“What if Lenore wants a permanent place aboard the Pollux? Or even the Terebellum?” He’d heard about Lenore’s help in the forecastle. The master mechanic had even remarked to any who’d listen “Bricky girl, that Kenward. I’d be happy to train her up as a mechanic.”
Nettie downed another round of port. “I’ll have her shot too,” she snarled.
Nathaniel held back a grin, both amused and delighted by her answer. He braced a hip on the edge of the desk and watched Nettie pace. “Well that would put Jane Kenward into the dither you’ve always wanted to see.”
“That girl is going straight back to her mother as soon as they tie this ship down for repairs in Maldon.”
He hoped not. At least not permanently. He wanted her to come straight to him—and stay. He’d caught her wide-eyed stare in the battle’s chaotic aftermath, when the crew had breathed a collective gasp of relief that the fighting was temporarily over. She’d mouthed his name—Nathaniel, not Colin. The expression on her face had been an odd combination of anger and yearning. Commands and tasks separated them, and they hadn’t crossed paths since. He was desperate to see her, to hold her. To explain.
“You’re still the best damn gunner in the fleet, dead or alive,” Nettie said, interrupting his thoughts. “But worrying over you will kill me faster than any tussle with a horrific.”
A knock at the door made them both turn. Nettie cast him an enigmatic look, put away the port and tucked the Howdah into her belt. “I know that knock,” she said. “Looks like you have some explaining to do. I’ll leave you to it. Don’t drink all the brandy while I’m gone.”
Butterflies bashed themselves to death against his ribs when he spotted Lenore standing at the threshold. What would she say now that she knew?
Lenore inclined her head as Nettie eased past her. “Captain.”
The older woman grasped her shoulder in a brief display of affection. “Go in, Lenore. He’s waiting.” The door closed behind her, leaving Nathaniel alone with the person most precious to him. He waited, letting the silence bloom until she was ready to speak.
She clasped her hands in front of her and looked down for a moment before settling her gaze on him once more. “I knew,” she said softly. “Somehow I always knew, from the first moment I saw you again.” Her lips flattened against her teeth, and her eyes turned glossy. “Were you ever planning to tell me?”
He edged closer to her. Tension made her entire body quiver, and she balanced on the balls of her feet as if she’d bolt if he moved too swiftly. “Not at first,” he admitted, hoping she heard the apology in his voice. She flinched. “Look at me, Lenore.” He sketched an invisible line down his torso. “This isn’t even my body. It belonged to a comic droll stabbed to death for the three crowns in his pocket. What was left of me wasn’t worth saving. Harvel’s experiment might be viewed as miraculous if it weren’t so heinous.”
She crossed her arms, rubbing them briskly as if she stood before him with no coat and the windows open. “You’re still Nathaniel.”
What faith she had in him, this resolute, loyal girl. “No, I’m not.”
Her arms dropped to her sides, back straightening with an indignant snap. “Yes you are. I knew it the moment I saw you again at Highgate, leaning on that cane and scaring the mourners.”
He sighed. “Lenore...”
“Don’t ‘Lenore’ me. Even before you were dropping hints a blind man could see, I knew it was you. Everything inside me that broke when they said you’d died suddenly healed.” She dragged her braid over her shoulder to worry it between her fingers. “I didn’t recognize what it was at first. Maybe if I weren’t grieving my father, I might have figured it out sooner.”
She’d have to be stubborn to defy her strong-willed mother. He shouldn’t be surprised Lenore refused to budge in her assertion he was the same man he’d been five years earlier.
Nathaniel inched a little closer, close enough to hear the sudden hitch in her breathing. “I can hear and speak to the dead, love. I don’t need to eat or drink or sleep. I can lust; we’ve both ascertained that.” He grinned when she blushed. “My blood is poisoned with gehenna, and the changes it wrought are obvious. I am no longer the man you knew.”
His eyebrows lifted at the low growl rumbling from her throat. This time she narrowed the distance between them until they were toe to toe. His armor made a dull tink-tink sound when she tapped him on the chest.
