Steamed (30 page)

“I’ll take care of anything you need to do,” he said firmly. “You just rest that knee. You’re lucky you didn’t break your leg the way you landed.”

“I was trying to see in which direction the Moghul ship was going,” I said, allowing him to tuck me in. “I wasn’t watching the ground.”

“I know. Scared at least ten years off my life,” he said, and I noticed for the first time since we’d staggered our way to the small inn outside of Angers that there were deep lines of stress on either side of his mouth. I touched them gently.

“You were wonderful, Jack. I doubt if I could have managed Mr. Mowen on my own. Are you sure he’s—”

“The doctor said he’s concussed, has a couple of broken ribs and a bruised ankle, but he’ll recover.”

“I just wish we knew what happened to Mr. Llama,” I said, fretting the embroidered bedcover. “Has no one seen any sign of him?”

“Not yet, no.”

“I hope he wasn’t seriously injured.”

“I doubt if he was. The others came through all right. Speaking of which, your chief officer is being a big pain in the ass about seeing you. He insists it’s his right or some such bull. I told him you needed rest, but he says he wants to make sure I haven’t done away with you and am trying to hide the fact.”

“He is . . . imaginative,” I said, smiling. “You may let him in.”

“Nope. You’re too tired.”

“Please, Jack. It would make me feel better to see that everyone is safe.”

He hesitated for a moment, then bent and gave me a swift kiss. “You’re going to wrap me around your little finger any time you like, aren’t you?”

“I’m a woman,” I said with a nonchalant shrug. “That’s my job, isn’t it?”

It took over an hour to see all of the crew, since Jack would allow them to enter my room only singly. They all looked hale and hearty—a few cuts, bruises, and, in Dooley’s case, burns aside. They were all animated and excited, and wanted to know just what had happened. Noting that I was fast losing strength, Jack told them we would have a group meeting the following morning, and explanations and plans would be made then.

“We can’t stay here overnight,” I told him when he saw out the last of the crew.

“Why not? You said yourself that the
Aurora
would take two more days to get to England, and that we could make it there by one on a train.”

“I said if I was captain, I would make repairs first, and those would take a day. But we have no guarantee that the
Aurora
’s captain will do any such thing. He might feel that he’s vulnerable to another attack, and make all haste to get safely to England. We must leave tonight, Jack, if we are to arrive in England in time to intercept the transfer of prisoners from the
Aurora
to the prison.”

His shoulders slumped as he sat next to me on the bed. “Poor Hallie. She must be scared to death, and God knows what she thinks of me just letting her be carried off like that.”

“I have no doubt she’s frightened—I would be in her situation—but she’s a strong woman. You’ve told me that many times. And although I regret that she is no doubt very worried and scared, we have to focus our energies on rescuing her, not ruing what has happened.”

“And that means letting you walk around on a leg that should be resting,” he said, his shoulders slumping even more.

I leaned into him and rubbed my cheek on his shoulder. “If I told you that it’s feeling better, will you kiss me?”

“I’d kiss you anyway,” he said in a voice that sounded very close to exhaustion.

“Ah, but I didn’t specify where the kiss would land.”

He straightened up at that, a familiar light of interest glowing in his mismatched eyes. “Captain Pye, are you by any chance flirting with me?”

“Yes, Mr. Fletcher, I am. Is it working?”

“As a distraction, you mean? Yes. Although I’m not going to make love to you as you deserve. No,” he said, holding up a hand to interrupt the protest I was about to make. “Don’t beg, it’s not becoming in a captain. You need time to physically recover from the incidents today, and if we are to get to England before morning, I will have to go out and figure a way there.”

I bristled at him. “I never beg!”

He grinned.

“Well, almost never,” I amended, recalling an event just two nights past when I pleaded with him to repeat a particularly effective tongue swirl. I cleared my throat and adopted a placid expression. “The ice you brought for my knee has worked wonders, so I should have no trouble booking our passage.”

He hesitated. “I suppose it will be all right, but only because I have no idea how to go about doing that. Although I would if you wanted me to.”

“I know you would.” I kissed him softly, my lips lingering on his. “I can’t tell you how much I appreciate all your help and support, Jack. I really would have been lost without you.”

“You are a horrible liar,” he said, pulling me onto his lap. When I stiffened with outrage, he just tickled my ribs. “Don’t get all prissy on me, Tavy. It was actually a compliment.”

“You have a very strange idea about what consists of a compliment,” I grumbled, my breath suddenly hitching in my throat as he began unbuttoning my blouse.

“Mmmhmm,” he murmured, burying his face in my chest.

I clutched his shoulders and gave myself over to the pleasure he provided, but only for a few minutes, sighing when I caught a glimpse of my pocket watch lying on the nightstand. “I’d better get going. Jack, please, you’re to make me embarrass myself when I go out.”

He pulled his head back from where he’d been sucking on my nipple right through my chemise. The flesh pebbled, the skin tightening into hard little knots of desire and pleasure that wanted nothing more than for Jack to pay them a good deal more attention.

“Sorry,” he said, not at all contrite as I buttoned up my blouse. He grinned wickedly at my breasts before I buttoned my jacket.

“What are we going to do with the crew?” he asked as we slipped out of the inn.

“I hate to say it, but we’d probably have more luck of getting to England quickly if there are just two of us. I will try to book them passage with us, but if I can’t, they must simply go later.”

As I suspected, there were limited openings on a train that left Angers an hour after we spoke to a booking agent. “Only three spots left, madame,” the agent told me when I inquired as to the fastest route to England. “The train, she leaves from Angers and arrives at Paris at two of the clock in the morning. The boat train leaves on the half of the hour, and arrives in Calais at the hour of five. If the channel crossing is not delayed due to weather, you will arrive in London by nine of the clock in the morning. Will that suit Madame?”

