Misleading The Marquis

12 - Bane

The dining deck was a small space, denoted by a sprinkling of white linened tables with accompanying chairs. It was perched, as the name suggested on the stern of the ship, three walls of windows overlooking the night sky as the airship cut through the stars themselves.

Apparently the honeymoon suite came with a coinsiding table that sported the very best star-gazing position. So far, George had barely touched a thing on her plate, and her little hands gripped her eating utensils as if for dear life.

"Alright there George?" Bane murmured as if ignorant of her plight as he carved into the steak he'd ordered from the ship's kitchen.

It was dry and thin... airship food always was. She gulped quickly, tearing her eyes away from the seamless domed glass window that they were lucky enough to sit just beside, almost as if they floated in the nightsky without the support of the airship at all. Bane hid a smirk in his wine glass as he waited for her to answer.

"Fine." Was all she bit out, eyes shifting back to the view that was utterly lost on her.

Bane watched her for a long moment, noting the paleness in her palor and the way she was grinding her teeth without realizing it. How much of her was real? How much of her had she really put into those letters? "Do you fish, George?" Bane asked without preamble, hoping to catch her off guard.

"Er - what?" she muttered back, then as if just hearing his question, "Yes, when I was small - my father would take me." Bane nodded politely, so there had been truth in that story at least.

"Can you swim?" he asked next, trying to keep his tone conversational without alerting her to his rapid fire assessment.

"Why?" she asked, immediately tensing, which he'd thought was impossible to become more tense in her condition, "Are we over water? Will we have to swim if the ship goes down?" she continued in a string of words.

"No George," Bane spoke softly, reaching across the table to touch her hand ever so slightly.

But she gripped his fingers as if holding on for dear life, narrowing her attention on him instead of the windows.

"But I can't swim," she admitted in a whisper, her brow puckered with worry, her eyes round in anxiety. Bane found himself reaching out to touch her face with his  hand, as he searched for the right words to sooth her.

"We'll be fine George," he promised, "I can swim for the both of us, shoudl the need arise - which it won't," he added, when she opened her mouth to ask just that.

He felt her relax a miniscuel amount, leaning her face into his hand where his thumb was still tracing small circles in the softness of her skin. His gaze flitted to those lips and then away again, wondering just what she was thinking as she held his palm to her face... as if he provided comfort in the way he'd hoped.

"Promise?" she whispered, glancing at him and then out into the cloudy darkness again, fingers gripping his like a vice.

"Promise," Bane heard himself say deep from his chest, a warmth coming over him.

"Is everything to your liking?" the waiter approached them, a white towel cast over one forearm as he waited for a response. George just looked at him, waiting for him to answer for both of them.

"More bread," Bane ordered, wondering if this sudden affectionate tendency of George's was because She'd over done it on the dinner wine, which She'd happened to like so much more than the first glass She'd had at the inn.

The waiter smiled placidly, as if Bane was not carressing his wife' face in a public dining room just then. But she was not protesting... what was a man to do when the lady herself held him in place. And not just physically, Bane cursed to himself in a surrendering kind of melancholy.

"Do we have to eat here tomorrow morning?" George asked quietly, and Bane let his thumb run that tiny circle across her cheek once more before pulling his hand away and clearing his throat.

"Ah - no, no, certainly not," he admitted, shrugging as if to rid himself of the sudden overwhelming feeling to do whatever she asked of him, "We'll have our meals brought in for the rest of the trip," he promised with a grim smile.

He did not want to like her, he really was not sure he like her one bit at all - except that she was soft, and much too trusting and it seemed as if she was everything She'd said she was in those letters... all things except the right Georgina Marie St. John.

And Bane had been more than a little mad over that woman, he knew this because he'd proposed to someone he feared losing, because he feared losing her so deeply.

It had been a disturbing discovery when that one letter had arrived, detailing her day in the park, and how her father used to take her fishing... and out of nowhere Bane had laughed at the story of her falling into the pond they kept in their gardens at the St. John Manor house.

In that precise moment, Georgina Marie St. John had not seemed like some distant goddess, blonde and terrifyingly beautiful and out of his reach. No, in that moment he'd wished to laugh with her, to hear her tell the same story face to face, perhaps even persuade her to tie up the hem of her dress and go fishing with him in the forest that surrounded Brisbane Castle.

No in that moment, he'd wanted the woman in those letters like he wanted his own home. And now she sat across from him, a twisted up little puzzle, not blonde at all, just terrifying and beautiful and his.

"Gina Marie? Is that you?" a woman's voice interrupted Bane's musings and he and George both turned to find a man and woman standing at their table, both blonde and having a roundness to their faces that placed them as siblings.

"Caroline!" Gina Marie smiled in a warm greeting, "How good to see you! And Calvin, you as well," Gina Marie nodded in the man's direction with a polite and genuine smile, though Bane knew the young man to be smiling much wider than was strictly necessary for the friend of one's sister.

"Bane, this is Caroline Stanley and her brother Calvin. Caroline and I were in school together so long ago!" Gina Marie explained, turning to include him in the conversation. Standing slowly, Bane reached his full height and rolled his shoulders back accentuating their broadness as Calvin's gaze swung away from George to greet her new husband.

"Oh you're married?" Caroline was cooing, holding both of George's hands and oggling over her friend's news. Calvin was caught in Bane's sharp gaze, not moving and not speaking as the two locked eyes for several long seconds.

"We are just on our way home," Gina Marie explained, and Bane was thrown from his concentrated hatred towards Calvin long enough to look away. Home? Why was it sticking out so terribly sharp to him that She'd just called Brisbane Castle home? The place She'd previously held no intention of ever setting eyes on until her leg became broken.

"You hate flying though, don't you Gina Marie?" this comment from Calvin with a friendly little smile, and Bane realized he'd lost ground getting distracted over George's comment on their journey home.

"That's Lady Brisbane," Bane heard himself growl darkly as a shot of jealous ran through his chest, igniting an anger that he knew immediately to be unreasonable and unavoidable all at once.

"Bane -" George gasped, and he looked to see his new wife stricken with humiliation as her eyes dodged back and forth between her husband and her friends.

"No, quite right -" Calvin was saying smoothly, "Just takes a bit of getting used to I am sure," he added congenially, tilting his head in a pacifying motion. But Bane knew better of the young man's trick. He'd gotten under Bane's skin first and now came out looking the gracious one and Bane the Beast of the North.

"We should let you return to your meal," Caroline was saying now, taking her brother by the arm and glancing nervously up at Bane even as she said her goodbyes to George.

"That was rude," George declared stiffly and quietly as he took his seat again, her heart shaped face in a decidedly pouty expression. Bane chose to ignore her rather than admit his moment of inexplicable jealousy.