Enthralled

by Lora Leigh

  “Yes.” Because Thom hadn’t known that anyone could make prosthetics like he possessed now. Though not mechanical flesh, they were just as amazing in their own way.

  “So you made their acquaintance in Port Fallow. And then?”

  Thom hesitated. Her voice was strained. Her face had paled, but her eyes were bright, as if she held back tears.

  “Georgie?”

  She shook her head. “Staying or leaving isn’t so important now, Thom. How do you think the rumors began? Is there anything we can use as leverage against this man?”

  Staying or leaving wasn’t important. For so long, it had been all that mattered. It didn’t now.

  Thom pulled a chair from under the table and sat. “Ivy likes building things. I had experience diving. So about four months ago, Mad Machen sailed into Port Fallow’s harbor for a few weeks’ stay, and while she was there we made a trade. I’d tell her what I knew of diving in deeper waters, and she’d give me the first submersible she’d made. So we spent time together while she built a new one. But anything else?” He shook his head. “She’s a fine woman. But I haven’t had eyes for anyone but you, Georgie. And she doesn’t have eyes for anyone but Mad Machen.”

  “For the pirate? But I thought he abducted her. Forced her to work on his ship.” Her green eyes hardened. “Forced her into his bed.”

  “That’s what people say, but I asked her once if she wanted help getting away. She said no. And I never saw anything that made me think he’d hurt her.”

  Instead, he knew exactly what the man felt when he looked at her. Thom was feeling the same now, looking at Georgiana. There was the woman he’d kill for, die for—and do both without a single regret.

  “Truly?”

  He nodded. “Considering what she’s capable of building, Georgie, she could have gotten away a long time ago. If she’d wanted to.”

  Her expression thoughtful, Georgiana rose from the bed and hung up the pink dress. “He has a terrifying reputation.”

  “And he’s earned it. He is a madman.”

  “A dangerous man.” She joined him at the table, skirts swaying with each step, sweeping her flowery scent around them. “But you weren’t worried?”

  Thom shrugged. “After watching a megalodon swim by when I was a hundred feet below the surface, mad pirates don’t seem much of a threat.”

  Unless they pointed a gun at Georgie. Even a giant armored shark couldn’t terrify him as much as seeing her in danger.

  Smiling, she took the nearest chair. The sun shining through the porthole caught the reds in her hair like sparks of fire and deepened the shadow beneath her soft bottom lip. Her gaze fell to his arms. “So they truly were a gift?”

  “Yes. Ivy said it was in trade, too.” Though they were worth far more than any help he’d given.

  “She sounds very generous. And amiable.”

  “She’s both.”

  “The rumor is that she’s a little mad, too.”

  “Considering that she gave me these arms for nothing, I’d say there was some truth to that,” he said, and her laugh in response lifted through him. “Though I never put much stock in rumors.”

  “I don’t, either.” Her smile faded. Steadily, her gaze held his. “But it’s sometimes difficult to ignore them, when a rumor is the only news of your husband that you receive.”

  Throat suddenly thick, Thom nodded. He’d done wrong by her in that. The easy excuse had always been that he couldn’t read and write, anyway. But he could have had a message sent. Thom just hadn’t been able to make himself tell her that he still had nothing. And the longer he’d gone without a message, the harder it had become to send.

  But that soft admonishment was all she said of it. “And these coins? How did you find them?”

  “While I was in Port Fallow, working with Ivy on that submersible, I ran into Lady Corsair again. We met on Mad Machen’s ship and she invited me up to her skyrunner for a dinner.”

  Georgiana stared at him. “You had dinner with Lady Corsair.”

  With a grin, Thom nodded. The disbelief in her voice wasn’t that of someone wondering whether he lied. His wife was wondering whether he’d gone mad, too. Maybe for good reason. A mercenary, Lady Corsair’s reputation was even more ruthless than Mad Machen’s.

  “And while we were eating, Archimedes Fox told me—”

  “Archimedes Fox!” Now she laughed. “He’s not a real man. He’s a character in those adventure stories.”

