Hannah buckled under confrontation, followed the harsh lead of Danae's hand with a soft intuition for the intention behind sudden, jerking impulse.<br/>"I thought-"<br/>Wheat blonde curls tumbled over clenching knuckles like flounced silk, strained of rosemary fragrance by twisting sieve. it embarrassed Hannah, even as she lay her head for Danae's chastisement and inhaled the fever dream bedding.<br/>"No, I am no such creature of darkness," she protest. The larger lion had her pinned under a killing paw, and she submit, did not move from the draped weight lest she invite the claws.<br/>"I thought to repay you for your kindness with my company. There is no sin, no adultery, please."<br/><br/>Her hand had not moved from its placement on firm belly, and it listened to the shallow breath, in and out, for a wave of drowning euphoria to crash over Danae. When she was submerged and hands feeling for the cool night air, Hannah crept onto the bed. Knees straddled meandering jodhpurs, though her posture servile, aware that Danae would seize control at any moment, and until then she ought be on her best behavior.<br/>"There is no sin."<br/>Fingers picked at the buttons remaining. Now her hands, both of them, returned in a slide to the belly she'd been shown. Hannah would not own to it as anything more than friendly concern.<br/>"There is no sin," became her whispered mantra. "Not in the garden of Ezra. Saintly virtue calls us there, unfettered by machinations of jealousy. Away from the darkness, on the white beach, we are free. It's freedom which calls to you, Lieutenant."<br/><br/>Having freed Danae of restraint to her own breezy state, Hannah lowered to lay upon the bed- no, upon Danae's body. Her head on breathing belly, body relaxed, she heeded the fitful anger wanting to rise up to the married woman's surface, lost in a dream of opium.<br/><br/>The drug was upon her. Not even the frightfully close booming of thunder roused Hannah. Her teeth worried in the lotus petal fabric of riding shirt. Nothing now would keep her from rest.<br/><br/><hr/><br/>With restless anticipation Zoe awaited the news of Corinne's cursory examination. She was ready, willing to believe any wild hypothesis; that it be living, infused with malevolent intelligence, a twist in the tapestry of Dementlieu, the egg from which evil, like the insects of spring, hatched forth.<br/><br/><div class="spoiler_container"><div class="spoiler_header" onclick="hideSecond (this);" role="button">Corinne's Arcana</div><div class="spoiler_body">If indeed Zoe's untrained hand had captured the mists within a bottle, it did not remain gaseous in container, and slid around in glass freely intermixed with remnants of wine. It seemed to be the passing of a thing, not the thing itself, leaving only water behind. </div></div><br/><br/>"If we go into the heart of darkness, it's important to understand it. I have always thought so, and delight to have women of science sharing our voyage. It brings me a comfort. You will not mind then, if I bring you samples in queer jungle flowers and peculiar signs and discoveries from the shoal. Think of me as your assistant, when the church's work has not otherwise occupied us."<br/><br/>Whatever likeness of Corinne was borne in Zoe's imagination was cast in bronze, unshaken by moments of uncertainty. Still Zoe's eyes were wide with wonder, looking on that trunk of science beside the bed, and up Corinne's silk-curtained legs, smiling bright.<br/>"Yes, as friends," she decided. "In the morning I'll rejoin the sisters. Camille will have something to say of it, of course, but you oughtn't pay it any mind. She circles about scandal like a hound inspecting his bed, soon she will be in it and all pretense forgotten. We need only bear it a little longer, and then..."<br/><br/><hr/><br/>Emma La Berche roused from sleep with a little coaxing, but the Cocoa House pair remained medicated and comatose. With what untrained strength she could manage in such delicate sleep clothes, Eloise helped Jeanne's body not to drag as it was Aloisa, for the most part, carrying her. Eloise resented it, not of Aloisa just yet, but for the servant's work foisted on her by circumstance, and thankfully there were very few to witness it, the route they took belowdecks.<br/><br/>Before the saloon's proud waxed doors sparkling with lightning flashes through slivers of colored glass, where the mizzen mast pierced each deck and lent the deck house an unshakable foundation, stairs starved of lantern light by their switchback geometry descended, deeper than the wardroom, to the cabins below.<br/><br/>Eloise's voice echoed into a lightless wardroom, abandoned for the finer luxury above. "A moment, let me find my breath. I am not as robust as you."<br/>She sat there on the threshold of the wardroom's darkness, her panting claustrophobic in the switchback stairs still to come, taking solace from the groaning of the ship around them that this, too, was tested by the storm.<br/>"It is quiet below. We may be alone, with none to hear our secrets but the mists."<br/>Into the wardroom she leaned to confirm for herself there was no one yet lurking among the chained supper tables.<br/>"They say of Blackwell soirees, dark things inhabit the manor under cover of darkness. Devils, in human guise, walk among the elite on cloven hooves."<br/>Ginger fingers sorted the stray hairs from Jeanne's sleeping face. For a moment, she considered herself some kind of warden against corruption, a watchwoman like Aloisa, and was ready to carry again.<br/><br/>"One must be careful accepting the hospitality of Mlles. Goulet and Bordeaux, for this reason."<br/>Then, the lightning struck.<br/><br/><hr/><br/>So close to the lightning's stroke, there was no marbling of the sky. There was only an all-consuming flash, bright as the coming of Saint Ezra, drenching the main deck in light and flashed brilliant into every porthole. That creaking of the hull finally surrendered in violent musket volley<em>crack-crack-cracks, </em>the splintering of main mast into blackened halves, burning away of rigging in whipping, lashing spectacular tongues of flame.<br/><br/>Among the mast shards thrown out across the deck were chunks long as lances, heavy enough to hurl crewmen right off the deck rather than wound. From the highest crow's nest down into the heart of the ship, such fury from the heavens passed that weighty nails ejected from firm housing and ricochet into cabins and corridors.<br/><br/>Pieces of the main mast leaned and snapped and rolled the whole Charlotte hard to port before breaking loose into the sea with many a sailor. Even those bodies belowdeck were thrown with stupefying suddenness into a deep, precarious tilt which turned the whole world nearly sideways.<br/><br/>The first rogue wave crashed midships and poured frigid in through split hull, into the corridors of the Charlotte's luxury cabins along with witless pale fish and the rotting odor of deep sea.