She had become quite a figure in that regard, accepting no chaperones, no guardians or matchmaking great aunts, no nods to polite society or the accepted practices of the gentler sex. When the mood struck, she drank like a man, swore like one, bedded whom she chose and didn’t give a damn what ruination came of it. She was shunned for this, of course, but only in the confines of the capital city, a maze of titles and palaces she hadn’t seen in at least a decade. Even there, public condemnation had somehow turned into private adoration, making her much more the celebrity than her well-natured cousins. The Mad Lady Sinclair, they called her.
And they didn’t know the half of it.
He finished off his scotch, wincing at its burn. Perhaps he knew too much, but that didn’t stop him from staring. He couldn’t look away from her. No one could. She sang from the heart, her voice rich and strong and unapologetic, hitting and extending every note, with the smallest waver forming just before a breath, a hint of vulnerability that held every man in the room transfixed, unable to breathe unless she did.
Her hair defied its pins, unruly blonde curls forming a petulant crown, her cheeks pink with song and champagne, her eyes bright and blue… a willful Pandora with her hand poised on man’s undoing.
But there was something else now, something different. A bruise just above her right eyebrow, a mark he’d earlier mistaken for shadows. Her shoulders too, some stiffness in the way she held them, perhaps.
So, not without a scratch after all.
He should have taken immense satisfaction in that. God knew, he wanted to. But he found himself concerned about the possibility of bruises he couldn’t see, damage he didn’t know about, and then despising himself for his own weakness. He was not her caretaker, after all. Not anymore.
Gilda finished her last note, letting the lyric thread gracefully in the air before she smiled, brought down to Earth by riotous whistling and crackling applause. Stone faced War Cabinet Officials, who had not smiled once during the prolonged negotiations of the past few days, were now grinning ear to ear like schoolboys.
They would give her anything she wanted, anything they could. Fortunately, the agreements he was after were already signed. She was too late, though she didn’t know it yet, and none of the men here were at liberty to tell her.
This too, he should take great satisfaction in. Signaling the attendant, he ordered another scotch. It was a night for celebrations, after all.
Gilda dropped onto the stiff metal bench and blew the curls from her eyes, still smiling as she met approving masculine nods from around the room. They were a strapping bunch, these all-important war chiefs, a group of good, strong men, by the look of it. One of them took her place by the violinist and broke into a bawdy song, with verses dedicated to raging seas and unpredictable women, in lively turns.
“You have a gifted voice, Lady Sinclair,” the Duke remarked from his bench seat on the opposite side of the table, amusement playing in his gaze. He wore a simple rose colored jacket and round spectacles at the end of his nose, his fingers circling a lit cigarette in the air as he spoke. “One wonders what you do with it when it comes to your father’s company.”
“I demurely withdraw, your grace,” Gilda said. “In thousands.”
His eyes warmed, a private joke and a good one. He put his cigarette to his lips and drew a harsh breath. “Sorry to have missed so much. I came in about fifteen minutes ago. More tedious briefings, I’m afraid.”
“The situation is serious?”
The Duke blew smoke through his teeth. “My dear, uniforms require a great deal of seriousness. If you’re wearing one, or listening to one, you cannot avoid it.”
“Well, you see? I came at the right moment to distract you.”
He sighed, considering the tip of his cigarette. “And yet, I suspect you’re less interested in me than in your runaway business partner.”
“Mr. Lanchard is here to meet with Navy officials. I came to deliver urgent medicine to the sick.”
The Duke chuckled. “What a truly selfless creature you are.”
“Has he met with them yet?”
“Whatever do you mean?”
“You know exactly what I mean.”
The Duke cast a sidelong glance at Nathan, now talking with a pair of Naval officers, gesturing in repetitive arcs as he explained something of technical interest. “If he has, then he should no longer concern you.”
“He owns fifty-one percent of Sinclair Airship.”
“Well, of course, but if he has business with His Majesty’s Royal Navy, he will need to leave the running of things to you and the company managers. I doubt those withdrawals will be much affected.”
“But he’s our designer, you know that. My father trained him.”
“Hire another one. It’s an airship. It has a frame. It has a cloth hull and a collection of envelopes you fill with gas, a few propellers on either side. How hard can it be?”
“He belongs to Sinclair, not to the Royal Navy.”
The Duke looked confused. “My dear, one can never become too sentimental about people. Dogs, of course, and property too, but people invariably fail to understand who they belong to.”
“It is more complicated than that.”
“Ah…Now we come to the truth. I had heard that he was some kind of family member, some scandalous relative hidden from the light of day.”
“He’s not a blood relative, not a relative at all, in any biological sense. Nathan’s mother was a pretty widow from Blackburn. His father died on the frontlines when he was three. My father hired the young widow Lanchard to look after his Northern estates and you can imagine the rest.”
The Duke looked particularly disinterested. “I shall try not to.”
“She played the part of a good mistress for years, then died heroically of some consumptive illness, leaving my father to mourn her ad nauseam for the rest of his life. He took Nathan in like a son, the son he always wanted. The son he never had, poor fellow.”
