Ring of Fire III(16)

Weaver looked away, toward the work being done to ready the airship. The envelope was now beginning to fill out completely, as the hot air produced by the burners did its work.

The moon was almost directly behind her, so her profile was well-illuminated. She had a short, blunt nose, above lips that were slightly imbalanced. Her lower lip was thin; the upper, rather fleshy. Her chin was round, as were her cheeks. Like Böcler himself, Weaver was someone who would constantly tend to be plump.

Her figure, also well-illuminated, was much like her face. Not obese, certainly; but not at all slim, either. She was attractive, in a modest sort of way, but not a woman anyone would consider a beauty. Or even particularly pretty.

Böcler felt a sudden, powerful attraction to the American. He was taken completely off-guard. What had triggered that impulse?

He was a bit alarmed, too. He was only twenty-five years old. A rich man’s son or a nobleman would contemplate marriage at such an early age, but someone from Johann Heinrich’s modest origins would not be able to sustain a household until he was in his late twenties or early thirties. He had no business getting interested in a woman yet. Any woman, much less an up-timer.

The thought of pursuing a mere dalliance never even occurred to him. A considerable number of people—most people, truth be told—thought Böcler was a prude. But at least he could claim the virtues of prissiness as well the vices. He was not a man who would toy with anyone’s affections.

* * *

Bonnie Weaver wasn’t thinking of the man next to her at all. Her concentration was on the man tending the burner that was filling the airship’s envelope.

Stefano Franchetti. Slender, dapper in a commoner’s sort of way, quick-witted; altogether charming.

He reminded her a lot of Larry Wild. The reminder drew her to him and repelled her at the same time.

Bonnie and Larry hadn’t exactly been involved, but they’d been very close to it when the Ostend War started and he went off to fight the Danish fleet attacking Wismar. He’d been killed in that battle, when his rocket boat attacked the enemy ships.

Foolishly, in hindsight, Bonnie had probed hard and long to find out exactly how he’d been killed. When she finally learned, she wished she hadn’t. Cut in half—literally, cut in half—by a cannonball. They never found any part of his body. The upper half had been sent flying into the sea, where it would have long ago been eaten by sea life. The lower half had stayed in the rocket boat, but the boat itself had blown up a short time later when it rammed one of the Danish warships.

October 7, 1633. More than two years had gone by since then, but she still had nightmares about it sometimes; even flashbacks to something she’d never actually seen.

The worst of it was that she couldn’t grieve properly. It wasn’t as if she’d lost a husband or a fiancé or even an established boyfriend. Just...a possibility, forever gone. She still wondered what might have happened between them. Not just from time to time, either, but often. She was beginning to fear she’d developed an obsession over his memory.

Hearing a sound next to her, Bonnie turned her head and saw that Böcler had a tight expression on his face. That had been him, issuing a little hiss of pain. What was she doing, mooning over a dead man and his Italian doppelganger when she had an injured man to tend to?

There was a first aid kit in the gondola, she remembered. She’d never looked inside it, but it had to hold bandages and some sort of salve or unguent. Bandages, for sure.

The problem was that the envelope had been inflated enough to come completely off the ground. Stefano and Amanda and Dina were scurrying around with last minute preparations. This was the worst possible time for her to start rummaging around inside the gondola. She wasn’t even in it yet.

Her thoughts must have shown in her face, because Böcler cleared his throat and said, “There is nothing you can do for me at the moment. Once we are in the air, we can see if there are medical supplies in the...what do you call it? The part that looks almost like a boat and hangs underneath the huge balloon?”

“Gondola. It’s called the gondola.” She gave another smile. “And you’d do better to call the inflated part the envelope instead of the balloon, or you’re likely to get a long lecture from Stefano on the profound metaphysical distinction between a dirigible airship and a pitiful balloon, subject to the mercy of the winds.”

He smiled back. It was quite a nice smile, she thought. Much less stiff-upper-lip than his personality seemed to be.

Then, again, maybe the smile was the reality and the personality just the appearance. It was always a mistake to judge people too quickly. Whatever else, she’d learned one thing about the short, stout Franconian secretary tonight. He was a very steady man. Reliable in a crisis, and not given to either panic or self-pity. She knew plenty of people with more charming externalities who were a lot less solid.