“Bonny, she is.” The man ignored Casper to lean across the table. He was ruggedly handsome and knew it, probably a good fighter, with broad shoulders and huge hands. Another predator. I batted my eyelashes at him, feigning naive curiosity. His long lips curled into a knowing smile.
“Freesia’s full of monsters, wee thing. You’ll go there to watch a Blud Baron’s spawn, and they’ll eat you right up. Wouldn’t you rather be a lord’s mistress? Nice little cottage in Glasgow, weekly allowance, pretty dresses? I won’t use ye too hard. Eh?”
I heard a cracking noise and looked over to find Casper’s hands flexing, his teeth bared. Before I could decide how to extricate myself from my first proposal, Casper leaned over and whispered something into his ear.
“Perhaps another time, lass.” The man scooted his chair back abruptly and found a different seat at the other end of the table.
“What did you say to him?” I whispered to Casper.
“None of your—”
“—goddamn business,” I finished for him with a sigh.
“Exactly, yes,” he said in a dignified voice as the table went quiet.
Miss May posed dramatically in the doorway. After slamming it shut, she swaggered into the room and to the head of the table. She was dressed as a lady pirate, with the most covering bits of her costume missing. She swung one booted foot up onto her chair, letting the fluttering petticoats drip from her knee and offering a view that made me cough and look away.
“Welcome, all, to the Airship Maybuck, the world’s first and best floating pleasure ship. Everything on this boat is for sale, at a price. You know the rules, or you wouldn’t have made it past the dock. Pay for what you take. Mind your manners. And no fighting. Break a rule, and you’ll find yourself in the brig or thrown overboard. Until then, enjoy yourself. We’re here for your pleasure.”
Her grin made it very clear that it was somewhat for her pleasure, too. Everyone cheered, and the men managed somehow to untangle their limbs from the ladies long enough to raise a toast of wine to the ship’s captain. She raised her glass in return, and the little girls in their white gowns filed in through the door with platters of food that I couldn’t identify. It was all meat or trash to me, but there was a lot of it.
Just then, I noticed that the pretty girl carrying a smallish pig was none other than Keen. In a diaphanous white gown, with her hair and face washed, she was like an angel, all huge brown eyes and long lashes and that mischievous grin that made me want to drain her and then strangle her for being so foolish.
Casper stiffened beside me, grabbing her wrist as she set down the piglet with a chaste curtsy.
“What are you playing at?” he hissed.
She yanked her arm back. “I make my own choices. And you’re not my dad.” She offered him a blinding smile and scampered out the door. A hand from the crowd reached out to smack her on the rump, and I felt Casper shaking with anger beside me.
“What’s a dad?” I whispered.
He put his head in his hands, speaking quickly and so low I had to lean close to hear him.
“Dad means father. She thinks I act too much like her father. But she forgets what a dangerous world this is. She’s too young to be here. I shouldn’t have brought her along.”
“Where are her real parents? Why is it your business, what she does?”
“You have no idea what you’re talking about.”
“I know that if she’s over fourteen, there’s nothing you can do.”
“There’s always something I can do.”
He reached into his waistcoat and pulled out a silver flask, which he slopped into his red wine in such a way as to obscure the contents. Stronger liquor, perhaps? Laudanum? A potion? But he didn’t have the eyes of an opium addict—our old butler had had that look, shortly before my mother staked him for incompetence. There were so many smells in the room, so much skin scent in the air, that I didn’t have a hope of puzzling out his secret ingredient.
“Oi, Maestro!” Miss May lounged back in her chair and grinned at Casper. She held up her own glass of deep burgundy wine. “To an excellent bargain.”
He toasted her in return and drank deeply before pouring himself another glass.
Casper and I spent the rest of the meal in our own pool of silence, a tiny island of tension amid the great, lashing waves of flesh and gluttony. He finished his glass of wine and swirled the last drops of deep maroon around and around in his goblet.
He never ate a bite.
The dinner didn’t come to an end so much as the food was sampled and abandoned for other needs. The wine still flowed, though, and the party only became more animated as Keen and the other girls carried platters out to make space. When an elderly gentleman with a curled mustache pulled one of the girls into his lap and yanked down the sheer fabric above her corset to expose pierced nipples, Casper bolted up from his seat.
“Leaving so soon?” Miss May murmured sweetly, her ruby lips against a flushed young man’s ear.
