Kallas turned his attention from a seething Athena. “What did you have in mind?”
“Kidnapping a lady.”
“Is she pretty?”
“Very.”
Kallas smiled, shaking Bennett’s hand again. “Then we’ll get along, you and I.”
She hadn’t much experience with ships except the one that had brought her to Greece. Departing from Southampton, they’d taken a top-of-the-line triple-masted steamer around the Iberian peninsula, skirting the coast all the way to Gibraltar, to Monte Carlo, then past Sicily, up around Italy to Brindisi, and finally Corfu to Athens. That ship had been surprisingly lavish, with an elegant dining room, two salons, and a card room, plus a host of men and women seated on folding chairs on deck whilst wrapped in flannel.
She knew that their sailing accommodations from Piraeus to Delos would be less opulent. It did not matter to her if the ship hadn’t a conservatory. But this…this was entirely different from what she had anticipated.
“Do we really need so many guns, Father?” she asked as she was helped aboard by one of the ship’s crew. Turning to watch her luggage being hauled up the side of the ship, she found herself staring at the cannons that poked from gun ports like lethal iron fingers. And, on the fore deck, squatted a gun turret and two more cannons, one fore and another aft.
Her father already stood on deck, and surveyed their ship with an approving nod. It was iron hulled with two telescoping funnels and two schooner masts, further powered by a steam-driven wheel at its center. A contradiction between this ship and the others merrily floating in the harbor. The Greek crew, too, looked hardened and intimidating, not returning London’s smiles and nods of greeting.
“I know it isn’t very luxurious,” her father said. “But you must try and bear up, if it isn’t too taxing.”
“It’s not taxing in the least,” she said. “But it’s the weapons that alarm me.”
Thomas Fraser, already turning pink in the late afternoon sun, stood next to her. “We must be prepared,” he said. “I’m sure you are familiar with the terrible events five years ago, when brigands captured a party of British tourists near Marathon and demanded a ransom. Many of their captives died during the rescue attempt.”
“An awful tragedy,” London said quietly.
“And your father has already spoken of enemies, Mrs. Harcourt, of which you may have already met. So the guns are, indeed, necessary.”
“I hope we don’t have to use them.”
Fraser merely shrugged. Then he turned away, and he and her father spoke with the ship’s captain. Sally yelped instructions to the men hauling the luggage over the side of the ship. Left to herself, London went to the railing and watched the harbor with its traffic of ships, but her thoughts strayed back to Ben Drayton. Perhaps he truly was one of her father’s enemies. She wanted to dismiss the idea outright. They’d shared something, a link or bond that she barely understood but felt deeply. When she was with him, she felt freer, more her true self that had been buried for most of her life. And, it was true, her body wanted him, wanted him fiercely.
Yet she could not dismiss how he had transformed so utterly and quickly in the garden last night from a seductive, charming rake into a flint-eyed man capable of anything. And she recalled his mastery of moving within the shadows as if he were part phantom.
Had it been wrong to find him so attractive, when he could mean her and her father harm? London prayed that she would never have to see Drayton again and test her willpower. Still, she couldn’t stop her mind from tormenting her with thoughts of what it might be like to kiss him, to have his hands upon her uncovered skin.
A new voice speaking English behind her caused London to turn around. Standing with her father and Fraser was a tall, skeletal man whose bloodless skin gleamed like hoar-frost in the bright Aegean sunlight. A thin fringe of colorless hair ringed his head, and he was dressed soberly in black and gray. London could not stop herself from staring at the onyx ring glinting on his right index finger. Something cold spiraled through her bones as she looked at him.
“London,” her father called, “come and meet my colleague.”
With reluctant steps, London went to join the men.
“London,” Father continued, “this is John Chernock. He will be accompanying us on our voyage and advising Fraser and I. Chernock, my daughter, London Harcourt.”
She gave the man a restrained nod, hoping she could keep her immediate dislike of him hidden. He smirked at her as though reading her mind. “I knew your late husband, Mrs. Harcourt,” he drawled. “And I’m sure you do him and your father credit.”
“Thank you,” London said with a thin smile. “Father, I think I’ll find my cabin and settle in.”
“Of course. Sally!” her father shouted. “Take your mistress to her cabin.”
London was about to state that she could find her quarters on her own, but the maid appeared to provide escort. London gave the men a brief curtsey and then hurried below deck, with Sally scurrying after her. She wanted to put as much distance between herself and Chernock as possible. It would be difficult, though, since the ship was only two hundred and fifty feet long and not, as she hoped, two hundred and fifty miles. She had a feeling that there was no distance far away enough from that walking stalactite her father called a colleague.
As soon as London disappeared into the ship, Chernock addressed Edgeworth. “A pretty young woman, your daughter.”
“She’s promised to me,” Fraser grumbled.
“I didn’t promise anyone to anybody,” Edgeworth said, his voice cutting. “Henry Lamb insisted that he’d prove himself to me in order to win the right to court her, and look what happened to that fool. Killed by Blades in the Gobi Desert. Killed by a woman, for God’s sake.” Base emotion, which Edgeworth struggled his whole life to contain, clogged his throat. “And his blunder ruined my only son.”
Chernock nodded. “Lamb’s abject failure forced Jonas to return to England through the Transportive Fire.”
“Is such a thing possible?” asked Fraser, aghast.
“No man had attempted it before,” said Chernock, darkly, “and now we know why.”
Edgeworth growled, “His burns finally healed, but the scarring is abominable. Damn it!” He turned away to rub his stinging eyes on the sleeve of his jacket, trembling with fury. He vowed to himself that the Blades of the Rose would pay for the damage done to his son. Jonas was to have succeeded him as a leader amongst the Heirs of Albion, but that dream died when his son came back from Mongolia a twisted, burnt husk, his mind more damaged than his body.
Edgeworth refused to believe that Jonas’s retreat had been anything less than honorable, even though he had heard the whispers. Jonas had fled, it was true, and with terrible haste, but only because Lamb had failed, because the Blades persisted in their foolish, sentimental quest to keep the world’s magic from the hands of the Heirs.
“He made a brave sacrifice for his country,” Fraser said, placating. “Jonas holds, as we all do, that Britain deserves to command the globe. Its nation, and its citizens, are superior to all others.”
“The apotheosis of culture and statehood,” Chernock seconded.
Fraser shot Chernock a quick, cutting look. Edgeworth was his to appease and flatter, and Fraser wouldn’t stand for some skeleton of a man to ride on his coattails. He continued, “The Heirs of Albion willingly give their lives for this belief. I know I would, given the chance.”
“It’s those Blades that play the gadfly,” Chernock sneered. “With their absurd conviction that no nation should rule over another. A mawkish ethos.”
When