  “All of them based on his salvaging runs.” Though it wasn’t the type of salvaging that Thom did. Instead of recovering recent wreckage, Fox risked the zombies in the abandoned cities of Europe, searching for treasures. That risk had paid off for him, too. “Much of it’s true. Especially the bit about his colorful clothes—I nearly go blind every time I look at him.”

  She laughed again. “Truly?”

  “Yes,” he said. “His sister writes the stories. She lives in Fladstrand.”

  Not far from Skagen. Georgiana’s eyes widened slightly. “I heard that Lady Corsair flew into that town a few times—and that Fox’s sister was kidnapped last year. But I thought it was all part of another story.”

  “They didn’t tell me anything about that. Fox was more interested in talking about a wreck that might be worth diving. It was more than two hundred years old, and he said it was just waiting for any man who could dive deep enough for it—and that in a wreck so old, I wouldn’t have to worry about anyone claiming ownership of anything I found.”

  He’d also said that others had died searching for it. But Thom hadn’t thought there was anything to lose by trying.

  He’d been wrong. Though he’d found the treasure, there’d been everything to lose.

  “How deep was it?”

  “Fox didn’t know for certain. Just deep enough that no one had found it yet, though his research had given him a good idea of its location. But it was just over three hundred feet.”

  “Three hundred feet!” Georgiana shot out of her chair, her hands flying to her head as if to keep her brains from exploding. “Thom! What the hell were you thinking?”

  She was right to be angry. That dive had hit him harder than any other, making him dizzy under the water, and feeling as if every joint in his body would snap apart after he’d come up, despite a slow ascent. In her place, he’d have been shouting, too.

  But foolish or not, his answer was the same. “I was thinking that I had new arms, but that I didn’t have anything else to bring back to you. It seemed worth the try.”

  Her lips compressed and she turned away from the table, arms crossing beneath her breasts. Those soft mounds rose and fell sharply a few times before she nodded. “Where was it?”

  “Off the eastern coast of Ireland.”

  She glanced back at him, baffled. “Ireland?”

  “It was the wreck of the Resolution.” That was met with a blank expression. “It was the ship that the Irishmen fired on when the Horde first invaded.”

  Her eyes slowly rounded in realization. She knew the story, then. Thom hadn’t until Archimedes Fox had told him. It was apparently common knowledge among the descendants of the Englishmen who’d fled Britain for the Americas—and a sore point between everyone living in Ireland and Manhattan City. But not in England. Those who’d lived under the Horde hadn’t known anything of the incident. And truth was, Thom didn’t care enough to hold a grudge now. He could see both the horror of what had been done, and he could see the sense of it, too.

  Two hundred years ago, a good number of Englishmen had been infected by the Horde’s sugar and tea. And when the radio signal had begun broadcasting, a good number of people suddenly had their emotions dampened. They’d become pliable, obedient.

  A good number of people, but not all of them. Those who could had tried to flee, but there’d been no airships then. The only escape lay across the water—and Ireland was the nearest destination that wasn’t teeming with zombies.

  The people on the first ships to Dublin had
been allowed to disembark. But those ships had been full of panic and rumors of infection, and the city had recently lost a large number of its population to a plague, so the Irish had set up a blockade at the mouth of the bay and began ordering new arrivals to turn away. The English refused, and soon the sea had been teeming with boats waiting for entry, some of the passengers taking the risk of rowing to shore or attempting to sail farther along the coast—until the Lord Mayor of Dublin had ordered cannons to fire on the largest ship, Resolution, as a warning of what would happen to them all if they didn’t leave.

  The drastic action had the desired effect, but that hadn’t been the only ship sunk. Several dozen that left Dublin had also been lost in the North Sea and while trying to cross the Atlantic.

  “Fox told me that, aside from the fishing boats, most of those who’d managed to escape England only did because they could afford to go—and that all of the valuables they took with them had likely sunk, too.”

  “The Irish always denied it ever happened,” Georgiana said.

  “But people saw it, talked about it, wrote letters about it. Some painted the scene later. Fox had studied the letters and pictures, and told me where to find it.”

  “And you did.” Her admiring look sent heat rushing under his skin. “Were only the coins left?”

  “I don’t know.” Thom hadn’t stayed down long enough to look for anything else. “As soon as I saw the chest, I knew it would be enough. There were five thousand coins in it.”

