Burning Bright (48 page)

In the moonlight, his eyes narrowed. “Nothing to keep you here?”

“What would you have me say, Lieutenant?”

His mouth opened, formed a word he closed his lips over. “I suppose…nothing. If you have no reason to stay. I thought…but I suppose I was wrong. Better you leave than stay here out of gratitude—that’s a poor repayment.” He pushed away from the taffrail, leaving Elinor gazing at him in confusion. “Miles will be waking up soon. I should be there when he does.”

It was as if a cold ocean wave had struck her, driving her down into the frozen depths where she could neither speak nor see. “What?” she managed.

“Hays says he ought to have someone there he knows well to help him orient. That was some Healing he did. Never seen the like before, which I’m glad of.”

Elinor was finally able to draw breath. “I thought I killed him,” she whispered.

“What was that, Miss Pembroke?”

“He was dead,” she said, more loudly, “he wasn’t breathing, and I…I thought I killed him.”

Beaumont’s expression went from angry to startled, and then full of sympathy, in one second. He reached out to take her hand. “Miss Pembroke, I beg your pardon,” he said. “They took you away before—he wasn’t breathing, true, and his lungs were fair sco—singed, but nothing Hays couldn’t manage. Some scarring, but he’s not dead. You—oh, no wonder you said there was nothing—” He began pulling her along. “Come with me. You can see for yourself.”

“No,” Elinor cried, tugging her hand free. The blessed relief of knowing she had not been responsible for two deaths melted away into horror and anguish and a different kind of crushing guilt. “I cannot see him, I cannot bear it, he will—” and she fled past the helmsman, down the companionway, and into the dark, stinking confines of her bedchamber.

She stood, breathing heavily, her eyes squeezed shut. Scarred, Beaumont had said. She had hurt him so badly, permanently damaged him, and she would eventually have to see him and know how he hated her, how her lack of control disgusted him, he who had tamed his impulses so he would not use his talent to hurt others. The thought stabbed at her heart.

She lit her lamp and used Ramsay’s ruined jacket, speckled with burn marks and striped with ground-in char, to mop up the vomit—how strange that there was so little of it—and wadded it up and threw it out the window in the great cabin. Then she went back into her bedchamber and hid, leaving the door open a crack to air the room out. She sat on her bed and let random thoughts drift through her mind. Someone would have to go for Stratford’s body. She would need another gown; she could not wear this one for every day; it was completely inappropriate.

She would have to speak with the admiral. Could she find a way over to
Breton
before Ramsay was recovered enough to see her? If she could avoid him entirely…maybe that was what he wanted as well, not to be reminded of who had damaged him. Was his arm whole again? Had Hays been able to save his hand? She tried not to think of that blackened ruin, told herself,
It is not so much a handicap for him, he is so skilled at Moving
, and hated herself for once again trying to find ways to make all of this less her fault.

The door of the great cabin opened. Footsteps sounded on the floor boards, and a light bloomed, then another, until bright light cast a glow through her open doorway. Elinor sat on her bed, her pulse drumming inside her ears. Footsteps, again, then silence. Then Ramsay said, “Arthur said you wouldn’t come to me, so I thought I’d come to you instead.”

He didn’t sound angry. He sounded as calm and unruffled as he always did. Elinor closed her eyes tight until she saw sparks, opened them, and stepped through her door.

Ramsay stood at the window, his profile cast into shadow by the arrangement of the lamps. He wore only a shirt and trousers, neither of which were burned, and his boots looked untouched by fire. He turned his head slightly when she entered, then gave her a more direct look that left the right side of his face in shadow. “You look beautiful,” he said. “I’ve seen that gown hanging in that cupboard a dozen times, but I never thought I would see you wear it.”

It was so much not the greeting she was braced for that she stammered, “It…I have no other gowns, Captain, and…I hoped you would not think…it is not as if I am happy, you know.”

“I know. I can imagine.” He went back to looking out the window. “I want you to see,” he said after a long moment in which Elinor wondered if there were any point to her fleeing back to her bedchamber, or out the door. It was a ship; where could she run to that he would not eventually find her? “I think it will be better if you don’t continue to torture yourself with possibilities.”

He turned to face her fully, and stepped into the light shed by the overhead lamp. She clenched her teeth on a cry. Shiny pink scars streaked with red ran along his chin and down his neck, up the edge of his face and into his bare scalp where the burnt hair had been shorn away. His ear, undamaged and too pale, looked out of place among the scars. His right hand was bandaged, loosely, each finger wrapped separately, and the bandaging continued up into his sleeve, the cuff unfastened to allow the bandages to pass through easily.

With his eyes still fixed on her, he reached up with his left hand and tugged the neck of his shirt to the side to reveal more scar tissue on his shoulder that seemed to extend down toward his chest. “There’s only so much Healing can do with burns,” he said. He sounded so apologetic she wanted to fling herself out the window. “But Peregrine repaired my ear, and my lungs and throat are undamaged.”

