Salvage

by Meljean Brook

  And the remains of the airship burning like a beacon through the night. The etiquette of the seas demanded that any passing vessel offer help and rescue. Now the smoke led them here.

  “Have the megalodons gone?” she whispered.

  “I haven’t seen a fin in more than an hour. That doesn’t mean we’d be all right to start rowing.”

  Georgiana didn’t want to risk it, either. She watched the airship’s approach, silently urging the engines faster. Slowly, Thom’s muscles tensed around her.

  “Thom? Is it a shark?”

  He made a slight choking sound that might have been a laugh. “In a manner of speaking. That skyrunner is Lady Corsair’s.”

  The notorious mercenary. “I thought you were friendly with her?”

  “I am. She’ll probably still charge us a ransom before she lets us go.”

  Georgiana supposed it was the principle of the thing. She didn’t mind paying for a rescue, though. It seemed more practical than remaining here.

  “All right,” she said, and felt Thom’s smile against her hair.

  “You’re not afraid?”

  “After watching that megalodon swim by our boat, I’ve become just as impervious to the threat of madmen and mercenaries as you are.”

  He laughed quietly against her, and a few minutes later, when the airship hovered overhead and a rope ladder unrolled down to their boat, he urged her up the rungs ahead of him.

  Above, a man with a wide grin and the loudest orange waistcoat Georgiana had ever seen leaned over the rail, watching them climb.

  “Big Thom! We heard rumors that you’d gotten yourself kidnapped! But now I see that you’ve just been on a pleasure cruise with your wife.”

  Thom’s gruff reply came from just beneath her. “It seemed like good weather for one—”

  From the sea below, a rush of water and cracking wood. Gasping, Georgiana looked down just as enormous jaws crushed their boat to splinters. After a second, nothing remained but small floating pieces.

  Astonished, she met Thom’s eyes, swallowed hard. “Well,” she said. “You missed the opportunity to test out your knife.”

  And his laugh followed Georgiana the rest of the way up.

  * * *

  Within an hour, Georgiana was walking down a passageway toward another stateroom. In another three hours, she would be home, and quite aware that she and Thom would be returning in much the same way they’d left: on an airship, down a cargo platform. Perhaps even returned to the same spot, with her steamcoach still where Thom had abandoned it.

  But Georgiana could not bear to return in exactly the same way they’d left.

  When they’d left, she and Thom had been on their way to the magistrate’s to separate. When they’d left, Georgiana had still been keeping the promise to herself that she would never ask him to stay again.

  Now she would beg, if necessary. When they’d left, theirs had been a wreck of a marriage. But in the past few days they’d salvaged something incredible from it, a treasure worth more than any gold—and she couldn’t let him go.

  But it would not be her choice. If Thom didn’t see himself as she did, if he still believed himself a failure, he might want to leave. The very thought of it started a desperate ache in her chest. What would she do without him now?

  She didn’t know. But it would not be the same as before. She’d survived the past four years.

  Georgiana didn’t know if she could survive his leaving again.

  Eyes blurred, throat knotted, she barely saw the cabin as they entered it. As soon as the door closed, she turned to him.

  Before she could get a word out, he kissed her—and yes, this needed to come before anything else. Not a task, but a sheer necessity. She melted against him, his warmth easing the ache in her chest and the pain in her throat. Rough stubble scratched her chin and his coat was damp and her fingers were cold, and this was the most wonderful kiss that there’d ever been.

  Until it ended, but then he swept her up and carried her to the bed, and that was even more wonderful.

  He set her down on the mattress and stepped back to unbuckle his coat. Voice hoarse, as if something within him was hurting, too, he said, “I need to have you again before we reach home, Georgie.”

  “You already have me, Thom. Always.” Gathering every bit of her courage, she rose up on her knees. “Always. When we reach home, I want you to stay. No papers, no separation. I want to call you my husband for the rest of my life.”

