He raised his eyes from the papers to meet hers and Elliot promptly snapped her mouth shut. "Tomorrow," he repeated.
Twenty.
"YOU SHOULD LEAVE."
Dee blew some hair out of her eyes and exchanged the full bucket of milk for an empty one before leaning back under the cow. "And leave Jef behind? Your father wouldn"t like it either way, I"d wager. Nor me running off with one of his new Posts hiding in my belly."
Elliot had come to the new, makeshift dairy first thing that morning hoping to catch Dee before the shifts changed. Around them, the Reduced dairymaids were hard at work, but there were no other Posts within earshot when Elliot delivered her father"s decree. "My father hardly cares if Jef"s a Post, nor you, nor your baby. He wouldn"t be confining you to the birthing house if he did." Elliot crouched down beside Dee. "You can"t stay there, Dee. You have a home . . . a family."
"But it"s okay for Reduced women to stay there for a year, confined to their beds like animals in a cage?" Dee didn"t look up from her milking. "The birthing house is torture for everyone, Elliot, not just Posts. You know that, too, or you wouldn"t have so carefully protected Ro all these years."
Elliot flinched. "You think I"m being cruel to the Reduced?"
"I think the world is cruel to them," Dee said. "Because the world is a cruel place. This estate is a cruel place, but there are other places far more cruel."
Like Andromeda"s old estate. Like the dangerous areas of the Post enclaves. Yes, there were places worse than the North estate, but many of the North Posts were willing to risk it, anyway. Why wasn"t Dee?
Dee leaned back and puffed out a misty breath. The frost had come, late last night, blanketing the lawns and roofs of the estate in silver. The day promised to be gorgeous, but it was still too early for the sun to break through the mist. "Speaking of cruelty to the Reduced, what"s this I hear about Benedict North?"
"He"s come back," Elliot replied. "And father brought him."
"Will wonders never cease." Dee"s eyes narrowed. "What do you think it means? Is your father planning on handing over his inheritance?"
Elliot gave her friend a skeptical look. They both knew Baron North too well for that. But Benedict was aware of what he was owed. "Too early to tell what my father has planned."
Dee considered this for a moment. "Elliot, what if I did as he said? Go there for a bit, wait until his attention is elsewhere, come back? If we"re agreed that your father is only doing this because of the concert or because of our relationship . . . well, he"ll find something else to occupy his thoughts soon enough. It"s happened before. And if he"s concerned about Benedict, I don"t want my defiance to become a scapegoat for his frustration."
"Or we could tell him you went in, and really you could go . . . elsewhere."
"Else . . . where?"
"The Grove estate. Or wherever it is Thom has gone."
"Elliot . . . ," Dee said in warning.
"Or what about asking the Innovations?" Elliot suggested. "We could talk to Felicia. I know she would help us."
Dee looked skeptical.
"They aren"t all like . . . him."
"Oh, don"t you worry about Captain Malakai Wentforth," said Dee. "He"s been all apologies this morning. Dropped by my cottage at dawn, and he"s been helping Gill with some of his mechanical difficulties for the past few hours."
"He"s been what?" Elliot asked in disbelief.
"Amazingly contrite. I think he knows he was over the line last night. Maybe he"d had too much cider."
"The Groves" cider isn"t that strong."
"Well then, maybe he just realized it"s a good deal harder to defend his behavior in front of people who actually know you than it was to make up lies for that Phoenix girl. Either way, I expect he"ll be coming by to apologize to you any time now."
Elliot rubbed her wrists where Kai had grabbed her at the concert. "I think not." He may have insulted the North Posts last night, but he had nothing against Gill or Dee personally. He was angry at Elliot.
And he"d spent years with Andromeda Phoenix, who had a much more concrete reason to hate Luddites. Their friendship had fanned his anger into hatred.
"As for throwing myself at the Innovations," Dee continued, "that"s a nonstarter. We shouldn"t risk their relationship with your father."
"He wouldn"t have to know where you were." But as soon as the words were out of her mouth, Elliot understood. This was just like with Thom. No one could know. Certainly not Elliot. "Dee-"
The older woman wiped her hands off on her skirt and stood. "This conversation is over, Elliot. I"m under your father"s authority, not yours. My choices are to follow his rules or leave."
"You know that"s not true. We"ve been breaking his rules for years, you and I."
But Dee ignored that. "If I leave, I endanger Jef."
"If you stay in the birthing house, how can you protect him?"
"If you disobey your father"s direct orders, you can"t protect him if something goes wrong." Dee sighed, and when she spoke again, her voice had a hitch in it. "And I need you to be able to do that, Elliot. Can"t you understand?"