“I am so glad,” she said, and cursed how strange and distant her voice sounded. It was wrong, it was all wrong, he was supposed to hate her, not…not
explain
as if this were all something that had simply happened, like a hurricane or some other natural disaster no one could predict.

Ramsay took a deep breath and turned to face the window again. “I will be going to London in the morning, as soon as there’s a Bounder to spare,” he said. “Peregrine knows a specialist he thinks might be able to restore my hand and arm, though I likely won’t have full functionality, but then it’s not as if that’s a problem for me.”

He laughed, a short, tense laugh—he sounded nervous, why nervous? How could he think he owed her
anything
? “So I…Miss Pembroke, I…” He laughed again, and turned to face her, his good hand pushing his hair back from his face. “I told you I was bad at waiting, didn’t I? And this does not seem the right time, but I have to tell you, that is, to ask—I realize I’m not the best prospect, and I’m certainly not as handsome as I was, not that I ever was much to look at, but I wonder if you would consider—if you would accept—”

Realization burst over Elinor, what he was trying to say, and she was so overwhelmed with conflicting emotions of guilt and sorrow and happiness and relief that she burst into tears and said, “How,
how
can you think I would love you less because you have a few scars, when I am the one who gave them to you? Miles, why do you not hate me for hurting you so? I despise myself so much for my lack of control, and I—you should have let me burn, you should have, because I do not deserve your sacrifice!”

Blind with tears, she heard him approach her, footsteps crossing the floor, and then he put his arm around her and drew her close. He smelled of soap and freshly laundered linen and not of blackened flesh, and it made her cry harder. “Elinor, you were disintegrating in front of me,” he said, only just audible over the sound of her weeping. “I could barely see your face. I was shouting at you, and you didn’t seem to hear me, so I did the stupidest thing I’ve ever done in my life and reached into that fire to find whatever was left of your hand. And then I held onto it.
My
choice, Elinor. It hurt like the devil, and I would do it again if I had to, because there is nothing in this world I would not do for you.”

“No, I am too dangerous—”

“So was I, once. My self-control came at the cost of a man’s life. You are far luckier than I.”

“I will never use my talent again, never!”

“You won’t be able to keep that vow. Darling, listen to me.” He put two fingers under her chin and lifted her head so her tearful eyes could meet his. “If all you will ever feel when you look at me is self-loathing, if all you will ever see are these scars, then I will leave this room, and you will never see me again because I refuse to torment you so. But I don’t want that. I love you, Elinor. I want to spend the rest of my life with you. Please, love, forgive yourself, if only for my sake. Don’t make me walk away from you.”

Elinor drew a great, shuddering, calming breath, and blinked away tears because by now her arms were around Ramsay’s waist and she did not want to let go. “Stratford is dead,” she said.

“I know. We’ll both have to bear the burden of guilt for that. I should have specifically instructed him not to take you anywhere.”

“It was so stupid. I should have realized there were men in that emplacement.”

“I know. As I said, we both have a measure of guilt there.”

She laid her cheek against his shoulder and breathed in the bright, clean smell of him. “I think you are handsome and your scars make you more so.”

“You can tell all the other wives you have a husband who will walk through fire for you.”

“I do. I cannot now remember if I have said that I love you.”

“You did, actually, but it was a rather tear-riddled confession and I was too startled to fully appreciate it. So if you want to say it again—”

“I love you.” She looked up at him. “I think you should kiss me.”

His eyebrows went up. “Isn’t that somewhat improper?”

“I have only been kissed once before, and I did not enjoy it. I would like to see if your kiss is better.”

He laughed and ran his fingers across her skin, down her hairline and along her jaw, so gently. “I make no promises,” he said, kissing her forehead lightly, making her close her eyes with pleasure. “But I think—” he kissed her cheek, just as lightly—“you will not be disappointed,” and his lips brushed against hers, the faintest pressure that made her inner fire rage with a need for more, so, impatient, she pulled his head down so she could kiss him instead.

In which almost everyone has a happy ending

o much happened in the next seven days that Elinor remembered it as a blur, punctuated by bright, still moments she would never forget:

Miles returning after far too many hours in London with the right cuff of his jacket limp and empty, then comforting her as she sobbed;

Stratford Hervey in his shroud, lying with
Athena’
s other dead as Miles read out the service, then Bounded away to be returned to his grieving parents;

Admiral Durrant’s shaking hands as he congratulated her on her victory, with no word of blame nor reference to his nephew’s death sentence, commuted to transportation;

and Selina’s face when she entered her drawing room and found Elinor there, her surprise and then tearful joy unmarred by anger or reproach.

A small but prominent notice in the pages of
The Times
, announcing the upcoming marriage of one Captain Miles Ramsay, Extraordinary Mover, to Miss Elinor Pembroke, Extraordinary Scorcher, appeared quietly one day that week. Elinor showed it to Miles at the breakfast table. “It is the only notice I will give him,” she said to Miles, who looked grim. He had wanted no notice at all, had been angrier at Mr. Pembroke’s treatment of his second daughter than Elinor was, but had bowed to her wishes. “If he or mama chooses to attend, I will not turn them away. But I think they will not.”