he did with Ilsa. He didn’t have to think he’d failed somehow. Her smile came ready and often, and made him smile in return, something he thought he might have forgotten how to do. But still— “Not today.”
He turned away from her disappointment, feeling oddly disappointed himself. There, coming up the gangplank, was the reason he shouldn’t be talking to Tallia this way, thinking of her that way.
His gaze sharpened as Gilda and Ilsa came aboard, talking animatedly.
Ilsa picked her elegant way onto the deck, her chestnut hair swinging between her shoulder blades. She wore a dress, something new. Not the gray Remorian shift-like dresses he was used to seeing her in, shapeless and bland, but something fitted in pale green silk. It did something to her, lit her up like a lamp, made her copper-bronze skin glow in the sun. Half the crew stopped to stare, and a pair of whistles made Ilsa blush, but she looked happy, something Holden had thought was drained away from her.
For a breathless moment Holden thought that maybe he loved her, not just because he’d been told to, bonded to. Loved her, was happy that she was happy, even if it wasn’t him who had made her so. Yet he couldn’t be sure, because he’d been told to love her by the Master and though he was dead, still, maybe it was that.
Van Gast came back on deck and Ilsa ran toward him, laughing, saying something Holden couldn’t catch. Van Gast swung her round and admired her, or maybe the dress. Ilsa laughed again, a flush on her cheeks making her delicate features light up. She went to kiss him—maybe on the cheek, maybe not—but Van dodged with ease and held her firmly away.
Ridiculous, to be envious. Van Gast had no interest in Ilsa, in any woman other than Josie—that was half the problem, was why they were here when Estovan was the last place any of them should be. Van Gast was helping Ilsa, as he’d helped Holden and the rest of the crew, in coming to terms with freedom, with choices. He pretended it was a burden, that they were beyond help, but Holden thought it had helped him as much as them.
“Is that Van Gast’s lover then?” Tallia asked.
Ah yes, the difference between lovers and a tumble. Van Gast had tried to explain this peculiar way the racks had, but Holden couldn’t quite grasp it. It was simple, Van Gast had said. You might not see your lover from one month to the next if you were on different ships, or they lived in port. Tumbles were how they dealt with it. A tumble was just who you ended up in bed with, a lover was who you loved, and you loved your lover and no other.
Every rack tumbled, or so Van Gast said—though it seemed he didn’t, only pretended to for his reputation. That had been why he’d hacked off Holden’s wrist. He’d said it was to rid Holden of the bond. But it was for jealousy, because Josie had lied, implied that she loved Holden so that he’d stop chasing Van Gast. She’d lied to save him, and Holden hadn’t been the only one who’d believed it.
“I heard he had a lover,” Tallia said, her voice oddly strained. “But I didn’t believe it. That man’s never going to be pinned down to one thing, one person, if half of what I’ve heard about him is true. Tumbles all over the place, yes, more than most racks put together. But a lover?”
Holden’s voice almost failed him, odd emotions he had no name for strangling his throat. “No, that’s not Josie. That’s my wife.”
He shouldn’t have said that, let Josie’s name out, but Tallia didn’t seem to have heard him. She’d find out soon enough anyway from the rest of the crew, who gossiped like fishwives when they thought Holden wasn’t listening. Tallia watched Ilsa with interest and a narrowing of her eyes that Holden didn’t like.
Ilsa kissed Van Gast soundly on the cheek before he could dodge it, laughed up at him with stars in her eyes and ran down the steps to her and Holden’s quarters, her wide grin a twist in Holden’s heart. Van Gast might have no interest in Ilsa, but that didn’t mean Ilsa had no interest in Van Gast. Holden didn’t know what was in her head, or her heart. Not anymore.
Yet Holden had been doing just the same, hadn’t he? He ignored Tallia’s