“Where it counts most, you are. The soul, the mind, the heart. The body might not be yours and changed beyond comprehension, but the small things you do—the way you tip that invisible topper, how you tilt your head when you’re considering a question, even the pitch in your voice when you’re impatient. Those things belong solely to Nathaniel Gordon.”
His grin coaxed one out of her. “You plant your feet when you believe in something don’t you?” It was one of her many charms that made him fall in love with her a lifetime ago.
She considered him for a moment. “I was more than suspicious when you told me your name was Colin, but the surname threw me off, not to mention the improbability that you weren’t actually dead. Who is Whitley?”
His dear Nettie. She’d guffawed when he told her the name he’d assumed to hide his identity from Lenore. He hadn’t missed the pleased blush that flagged her cheekbones. “That secret isn’t mine to tell. Maybe one day the person who possesses it will.”
Her hand splayed across his chest, fingers dancing up to his neck and down to his abdomen, undaunted by the hard armor. He felt her touch all the way to his bones. A hot shiver replaced the fading spasms in his back. He choked back a surprised laugh. While his protective shell might not obey his every command when he wished, Lenore’s touch had beguiled it the same way she had beguiled him. The armor began to thin and soften in random spots, transforming to fabric.
“Even the way you kissed me was Nathaniel Gordon.”
He captured her hand and pressed her palm flat over his heart. “I never thought I’d be fortunate enough to taste you again,” he said in a voice gone low and thick. Lenore’s eyelids lowered to half-mast. “Especially in a graveyard or on an airship.”
“You should have told me,” she said. “I suspected but to hear it confirmed over the Terebellum’s speaker tubes by Nettie threatening you?” She shook her head.
He pressed her hand even harder to his chest. Her eyes grew wide when the armor collapsed there and transformed to cloth. “I could live with your first rejection, Lenore, because there was hope. I wasn’t giving up, despite your mule-headed insistence on me claiming an inheritance I didn’t want.” He closed his eyes, forcing back the fear that reared a cobra’s head inside him. She had kissed him and welcomed his embrace when she thought him nothing more than a Guardian. Surely, now that she knew all, she wouldn’t turn him away? “Were you to reject me a second time, it would have been because of who I’d become, not what I was born to. In that, I found no hope.”
Lenore lifted her free hand to trace the contours of his face. Cheekbones and jaw, eyebrows and forehead, the blade-thin bridge of his nose and curvature of his nostrils. Did she see a reflection of the old Nathaniel in the black expanse of his irises and scleras? She grasped his chin and tugged him down to her. “I hate Harvel for what he did to you.” Her breath caressed his lips. “Yet I’d thank him if he were alive because he gave you back to me.”
In this moment, with all his dreams sparking to life at Lenore’s words, Nathaniel thought he’d thank Harvel too—then disembowel him later.
Lenore freed her other hand from his grasp and slid both into his hair to cup his head and hold him in place, looming over her. “Nathaniel Gordon,” she declared in a fierce voice, “I will love you until I’m one of those spirits who whispers in your ear and bores you with my repetition.”
He laughed and gathered her into his arms, no longer armored but garbed in fabric that welcomed the press of Lenore’s body against his. He nuzzled his nose against the side of hers. “Love, by then we will
be dust together.”
Lenore’s laughter chorused with his. “That’s because when my mother finds out my Nathaniel is back and keeping company with the dead, she’ll immolate us both with a single, well-aimed glare.”
EPILOGUE
One year and a day after her father’s death, Lenore Kenward became Lenore Gordon by marrying a man who guarded the dearly departed.
Having resigned herself to spinsterhood more than a half decade earlier, she never imagined she’d marry or that the ceremony would take place in a tucked-away grotto in a graveyard and be attended by an odd array of guests, both living and deceased. Then again, Nathaniel was an unusual groom and Lenore a flouter of society’s more rigid rules, so it seemed perfectly appropriate that the ceremony itself mirror the uniting couple.
Highgate’s rector, John Morris, oversaw the proceedings with his wife acting as witness. They were joined by Nettie, dressed in a far more conservative frock than what she usually preferred. It didn’t bare her knees and was a subdued shade of blue. She or someone else had tamed her wild hair into a neat chignon, though a beaded braid had managed to partially escape its prison of pins and bounced with every nod of her head.
