Dead water - Barbara Hambly [33]
“Ah, but you are!” Theodora insisted, like every other woman to whom Hannibal told the honest truth about himself—after three and a half years January was still trying to figure out how he did that. “And who else can I trust? You are so sweet. . . . And he's become so capricious, I scarcely know what to believe anymore! If he turned away a good job to take a poorer one, all at a whim, how do I know that his next whim will not be to forsake me for another, prettier perhaps, or more endowed with the world's goods? For though my family is a fine and an old one, we are, alas, fallen upon poverty!”
Her accent alone was enough to convince January that her family was probably not as fine or old as all that—after one generation of wealth, Americans tended to ship their daughters off to schools where refinement of speech was a part of the curriculum—but Hannibal only passed his palm gently over her cheek.
“For the world's goods I care naught, my Angelflower, and as for beauty, how could any man turn his eyes from what I see before me here? Eyes as soft as honey / and a face / that Love has lighted / with his own beauty. . . .”
“Michie Hannibal, sir?” Dalliance was one thing, but January had witnessed two examples already that morning of Kevin Molloy's propensity for casual violence. He had no desire to see his friend beaten up over a blue-eyed tart in pink ruffles. The junior pilot Mr. Souter passed him on the stair, on his way to the pilot-house to change over watches—at a guess, once his watch was up Molloy wouldn't linger. No sane man would, in a ten-by-ten-foot pilot-house with Mark Souter droning on relentlessly about his great-uncle's contribution to the Battle of Blue Lick in 1782 and the precise degree to which the Souters were related to the Wickliffes of Glendower, whose Logan cousins had married into the Todhunter family through a connection who was a first and a second cousin, once removed either way. . . .
Hannibal raised a hand to sign January over, and Miss Skippen caught his wrist. “Oh, send him away, do!” There was a slight desperation in her face—January wondered how many others she'd attempted to attach herself to since Colonel Davis had passed by her dropped handkerchief a few hours ago.
“My sweet, I dare not snub Ben, even for the felicity of your violet eyes. It's he who makes my coffee in the mornings.” He bent to kiss her hands. “Until tonight.”
Her parting from him would have done credit to the great tragedienne Sarah Siddons as Juliet. January half expected her to stab herself on her way through the door of the Ladies' Parlor, where Mr. Quince was holding forth on the subject of the need for the immediate re-colonization of all slaves to Africa.
“Tonight?” January raised his brows as he and Hannibal entered the stateroom.
“We have a tryst on the starboard promenade after dinner, and I rely upon you to be sleeping on the floor here in case she feels faint and demands a place to lie down. Considering the amount of information I've gleaned from her so far, I can hardly cut the poor girl now. God knows she's been cut enough by La Fischer and her co-harpies in the Parlor—not that I'd want my sixteen-year-old daughter associating with her, if I had one, mind you. I rescued her while on my quest there for coffee, which I didn't get, by the way. . . .”
“I'll get you some. How long were you with her?” January wasn't certain, but he'd thought Miss Skippen's pink muslin skirts, with their ruffles of blond lace and their silk roses, looked wet and dirty along the hems—they were light-colored, too, as had been those he'd glimpsed in the dark of the hold.
“Twenty minutes or so. Just before we pushed away from the landing. I'm not sure what she'd been up to—mischief, I think. She was breathless and trembling, anyway, and practically fell into my arms. Is all well with you, amicus meus? I feared something had happened when you didn't make an appearance. . . .”
“Rose went down into the hold while they were loading and found evidence