He stared at her, one eyebrow rising.
She plastered a hand over her face. “I didn’t mean to say it. It just slipped out. This is ridiculous. I’m never attracted to people. I wasn’t even attracted to my husband.”
Somehow, adding that information did not make the situation feel any more comfortable. Her face was aflame. She balled the hand on her face into a fist, then thumped it against her forehead.
“Please ignore everything I’m saying. Sometimes my mouth just makes noises that vaguely resemble human speech. It’s very inconvenient.”
He was staring at her, a slight upward tilt to his lips.
“Don’t look at me,” she moaned, turning away. “It makes the embarrassment all the more acute. Look away and let’s pretend I didn’t say anything.”
“Just to make one thing clear,” Captain Hunter said, “I may be trying not to laugh right now. But it’s not because you should be ashamed of what you just said.”
She turned slightly to glance at him. He did look on the verge of bursting into guffaws, the corners of his eyes crinkling in amusement. What was she to do?
“Talking more is not helping.” She dug her knuckles into her eyes.
“The funny part,” he said, “is that you think I’ll mind. I know I’m attractive. You’ve just confirmed that you have excellent taste.”
That only made it worse. Amelia let out something close to a squeak.
“I know,” he told her. “It’s terrible manners for me to notice how handsome I am. But just between the two of us?” She could hear the cocky grin in his voice. “I’m aware.”
“It’s not good manners of me to feel it,” she muttered. “Virtuous women don’t.”
“Well,” he said, in the same matter-of-fact tone that he’d used to tell her that he was aware of his handsomeness, “that’s poppycock.”
Somehow he managed to emphasize the cock in poppycock, and that made her face feel like fire all over again.
“There’s no virtue in attraction. Some people feel it. Others don’t.” He shrugged. “Variation is ordinary. That’s all.”
She shook her head. “You’re making this all sound so commonplace.”
“It is.” He waved this away, as if all the heat lodged in her were pedestrian. “It’s normal to want things. This is one of the things that people want. Unless you’re worried about what I would do about it?”
“No—of course not—I’m sure you wouldn’t—”
“We’ll leave Fuzhou on the Lenity. My cousin Zed is the captain. I’ll move my things to a hammock in his room, which will leave a full chamber for you. You’ll have a lock and the only key.” He smiled. “It’s a very small ship, and much of it will be taken up with cargo.”
She exhaled slowly.
“We will go to Hong Kong, where the Celerity is docked. You’ll get another room, another key. Bell is the captain there; he brooks no nonsense, not even from me. Once we’ve arrived in Shanghai, I’ll be around for a few days on business, after which I will go lay submarine cable.”
Something terrible was happening to Amelia’s imagination. Lay submarine cable should not have sounded like such a euphemism, but she could not help but think of the process—long, thick cable being laid in the watery depths—
“Eep,” she managed.
“I’m attractive,” Captain Hunter said, “but I know my own limits. Even I can’t attract you from the middle of the North Pacific Ocean. So rest assured.” He grinned at her. “This too shall end.”
“You… You…” She bit her lip once more. “But…”
“I don’t mind,” he told her. “It’s not embarrassing. It’s perfectly normal. I promise you once you understand what a shambles my encoding program is and how ridiculous a task I’m foisting upon you, whatever you’re feeling now will fizzle off into annoyance. But I don’t need you to want less, Mrs. Smith. I need you to want more.”
She looked over at him, eyes wide. It felt as if he lived in an entirely different world. It had different rules from the one she inhabited—rules that were both kinder and far more stringent all at the same time.
“What do you want?” she heard herself ask.
“A worldwide telegraphic network.” The answer was as swift as it was insufficient.
“Why?”
He shrugged. “Is profit an insufficient motive?”
“That’s a question,” Amelia pointed out. “Not an answer. You’re asking me to work with you. Shouldn’t I know if your aims are good? Nobody just wakes up one day and says, ‘I want a telegraphic network.’ So why?”
“Ah.” He pulled away from her, gaze wandering over the harbor, then to the hills to the east. “That’s an excellent question. Do you know how much it costs to send a transatlantic telegram?”
She shook her head.
“Four pounds. Twenty-two American dollars. Thirty grams of gold. Months of work for the average worker.”
She felt shocked. “I had not realized the profit was so immense.”
“Do you know what it means when the cost is so high?”
She shook her head.
“It means the only messages that can be sent are ones of business. News of a cotton shortage. Information on large trade negotiations. That sort of thing. It means that who communicates and how and to whom is limited. That shapes the world we live in.”
He was still looking out over the harbor. She had thought him attractive before. Now with his gaze fixed on a faraway mountain, he seemed even more so.
“The world is going to grow in the shape of the wires we lay, and nobody is thinking about what that will look like. They don’t ask what it will mean if all we talk of is business and news from the wealthy and powerful.”
She swallowed.
“Think of all the things that could be sent. ‘Clara had her baby.’ ‘Come quickly. Papa is dying.’” His voice sounded like steel on that one. He turned, gesturing, looking her in the eye. “Or: ‘I love you.’”
Her breath seemed to come to a standstill in her chest. The moment narrowed. And perhaps he realized what he’d said because he looked up at the sky, rolling his shoulders.
“There.” He said it with a shake of his head. “Now you know my secret.”
“Your secret.”
“My father’s family has been in trade for some eighty years. I had been around the globe the first time before I was ten. I enjoy it.”
She nodded.
“My youngest brother does not. It doesn’t suit him. He’s place-bound.”
She nodded again.
A hand worked at his side. “It’s really very simple. I want a worldwide telegraphic network so that I can tell him I love him from anywhere in the world.”
Amelia let out one breath. Then another. Her own wants rose up in her, hard and savage. A dusty road. Her mother. Words exchanged.
Hold on to your heart. I will be back.
If Amelia did this—if she made a telegraphic code that touched every corner of China, if it were easy and available…
Every day that passed, she’d wish. And want. And hope. She’d wait for a telegram that would never come from a woman she could scarcely remember.