“Very much so, yes. Two, please.”

“What time is the
Aurora
due to land?” Jack asked in a quiet voice.

“Four bells,” I said, glancing at the clock. It was just twenty minutes to that time now. “But I’m hoping that the attack slowed her down somewhat. We might just make it there before her, especially if she was forced to make repairs.”

“
Mon Dieu!
You are from the
Aurora
?” the ticket man asked, obviously overhearing a word or two from our muted conversation. “That was most terrible, the attack of the Moghuls. It is said that they swept out of the sky like a giant black bird of prey, and tore apart the
Aurora
and a smaller ship, which crashed near here.”

“We were on the
Tesla
, the other ship,” I said, glancing at Jack.

“And you are not killed? I hear that no one was saved, and yet here you stand! You are sure you are from that ship and not the
Aurora
?” he asked somewhat suspiciously.

“I am the captain of the
Tesla
. I assure you we know which ship we were on,” I said stiffly.

“How did you happen to hear about the attack on the
Aurora
?” Jack asked as I tucked the tickets away in my bag. “I imagine someone noticed the
Tesla
falling to the ground, but the
Aurora
didn’t crash, did it?”

“
Mon Dieu
, no! But she is here, in Angers, getting the repairs most necessary.”

Jack and I exchanged glances. If the
Aurora
was on the ground, perhaps now was our chance to extricate Hallie from it. Just as my hopes rose that we could manage that, they were dashed again. “The emperor, he has sent ground troops from Paris to guard her. It is said that the Moghul airship haunts the skies around us, waiting for another chance to destroy her.”

Jack and I both slumped a little at the news. “Do you happen to know when the
Aurora
is expected to get under way?”

The man gave a Gallic shrug. “
Non.
But it cannot be long because it is said that the ship holds a present most
magnifique
for the emperor William to give to his bride, and the wedding, it is tomorrow, yes?”

I managed to keep from grimacing. Jack didn’t even bother to try to hide his disgust. “Some present,” he muttered under his breath.

I squeezed his arm and was about to leave, but the agent suddenly peppered us with a thousand questions about the attack. It took some time to curb his interest, but as we left the train station, we had much to chew over.

“The captain of the
Aurora
didn’t say anything about us attacking them,” I said to Jack as we settled back in a cab.

“Evidently not. I wonder if the sedatives had some sort of amnesia effect?”

“More likely things were just so confused and desperate after the attack by the Moghuls, they didn’t remember the prick of the needles.”

“I hope not. The question is, what are you going to do about the
Tesla
? If your Aerocorps doesn’t know you had turned to piracy, you might still have a job there.”

“Possibly, although there’s the crew to think of. Surely they must have an inkling that we were up to something nefarious when we locked them into the mess.”

“I don’t know,” Jack said slowly, his fingers stroking over mine in a way that had me thinking wholly inappropriate thoughts. “They were full of questions for you tonight, but if you think about it, none of them asked you why we locked them in—they all wanted to know about the Moghul attack.”

“That is true.”

“And why the Moghul seemed to target the
Tesla
over the
Aurora
.”

My lips tightened. I wanted very much to know that, as well. “The
Aurora
did have cannons, and we did not.”

“I suppose that would explain it. You know I’m opposed to violence, but if I could get my hands on that Moghul prince guy, that Abdullah—”

“Akbar.”

“—Akbar, then I’d wring his neck. He could have killed you!”

I said nothing because really, what was there to say?

We returned to the inn and slipped inside without being seen by any of the crew, most of whom I suspected had retired to recover from the day’s ordeal. By the time Jack paid the innkeeper for all our rooms, I had written a brief note to Mr. Mowen, and enclosed the crew’s tickets to London on a train that would leave early the next morning.

“I told Mr. Mowen that we had to be in London to meet the
Aurora
when she landed,” I informed Jack as I sealed the envelope. “And that no one seems to be aware of our attack on the
Aurora
. I trust he will keep his silence about that.”

“I’m sure he will,” Jack said, draping a shawl he’d acquired somehow around my shoulders. “He’s a good guy, Matt is. We can trust him.”

We escaped the inn a second time without being seen. I was about to ask Jack where he found the shawl when suddenly we were surrounded.

“
W
hat the hell—” Before I could do more than swing around to face the men that loomed up out of a dark doorway Octavia and I were passing, one of them grabbed me in a choke hold, and pressed a cloth across my face. Two others held my arms as the sickly-sweet scent of something I knew must be an anesthetic seeped into my lungs. I fought as best I could, but the men were expert in close combat and avoided most of my attempts at stopping them.

“No!” Octavia cried, throwing herself on one of the men. They were all swarthy in color, clad in brown-and-gold outfits with white turbans, the ends of which covered their lower faces, just like those worn by the Moghul attackers in Rome. . . .

“Moghuls!” I yelled through the cloth as a synapse sparked. “Run, Octavia!”

“Leave him be!” she cried, pulling at the man’s arm that held the anesthetic to my face. Her voice seemed to be rather distant, her beloved face growing fuzzy. I was being drugged, knocked out, but there wasn’t a damned thing I could do about it.

“If you hurt her, you’ll spend the rest of your life regretting . . .” I fell face- first into a thick black pool of nothingness.

I swam around there for a bit; then a nagging worry started to make me feel uneasy. Just as I pinpointed the source of the emotion as being concern for Octavia, a tidal wave hit me dead in the face.