“Something wrong?” she asked.
He glanced up at the roof. “It’s raining.”
A corner of her mouth turned up. “Here I thought Vishnu’s lemon ice was melting and dripping on my roof.” She took out her timepiece. “I was just about to head out for our meeting.”
“That’s why I’m here.” He stood completely still, afraid he might turn and knock over some delicate piece of equipment, or accidentally crush a tool beneath his boots. The cottage had been fitted perfectly for someone Kali’s size. Fletcher, however, felt like an ironclad trying to dock in a sloop’s berth.
She looked taken aback, and hurt. “You don’t want to meet today.”
“Like hell.” He didn’t realize how heated his voice was until he saw her take a step back. “I mean, I do want to. But with the rain . . .” A frown began to gather between her brows, and he realized he couldn’t flat out tell her that he feared she’d injure herself in the mud and slippery terrain. They’d been hiking the hills for a week, and her strength had grown daily. She no longer gasped for breath on the climb, and her movements were smoother, faster. Still, he didn’t like the thought of her tromping around in the mud and over slippery rocks.
“It’s, ah, cozier here, don’t you think?” he managed.
She looked at him as if he was missing a few wires in his circuits. There were more bits of metal and half-completed apparatuses than furniture. It might be clean and organized, but cozy, it wasn’t.
Then her brow cleared with understanding. He tensed. She’d guessed his reason for not wanting to go outside, and in a minute, she’d give him a thorough telling-off for coddling her.
“I never knew a Man O’ War could dislike the rain,” she said, smiling.
He’d stood watch in the middle of hurricanes without complaint, but he said now, “Hate the stuff.”
She pointed to an empty corner of the cottage. “Go dry yourself out.”
Feeling like a giant, shaggy wolfhound, he went to the corner and shook his head. Heavy water droplets flew from his hair and even his beard. He threw his dripping coat onto the back of a chair.
“Take a seat and I’ll get our luncheon together,” she said.
“Don’t wait on me—”
“I’m hungry,” she countered. “You don’t know where anything is, and I’m half afraid you’ll topple the whole cottage if you take a wrong step.”
He couldn’t argue any of those points, but it felt odd to be served as he’d been when a ship’s captain. Then, it had been natural, the proper order of things. But after what was nearly four months of self-sufficiency, having anyone wait on him—Kali especially—nettled. But he took a seat at the table and tried not to knock it over from the restless bouncing of his leg.
Finally, she set soda bread and two bowls of stew on the table. In truth, she put a bowl of stew in front of her chair, and then a pot of it in front of him.
Before he could object, she said, “My mother would drown herself in the Nag River if she thought her daughter let a guest go hungry.” She sat down opposite him. “Besides, you brought me the rabbits, so most of this stew is yours.” Without ceremony, she picked up her spoon and ate.
Nothing for him to do but follow suit. So he ate as well, tearing off hunks of the soda bread to share. They fell into a companionable silence, with the rain and crackle of the fire and the scrape of their spoons the only sounds in the cottage.
She chuckled. “Aren’t we a regular portrait out of Mrs. Abelard’s Domestic Journal for Women?”
“Thought you’d be too busy reading the latest engineering journal to bother with such tripe.”
“I didn’t make a habit of reading them. If one of the amanuenses happened to leave a copy around, I wasn’t above a perusal. And I object to the word tripe,” she added hotly. “You don’t call men’s periodicals full of adventure stories tripe.”
“I don’t read ’em.”
“But you never thought less of the men who did read them.”
He stared at her, mystified. “What’s got your engine overheating?”
She set her spoon down with a clatter. “It doesn’t matter how far we’ve come. Women can be engineers, doctors, professors now, yet we’re still not thought of as fully equal. I thought it would be better in England than in India, but I was wrong.”
