"No," Heris said firmly. "Not off the bridge." Her thoughts raced, crashing into each other like fox hunters of two hunts in collision. What came out, at last, was the professional ship's officer. "I've got to check in with Sirkin—the standing watch—and let her know there's a sealed weapons cargo coming up to the ship. It's a good thing we had a complete refitting at Takomin Roads. Did you know the sulfur cycle was off by two sigs?"
He released her with a roar of laughter. "Dear heart—Heris—Captain—your owner had better pull up her bloomers or whatever they call them on aristocrats. Weapons? Does she know?"
"Of course she knows; I used her credit line." That had been—how long ago? And would Cecelia still authorize those weapons? Better get them aboard before she changed her mind. Somewhere the smugglers that had put that contraband aboard had to be wondering what had happened to it. The rich were no safer, if they didn't bother to defend themselves, than someone on the docks. In the depths of her mind, the final door to her past shut, and she faced the future as a civilian without the old pain. It would return, she knew, as old pains always did, in the dark hours everyone faced . . . but the worst was over.
Chapter Twenty-one
Discretion must be served. Two by two, the former prey, Heris's former crew members, left for the mainland hospital, where (Heris was assured) Bunny's excellent medical staff would check them out, and where they would live in privacy and luxury until they decided what they wanted to do. She had spoken to each one, but they were too dazed to talk much. She understood; she felt that way herself. Too many emotions, too much turmoil. Finally, with the lodge empty, it was her turn. She and Cecelia and Petris had a luxurious flitter, with Michaels himself at the controls, for the flight back. No more clouds. . . . The wrinkled ocean lay blank and blue under a clear sky until they reached the mainland. Heris stared at it until she felt the pattern was imprinted forever on her retinas. She wondered why Petris was traveling with them, then wondered why she wondered. And why couldn't they talk? After that first night, she had not expected the awkwardness of the days and nights since, when they could cling together . . . but not complete a sentence.
The flitter delivered them to the wide courtyard before the Main House rather than the flitter hangars. Here it was cold, with low clouds racing across the sky before a sharp wind. Heris sealed the jacket she had not needed on the island and shivered. She was glad she wouldn't have to walk up the hill from the other end of the village. Inside, Petris looked up the great staircase that first time with an odd expression that mingled delight and apprehension.
"This is exactly how I thought a great lord's house would look, and I don't trust it," he said finally. "It's too perfectly what it is, like an entertainment-cube version of a fleet cruiser."
"It's intimidating," said Heris. Now she could admit that. "I couldn't believe anyone actually lived in it. But they do." She wondered where the servants were; usually two or three at least were in the hall at this hour. But the one who had opened the door had vanished, leaving it to Cecelia to lead the way upstairs.
Petris, she found, had the room next to hers, where she remembered someone else having been, but she did not raise her brows to Cecelia, who already looked entirely too smug. How had Cecelia known that?
"Don't forget," Cecelia said, "that Petris will need to check in with Neil. I'll let him know you're coming, shall I?"
Heris looked at Petris. He had not had the benefit of Cecelia's riding simulator. But he grinned. "I can hardly wait to see Heris on horseback, chasing a fox," he said. "Although I'm not looking forward to those early starts."
"Nonetheless. And of course I needn't warn either of you about discussing all this—"
"Not at all." Petris raised and lowered his brows at her, a clear dismissal.
"Dinner at eight," Cecelia said. She strode off down the corridor.
"Your employer—" Petris began.
"Our employer," Heris said. "Unless you change your mind."
"I never change my mind," Petris said. "Come in here—" He led her into his room, a twin of her own. "I don't believe this, either!" He was staring at the furniture, the gleaming expanse of the bathroom and its glittering toys. He walked around the room, opening and closing the doors of wardrobes, looking into drawers in tall polished chests. Heris could see the racks of clothes, and wondered. "I'm sure these all fit—Lady Cecelia would have seen to it. I always knew there was a good reason to leave the onion farm." Then he looked into the bathroom again. "Plenty of room, and warm towels. Shall I scrub your back, my love, or will you scrub mine?"
* * *
Ronnie was sure they were all making too much fuss about his condition. George had been shot; George might die. He still had that nagging headache, and a collection of bruises and scrapes, but after a night in the hospital he was ready to go back to hunting. Or at least, back to living in the far more comfortable quarters he had enjoyed before.
"Time enough," the nurse said. "You're not leaving until the doctor agrees, and your scans aren't normal yet." It wasn't the same nurse as before, he thought, and wondered how often their shifts changed.
"Nothing's broken," Ronnie said. "You let that fellow in the other bed leave just twenty-four hours after a broken leg—"
"Bones aren't brains," the nurse said. Ronnie closed his eyes, feigning sleep, and was surprised to find dark outside his windows when he opened them again. The next morning (which morning?) he woke without a trace of the headache, and the awareness that he had not been clearheaded before.
