Passenger (Passenger, #1)(68)

“It’s beautiful, thank you,” she said. And also generously loose in the waist; but it came with a belt that would allow her to tighten it if necessary. “How was it out there?”

Nicholas stared at her as she struggled to blindly unbutton her dress until Etta, flushing, finally cleared her throat. He startled and spun on his heel, giving her a little bit of privacy, as she got enough of the buttons undone to pull the dress over her head.

“Men are working to clear the wreckage from last night’s attack—they’re searching for survivors still,” he said. “I overheard them saying they would move to this area soon, so we need to proceed with some haste.”

Etta thought so too, but it wasn’t helping her get her stays unknotted any faster. Her hands throbbed from where they’d been scraped raw by her fall, and she could not get her fingers to stop shaking.

“I’m sorry,” she muttered, “I need help—”

Nicholas glanced at her, then immediately turned back to face the wall. Etta felt a blush moving up over her face and chest. Stays and a nearly see-through shift. She could have at least crossed her arms over her chest.

He took in a pained breath and turned around. She studied the quick, sure movements of his calloused hands as he worked, forcing her arms to stay down at her side until the laces finally gave. His broad shoulders closed out the rest of the world; Nicholas stood close enough that she could have leaned forward, pressed her face against the space between his neck and shoulders—she could have—and, for a moment, she felt she might be trapped in the heavy grip of her own want if she didn’t. His pulse fluttered in his neck, and she couldn’t take her eyes away from it.

“There,” he murmured, though his fingers lingered on the loose laces a moment longer, his thumbs skimming along the upper edges of the stays, ghosting against the fabric of her shift. Etta held herself completely still, too afraid to lean forward into the touch; too afraid to move, or do anything that might end it.

The dizziness was back. She felt the warm breath of his sigh fan against her collarbone, an instant before he stepped away. He kept his gaze down as he said, in a voice like warm honey, “Sailors. Good with knots.”

It wasn’t until he turned back around to let her finish that Etta’s mind cleared again enough to remember the scissors she’d taken and stowed in her bag, for this exact reason.

The dress he’d chosen fit her well enough, but Etta would have to make do with the lace-up leather boots she’d taken from Sophia, and just ignore their pinching until there was a better option. She reached up, touching her earrings to make sure they were still there.

“Okay,” she said, smoothing her hair back over her shoulder. “How’s this look?”

As he stared, she reminded herself very firmly that he was staring at the hideously bruised lump jutting out of one side of her face, and only the hideously bruised lump.

After a moment he said, “You’ll do, pirate. Now, tell me what your mother’s letter truly says.”

As he balled up the gown, rolling the fabric up into a tidier bundle, Etta retrieved the letter and pen that had rolled to the bottom of the bag. Using the wall, she sketched the outline of a star over the face of the letter, studying the flow of words that were contained inside of its shape. Nicholas stepped closer, reading over her shoulder. Around them, the morning was picking up in pace, bursting with voices and the smell of fire and gasoline; but they were tucked inside a quiet pocket, a passage of their own.

“Rise and enter the lair, where the darkness gives you your stripes. Tell tyrants, to you, their allegiance they owe,” Etta read, running a finger beneath the words within the star. “Seek out the unknown gods whose ears were deaf to lecture. Stand on the shoulders of memory. Bring a coin to the widowed queen. Remember, the truth is in the telling, and an ending must be final.”

“My God,” he said, with a hint of delight. “How did you know to do this?”

With as little explanation as possible, she told him about the secret messages her mother had hidden in her violin case, and in her suitcase when she traveled.

“She wanted you to be able to read it,” he said, practically glowing with excitement. “She thought that someday you might have to find the astrolabe. Do you understand any of the clues?”

Etta shook her head, scanning the words over and over again, wondering if she’d been wrong—if it was meant to be another shape. The words didn’t make any sense.

“If we assume this is a list of instructions, directions, then I believe we can ignore the first clue,” Nicholas said, taking the letter from her. “The second, Tell tyrants, to you, their allegiance they owe, refers to the place where Nathan Hale was killed—the passage we came through—meaning the next one is likely relevant to us now: Seek out the unknown gods whose ears were deaf to lecture. Does that stir anything in your memory?”

Helplessness tugged at her as she shook her head, and she felt her hope start to fray. How were they going to figure out multiple clues like this in seven days?

“What do ‘unknown gods’ have to do with London during the Second World War? Are they people? A certain faith? The last clue tied the location of the passage to one man’s death.” And the clue had used a song that her great-grandfather was fond of belting out now and then. Would this one relate to her family in a similar way—be as personal?