Could he be about to propose? If so, she could not toy with a good man’s affections in this manner.
“Ian, I am … encumbered. I have the girls to think of, and Tigg, and Jake.” And there is Andrew.
“It is heroic, the way you look after those children. I can be of assistance to them. I believe I have already offered young Tigg a position. Our chief engineer, Mr. Yau, is standing ready to take him on as midshipman, if you and he agree, and Jake has the makings of a fine navigator now that he has decided which side he wants to fight on.”
“You may have to fight Alice for him. He got us here, all the way from Reno, when none of us had ever been in these skies before.”
“Do not change the subject.”
“But I must,” she said desperately. “I am so confused. One moment I’m a giddy girl, thinking you might kiss me. The next moment I’m as old and wise as a professor, thinking of my wards and their futures. And then there is my own future. If my application is accepted, I will be going to university when we return. I will not have time for—for courting. And in any case, you will be off to the Antipodes with the Dunsmuirs. It seems a hopeless case.”
“Not hopeless,” he said softly. “Never hopeless.”
And before she could take another breath, he dipped Sth,ss, his head and kissed her.
*
Knots in one’s stomach were anatomically impossible. Yet there they were, growing tighter with every moment that Claire and the Lady Lucy’s captain did not reappear.
Finally Andrew had had enough.
He smiled at his partner, the daughter of one of the governor’s cabinet ministers, bowed over her hand, and made his way through the crowd to the French doors. He stepped through just in time to see Captain Hollys gather Claire into his arms and kiss her.
Just the way he himself had kissed her, that day in the lab when she had been engaged to another.
And she allowed the captain’s kiss, just the way she had allowed his.
The breath rushed out of him and he actually flinched, as if someone had delivered a sucker punch to his stomach. Blindly, he turned before they could see him, and stumbled back into the ballroom.
“Mr. Malvern!” Lady Dunsmuir emerged, smiling gaily, from between two large matrons. “Good heavens, sir, you look ill. Are you all right?”
He must pull himself together. He and Claire were not engaged. They were not even a couple. They were … whatever two people were who had shared a kiss and had both acknowledged that it meant something, however wrong it had been at the time. He had never had a chance to speak of what lay on his heart, and she had been too busy looking after the children and flying about the country saving people’s lives to remember that she carried it in her hand.
“Mr. Malvern, I am becoming quite concerned.”
He focused on Lady Dunsmuir, who was gazing up into his face, two worried lines between her brows. She laid a gentle hand upon the fine wool sleeve of his new dinner jacket. “Is there something outside that upset you?”
The breath he had managed to catch rushed out again. “Claire is kissing Captain Hollys on the terrace,” he said dully.
“Ah.” She pulled him aside, between the drapes and a huge potted topiary tree shaped like a series of lollipops piled one upon another. “I rather think Captain Hollys is kissing her. He has been smitten since the beginning of the voyage.”
“The result is the same.” He came to himself with the realization that discussing Claire with anyone else was the height of disloyalty.
Not that loyalty was counting for much anywhere he looked at the moment.
“Dance with me,” she commanded, and when he obediently whirled her out onto the floor, the action seemed to clear his mind.
“I beg your pardon, Lady Dunsmuir. It is wrong of me to say such things.”
“Why? You have her affections, I know. One does not sacrifice oneself to save a man’s life if one does not care.”
“She risked her She not sacri life to save James Selwyn, and she did not care for him. It seems to be her way.”
“She is brave and impulsive and fiercely loyal. And, I suspect, rather inexperienced when it comes to matters of the heart. You must make allowances, Mr. Malvern. She is only just eighteen.”
“I know,” he sighed. “I do not know whether to propose or pack her