Brightly Burning(48)

The junior crew and two lieutenants were deep into a game of poker, though their cards were cruder than those I’d seen the Ingram party and Hugo using. I drifted to the edge of the room, where Preity was sitting, cheering on Lizzy as she stared down Griegs. Hanada should have stayed. This was right up her alley.

“Did the crew-member princess decide to slum it down here with us?” Griegs sneered over his hand. Lizzy promptly smacked him on the shoulder.

“She’s bunking down with us now, so be nice. Her Grand Highness Bianca saw to it.” Everyone tossed me a bit of sympathy.

“Yeah, and it’s not my choice to spend hours up there in that awful drawing room,” I said, deciding to use the truth to my advantage. “It’s dreadfully dull when I’m sitting in the corner being ignored, and the epitome of humiliating when they pay me any mind. I’d rather not go, but Captain Fairfax is requiring it.”

“That’s weird,” Lizzy said, trading a look with the others.

Was it? I supposed I was used to Hugo demanding my company on a nightly basis. I both hated the humiliation of the drawing room and craved his company, like a masochist.

We stayed in the rec room until Lizzy took the kitty with a royal flush, causing a red-faced Griegs to stomp out of the room. Then I got my first taste of communal life in years, dancing around with the rest of the girls in the bathroom, hoping no one could see me blush when I bumped into a male lieutenant named Ritter. I strapped myself into my top bunk as Lizzy voice-commanded the lights off, realizing as I turned my face against the pillow, eyes meeting pitch-black, what I would miss most about my private quarters. This room had no window, and thus I was cut off from the stars.


Chapter Sixteen


Over the next week, I tried to adjust to the rhythms of my new life. I rose at six thirty to beat Griegs to the showers, as I found he notoriously liked to sleep in until the last possible minute. My new roommates embraced me, becoming friendlier each day, while I felt more and more distant from my friends among the Rochester crew. They were all considered senior staff and thus ate with the senior Ingram crew. Only Jessa remained constant; I spent my days with her, and my nights in the drawing room for my allotted two hours. Hugo hadn’t asked Jessa back since the night he’d given her the gift. She wasn’t taking it well.

I made excuses, because I didn’t want to tell her the truth. The new Hugo I’d met on the day of his morbid anniversary was a permanent fixture now. Frequently drunk, intermittently hot and cold, not at all thoughtful or sensitive to others. He’d turned into every stupid boy I’d ever known on the Stalwart but worse, for every once in a while, there was a glimmer of the old Hugo. He’d make an inside joke about a book we’d read, or ask me with genuine concern about my day. But then he’d pour himself another drink, and Bianca would pull him away. She became his new favorite person. Or an old favorite, as Hanada had pointed out.

I took Hugo’s advice and used my time in the drawing room to get to know my new drawing tab. I rendered Captain Ingram in his gold-ribboned shoulders in ink and acrylic blue and gold, and Mrs. Ingram in her successive parade of ridiculous hairdos in pastel oil crayons. I did a watercolor of the trio of cousins whose names I couldn’t remember bending their heads together in gossip. A simple, sad pencil sketch of the sullen Justine, who watched her husband flirt with the maids serving drinks.

And Bianca. I drew her most of all, in multiple mediums, over successive nights. I was determined to capture her beauty, as a reminder to myself why Hugo spent each evening accepting her shameless flirtations. Why he always flirted back.

“You capture her well,” Hugo said one night in a low voice, startling me so much that my stylus slipped, creating a smudge across Bianca’s right cheek. I quickly undid my last move. “You really captured the . . . spark in her eyes.”

I thought the word he was grasping for was “meanness,” but I merely smiled and accepted the compliment.

“Do you ever draw me?” he asked, a wicked glint to his eyes. I did draw Hugo, but always in private, so no one could see the attention and time I spent on him. “I can tell the answer is yes, so you might as well show me.”

I found my most recent attempt at him and handed the tab over for his assessment. He frowned. “I look so serious.”

“Well, you’re a serious person,” I said.

“Not around you. You’re the one person I feel I can relax around.”

I willed myself not to say something that would get me fired.

“Even when you’re relaxed, then,” I hedged, “you have a baseline of seriousness. It’s not a bad thing. I also consider myself a rather serious person.”

“That you are,” Hugo said. “And do you ever draw yourself? Do you have a self-portrait?”

“There are far more interesting things to draw. Real and imaginary.”

“Oh, I don’t agree. Would you draw one for me?”

I hesitated.

“Please? If you do, I won’t make you come to the drawing room.” I perked up at that, but too soon. “For an evening or two,” Hugo finished, his smile sly.

“Fine, but only because it’s somewhat of a thing artists do. All of the greats created self-portraits, and I am by no means great, but I shall try.”

“Good,” he said. “But there will be no more drawing tonight.”