My Dearest by Susan Sizemore Page B

lap. A cold nose and a paw patting her cheek followed instantly. Star's persistence made it evident there would be no more writing for her mistress until the dog had a thorough petting.
    After a while Megere's hands moved automatically, running through Star's fur, patting her head and belly. the petting was comforting to them both, and Megere's thoughts drifted back to the extraordinary incident which had filled the last days.
    It started with a dinner party, which was not the normal way for a crisis to commence on board a warship. But it was hardly an ordinary crisis, now was it?
     
    Megere held up her black lace frock, critically studying the embellishments of jet beads that had been added to the bodice. The Ironbound boasted a tailor and a seamstress, a married couple. They and their assistants manned a fifty-pounder during battles as the cannon crew. She had liked the dress very much in it's original form, but since her father had been promoted to the minor noble rank of esquire, she now needed to adjust her wardrobe to match her family's new rank. The beading had turned out quite well, she decided.
    She was happy for the chance to wear something besides her contractor's uniform, practical though it was for day-to-day wear.
    "Fanatic to fashion as I am, why did I take up a profession that doesn't allow me finery?" she asked.
    "It likely has something to do with your unladylike enjoyment of rooting around the exposed insides of your fellow humans," Lord North responded.
    He was rather brutally correct in his assessment. Female doctors were not allowed to practice surgery in civilian life, but their skills were developed, honed and valued by the military branches of the Ang Empire. Hence, she spent much of her life deprived of fashionable clothing.
    North was already wearing his dress uniform, along with an appropriate selection of his decorations and medals.
    "You look splendid," Megere told him, but couldn't help a teasing, "The light that shines from you is nearly enough to blind one in the small space of this cabin."
    He arched a brow, glanced at the bunk, then to her wearing only her underthings. "Hmmm..."
    Megere swiftly pulled the black dress over her head. She turned her back to Lord North. "I'll need you to do up the bodice buttons."
    This time he humphed rather than hmmed. "You need a lady's maid," he told her.
    He'd made the suggestion before, but she would have none of it.
    "What about that apprentice of yours, Dr. Ratcatcher? It would keep her humble, and give her something else to sneer at you for."
    "Dr. Redcat," Megere corrected.
    That young woman had openly made the assumption that the surgeon she'd been assigned to study under held her position on the Ironbound due solely to her relationship with Admiral Lord North. Megere confessed that she would have felt the same had she been in RedCat's shoes. North was not so understanding.
    "Don't keep chiding the girl," Megere told her lover. "She learned quickly enough that I know my business once we were dealing with bloodied bodies and smashed bones. It's a good thing to acquire knowledge under fire."
    "Didn't she hide in a corner screaming for a while?" he asked.
    "You were not supposed to learn of that."
    "I know what happens on my own ship." His fingers caressed the back of her neck in between fastening buttons.
    "It was the cannon fire that unnerved her. It happens to many the first time in battle. She recovered soon enough."
    Talk of work in the sickbay reminded her of one of her concerns.
    "What would happen to me if you were forced to move your flag to a different ship?"
    "If that were necessary, the Ironbound would be sinking and we'd all have to abandon ship," he replied sternly.
    "But if it were not sinking and you still had to go? What if I was needed in the sickbay?"
    He was even more stern in his response. "There are other physicians on board. Where I go you go."
    "But--"
    "If you were to marry me there would be no questions of your being at my side