"And you're not yet," the doctor said, when she arrived to talk to him before he left. "You think you are, but it's like climbing out of a hole: it's lighter where you are, but you're still in shadow. I know this will disappoint you, but I've already notified Lord Thornbuckle's head groom: you are not to ride for at least ten days, and you'll have to be reevaluated then."
"But I didn't—" Ronnie began, but the doctor smiled and patted his knee as if he were a child. Considering her white hair and wrinkles, she probably thought of him that way. I didn't want to ride, he said silently. And now I don't have to. "What about George?" he asked. They had told him nothing so far except soothing murmurs. He braced himself to hear that George had died.
"That young man," the doctor said. "Do I understand that everyone calls him the odious George?"
"Yes," Ronnie said.
"I can see why," she said. "He can have visitors—in fact, he has visitors all day, now. So if you want to know, just take the lift up one, and it's the third door on the left. He's still on the surgical floor, though really—" She shook her head without finishing that and left. Ronnie pulled on his clothes, hardly wondering where they'd come from, and went to see George.
George lay propped up in bed, looking like an advertisement for a hospital company: dark hair perfectly in place, fading bruises on his face suggesting courage without diminishing his good looks. Ronnie knew that on anyone else the yellow and green and dull purple would have looked hideous, but George's luck seemed to hold.
"Ronnie!" His voice sounded the same, if not quite as loud as usual. "I wondered when you'd make it up here. You missed all the excitement."
Ronnie stared at him. Missed all the excitement? Had no one told George about the admiral and the gas grenade, or the prince, or—
"My father's on the way," George said. He looked exactly as he had always looked, smug. Odious. Ronnie wanted to hit him, but you couldn't hit someone in bed with a gunshot wound. He went in, nonetheless, holding a vague grudge but not sure how to let it go. Should he tell George about the prince? He thought he remembered it was supposed to be a secret.
George's face changed, and his voice softened. "I—was really scared. You passed out on me, then they caught me, and those two—"
"Who?"
"The guards back on Bandon. I never saw the hunters at all, just these two men."
"They're the ones who shot you?"
"Oh, no. One of Bunny's militia shot me, and it wasn't an accident, either.
I tried to tell Captain Serrano, but couldn't get it across. . . . He was standing there, eyeing your aunt as if he'd like to kill her right then."
"Did you tell Bunny? When you got back here?" Ronnie had an urge to leap up himself, right then, and go find his aunt.
"It's all right. That's part of what you missed. That's the same man who tried to kill your aunt and Captain Serrano when they went to find you in the cave."
"Oh." Ronnie tried to remember if he'd heard about that man before. He remembered some things vividly: finding George unconscious, trying to build a litter, the storm, Raffa's warmth against him in the cold, dark cave, that moment of sheer terror when he jumped for the gas grenade. But he had no clear mental map of the time . . . how long they'd been on the island, or whether they'd stayed on Bandon overnight or flown straight back.
"Your aunt plugged him," George said, with relish. "He had the captain covered."
"She would," Ronnie said vaguely. He hated not remembering; it was like being very old, he thought. He had probably said things, and done things, without really knowing it. What if he had said something stupid? What if he had said something stupid to Raffa? Was that why he couldn't remember seeing her in the hospital?
George sobered again. "It's not that easy, being a hero. At least, it wasn't for me. You—"
"Not for me, either. There's a lot I can't remember."
"There's a lot I wish I couldn't remember." George scowled. "I have never been so scared, so humiliated, in my life—not even that first term at school." He sounded far more human than usual. "At least you didn't have to scrub any toilets."
"Not that again!" Raffa's voice; Ronnie turned to look. She might never have been off the mainland; she looked like all the other polished young women who had come for the hunting party, and she looked like no one else in the universe. Bubbles, beside her, leaned against the door and grinned broadly.
"Now I can quit holding Raffa's hand every night. You had us all scared, Ronnie."
"Me? George is the one who got shot."
"All George needed was a good surgeon, a day in the regen tank, and a personality transplant; my father could supply the first two, but not the last."
"You'll regret that, Bubbles—" George said, but it had no bite. "My reputation depends on being odious. And wrinkle-free."
"Your reputation depends on your father," Bubbles said. "Or someone would have beaten the odiousness out of you long before."
"Unfair," George said. Then he grinned. "Well—partly unfair. And I do resent the damage to my good trousers."
"I assure you," Bubbles said, in the same dry tone, "that you'll be wrinkle-free and out of here in time for the Hunt Ball. If you promise to keep your mouth shut and cause no trouble about Mr. Smith."
George made an innocent face that would not have fooled anyone. It certainly did not fool Ronnie or the girls.
"If you don't promise—and keep that promise," Bubbles went on, "I'll make sure that someone slips the wrong stuff in the regen tank for your next treatment, and you'll have wrinkles in places you don't think wrinkles can form. Permanent wrinkles. Then you can stay in this room until you die of genuine old age."
"And I," Raffa said, coming over to take Ronnie's hand, "will personally ruin every garment you own and send your tailor a certified letter giving your new measurements. Interesting new measurements." She mimed the anguish of someone in trousers with a short rise, the problems of skimpy sleeves and a baggy, short jacket.
