“I tried to talk to the figurehead about her,” he ventured. Etta looked disapproving, but also curious. “Bolt was even less courteous to me than she usually is. She bluntly says she wants Althea off her decks. She speaks wildly of her, with curses and threats, as if she were…” He stopped his thoughts and shook his head, hoping Etta would not demand that he continue. The ship spoke of Althea as if she were a hated rival. Not for Wintrow’s attentions, of course. She no longer had any interest in Wintrow.

He sighed.

“You’re mooning about the ship again,” Etta accused him.

“I am,” he admitted easily. “I miss her. Talking to Bolt is more a task than a pleasure. And you have preoccupations of your own these days. I am often lonely.”

“My own preoccupations? You are the one who stopped talking to me.”

He had thought her anger was reserved for Kennit. Now he had found his share of it. “I did not mean to,” he offered cautiously. “I didn’t want to intrude. I thought you would be, uh…” He halted. Everything he had assumed about her suddenly seemed silly.

“You thought I would be so busy being pregnant I couldn’t think or talk anymore,” Etta finished for him. She stuck out her belly and patted it with a fatuous, simpering smile. Then she scowled at him.

“Something like that,” Wintrow admitted. He rubbed his chin ruefully and braced himself for her fury.

She laughed aloud instead. “Oh, Wintrow, you are such a lad,” she exclaimed. She said the words with such fondness that he looked up in surprise. “Yes, you,” she went on at his glance. “You’ve been fair green with jealousy since I told you, almost as if I were your mother about to forsake you for a new baby.” She shook her head. He suddenly wondered if his jealousy pleased her. “Sometimes, between you and Kennit, you span the foolishness of all men. Him, with his stiffness and coldness and manly reluctance to admit any need, and you with your great puppy eyes begging for any moment of attention I can spare you. I didn’t realize how flattered I was by it until you stopped.” She canted her head at him. “Talk to me as you used to. I haven’t changed, really. There is a child growing inside me. It’s not a disease or madness. Why does it trouble you so?”

He let the words come almost before he knew what he was going to say. “Kennit is going to have everything: the ship, you, a son. And I will have nothing. You will all be together, and I will always be on the outside.”

She looked stunned. “And you want those things? The ship. A son. Me?”

Something in her voice set his heart hammering. Did she want him to desire her? Was there in her the slightest warmth for him? He would speak and be damned. If he had to lose everything, then at least let it be said. Even if she banned him from her presence, she would know. “Yes. I want those things. The ship because she was mine. And you and a son because…” His courage failed him. “Because I do,” he finished lamely and looked at her. Probably with puppy eyes, he cursed himself.

“Oh, Wintrow.” She shook her head and looked away from him. “You are so very young.”

“I’m closer to your age than he is!” he replied, stung.

“Not in the ways that matter,” she answered inexorably.

“I’m only young because Kennit insists that I am,” he retorted. “And you persist in believing it as well. I’m not a child, Etta, nor a sheltered acolyte. Not anymore. A year on this ship would make any boy a man. Yet how am I supposed to be a man if no one allows me to be one?”

“Manhood is not something that someone allows you,” Etta lectured him. “Manhood is something a man takes for himself. Then it is recognized by others.” She leaned down to pick up her sewing.

Wintrow stood up. His desperation was but one breath away from anger. Why did she dismiss him with platitudes? “Manhood is to be taken. I see.” As she straightened in her chair, he put two fingers under her chin and turned her startled face up to his. He would not think. He was tired of thinking. He leaned down and kissed her, desperately hoping that he was doing it well. Then, as he felt her mouth under his, he forgot everything but this daring sensation.

She pulled away from him, her hand flying to cover her mouth. She took a quick breath. Her eyes were very wide. An instant later, sparks of anger kindled in them. “Is this how you would begin asserting you are a man? By betraying Kennit, a man who has befriended you?”

“That was not about betrayal, Etta. That had nothing to do with Kennit. That was all about what I wished was between us, but is not.” He took a breath. “I should go.”