Two Guardians attended as well, their presence the cause of wide-eyed astonishment, disapproval and unease from Jane Kenward and the Kenwards’ long-time housekeeper Constance. The two men introduced themselves by first names only and the cemeteries they guarded—Gideon of Kensal Green and Zachariah of Nunhead.
Lenore herself found it hard not to stare at them. Like Nathaniel, they had been remade by Dr. Harvel and possessed the same coloring—long white hair and Stygian eyes with pupils as bright as stars, and they wore the severe garb reminiscent of the clergy. They were, however, unique in both stature and demeanor.
While the more jovial Zachariah came alone, the taciturn Gideon had brought a guest. Almost as tall as Gideon with a dignified grace that put any aristocrat to shame, Rachel Wakefield had taken Lenore’s hands prior to the ceremony and given them a squeeze.
“My sincerest congratulations, Miss Kenward.” The woman smiled not only with her mouth but her eyes as well, exuding a warmth that made Lenore think of summer and meadows and wildflowers. “You are a fortunate woman to marry such a fine man.” Her smile widened. “And I’ve been informed he is an even more fortunate man to take you to wife.”
“Thank you, Mrs. Wakefield. I’ve loved him for a long time.”
The ceremony was short and infinitely sweet. Lenore noted the tremor in Nathaniel’s hands when he held hers through the sharing of vows, but his kiss was firm and sure, promising so, so much more once they were alone.
Lenore invited their guests to the newly cleaned and furnished rectory Nathaniel once dubbed as nothing more than a place to occasionally take shelter from the elements. The dust and cobwebs were gone, and the clear windows caught the watery winter light, casting pale sunbeams throughout the parlor, made far more comfortable with a rug, furnishings and a fire in the fireplace.
Nathaniel had encouraged her to make the rectory hers and decorate it in whatever made her happiest. She had at first been hesitant.
“Nathaniel, I have no dowry or funds to bring to this marriage. We will live in Spartan surroundings.”
“I’m not without means,” he said gently. “I possess a hefty account funded by the Necropolis Company and the Mage Guild. There’s been no reason to touch it until now, and it’s grown impressively from lack of pilfering on my part.”
Lenore gawked at him. “You’re paid to guard Highgate?” She didn’t know why that news astonished her so. It was employment after all.
He grinned. “Handsomely. Guardians are social outcasts but valuable nonetheless. The Guild and the Company understand our worth and contribution. Even if they didn’t, Gideon would make certain to enlighten them.”
Having now met the dour, imposing Gideon, Lenore wondered what exactly his form of enlightenment entailed. She gave a delicate shiver and sipped the warm tea Constance and Rachel served to everyone.
Once the guests departed with good wishes and congratulations—even from Jane—the house settled into an intimate silence. Nathaniel reclined in a chair near the fire and tugged Lenore into his lap. Lenore wound her arms around his neck and stole a kiss from him.
“Are you glad it’s over?” she asked.
He nuzzled the warm spot near her temple, just above her ear. “I’m glad it’s just begun,” he said.
She melted in his arms. “You always did have a honeyed tongue, Nathaniel Gordon.”
He trailed a line of soft nibbles across her cheek to the corner of her mouth. “Care to taste?”
“Oh yes.”
He did taste of honey and the pomegranate wine he’d chosen over the tea served earlier, and Lenore savored the feel of his mouth on hers, his tongue gliding across her teeth to tangle with her tongue in a match neither won and at which both excelled.
She gasped into his mouth when he suddenly rose in one smooth motion, still clasping her tightly against him. “Bedroom,” he muttered when they took a second to breathe. She nodded and laid her head on his chest, listening to his strong, steady heartbeat as he carried her effortlessly up the stairs.
Their bedchamber, once an empty room shrouded in dust, held a bed, wardrobe, vanity and mirror. A chest footed the end of the bed. Lenore had proclaimed the room complete when she filled the chest and the wardrobe with personal items and clothes, including the precious ambrotype of a Nathaniel gone but not forgotten.