Lifting his hands, he said, “Don’t pin the stupidity of other men on me. I called that magazine tripe because I read a copy once, and it was full of the most asinine advice I’d ever seen. “A woman’s duty is always to her home and husband. She must ever be neat, industrious, and cheerful. Save your tears and complaints, for they are unwanted and disagreeable. Keep your conversation to pleasant, light topics.” He set his elbows on the table. “That’s not advice you’d follow. That’s not advice I’d want any woman to follow.”
Abashed, she slid her gaze away. “Well I . . . never really read the articles. Just looked at the fashion plates.” Her eyes returned to his. “Did it really say that?”
He picked up his spoon and ate. “And more. I’ve got a good head for remembering the written word. Want me to recite The Proper Conduct for Unmarried Ladies?”
She made a face. “I’d like to keep eating.” And so she did, until a moment later, when she muttered, “Sorry.”
He’d heard her, but pressed, “What’s that?”
“I’m sorry for leaping down your throat.” She prodded at her stew. “It wasn’t really called for.”
“You’re right,” he said. “About the advancements we’ve made. But there’s still a far way to go. I don’t imagine your skin color makes it easier, either.”
She looked surprised, but not angry, by his candor. “It seems as though we’ve both had battles to fight during our lives,” she said. “Some quieter than others.”
They fell silent again, returning to their meal. As they ate, he glanced around the cottage. Something was missing. But he didn’t know what. All the necessary furniture was there, and God knew an engineer might squeal in delight at the masses of tools, equipment, and semi-assembled devices. The large cooking and heating apparatus took up a goodly amount of room. Flour, and sugar occupied an open cupboard, as well as a few weeks’ worth of butter and eggs. A skirt and petticoat peeped out from a partially opened trunk in the corner, reminding him of the shy girls peering around corners at Admiralty balls.
Everything a person needed for survival was here. But there was a subtle absence.
“No photographs,” he said.
She glanced up, puzzled.
“Pictures of your family,” he explained. “The way you talk about them, I’d have thought you would have brought at least a photo of them.” He leaned back in his chair, which creaked beneath his weight, and contemplated her. “Or maybe you don’t want them around here. Maybe you’ve pulled anchor on your past.”
“The boarding house where I lived was destroyed in the battle. Nothing was left.” She said this flatly, a fact she’d grown used to. “Everything I owned—clothing, books, photographs—all gone.”
“I’m . . . sorry,” was all he could think to say. Jesus, was every word out of his mouth going to be the verbal equivalent of a rampaging elephant?
She shrugged, unconcerned. “Ever heard of Buddhism?”
“It’s some kind of Eastern religion or philosophy.” In Chinese ports, he’d seen monks in their saffron robes, and statues of a serene man.
“Buddhism started in India, but most of its practitioners now are farther north and east. Part of its teachings are the Four Noble truths. The first is that life is suffering.”
“Cheerful.”
“As opposed to giddy Anglicanism.”
He leaned farther back in his chair, and it made another complaining groan. “I was the captain, not the chaplain. How a man prays—or who he prays to—doesn’t matter to me.”
“Well, Buddhists accept the fact that in this life, we’re all going to suffer. Sadness, anger, fear. Sickness, age.” She glanced down at her leg
. “Injury. It’s part of human existence, and pretending otherwise just leads to more suffering.”
“A grim view, but truthful.” Even before he’d joined the navy and been witness to countless battles, growing up in Wycombe had shown him the harshness of the world. A worker got injured on the job, they didn’t work. No work meant no pay. The other workers tried to pool their wages to buy food and medicine, but there was only so much they could do. And there were workers who lost their jobs, replaced by automatons. People starved, lost their homes.
Even the factory’s owner—his son couldn’t walk, struck down as a babe by infantile paralysis. The boy used a tetrol-powered chair to move around. Rich or poor, it didn’t matter. Pain had a way of finding everyone.
“It’s not all dark forecasts, though,” Kali continued. “Suffering can be avoided. There can be happiness. That’s the second noble truth.”
