He glanced over his shoulder but didn’t quite look at her as he reached the bottom stair, pushed open a door, and led them onto the polished blond deck of the open-air promenade. “You like telling other people what to do, don’t you?”
“Well, who doesn’t?” A gust of night caused her to shiver. Strangely, though the air seemed very still, it had energy. Not like sea spray close to land—which always had a whiff of rot—but instead a kind of dense, clean-smelling weight. Beyond the railings, she could see almost nothing. That heavy air crept in like a spirit. “I like things done right. And sometimes,” she went on, “that means telling other people what to do.”
“You said you wanted adventure,” he replied simply.
She almost smiled at that. “Did I? Maybe. But I don’t remember asking you to take me on one.”
“Yes, I know. You only wanted to see the map room. But you were very eloquent regarding what ladies of your kind are allowed to do, and what they are not. I thought we’d go the way we are least likely to see the first-class diners coming in late for dinner.”
“Oh.” She resisted thanking him for thinking of that, but did sort of nod a little in agreement.
“That, and . . . I wanted to feel this weather. Isn’t it something?”
Vida gazed out. “I can’t see a thing.”
“Not much, I’ll give you that. But be quiet, and see if you don’t get a sense of what’s out there.”
He closed his eyes, and his face assumed a beatific expression. Vida narrowed her eyes, and wondered what sort of mystical nonsense this was. Nonsense, surely. And yet before she could successfully dismiss his behavior, she did get a hint of what a vast mystery surrounded them. Felt what a colossus she rode over the watery plain, how they rocked gently on their forward path, giving in to a motion that was much larger than any of them and dwarfed even the mighty Princess. Before she could help it, her eyes had closed, too. She did not so much hear as experience in a gentle vibration that originated between her toes and rose up the backs of her legs the enormous engines of the ship, the impact of the wind as it slid around the ship’s high walls, and the waves, always shifting, way down below.
When she opened her eyes, Sal was staring at her with his dark, impenetrable gaze, and she remembered that this might all be some kind of trick.
“It’s bad weather out there,” he said, turning on his heel and leading them on.
She almost laughed. “You must be joking. It’s still as the dead.”
“Didn’t you know that the calmest place is at the heart of the storm?”
“Are you speaking some sort of riddle?”
“No, I am being very literal. You know how, when you are sitting in a room, the hot air rises to the ceiling, and so you tend to feel a draft around your feet?”
“Yes, I suppose that’s true.”
“Well, the atmosphere is the same—hot air warmed by a patch of sea rises, and cold air rushes under it as wind. But of course we are not in a little room anymore, we are talking about the wide, watery Earth, and as Earth turns, so the atmosphere turns, so that the system of weather begins to spiral. Meanwhile the hot air is cooled on high, its moisture becomes rain, the whole thing takes on tremendous energy, the wind begins to whip around the warm center, so fast it forms a kind of protective wall, a kind of hollow tunnel, and in that tunnel there is no wind, no rain, and things seem to be calm.”
For the first time on this voyage her chest tightened—was that feeling fear? She was not often afraid, but guessed that’s what the sensation of fear would be like. “Are you saying that we are in the middle of a typhoon?”
“No, no.” And his easy, willowy manner assured her that they were in no danger. “There is a big storm out there. But a typhoon—if it is a typhoon—moves very slowly, and a ship—well, a ship of this size can’t move fast exactly, but it can certainly get out of the way of a typhoon if the captain sees it in time. That’s why there’s a watch all day and all night. If they see bad weather, it is almost always possible to avoid it by changing course early.”
Vida stared out at that grayness, wishing she could see into it, that she could see all the way to the horizon. Her heart was beating in such a steady, intense way. But for some moments she felt oddly disinclined to move her feet. Ordinarily her evening clothes, once put on, seemed no less a part of her than her hair, her fingernails. And yet as she lingered, the night air seemed to slip in beneath the fabric, separating her from all that silk, lace, boning, ribbon, and she became keenly aware of her skin. It tingled with excitement.
“We should hurry,” Sal said. “Once Fitz and the captain have determined the course, he will most likely have dinner in the map room, so if you want to see it before he gets there, we had better hurry.”
“Oh—” A funny little moment followed in which she wasn’t sure what he meant. She shivered, and it came back to her—he really thought she was that curious about a map room. “Yes, of course.” The loveliness of weather, of moisture, of the air so suggestive of things to come, renewed her pleasant prospect of Fitz, of knowing more about him, of making him hers. What could it hurt to know what went on in his private lair? Anyway, she enjoyed this sneaking, this little bit of mystery.
“Come on,” Sal said, and she followed.
They went quickly now, up and down stairs and into the hall where a few days ago she had schemed, hesitated, and flopped. Sal did not hesitate now. He leaned against the door and pushed it open with his shoulder.
They both jumped a little in surprise when they saw the female figure.
Vida’s mind was slow to catch up—there was supposed to be no one here. But there was someone here. A woman was here, with eyes wide in surprise to match Vida’s own, framed in the doorway, blocking their path.
The woman’s hand was lifted, her arm extended as though she had been about to grab the doorknob, as though she had been about to leave the map room Vida was trying to go into. The woman’s beautiful fair hair was spilling over the front of her dress. Her cheeks were ruddy with some feeling that Vida did not like. She made an exclamation, somewhere between an “Oh!” and an “Ahhh . . . ,” flat at first and then soaring upward in surprise.
“Who’s there?” barked a man’s voice, deeper within, at about the same time that Vida’s mind put together that this was Camilla, who she had found so beautiful earlier on the deck.
A little hope burst through Vida and died. For a minute she had thought maybe it wasn’t Fitzhugh; maybe it was the brother who looked so like him. And then she knew that wasn’t the case. It was Fitzhugh. Sal’s long body stepped sideways to block her view. She tried to see around him, though she was at the same time contending with a strong urge to turn and run away.
“Fitz?” Sal’s voice was pinched with confusion. “I’m sorry,” he said, backing away. “I didn’t think . . .”
“Sal—” Fitz was saying as he came out of a dark corner into the illuminated part of the room. His hair was as polished as usual, and he was dressed for dinner in white tie and tails, and he was comporting himself with the sureness that made him so winning to newspaper columnists and the ladies who read those columns. “I asked you to see to Miss Hazzard.”