George rolled his eyes dramatically. "You might have trusted me. Lawyers' sons learn some discretion." The others snorted. He went on. "All right. I promise. No leading questions, no suggestive remarks, nothing about Mr. Smith or his . . . mmm . . . other identity. But how am I supposed to explain my disappearance from the noble sport of fox hunting?"
"We took the flitter to go picnicking, and we crashed, and you and Ronnie were hurt saving us. Very simple, very—"
"What about Lady Cecelia and Captain Serrano?"
"Unrelated, except that Lady Cecelia is the one who let Bunny know we were missing—just as it happened. We're hoping to get past the Hunt Ball without the whole story coming out."
* * *
Neil had pronounced Petris's seat "untidy but effective," and passed him into the blue hunt at once. Heris had little interest in riding to hounds any more, but also little choice; if she stayed home, it would be noticed, and tongues were already wagging. Cecelia, pleading age, could go out only twice a week; Heris had to ride five days out of seven. She knew Cecelia was up to something again—or still—because the Crown Minister stayed in the same days as Cecelia.
"I might just as well go back to the ship," she argued with Cecelia one afternoon. Her horse had stumbled on landing from a wall, fallen heavily, and come up lame; Heris herself had bruised her shoulder. The fox—if there was a fox—had got clean away. She wanted to be back on a decent ship, where large heavy animals didn't dump her off and then roll on her. Her leg wasn't broken, but it felt reshaped.
"You should go by the hospital and spend a few hours in the tank," Cecelia said. "You've had a hard fall, and you're sore. It'll heal."
"We'll have crew changes—"
"You can't go until after the Hunt Dinner and Ball. We have to finish out this much of the season, or it will be suspicious. You notice that no one comments on what happened?"
"But—"
"But Mr. Smith is safely contained; I've offered to take him home since we already officially know. We'll stay until the Hunt Dinner, and leave the next day. I always stay for the first Hunt Dinner." Heris found this confusing, since in the books she'd read there was only one official Hunt Dinner per hunt club, but presumably Bunny did things his own way. And with such a long season, perhaps most people didn't stay for the whole thing. Cecelia patted her shoulder; Heris tried not to wince. "Now go spend a few hours in the tank, and ask Sari to give you a good rubdown. Petris will be in the green hunt, Neil says, by the day after tomorrow, and you'll feel much better by then."
Heris didn't want a rubdown from Sari; she wanted a pleasant night with Petris. But with her bruises, it wouldn't be pleasant. "When is this Hunt Dinner?" she asked, resigned to a trip to the hospital. She would remember to look in on everyone.
"End of next week." Cecelia took a few twirling steps that startled Heris. She flushed. "I may be old, and plain, but there's no law that says I can't dance."
Dance. Heris thought of dancing with Petris, and felt her bones begin to melt. She would manage not to hunt in the next week; she didn't want to risk missing that. It might even be worth the hours in the regen tank. She was in the tank, trying to relax as the technicians fussed over her bruised arm and leg, when one of the things Cecelia had said brought her bolt upright, splashing.
"Sorry," she said, to the technician who had contained his own curse but not the expression on his face. "Bad memory." The prince. Cecelia had said they were going to transport the prince home. That meant . . . she squeezed her eyes shut, and thought about it. Would Ronnie stay here? Surely she wouldn't have that pair on her ship at the same time!
* * *
The last week passed in a flurry . . . cold blue days, icy nights, glorious rides across the open land the green hunt favored. Heris had come out of the tank with more than her bruises healed, and suspected Cecelia of telling someone to load her IV with mood elevators. Either that, or the old books were right when they described the glow of lovers riding stirrup to stirrup at a gallop.
"Gallop by day, and . . . other gaits by night," Petris said, his arm under her head again. Heris didn't answer, as the gait in question required concentration. They could talk again, she had discovered, but this was not the time. Later, he asked, "And what are you wearing to the ball tomorrow?"
"A dress," Heris said. She could feel herself starting to chuckle in anticipation, a quiver that Petris must surely recognize. He tapped her nose with his finger.
"A dress. Amazing. I thought fox hunters wore skins and furs to a ball. Or horse hid
es or something equally barbaric. What are you laughing about? Are you wearing a fur dress?"
"No . . . but I won't tell you. You'll have to see it." An extravagance, which she had not intended, but it had made an excuse to miss one day's hunt. It made a sizeable hole in the salary Cecelia had yet to pay her. She could hardly wait to see Petris's face when he saw her in it.
* * *
Heris had not meant to wait until the day of the Hunt Dinner to tackle Cecelia about the changes needed in the ship, but there never seemed to be time. But she had made promises to Petris and the others; she had to make sure Cecelia understood before they actually boarded. The argument (she was sure it would be an argument) must be private. She slithered into her own gown, and shook her head at the image in the mirror. The beaded bodice shifted color with every movement, shimmering; the soft pleats of the midnight-blue skirt were spangled with random beads, as if the bodice had dripped fire onto it. And she looked . . . very unmilitary, she decided. Very unmilitary.