Seeing that she’d finished her meal, and he’d cleaned his own pot, he cleared the table. He couldn’t remember ever having a mealtime conversation like this before, not even with his officers on the Persephone. Or even with Emily. Emily had also been insistent on propriety, so the most he’d coaxed from her were kisses and a few touches—which always left him aching with frustrated desire. Eating with Kali in her home, rather than the picnic meals that they’d been sharing over the weeks, felt more intimate than anything Emily had been willing to give. And there was more closeness merely talking with Kali than he’d ever had in a paid woman’s arms.
“I’m wagering whisky doesn’t have anything to do with avoiding suffering,” he said, returning to the table.
“No,” she answered with a smile, “but a good whisky can certainly make a rainy, chilly day more pleasant.”
He patted his pockets. “Didn’t bring any with me.”
Glancing at her cupboard, she sighed. “I didn’t, either.”
“Next time, I’ll bring a bottle.” Airships stocked a fair amount of spirits for the crew, though it was always doled out with discretion. Many of the finer bottles of whisky and brandy had broken in the crash, but some remained—which he portioned out to himself in small increments—and the crew’s store of gin had survived. Unfortunately, his implants meant it took nearly an entire jug of spirits for him to feel any of its effects, yet he liked the taste. He used a spent shotgun shell to dole out his daily drink.
“You’d better not,” she said. “I can’t hold my liquor. It takes just a few sips to get me stewed.”
He grinned. “Good to know.”
She scowled without heat. “No shenanigans, Fletcher.”
“An angel, that’s what I am. A perfect angel.”
Laughing, she rose smoothly from the table and began to prepare tea. Her motions had grown much more fluid over the past few weeks, her strength and confidence growing. Maybe their walks had something to do with it. He’d like to think so, that he contributed something, however small, to her progress.
Even without the change in her movement, warmth spread in his chest as he watched her move through her cottage. The straight line of her back. The small but unmistakable sway of her hips, hinting at the sensuality she hid beneath her staid wool dresses. As she set the kettle on to boil, his eyes followed the curve of her neck, and the soft wisps of black hair curled at her nape, like shy invitations to be touched. Invitations he desperately wanted to accept.
Unaware of his thoughts, she measured out tea leaves. “One of the origins of suffering is desire.”
He sat up straight. She can’t bloody read minds, can she?
“Desire for sensory pleasures,” she went on, continuing to make the tea, “food . . . sex. And things. Material possessions. We always want what we don’t have. We feel anger or envy if someone has more than we do. So we’re supposed to let go of our attachment to the corporeal world—including objects. Things. All they do is provoke craving, and that robs of us happiness, contentment.”
She set two cups down on the table, the same two she’d provided when he’d first come to her cottage. He had no real measure of time on the island, but it felt as though only days had passed since then—and that she’d always been a part of his life here. But it didn’t make him comfortable. The more time he spent with her, the more his heart beat thunderously in his chest when he saw her. The more her husky voice, with its mosaic of accents, throbbed through him and teased his dreams.
“So you’re not sorry that you lost your belongings,” he said as she sat down again.
Her smile was wry. “I miss them every day. Especially the photographs of my family. And my dog, Chaaya. I had to leave her behind when I came to England.” A look of pure longing and love crossed her face when she spoke her pet’s name, and he felt small and foolish for envying a dog.
She’d never talked of a sweetheart or a lover. Possible that she didn’t have one, but she seemed like a woman in full command of herself. Maybe the bloke had died in the devastation of Liverpool. If she grieved, she kept that specific sorrow to herself. Fletcher did and didn’t want to know, selfish bastard that he was.
“But I’ve got memories of them,” she continued. “Unlike photographs, those can’t be destroyed.”
He sipped at his tea. It nearly brought tears to his eyes with its perfection. “You’re very wise.”
This time, her laugh was full-throated, rich. “Words mean nothing. I’ve got plenty of words. In here and here,” she tapped her temple, then the space between her breasts, “I’m a damned muddle.”
He raised his mug. “Here’s to muddles, then, because I’m more tangled than those wires on your desk.”