  His fingers stilled on his coat buckle. As if not daring to believe, his gaze desperately searched her face. “Tell me again.”

  “I love you, Thom, and I want you to stay,” she said, and fierce joy replaced the pain. Oh, she would tell him again and again. “I loved you before, but I love you so much more now. Before, I’d have let you leave because the hurt was too much. It isn’t now. And I couldn’t let you go now, even if I was torn apart. If you went, I’d be trailing along behind you—or tying a chain around you to drag you back. So I want you to stay.”

  With a sharp hitch of his breath, he clutched her against his chest. Tightly he held her, his hands slipping up her back to tangle in her hair. Gently, he tilted her face up, and the aching love in his eyes was a mirror of her own. “You know I wouldn’t have ever gone. But I don’t know that I’ll be any better a husband than I was.”

  “Will you be with me?”

  “Every single night.”

  “Will you love me?”

  “Always, Georgie.”

  “Then that’s all I need.” She tugged him down to the bed. When he sank down on the edge, she straddled his thighs. His coat still needed unbuckling. Her fingers started in on the task. “If it’s money that worries you, you ought to know it’s not a concern. My business is yours, too—at least the profits from it are, since I invested your earnings to start it. And it’s done well. I’ve got a fleet of ten ships, and I’ll soon be acquiring more. Maybe airships, too. It’s not a chest of gold, but we won’t want for anything.”

  He struggled with that, but finally nodded. “Considering that gold is likely in a shark’s belly, I’ll trade it.”

  “It’s a good trade. Your share of the profits is a hefty one.” She took a deep breath. “If you want a new ship for your salvaging work, you’ve earned more than enough to buy another one. A new submersible, too.”

  “I don’t want to salvage.”

  “You’re very good at it.”

  “I was good at hauling fish, too.”

  He was good at a lot of things. But that wasn’t the question she needed to ask—the question she’d never bothered to ask before. “What will make you happy, Thom?”

  “Just you, Georgie. And you loving me even half as much as I love you.”

  “I love you twice as much as that.” And her heart was bursting with it. Smiling, she pushed his coat down his arms. “Is there anything you want to do?”

  He grinned and rocked up beneath her. “I want to make you my queen.”

  “Thom!” She laughed, her face hot. “I’m sure we’ll do plenty of that.”

  “Soon.” His expression gentling, he softly kissed her. “You’re the one person I care about proving myself to, Georgie. And yet you make me feel like I don’t have to.”

  “You don’t have to. You already have, over and over.”

  “And I’m not going to stop now.” And he seemed to be thinking her question over again now, his brow creased in a thoughtful frown. “I do like diving. And I enjoyed working with Ivy.” His hand smoothed down her suddenly tense back. “I’m not saying I want to go off and do it again. I’m saying that I liked tinkering, and putting that submersible together with her. I could make more of them, test them in local waters, sell them.”

  “You’d like that?”

  “I would.”

  Then it sounded perfect to her. “We could build a workshop for you next to the house. Or in town, by my offices.”

  “I’d like that, too. And I’ll figure out how to help
you take care of our children—and learn to read and write a bit, so that I can send you love notes and make up for all the messages I never sent before.”

  Her heart swelled. “I’ll send some to you, as well.”

  “And I’ll make a better man of myself.”

  “Oh, Thom. You’re the best man I know. You couldn’t be any better.”

  He lowered his lips to hers, said softly against them, “You’re wrong, Georgie.”

  Smiling, she wound her arms around his shoulders. “You’ll have to stay around to prove me wrong.”

  “I will. You wait and see. You’ll never be able to get rid of me.”

  She’d never try. “Is that your new promise? Because my new promise is that I’m never going to be separated from you again.”

  “It is, Georgie.” His voice roughened. “I swear it.”

  “And is there any chance you’ll ever break it?”

  “None at all.”

  “Then I was wrong, Thom,” she said, and leaned in for another kiss. “Sometimes, no chance is better than some.”