"I"m not a child anymore," Elliot cried. "I can protect you both."
"We"re done talking about this. I"ve made up my mind." Dee smacked the cow on the rump and it moved back into its stall.
"So you make up your mind and that"s it? It"s done?" Elliot lifted her chin.
"Don"t you give me that look, Elliot North. That haughty, Luddite look of yours. Kai wasn"t wrong about everything, you know. I know I can leave if I want. I knew that three years ago. I chose not to then, and I make the same choice now."
Elliot swallowed until her eyes stopped burning. "But why?"
"I just gave you half a dozen reasons." Dee sighed again. "Fine. I"m willing to compromise. If this doesn"t blow over by the time I have this baby, you are free to break me out of the birthing house. I"ll leave, and I"ll take my family, and you won"t have to worry about us anymore."
That wasn"t true. She"d worried about Kai for four years. And with more Posts leaving the estate, she"d worry about the fate of the farm as well. But it was all she would get from Dee.
"Enough of this," Dee said. "Shift change is coming. Let"s go see if Gill and the young captain have made any progress on that tractor. I want to be there when he apologizes to you."
"Don"t hold your breath," Elliot replied. "It"s not good for the baby."
KAI AND GILL WERE finished by the time Dee and Elliot arrived, and judging from their moods, they"d completely forgotten their argument the previous evening. Gill was laughing and slapping Kai on the back as the tractor hummed and sputtered away. Kai wore his sleeves pulled up and a grin Elliot hadn"t seen in four years. It stopped her in her tracks. She feared coming closer, dreaded being the reason for the smile to vanish from his face.
Despite the previous night"s frost, the morning had turned unseasonably warm for winter, helped along somewhat by the bright sun and the deep blue of the cloudless sky. Much of the barnyard had turned to mud as the heat softened the frost, but Kai looked as if he"d escaped the worst of it, even if he had been on the ground beneath the machine.
"Ladies!" Gill called. "The mechanic"s triumphant return!" He affected a flourished bow worthy of any Luddite lord, and Dee laughed and clapped. Kai still grinned, though once again he was not looking at Elliot.
"Thank you," she said to him nevertheless. "I"m afraid I never had the skill you did with this old hunk of junk."
He turned to grab his velvet jacket off a hook. "Yes, well. It was the least I could do."
"After . . . ?" Dee prompted, as Elliot wondered anew why there was no convenient sinkhole in the barnyard she could vanish into.
"After my rudeness last night," said Kai, doing up the b.u.t.tons on his jacket. His hair covered his eyes as he spoke. "I never should have interrupted the festivities in that way."
"Really?" Dee crossed her arms. "That"s all you"re sorry about?"
"Dee-" Elliot murmured.
"Not all." Kai lifted his head and looked at Elliot at last.
Twenty-one.
HIS EYES SEEMED TO bore right through her again, and Elliot had to ball her hands into fists to keep them from trembling. Had she been wrong last night, at the party? Had they always been like this? In her myriad memories of Kai, why could she not recall the strangeness in his clear black eyes? Was it the stark comparison between the handsome captain he was now and the grimy mechanic she"d once loved? Or was it that now she feared meeting his eyes and seeing his hatred and disdain of her reflected in their depths?
"I"m sorry I implied that Elliot doesn"t care about the Posts on her property."
As apologies went, his was pretty pale, yet her name on his tongue warmed her more than the morning sun. Where everything had changed, this at least was the same. Three syllables, and three thousand memories.
But Kai wasn"t done. "It was wrong of me to say that, and it"s untrue. I think she cares about them very much."
For a moment, she thought he"d say more and braced herself for the inevitable put-down. But it never came, as he turned toward the sound of sun-carts approaching. A moment later, Andromeda and Donovan crested the hill with Olivia and Horatio in the pa.s.senger seats.
"We"re going to the dunes," Olivia announced when they arrived. "I"d like to take advantage of the weather before it gets cold again."
"You mean you"d like to take advantage of the Fleet"s sun-carts on the dunes," Horatio corrected.
Olivia blushed, very prettily, but recovered herself quickly. "Malakai, you must come along. And Elliot, too."
"I have work," Elliot said automatically. She could happily live out the rest of her days without serving as witness to Olivia and Kai"s courtship.
"We all have work," said Horatio. "Except for my sister, lady of leisure that she is. She"s a bad influence."
Olivia laughed, and Elliot reminded herself again that the girl was not to blame for the pain in her heart.
"Come have a picnic with us," Horatio said. "You left our party so quickly yesterday that I didn"t even get the chance to dance with you."
