Page 44 of Measure of the Stars

“That wasn’t an answer,” Delauney said, then laughed.“Oh, damn.I can’t.How do you do this?”He collapsed onto Wes’ lap, still giggling.“I thought about denying you and felt terrible about it immediately.”

“I may have called you a brat once or twice, but you aren’t one,” Wes said, petting Delauney’s hair.“You just don’t have it in you to be cruel.”

Delauney looked up at Wes plaintively.“So will you come with me?I don’t want to do it without you.”

Wes hesitated.If Delauney had said that hecouldn’tdo it without Wes, that would be different.It would keep Wes in a tidy little box as a useful assistant, someone indispensable but nevertheless bound to Delauney by duty.But Delauney wanted him there.He wanted Wes, not a valet.Not an assistant.Not a servant.Wes looked out over the sea and felt the lifting of a weight he hadn’t realized was there.

“I’ll come with you,” he said.“We’ll do this together.”

The next day, Delauney brought the revised letter to Peter alone.As the minutes ticked by, Wes busied himself with the laundry, pinning up damp clothes as he tried not to think about Peter de Burre reading Wes’ name at the top of the paper.

He was just pinning one of Delauney’s ridiculous gold vests when a shadow passed over his right shoulder.

“Leave it.”Ned de Burre’s voice was so heavy with dominance that Wes dropped the vest on the deck.He turned, looking up into dark, unreadable eyes.

“Sir?”Wes asked, saluting warily.

“None of that,” Ned said.He jerked his head toward the stairs leading up to the wheel.“Follow me.We need to have words.”

Peter must have told him, then.Wes hunched after Ned, trying to resist the swell of resentment building ahead of what had to be a thorough dressing-down.When they’d reached a quiet corner of the ship, Ned turned around, a hand on his belt.

“So,” he said.“Delauneyhasbeen involved with you.”

Wes kept his mouth shut.It was better to say nothing than to confirm or deny Ned’s suspicions.

“Don’t pull the silent sailor trick on me.”Ned’s brows lowered dangerously.“I’ve seen it before.You and Delauney, you’re involved?You haven’t just been assisting him with your research?”

Yourresearch, Wes thought.Not just Delauney’s.“Both, sir.He told me about his work with the stars, and things...progressed.”

“And you understood it?”Ned asked.“All that nonsense about light having a speed and eclipses doing something about curves or lines coming out of the sun?”

“You didn’t?”Wes asked, before he could stop himself.The corner of Ned’s mouth twitched slightly, but it was hard to tell if it was disapproval.“Yes, sir, I did.It’s pretty straightforward when you lay it all out, actually.”

Ned raised a hand.“Please don’t lay it out for me,” he said.“So there are two of you, then.Two...star people.”He gestured widely toward the sky.“You do understand that Delauney’s family is here on this ship, yes?His parents will never accept this, what you two are, but they aren’t the ones you need to concern yourself with.I’m the one who will be displeased if you break Delauney’s heart.”

Wes felt a small tug of pain in his chest as he realized that there was no one to do the same for him.He and his family were strangers, now.“I wouldn’t,” he said.

“Because he’s like a brother to me,” Ned said.He scratched the back of his neck.“A brother who was too nervous to tell me that he loved something.Or someone.I have you to thank for opening him up to all this.He’s been drifting away for a while.I’ve been taking on more of the work on the ship to make up for it, but there wasn’t much I could do when he wouldn’t tell me anything.Now I know.That’s a sign, then, that you might be good for him.”

Wes didn’t know what to say.Ned was the quintessential noble; not too cruel, not too kind, but distant enough from the lower classes that Wes didn’t think he’d have the wherewithal to look closer at Wes’ influence on Delauney.Ned must have caught something of Wes’ confusion in his expression, because he smiled thinly.

“I may not know the stars the way you do, but I’m no fool.It comes from being a father, perhaps.If one of my girls falls in love with a commoner one day, well, I’d be a monster to deny them.The world is shifting.Nobles run off to study stars.Courtesans take on noble titles.Commoners can and will burn Staria to the ground if they’re mistreated.If we don’t move with the tides, we’ll drown in them.”He looked Wes up and down.“I never thought Delauney would settle down with a submissive, but then again, I didn’t picture him settling down at all.”

“He’s full of surprises,” Wes said with a shrug.

“You both are.”Ned sighed heavily.“You can really turn light into a math equation?And you two do that for fun?”Wes shrugged again.“Wedoneed to get you to Gerakia.”

He walked off at that, muttering softly to himself about mathematics and light.Wes waited for a full minute before he shook out the tension in his limbs, glanced at Ned one last time to make sure that he wasn’t coming back, and ran off to inform Delauney.