He pulled her in and wrapped his arms about her in a rather nice hug which Rue tried to imagine was like that of one of her many uncles but which was neither scruffy nor fruity-smelling, and gave her heart a little boost in a way the uncles never had. For one breathless moment she thought he might actually kiss her, right there at the end of the gangplank in full view of her crew, with blatant disregard for all propriety. He drew back and looked at her lips, his violet eyes very focused, but then he merely hugged her again. His hands pressed hard against her back. She fancied she could feel the roughness through the many layers of her dress. They must be rough, all that handling of sprockets and spigots and such.

Eventually, Rue managed to extract herself. “Mr Lefoux!” she said severely, because she ought.

“How could you?” said the engineer, looking more harried than it suited his customary persona of urbane intellectual meets boyishly charming flirt.

“How could I what?” Rue replied, attempting to make reparations to her hair, which had survived a mad dash across the Maltese Tower but not the enthusiastic regard of her chief engineer.

“Just disappear like that, running off after a raging lioness? I thought we had lost you. I thought you’d end up disembowelled in the nearest warehouse. I was just about to mount a rescue. Spoo was going to come, weren’t you, Spoo?”

“Of course I was,” said Spoo, looking forthright.

“Well, as you can see, you thought wrong. I found the parasol but not the cat.” It was pretty close to the truth of the matter.

Quesnel took a deep breath, rediscovering his devil-may-care self. “Of course you did, mon petit chou, so silly of me to doubt you.” He backed away. Rue wondered which was really the act – his previous concern or his standard behaviour.

“Exactly. Now, is everyone else back on board?” Rue looked over at Prim who was smiling at Rue’s discomfort and Quesnel’s display of concern, and Percy who was frowning down at his book.

Percy ignored her question but Prim glanced at a roster. She had scripted it neatly, like a party invitation, on pale yellow paper.

“Looks like,” said she, running one glove-covered finger down the list and whispering out a count. “Yes, everyone back except you. Shall we get on?”

“By all means,” replied Rue, skirting around Quesnel at a wary distance. The Frenchman ran his hands through his hair distractedly. He then realised he’d knocked off his hat when he’d grabbed Rue and went looking for it. By the time it had been recovered, Spoo having chased it down the gangplank, he was calmness itself, and Rue had made her way up to navigation.

“Professor Tunstell?”

Percy put down his book and took up position without looking at her, the sourpuss.

Rue turned back to Quesnel. “Chief engineer?”