“My niece is unaccustomed to such goings-on.” Casper pulled me behind him, attempting to drag me around the table toward the door.
Without really thinking, I said, “But, Uncle, I think this could be quite educational.”
Quite honestly, I was intrigued. I knew that my mother had had her pets, that her marriage to my father was mostly a political alliance. And of course, that he truly had been my father was in question, if you believed certain circles. But what sport occurred at the Ice Palace occurred behind firmly closed and locked doors. I’d never seen a live naked woman’s body, other than my own. And I’d never seen what lay under a man’s many layers of clothes.
The old man shifted the half-dressed, laughing girl and fussed with his buttons, and I leaned over in amazement, angling to see more. With a snarl, Casper lifted me around the waist and carried me out of the room past the giggling, moaning guests and their quickly disappearing clothing.
He slammed the door and dropped me to the deck, steering me down the hall by my arm.
“Well, that was a little awkward of you, Uncle.” I tripped, trying to keep up with him. “Things were just getting interesting.”
“We may be hitching a ride on a floating whorehouse, but that doesn’t mean I’m going to stand around and watch you be utterly . . .”
I watched him wince, fighting for the right word.
“Debased? Spoiled? Scandalized? Ruined?” I smirked. “Informed?”
“Let’s just say that those men aren’t used to being told no, and that room is going to get a lot worse.” And then his face went totally white, and he ran a hand through his hair. “Keen. Dear God. I left the poor girl in there. We’ve got to go find her.” He started to walk back down the hall, but I didn’t move, and he soon turned back with worry in his eyes. “Ahna, come on. It will only be a moment.”
“I’m going back to the room. I can take care of myself.” I flashed my fangs and huffed. Being told what to do rankled, and I badly needed a vial of blood.
He stepped closer, one hand around my upper arm and his hair brushing my cheek. “That’s the thing, though. If they find out what you are, who you are, the worst won’t be getting thrown off this boat. They could ransom you, punish you, chain you up. Torture you.” He shook his head. “Anything. Please just come with me now. Don’t make me worry for you both.”
“I’m . . . you . . .” It was hard to concentrate, being so close to him. “You don’t have to worry for me. The men are all in that room and busy. There is nothing to fear out here.”
“You’re right . . . but you might be wrong. Just get back to the room and lock the door. I’ll hurry.”
He released me and stormed down the hall, already intent on his next errand. I took the rare chance to admire his backside in the tight breeches and the way his coppery hair floated behind him, lit by the orange lamps. He really was a fine physical specimen, whatever he was. What had truly captured my attention, though, had been the look in his eyes and the purpose in his stride. He wasn’t just protecting his meal ticket—he really was afraid for me, the predator who had promised to put his head on a pike. And the only reason he was willing to leave me alone was to go save the insolent young girl who had recently accused him of acting too much like her father. No matter what Casper’s sharp words might have said, he honestly cared about us both. I was annoyed—but oddly touched.
I turned back to creep down the long hall, taking time to read the plaques by each door. The Leather Room. The Brocade Room. The Silk Room. The Damask Room. All fabrics, and lush ones. Did each girl have her own room, I wondered, or were they at the mercy of any wealthy passenger who beckoned? And who would normally have used our chamber, the Velvet Room?
I was so interested in my surroundings that I didn’t notice the man waiting in the shadows until he was close enough to stroke my cheek.
“Are you lost, little snowbird?”
It took every ounce of self-control I had not to hiss, let my shaking hands curl into talons, and rip into him. Instead, I stepped back and put my hands in front of me in a gesture of supplication that I’d seen frightened maids use when my mother was on a rampage. I blinked, opening my eyes wide, and simpered at him.
My immediate impression was of an ermine in the summer, small and dark and deft. But his smile was after something more carnal than meat, and his sharp teeth matched my own. A Bludman—but for some reason, I couldn’t smell him, and that scared me even more.
“Please, good sir. I am a maid and a passenger here, not one of . . . not a . . .” I stumbled over the word. What would a girl call a whore if she didn’t know what a whore was?
“Not a lady of the night?” His snicker was teasing, but I could hear an accent under the words. I looked more closely.
He wasn’t dressed like the other men on the boat, in clothes that showed status and wealth. Aside from eyes so light they were nearly white, everything about him was shadowy, down to the leather that held all of his weapons and the kohl ringing his eyes. He didn’t seem to belong there at all, and that’s what made unfamiliar fear trickle down my spine.