promenade or whatever it was, Charles went from lamp to lamp, removing all the lightbulbs. until the long, cozy space became a dark, shadowy pit. He stepped up out of this, coming back into the main area again, where he went to the far end of the corridor, climbed the open metalwork of the last tower of cages, then, hanging by one arm off the highest cage, he began removing lightbulbs from the gooseneck, green crimped-glass fixtures.

He was hanging off a cage, his hand in his sixth overhead fixture, when he realized there was a sound outside the kennel, out in the corridor. The general stirring of the animals should have alerted him, but his concentration was such that their shifting in their cages, a few stray barks, only served to drown the exterior sounds out until it was almost too late: Someone was right on the other side of the entrance to the kennel.

Charles scrambled up onto the top of the crate from which he was hanging, his knee objecting to the quick strain put on it. Almost immediately, the door swung open. The rising din of dogs barking and clattering on the metal floors of their confinement allowed Charles to crawl along the tops of the crates till he was far back in the darkness he himself had created. Below him, down the way, just at the edge of remaining light, a young woman bent down and peered into a cage. She didn't even have to open her mouth before he knew: They may as well have been traveling in a rowboat together for the way she kept turning up, right beside him.

Louise Vandermeer opened her puppy's crate, saying, "'Come here, you," then, "
Oo-eee
, you stink!"

She laughed as the little fellow lunged himself out at her, whining with eagerness. He licked her face as she tried to contain him in her arms. She drew him against her breast. "Eww, my. you smell like a barnyard." She continued to chatter away to the dog as she grabbed a rag and wiped out the cage, then carried the puppy himself over to the sink. "And what happened to the lights?" she asked as if he were perfectly capable of answering.

Charles eased himself up into a sitting position, one leg dangling over an empty cage as he leaned forward slightly to watch her. The dog was delighted to be where he was, his tail wagging so hard his whole body twitched. In the sink, he stood on his hind legs, paws on her bosom, trying to lick her chin.

The two of them seemed to have a real camaraderie; certainly she seemed to have an easier accord with the dog than Charles had yet seen demonstrated with human beings. She kept scratching the puppy and laughing as she pushed him under the spigot.

She cleaned the dog up, without regard for her dress, letting him lather the front as he scooted and squirmed up against it. Meanwhile she behaved as if she and the canine were having a conversation.

"No, my afternoon wasn't much better than my morning," she said as if in answer to a question. "What?

No, no, I'm just so tired of talking about the weather and smiling at people. I mean, someone today expressed delight at my coming marriage, then said I looked just like a real princess should. What does that mean, Bear?"

She bent down, found a towel under the sink, and wrapped it around the dog. "Honestly." she continued, "this man I'm marrying, he isn't even a real prince of anything, no country, nothing like that. So I look exactly like a real Princess of Nothing?" She paused in toweling the animal. "You know what I'd like?" she asked him. "For someone to tell me I'm"—she searched a moment—"wise." In a low, mocking voice she said, "Why, that Louise Vandermeer, she is so wi-i-i-se." She laughed. "Or capable. Or independent. Or compassionate. But no one would notice, I don't think, if I were the most insightful person on the face of the earth." She carried the squirming puppy over to where she tried to put on the lights at the end of the walkway by means of the switch.