Page 57 of Company of Thieves
TWELVE
“TheNightwingis secure, Alan. What are your plans? Should I sent out scouts to see what Etienne is up to? Or do you wish to make an attack?”
Alan looked across the fallow field, the need to find Etienne and punish him uppermost in his mind now that he knew Hallie was safe. Zand stood patiently by his side, waiting for him to speak.
“I can gather the men if you wish to attack. We will be outnumbered, but that hasn’t been a problem in the past, and I doubt if it will be now. So long as William’s men are out of the fight.”
Hallie was with child, his child, a child they had made together. He hadn’t thought about having children before, other than in a vague, “sometime in the distant future” sort of way, but now he was going to be a father. His Hallie, who had thought she was barren, was going to give him a child, one who would be the best part of both of them. He smiled at the thought of his contrary little dove. Trust her to find yet another way to make him feel off-balance.
Zand looked thoughtful. “Although it might be wiser to wait for theFalcon, since Captain Pye said the emperor’s men were sniffing around the Black Hand base. Captain Pye said Safie should be arriving this evening.”
That aside, Alan was a bit annoyed by the high-handed way Jack Fletcher had informed him he would be marrying Hallie. The fact that Jack had thought he was the sort of man who would deliberately seduce his sister just to strike at him was ridiculous, but he supposed he couldn’t really blame Jack, since Octavia had kept his secret from her husband. Still, to demand that he marry Hallie just as if he didn’t want to do that very thing was outrageous. The man was far overstepping his bounds. It wasn’t any of his business, after all.
“Or we could tie little incendiary bombs to pigeons, and let them fly at the Black Hand ship.”
Was that the sort of image Jack Fletcher had of him? That he would leave Hallie to raise his child alone? The more he thought about it, the more incensed he became. Octavia should have informed her husband that he, Alan, was a man of honor.Of coursehe would marry Hallie. He would do so even if she wasn’t with child. She was his, and no other man would ever have her. Therefore, it was right and proper that she should acknowledge that fact by marrying him.
“Or cats. Maybe we could tie a few helium balloons to cats, and push them toward the Black Hand ship’s envelopes. The damage they could do with their claws would be phenomenal, and most likely unrepairable.”
What bothered him the most, however, was the fact that Hallie didn’t seem to want to marry him, despite telling him just how much she loved him. “It’s not like I’m a monster,” he said aloud, his eyes on the clouds that gently floated across the sky.
“Some might say that the man who sent cats in to do his dirty work was a monster, you know.”
Alan grunted an agreement; then the words his friend spoke drifted through the tangle of his thoughts. He turned to look at Zand. “What are you talking about? What cats?”
“It’s not important.”
“Hallie didn’t think I loved her.”
Zand gave him a look of disbelief. “You? You’re besotted with her!”
“I know that, but she doesn’t seem to.”
“You’re as moon-eyed as they come!”
Alan frowned. “She’s a smart woman. You’d think she’d have worked out how I felt about her. About us. That we are meant to be together.”
“It’s downright disgusting how smitten you are with her.”
“It’s as if she didn’t know me at all.” He felt mildly indignant at the fact that Hallie, his Hallie, the woman who filled his thoughts, claimed she didn’t know if he loved her. “A man shouldn’t have to say the words every day. A man’s actions should speak louder than mere words. Anyone can speak words. It’s the actions that matter.”
“The looks you get on your face when you stare at her are downright absurd. You are the epitome of bewitched. Many has been the time I have noted it.”
Alan glared at theEnterprise, where Hallie had been having a nap while he moved theNightwingfrom where it had been moored a mile down the road. “And she said she wasn’t going to wed me.”
“She should apologize,” Zand said, nodding. “For doubting that you love her. It’s downright insulting.”
“It is,” Alan said, wrapping himself in righteous indignation. Hadn’t he done everything he could to make sure she was happy, safe, and contented in every way that mattered? “Gather the men. We’re going into town to find someone who will marry us.”
He turned on his heel and would have strode into theNightwing, but at that moment a brown-and-gold airship crested the trees, and started a descent. It was theFalcon.
“Safie! Thank god she’s here safe,” Zand said, and ran to help theNightwing’s crew moor the larger airship.
Alan returned to theEnterprise, wanting Hallie to meet his sister, and also to inform her that he had thought things over, and she was just going to have to admit that she knew he loved her, and that they would be married that very night.
“I thought we had this settled earlier?” Hallie asked fifteen minutes later when he led her over to where theFalconwas now moored. “You proposed; I accepted; you told me in wonderful, wonderful words and some really fine hip action that you loved me. What more is there to discuss?”
When she put it like that, he was at a loss for a reasonable answer. “Your brother was interfering. He had the nerve to tell us what we were going to do. I have thought the matter over and made a decision regardless of his demands,” was all he could come up with, even though he knew it didn’t make much sense.