After clinking her cup against his, she glanced over her shoulder and sighed. The knot of wires crouched at the corner of her worktable, as if slyly challenging someone to unravel it. “They got that way in transport, and now I can’t seem to unsort them. More’s the pity, because I could use them.”
“I’ll give it a go.”
Her brows lifted.
“Think I can’t?”
“Well, your hands . . .” She blushed. “They’re rather . . . enormous.”
Enticing, that blush of hers. “But nimble. Come on, hand it over.”
Reluctantly, she rose and retrieved the clump of wires. Then set it down in the middle of the table. “And no cutting them, either. That’s cheating.”
“Woman, you impugn the honor of Her Majesty’s Aerial Navy.” He picked up the wires and began slowly, slowly picking them apart. It was a careful, arduous process, made all the more complicated by the fact that the wires were almost all copper, so it was difficult to determine what belonged to what.
He glanced up. She had her elbows on the table and watched him like he was a performing animal or wonder automaton.
“Don’t you have something to do?” he asked.
She waved her hand toward her workbench. “Dozens of projects.”
“Go do one of them. I can’t work if you’re gawking at me.”
She batted her long, dusky lashes as him. “I’m making the big, strong Man O’ War nervous?”
“Not nervous,” he grumbled. “Distracted.”
After heaving another sigh, she rose from the table. “As you like.” She moved to seat herself at her workbench, but stopped. “I distract you?”
He refused to look up from his work, or even speak. Just grunted.
She muttered something in Hindi, then settled down to her own work. More silence fell as they both worked, with the only sounds the rain upon the roof and the clink of her tools as she worked on a device whose purpose he couldn’t yet figure out. As he untangled the wires, his mind fell into a pleasant state of nonbeing, anchored to nothing, concerned only with separating the filaments. He drifted, quiet in himself, peaceful. Yet he was always aware of her, the curve of her back as she bent over her project.
Only once did he glance at her bed, close enough to where he sat that he could stretch out one leg and brush against the blanket spread across it. He didn’t consider himself an imaginative man�
��he had a skill for planning battles and thinking well under pressure—but when it came to flights of fancy, he wasn’t particularly adept. Yet he could easily imagine her laying there at night. The shape of her body beneath the blanket. He decided she left her hair unbound at night, and that it spread fragrantly across her pillow. And maybe, just maybe, she thought of him.
God, she didn’t—she didn’t touch herself, did she? As he had been lately when he lay in bed and thought about her.
The idea—her touching herself as she pictured him—had him iron hard in an instant. His hands seemed to swell, and the knot of wires became impossible to untangle. With a muttered curse, he pushed it away.
She grinned at him over her shoulder. Which didn’t help the situation with his aching erection. He edged closer to the table so she couldn’t see his groin.
“Are you giving up?” she teased.
“Just need a break,” he growled.
“Ah, where’s that fighting spirit I’ve come to rely on?”
Blood returned marginally to his brain. “You rely on me?”
“No!” she said at once, blushing. “Perhaps a little. I’d, ah, rather not have to hunt if I don’t have to.”
He smiled to himself as she busied herself with a pair of pliers. Good to know that they were both fumbling their way through this indefinable thing between them. He took another sip of tea, and an idea suddenly struck him.
“When’s the ferryman scheduled to make his next delivery?”
She half turned in her seat. “I’d almost forgotten. Two days, I think.” She shook her head. “I can’t believe I’ve been here nearly a month.”
He wanted to ask her if it had been a good month, or if she regretted coming to the island. Instead, he said, “Don’t tell him about me.”
She frowned. “Why would I?”
“Say nothing. If he knows I’m here—”
“He’ll telegraph the navy, and they’ll come for you.”
“You know I don’t want to leave.” He wouldn’t rejoin the fight to become another instrument of death. But slowly, over the month, he’d begun to see this island less as a self-imposed exile and more of a private refuge for himself and Kali. Even if they never became lovers, he could happily stay in this place for the rest of his days.
Zoe Archer - [Ether Chronicles 03] Page 11