"You expect to dance on the dunes?"
Horatio chuckled. "I"m going instead of tending to my farm. If you don"t come, you"ll make me look bad."
His farm was not in such desperate shape. He had no broken tractors, and he had plenty of Posts to fill in when he wanted a day off. But Elliot would never say that aloud. She was still a North, and had too much pride for that.
"Go," said Dee. "The dairy is running smoothly, and I can"t think of anything else that needs your hand this afternoon."
Elliot narrowed her eyes. "You"re trying to get rid of me so I can"t protest your move." She had half a mind to appeal to Kai on the issue-she knew he hated the birthing house as much as she did. But when she turned to him, he"d already draped his hands on the overhead rails of the sun-cart that carried Olivia and leaned down to listen to her. His attention was not on Elliot or Dee, or the concerns of the North estate. She couldn"t expect him as her ally.
"Should we invite Tatiana?" Olivia asked.
"Tatiana"s busy this morning," Elliot said. "She"s entertaining my cousin, who came to the estate with my father last night."
Kai stiffened. "Benedict North has returned to the estate?"
"Do you know him?" asked Horatio. "We"ve never met, but I hear he"s been living in a Post enclave."
Kai"s forehead furrowed, and his glance in Elliot"s direction was so quick she almost missed it. "I haven"t seen him in years."
"We don"t have enough room in the carts," Andromeda said firmly. "Come on, let"s go."
Perhaps Andromeda wasn"t so bad, Elliot thought. She was saving her from having to spend the day with her sister.
In a few minutes it was all decided, and they set off for the dunes. Donovan was letting Horatio drive his cart, and Elliot joined their party, while Andromeda climbed in the back of her cart to let Kai take the driver"s seat next to Olivia. It was only once they were on the road that Elliot realized there were two extra seats. No doubt Andromeda didn"t want to be outnumbered by Luddites.
The dunes lay to the north even of the Boatwright estate, where the island grew thin and pointed like an arrow into the vast expanse of the sea. There was nothing but beach out here-no houses, no fields, no sign of civilization at all. In ancient times, this beach had been preserved as a religious artifact. The original settlers of the island had deemed it a home for the spirits, but no one believed that anymore. Indeed, wild places were the only ones truly free of spirits. All the real ghosts lived farther south, in the sh.e.l.ls of the burned-out cities that had once belonged to the Lost. The Boatwright house and the shipyard was the closest anyone had gotten to building out here. The Boatwright family kept the cliffs mostly pristine in reverence of an ancestry that stretched back long before the Reduction.
"What beautiful country," Donovan said. "It reminds me very much of some of the wild islands we discovered on our explorations."
"That makes sense," said Elliot. "Once upon a time, these lands were home to herds of wild horses. Was this what it looked like on the island where you found the Innovation horses?"
Donovan looked at his hands. "I was not on that particular voyage. It was from . . . before I joined the Fleet."
"Still, you must have seen many spectacular sights. Things no one else has witnessed in hundreds of years."
"Yes," Donovan replied, his tone stiff, and too late, Elliot remembered his song from the concert. He had seen them, and he now regretted every moment he"d spent away from Sophia.
"That was a very beautiful song you gave us last night," she said. "I am told that . . . I am very sorry for your loss."
"Thank you," said Donovan. "There are days that go by now where I"m fine. Where I believe that everything is better, and I can go through my day without thinking of her every second. But it"s almost worse after that. For then, when the memories do return, they bring with them remorse for having ever forgotten her."
"You haven"t forgotten her," Elliot said, "just because a few minutes or days or eventually weeks go by without having your grief in the forefront of your thoughts. She wouldn"t like it if you dwelled only on your sadness."
"You say this from experience in loss?" Donovan replied.
"Yes. I lost my mother four years ago." And she"d also lost Kai. Neither person had been far from her thoughts in the ensuing years. But Kai had lingered more, because she knew he was out there somewhere. Her mother only lived in her heart. "And I try to honor her memory by doing what I know she would have done had she survived. But if I ever forget her, momentarily, I don"t berate myself when I am reminded. She can"t be the only thing I ever think of, or I"d be catatonic, as unable to cope as I was the day I lost her."
"Ah, there you have it. I am unable to cope. I am not a credit to the Cloud Fleet at present. I write sad songs, but I haven"t been working much on our ship."
"You will move past this," she said.
He gave her a pitiful smile. "I don"t think so. Your mother, I am sure, was taken before her time, but she was a grown woman. She had made a life, she had grown children in you and your sister. Sophia died so young-all of her potential was wasted."