“And left him fifty-one percent of your inheritance.”
“Probably would have left him all of it, if not for the fact that my mother forbade it. Nathan has always been an extremely good fake son. He and my father spent years huddled over drawing tables together.”
“A very good fake son,” the Duke agreed. “Tell me again why you don’t want him shipped out to sea?”
“And leave me with the hideous investor?”
“What hideous investor?”
“Whichever one he finds, of course. He shall have to sell his shares to leave for such an extended period of time because, despite the modern movements of our day, a woman still cannot control a company with active government contracts, which means that I will be left at the mercy of the managers and a banker in a bowler, for certain.”
“A grim thought.”
“All so that Nathan can build airships directly for the Royal Navy, thus undermining Sinclair’s position as their chief shipping contractor.”
“Do you honestly believe that is his plan? A bit Machiavellian for someone with so few social graces, is it not?”
“He builds airships. That’s what he does.”
“But surely—”
“I’ve thought it all through. Leaving Sinclair would only make sense if he were planning to destroy us, to build his airships for someone else and put us out of business altogether.”
“Rather exhausting.”
“He’s inexhaustible, I assure you.”
“I wasn’t actually referring to him.”
“Unless the Royal Navy wants Sinclair and all of its support flights to stop running immediately, they need to leave Nathan with me. They can find a designer of their own.”
“So this is a fight you expect to win?”
“Yes.”
“I do so admire ambition in a woman of means. It demonstrates an ability to ignore the usefulness of having everything one could ever want.”
“I’m not the only person of means on this ship, your gr
ace.”
He conceded that with a resigned noise, something between a sigh and a groan. “True, but I have a rather vested interest in keeping the Sultans in their own hemisphere.”
“Which is?”
“Oh, dear girl, don’t you know? They cheat at cards. And I’m deathly allergic to tassels. They look terrible on me.”
They shared a warm look, a thinly disguised understanding that the danger was far more serious than either of them truly wanted to admit.
Gilda pursed her lips. “I’ll settle the matter of Nathan’s contract in no time at all. A few days, at the most. We’ll be flying as usual, ship shape at Sinclair, keeping everything in check. This will all be sorted out quickly.”
“What lovely resolve.” The Duke signaled the attendant. “We should christen such a bold battle plan with something far stronger than this watery champagne, don’t you agree?”
Gilda smiled and leaned forward against the table, catching Nathan’s disapproving scowl from across the room. “The stronger, the better, your grace. You, of all people, know how much I enjoy testing my constitution with expensive vices.”
The Duke. The goddamn Duke and that half-wit, girlish look she gave him that shut out the rest of the world, acknowledging only the two of them as a pair of famous aristocrats in a room full of lesser beings.
Nathan glared at the shadows cast along the ceiling, knowing that he had to stop this, pull the image from his mind, the way he had so many times before. After all, this is exactly what she wanted, what she’d come for. She’d be delighted to know he couldn’t sleep, tortured not by the memory of the shuttle hurtling to its own destruction, or the thought that she might have gone with it, but by the image of the Duke’s slithering caresses on her skin, his thin, pale lips sucking on her breasts.
Nathan shut his eyes, reaching up to press his palms against them in frustration. Stop. Stop. Stop. After this, you’re free. No more teasing. No more insults. No more petty manipulations. She’ll be on her own. Daddy’s spoiled little girl left to fend for herself.
He begged forgiveness, yet again, of Sinclair’s ghost for that, knowing full well how he’d failed the old man. Though it had never been said outright, he’d understood the obligation that had been passed to him along with the controlling share of Sinclair Airship.
Save the company from Gilda. Save Gilda from herself.
When he was younger, and completely besotted with her, he’d imagined himself doing just that, becoming the new visionary, the pillar that both father and daughter seemed to yearn for. But that was before he’d compromised himself, and Gilda, in ways poor Sinclair had never discovered. And before he knew how completely ruthless she could be.
He hissed through his teeth, wondering if he’d ever really be rid of her, no matter how much time or distance he put between them. She was part of him now, the lessons she’d taught so well, manifesting in his quick anger, his skepticism and distrust—attributes once so unfamiliar to the hopeless dreamer his mother had raised.
A loud thump issued outside his door, followed by a bright spill of laughter, its tone giddy and drunk.
He let his hands fall from his eyes.
“Mr. Lanchard,” Gilda’s voice rose from the other side of the door, her tone as sweet as an angel’s. “I suppose you’re hiding in there, sulking the night away. You’ve become a terrible boor. Did you hear me? You did. I know you did. A boor! You refused to even say hello to the Duke, and I object very much to that, because he is such a dear friend. He and I get along famously and I think he would order an airship just to please me. He concerns himself with pleasing me, not like some boors I know, who insist on sitting in the dark and crying themselves to sleep—”
He cursed in disbelief and rolled off the bed, swinging the door open in anger. Gilda fell through the doorway and landed at his feet. Her hair was loose, the onyx buttons of her jacket undone at the collar, leaving a pale slip of her neck exposed. She looked up at him in surprise, her blue eyes widening, her lips parted and shining. “Good Lord, Nate, when did you start sleeping nude?”
