I can’t—”
Yasmeen smiled.
The woman stuttered to a stop. Flustered and wringing her hands, she said, “He’s upstairs, ma’am. The third door on the left.”
“Thank you.”
The stairs made her wish that she’d spent the minutes in the steamcoach massaging her knees. Scarsdale’s door wasn’t locked—and no surprise there. His quarters smelled like an absinthe factory. She found him facedown on the bed. The poor bastard hadn’t even managed to get his boots off before passing out.
An ewer sat on the dressing table. She dipped her fingers inside. The water was cold. Freezing would have been better, but this would do.
At the sound of footsteps, she looked over her shoulder. Wearing a nightgown and a long floppy cap, Scarsdale’s valet was attempting to creep up behind her, a chamber pot raised high.
He froze with his arms straight over his head. His nightgown had lifted with the movement, exposing knobby knees. “Captain! It is so very good to see you.”
Better than bashing her skull in, at least. “What time did he fall asleep?”
“I’m not certain. He sent me to bed an hour after midnight.” The valet tsked, setting down the pot and stepping forward, his gaze fixed on Scarsdale’s boots. “The poor dear.”
Yasmeen dumped the ewer over the poor dear’s head.
Sputtering, Scarsdale reared up, batting wildly at his hair, pushing the sodden brown strands away from his eyes. Bloodshot, they focused on her. “Blast you!”
“Darling,” she purred, and tossed him a towel. “You look horrible.”
“I look fantastic.” He scrubbed at his face, then stopped to weave as if the vigorous moment had unbalanced him. Still, he managed to add, “As always.”
“I wake up next to ‘fantastic’ every day. You’re not even within leagues of him right now.”
“You’ve only yourself to blame. You bring me to Medway, Yasmeen? Good God. What is here but sailors and an oddities fair? This atmosphere sucks the life from a man, drains him dry, and the only thing to do is drink. You ought to have had the sense of meeting with me in Brighton.”
“Where supplies cost twice as much?”
He laughed suddenly. “Ah, well. That explains the price of my upcoming nuptials. I ought to have insisted on them taking place in Medway instead of Brighton. We could drink together, you and I.”
His marriage. Goddammit. So he was going through with it.
Maybe. “If you drink enough, it’ll be much easier to abduct you.”
“Is that your plan—to spirit me away aboard your lady?” He pressed his hand to his stomach, as if queasy. He probably was, and not just because of the drink. Heights terrified him. Even now, the shades over the windows were drawn—not to keep out the light, but so that he wouldn’t see the view from the second floor. “I’d rather be married.”
No, he wouldn’t. “Break it off. The people on your father’s estates don’t need you. They managed well enough alone for two hundred years.”
“They were under the boot of the Horde for two hundred years,” he said dryly.
“And the aristocracy is different?”
“It’s not tyranny.”
Yasmeen thought that everything but willing service was tyranny of some sort. “So you will swoop in and take back what they have earned, and the people on your lands have no choice in the matter.”
“Neither do I.”
Fair enough—and there was little more to be said. He would no more abandon the responsibilities of his station than she would her crew. But if this marriage would be hell, she would never abandon him to it. “Do you like her, at least?”
“Yes.” He sighed. “I like her very well. I will be content, Yasmeen.”
That couldn’t be enough—but that wasn’t her decision to make. “No kidnapping, then? Perhaps it’s for the best, since Zenobia Fox has just been abducted and taken to New Eden.”
Scarsdale froze. “What do you say? I thought you were after somebody’s brother.”
“We were at her home only yesterday. She’d been taken by Berge on The Kite as an added incentive to the brother’s rescue.” At the sideboard, Yasmeen poured him another drink. Zenobia and Scarsdale had become good friends the previous winter, inseparable in each other’s company. If Zenobia was not secretly as romantic-minded as her brother, it might have been a practical match. “We’re off to New Eden as soon as the supplies are aboard my lady. Did you speak with the Blacksmith?”
Slowly coming out of his shock, he took the brandy. “Yes. I saw the autogyros loaded into the locomotive car. So you truly are attempting this madness?”
“Yes.”
“I’ll come with you.”
Despite his terror, he offered. A finer