Her new husband set her down so that they stood pressed together by the side of the bed. His mouth curved up on one side. “I will give you anything you desire if you let me play lady’s maid.”
Her fingers walked across his shoulders. “You are a man of many talents, it seems.”
“No, only a few, but I excel at those.”
How very, very fortunate she was to finally call this man hers. The joy welling up inside her threatened to burst free in an embarrassing barrage of tears guaranteed to alarm Nathaniel and turn her face into a splotchy, hideous visage. Instead, she clutched the safety of lighthearted innuendo and teasing. “Prove it,” she said.
His eyebrows shot up, and the wicked grin spreading across his face made her laugh. “I could never resist a challenge.”
True to his boast, he made short work of her wedding dress and corset with its miles of lacing. They made a growing pile on the floor, along with her petticoats and crinoline, shift and small clothes. He paused when she stood before him wearing only a pair of garters and filmy stockings that did nothing to warm her legs. His spectral gaze blazed, burning hotter as it touched on her shoulders and bare breasts, the curve of her waist and flat expanse of her belly, the slope of her hips and length of her legs.
He had seen her naked before, years earlier. Then, it had been a furtive, forbidden union, no less pleasurable for its risk but infinitely less stirring than this moment when they stood together in the room they shared as man and wife. Lenore fought down a blush and raised one leg, her stockinged toes caressing his shin. “Don’t you want to finish?”
Nathaniel’s voice was guttural. “I suspect I’ll be finished before we’ve truly started.” He gestured to her stockings. “Leave those on and loosen your hair for me.”
She did as he requested, sauntering to the dressing table to seat herself naked before the mirror. Nathaniel didn’t follow, but he turned to watch her, his eyes bright in the room’s dim light. Lenore took her time removing the pins, setting each one carefully on the vanity. With each pin out, a curl unfurled to fall down her shoulders and back until her hair cascaded over the chair and pooled in her lap.
Her husband’s breathing panted harsh and loud in the room. She met his eyes in the mirror’s reflection, noting the flare of his nostrils, the silvery shadows that smudged his cheekbones and the way his chest rose and fell as if he’d run across London Bridge a dozen times without stopping.
“My God,” he said in a choked voice. “You’re e
ven more beautiful than I remembered.”
She smiled, warmed to her toes by his fervent compliment. Desire unspooled in her belly, sending liquid heat through every part of her before settling into a throb between her thighs. “Your turn,” she said softly.
Her startled bleat nearly ruined the sensual atmosphere when Nathaniel closed his eyes and went from being garbed in black from neck to feet to bare, pale nudity in an instant. His expression had sobered, a touch tentative as he watched her leave her seat at the vanity to stand before him.
She once likened him to a marble statue. How unknowingly accurate she’d been in that comparison, and he was garbed then with only his hands and face hinting at his overall paleness. The Nathaniel she’d first fallen in love with had been a man of average height with broad shoulders, muscular arms and a powerful, easy stride. The Nathaniel who claimed a droll’s body as his was muscular in his own right, taller and leaner with the long, wiry body of an acrobat.
Looking at him was like looking at the living representation of a Greek myth gone awry, in which a mad Pygmalion begged an even more perverse Aphrodite to bring a male Galatea to life. The goddess had done it with torture and lightning. The sculptor scientist perished, but his creations lived on. One of them married Lenore.
“You are truly lovely,” she said, breathless at the sight of him. The silvery color shadowing his cheekbones spread down his throat and across his chest. Lenore’s gaze dropped, and her lips parted. “Oh my.” He might share the same milky skin tones and muscular physique of any of the Greek and Roman statues but God, or the mercurial Aphrodite, had been far more generous than the sculptors when endowing the living man.
Nathaniel followed Lenore’s wide-eyed gaze to his erection, swollen and stiff. His hands fluttered at his side as if to cover himself and went still at Lenore’s abrupt “Don’t.”
Lenore wet her lips with her tongue, smiling faintly at Nathaniel’s sudden focus on her face. “It must have been a...challenging task, flipping and tumbling about with such a...” She frowned, searching for the right word.