Nathan slammed the door shut, pitching the small, windowless room into darkness.
He was absolutely stunning. A shadow image of him remained standing, burned in her mind, even as the light disappeared. She hadn’t held his gaze for more than a second, her attention straying from the angry green of his eyes to the lean muscle in his shoulders, following his long, tight waist down to narrow hips and strong, well-formed legs…the full and heavy cast of shadows between them nearly breathtaking.
She still couldn’t quite believe it. Nathan was always dressed in a dark suit, a drab mechanics outfit, or other horrid use of fabric and thread, only to suddenly appear far superior to the most impeccably dressed men she’d ever known while caught in the act of trying to sleep.
“You demanded an audience,” he said coldly.
“And I forgot to recommend attire?”
“Nothing you haven’t seen before.”
“Not entirely true. The last time I saw you, sans garments of any kind, you were…smaller.”
“Younger.”
“And also smaller, university bound, as my father’s favored pet, a skinny boy with charcoal stained fingers and sleek, alabaster skin.”
“Irresistible, in other words.”
“Oh come now, you act as if you were the one who was ruined.”
Nathan swore under his breath and walked past her, a looming shadow outlined by the thin light filtering under the door. He sat on the bed and leaned forward, slow with exhaustion as he collected his clothing from the floor. His hair was loose, sable strands of it brushing along his neck, adding a darker dimension to an expression she couldn’t quite make out.
Not that it mattered. He was simply brooding again, unhappy for a myriad of Nathan-esque reasons she would never completely understand. Had she abused him over the years? Well, slightly perhaps, but he’d been rewarded for all his discomforts, hadn’t he? He’d received the best education money could buy, studying at the best university, under the Great Inventor himself, at her father’s insistence. He’d received a fine estate, and wealth beyond the dreams of most men, simply because he modeled himself as the perfect son, and his mother had been younger and prettier than her own.
God knew, beauty was the true strength of the Lanchard family, and the son certainly resembled the mother, with the same striking green eyes and dark, lustrous hair. It had been beauty enough to steal a kingdom, destroy the love of a lawful wife and cast a rightful daughter in shadow.
She glared at him, searching for the slightest hint of remorse and finding no sign of it. “So this is how you’ve decided to repay the old man? Discard everything he built, everything he invested in you, just so you can play at sandcastles of your own?”
“Play at sandcastles,” he repeated, his voice a cold hiss in the dark. “Yes, that’s exactly right. Nothing escapes you, does it?”
“You’re still angry about the shuttle.”
“Another brilliant stroke of insight.”
“It saved lives.”
“If you had come five hours later, the sea would have been calm.”
“Five hours later those men might have been dead.”
“We’re at war, Gilda. Men die every hour of every day. If we throw away our prototypes, they’ll die even faster in the future.”
“You do not have to explain war to me.”
“It would be helpful if someone did. Oh, you’re a creature of destruction, I’ll grant you that, but it’s a far prettier version than what appears in those bloody trenches out there, in the burned-out buildings and fields of corpses. What would you know of that? You take your pleasure in petty games and public seductions, punishing any man that ever crossed your path. That’s certainly war of a sort, though one wonders who you think the enemy is, or perhaps you simply don’t care.”
She narrowed her gaze, refusing to be cut down by this man, of all men. “If I am a harlot at war, sir, I think we might agree
that at least I am not a profiteer. I would have had to take lessons from your mother for that.”
For a moment, he was terrifyingly silent, his anger burning hot between them, a solid presence darker than any shade of night.
“Get out,” he said finally.
Gilda knew that she should. It would be a simple matter to rise quietly from the floor and leave without a word. It was the wisest course, the safest course, surely.
But then, by God, it felt good to finally say what needed to be said between them. If he wanted to scream back at her, then so be it. Let him rise up and yell at the top of his lungs, prove his own flawed humanity for once, lose the shining veneer of Nathan the perfect son, the perfect engineer, a man with no petty games or public seductions to make his life anything other than the same colorless gray, day after day.
Stop living in denial of what you are, Nate. A man who inherited a fortune because his mother chose to whore herself to a rich aristocrat, a man with no right to call himself Lord Sinclair’s heir, no right to act as my judge, or my keeper… Not after everything you’ve taken from me.
She shook her head, her tone low and vindictive. “I must admit, I have often wondered how your real father, the one who died in those horrible bloody trenches, would have cared for his replacement in your mother’s bed, an old man with a wife and child of his own.”
“That’s it.” He was on his feet, grabbing her by the arm and pulling her up from the floor, his restraint frayed to its last thread.
He was furious, so deeply furious, his breath a vicious hiss through his teeth, his fingers biting into her skin as he half-carried her to the door. The warm distortion of the brandy offered no apologies, no regret, only satisfaction that a defensive wall had been breached and no quarter taken.
The Aviator Page 2