Beneath a Waning Moon: A Duo of Gothic Romances (17 page)

Cool on his lips, the wine was sweet and tasted of summer—or what he remembered of summer.
 
An image spun before his eyes, of a brown-eyed girl with an easy smile and long dark hair that glinted red in the sun.

"Lenore."
 
White rose petals danced across the table, and the name echoed in the void.

CHAPTER THREE

“WOULD YOU THINK POORLY of me if I confessed to the temptation to drown my mother in her koi pond?"
 
Lenore eyed her hostess over the rim of her pint glass and wiggled her eyebrows.

Nettie Widderschynnes, captain of the
Pollux
, grinned and raised her glass in a toast.
 
Lamplight winked off the bits of beads, shell and ribbon entwined in her blonde braids.
 
She'd greeted Lenore's sudden arrival on the ship with a spine-cracking embrace and the offer to share a pint in her quarters.
 
"I'd think you were your father's daughter.
 
I'm surprised he didn't do it years ago."

A fundamental traditionalist, Jane Kenward had loathed Nettie at first sight and considered her a low-class, immoral strumpet who dirtied their doorstep each time she appeared at Kenward's workshop to do business.
 
Nettie returned her contempt in equal measure.

A formidable woman of unknown age and even more obscure birth, Nettie Widderschynnes had risen from the gutters of the Abyss to become one of the airship fleet's most experienced captains.
 
She ran her ship with a strict hand and carried a reputation as a fearless captain and even more ruthless business woman.
 
She had no patience for traditionalists like Jane and told her so in no uncertain terms, forever earning the other woman's enmity.

Lenore adored Nettie for all the reasons Jane abhorred her.
 
Encouraged, albeit on the sly, by her father, she had pretended to be Captain Widderschynnes when she was a child, guiding the
Pollux
on her many runs, capturing cargo and enemy dirigibles for the king.
 
She'd dreamed of joining Nettie's crew, but her mother's stringent disapproval and the progression of her father's illness had insured it remained a dream.
 
Until now.

She put her glass down and folded her hands in her lap, once more silently rehearsing what she planned to say.
 
A golden tide of ale rocked in the glass as the airship gently yawed at its mooring mast.

Nettie eyed her, one eyebrow lifted.
 
"Now this should be good.
 
Every time you do that, I know you're about to spin some scheme.
 
Spit it out, girl."

Lenore took a deep breath and spilled her words in a torrent before she lost courage.
 
"Papa was a great inventor but no banker.
 
There’s debt—a lot of it.
 
The creditors will seize his workshop and everything in it to pay what is owed.”
 
She took a quick sip of beer before continuing.

“He left some funds so that Mama may live comfortably but not enough to support us both.”
 
Arthur Kenward had expected his only child to be married by now, and if Lenore was honest with herself, she once assumed the same thing.
 
“I want to join the crew.
 
Your crew.
 
I'll take any spot—messman, rigger, mechanic, ground crew even—whatever is open.
 
Papa taught me soldering and welding.
 
I can read blueprints and am familiar with propulsion and the concepts of thrust vectoring.
 
I haven't much experience for telegraph or navigation, but I can learn.
 
What do you think?
 
Would you take me on, Captain?"

She inhaled after her long spiel and stared at Nettie, willing the woman to say yes.
 
Unfortunately for Lenore, Captain Widderschynnes' distinction as an intrepid adventurer didn't include an impulsive nature.

The terraced lines at the corners of the captain’s blue eyes deepened, and she set her glass on a nearby table.
 
She braced her elbows on her knees and scrutinized Lenore as thoroughly as the Guardian had done two months earlier at Highgate.

"Your father," she said in a far more formal accent than Lenore had ever heard before, "bless his departed soul, would have my guts for garters if I had you flutterin' in the wind from a mooring mast or runnin' about stringing yaw guys to cables and pulley blocks."

Lenore's heart threatened to pound out of her chest.
 
"I don't have to be a rigger."
 
She loosened the death grip she held on her own fingers.
 
"I can work in the mess or the laundry. There's no danger in sweeping and washing dishes.
 
Or I can post to the main engine room.
 
I know machinery.
 
I assisted Papa with several of the improvements installed on this ship, including the incendiary shield."

Nettie graced her with a disgusted look.
 
"Don't play stupid, Lenore.
 
The
Pollux
is bristlin' with cannon, machine guns and bombs, as well as other nastiness you're best not knowing about.
 
You know any post on an airship, especially a runner, is risky.
 
If Nathaniel's death didn't teach you that lesson, nothing will."

Five years, and the grief was as crushing as the day she received word of Nathaniel's death.
 
Lenore closed her eyes for a moment, forcing the sorrow back to the shadowed parts of her soul.
 
It was enough she mourn for her father.
 
She knew the pain of that loss would lessen with time; she'd shoulder the pain of the other until she died.

She opened her eyes to find Nettie's expression had gentled to one of sympathy.
 
"It's not my way to be cruel, Lenore.
 
I think you just need remindin' this isn't a game or some great adventure.
 
There's danger and costs in this business.
 
Nathaniel paid the 'ighest price, and you paid with 'im."
 
She frowned.
 
"Your papa was my one of my best mates.
 
I'd be no friend to 'im if I put 'is girl at risk.
 
You’re better off hiring out as a governess or lady’s companion."

Jane Kenward and Nettie Widderschynnes agreed for once in their lives, much to Lenore’s dismay.
 
Jane had suggested—insisted—on the same thing.
 
A position as governess or companion was Lenore’s best course.
 
Respectable, safe, soul-withering.
 
Lenore blanched at the idea of years stretched out before her, trapped in households where she was isolated from everyone except spoiled, difficult children or bitter widows whose idea of a companion was synonymous with whipping boy.
 
Her father might disapprove, but he wasn’t here to tell her no.

“Nettie, I know the risks, but I've wanted this all my life—before I met Nathaniel, before Papa's death.
 
You saw me when I was a child, how I'd pretend to be you."
 
Lenore didn't miss the faint blush warming the older woman's cheeks and pressed her advantage.
 
"Other women serve under you on the
Pollux
.
 
Will you not consider it?"

Nettie took a long swallow of her beer and wiped her mouth with the back of her hand.
 
"Brilliant with his inventions, your papa.
 
Not much of a sailor or crewman.
 
Got airsick each time he went on a night run with us, but he loved it all the same.
 
Said you would too had you been old enough to accompany him."
 
She scowled at Lenore.
 
"I'm not sayin' aye, but I'm not sayin' nay either.
 
I want to think about it."

Lenore's shoulders sagged, and she slumped in her chair with relief.
 
"Thank you, Nettie.
 
For what it's worth, you might well save me from a slow death of needlepoint, alphabets, and smelling salts."

"And put you in harm's way with a quick death from a stray bullet."
 
Nettie pointed an accusing finger.
 
"Don't play the savior card with me, missy.
 
If I say no, you keep your dignity, accept my decision and walk out of here without argument.
 
Understood?"

Lenore saluted.
 
"Aye, Captain."
 
She didn't dare smile.

"We sail in three days' time for the Redan, providing escort for the
Andromeda
.
 
It's a month out and a month back. You'll have your answer then.
 
No sooner."

The Redan.
 
Lenore's heartbeat stuttered.
 
She'd been raised on tales about the defensive perimeter.
 
Bordering the length of Atlantic coastline from Hammerfest in Norway to the Strait of Gibraltar, the buffer protected the continent from the horrifics that sometimes erupted out of the dimensional fissure.
 
Many airships, along with their crews, had been lost fighting at the Redan.
 
Nettie had almost lost the
Pollux,
and Nathaniel had died there.
 
If she joined the crew, it was a guarantee she'd see it first-hand.

"You'll be careful, won't you, Nettie?"

Nettie shot her a reproachful look.
 
"Not much choice.
 
We're playing nanny to a cargo lifter loaded with flyers and munitions."
 
She gestured to Lenore's untouched glass.
 
"You might not want to let that get too flat.
 
It turns bitter."

 
Accustomed to the captain's pragmatic view of her job, Lenore didn't expound on her concern over this latest mission.
 
She rose from her chair.
 
"No more for me.
 
I'm off to visit Papa, then home.
 
I need my wits sharp to face Mama's tirade.
 
She won't soon forgive me for sneaking away."
 
She didn't hide her distaste.
 
"I missed Aunt Adelaide’s weekly one o'clock visit, along with her atrocious piano playing."

Nettie's chuckle was less than sympathetic.
 
"Better you than me, ducks.
 
I'll take a good battle at the Redan over that nonsense any day."
 
She stood with Lenore.
 
"You'll give my best to your papa when you visit, yeah?"

Lenore gathered her shawl and reticule.
 
"Always."
 
She paused, remembering the funeral and the Guardian who vowed to protect her father's grave.
 
"Did I tell you I met the Guardian of Highgate?"

The other woman's eyes widened. "Did you now?
 
And how did you manage that?
 
They're not known for socializin' with the living."

"He revealed himself once the sextons bricked Papa's grave.
 
I approached him…"

Nettie's bark of laughter interrupted her.
 
"You've a backbone tough as those corset steels you wear, girl.
 
Guardians scare the lights out of most people."

Lenore's cheeks heated at the compliment.
 
"He had a fearsome aspect.
 
Tall, dressed in black armor—and the strangest eyes, as if he looked back on eternity."

"You make him sound like a right 'andsome bloke."

She shrugged.
 
"He was, in an odd way.
 
Very gentlemanly as well.
 
He promised none would disturb the grave, and he's kept that promise.
 
The bricks are as they were laid."
 
She didn't mention the sense of recognition that struck her at their first meeting.
 
Even now, weeks later, his image burned darkly in her mind's eye, along with the unwavering certainty she knew him.
 
"I haven't seen him since then, and I go to the cemetery weekly."

"A good thing, I think."
 
Nettie escorted her out of the captain's quarters and into the corridor that ran the length of the keel.
 
"He's one of Harvel's experiments.
 
Who knows what terrible things those poor souls suffered and how much it changed them—for the worst I'll wager."

They bid each other farewell at the gangplank.
 
Donal McCullough, Nettie's master rigger, escorted Lenore to the omnibus waiting at the depot.
 
"Sure you don't need me to take you to the station, miss?"

"I'm certain, Mr. McCullough.
 
Thank you."
 
She boarded the omnibus and found a seat next to a woman cradling an infant.
 
She returned McCullough’s wave as the driver pulled away and settled in for her journey to the train station.

CHAPTER FOUR

NATHANIEL GROANED UNDER HIS BREATH at the sight of Lenore strolling down one of the cemetery paths to her father's grave.
 
Hidden by an ancient elm bedecked in ivy, he consumed her with his gaze, taking in the bombazine gown of unrelenting black, the upswept hair that revealed her pale neck and highlighted the line of her jaw.