  Georgiana’s mouth opened. No sound came out. She plopped back into her chair, looking astounded.

  Thom imagined he’d looked the same when he’d first come across the chest. “Fox had given me the name of a salvage dealer in Brighton. So I took one of the coins in. He called it a Carolus Broad—one of the last English coins minted before the invasion. He said he’d had a collector eager to know if any came in. He gave me that collector’s offer, but also told me that the offer was lower than the value of the gold itself, and that, considering where I’d found them, I could take in more at auction or ask for a higher price. I wanted to bring the coins to you first, anyway, so I told the dealer to make his inquiry and send word to me in Skagen.”

  “So you were coming home with a chest of gold,” she said softly.

  “Enough to buy mechanical flesh if these arms wouldn’t do.”

  Her chest hitched. “Oh, Thom. They would have.”

  But he’d been too late, either way. He’d had these arms when she’d agreed to separate. “At least it was something worth bringing home. Something I could have given you when I left.”

  “The gold?”

  He nodded. “That’s a husband’s duty: earning enough to support his family.”

  “‘And a man doesn’t deserve to come home unless he’s done it.’ Yes, so I’ve heard my father say.” She rose to her feet and paced a few steps, rubbing her forehead with the tips of her fingers—a gesture Thom had seen many others make when they were frustrated or tired, though he’d never formed the habit himself. Skeletal iron fingers didn’t smooth away tension well.

  She faced him again, eyes narrowed. “Was this salvage dealer the only man who knew you’d found the coins?—but you met him before. So the dealer is not the same man as on this airship.”

  “The collector he contacted knew, too.”

  “You increased the price. Maybe it was more than the collector could pay—or he realized that hiring a band of mercenaries would cost far less.”

  That would fit. “So he came to take it rather than make another offer.”

  Georgiana nodded, blew out a sharp breath. He could imagine what she was thinking—the man had tried to kill him rather than make another offer, too. This task he wanted Thom to do probably wouldn’t end any differently.

  Her eyes met his for a long minute before she stepped closer to his chair. Her hand lifted to his face. Just a gentle touch, her fingertips sliding over his bearded jaw, but need slapped him hard, turning his body into one thick ache. Hanging at his sides, his hands clenched to fists. He wouldn’t grab her, haul her onto his lap. He wouldn’t take her sweet mouth with his.

  But smoking hells, he wanted to. And Georgiana had to see it. Her gaze was arrested on his face, her lips parting. Her fingers had stilled on his jaw, then her focus dropped and he felt the light brush of her thumb against the corner of his mouth.

  “Georgie,” he said roughly.

  Her eyes closed. With a sigh, she turned her face away, her gaze sliding around the stateroom. “We need to search this cabin,” she said. “Maybe we’ll find something to aid in our escape.”

  Always practical, his Georgie. And she was right. He nodded against her hand.

  “Let’s look, then.”

  FOUR

  The search needed to be done, but it was also a mindless task, and Georgiana desperately needed the time to think on everything that Thom had told her.

  Her husband was such a good man. A far more fascinating man than she’d realized. And knowing why he’d stayed away left Georgiana ashamed and angry at herself now.

  She had asked him to hold her in his arms every night. Of course, she hadn’t meant it so literally—and the important part hadn’t been his arms, but that he would be there every night.

  She’d been so thoughtless. Cruelly and selfishly so. Why had she never imagined how such words might sound to a man whose arms had been replaced with iron? And she’d never explained what she’d meant, or why it mattered, so that he wouldn’t mistake her meaning. She hadn’t told him of her mother. Why had she assumed that he would know exactly what she’d wanted? As if it had been his responsibility to perfectly interpret her every thought and desire.

  Oh, and this was the very worst time to think about whose fault it was that her marriage had fallen apart. What did any of it matter if they didn’t survive this? She had to be clever and focus on their escape, not think of the past.

  She had to be clever. Even a few days ago, Georgiana would have said she was. Also sensible and intelligent. Her lack of understanding of the man she’d married dealt a shattering blow to that belief. Her gaze had been so limited and narrow. Searching the horizon for his ship, but never seeing anything but herself.

  With a heavy sigh, she pulled open the final drawer in the writing desk. Nothing there. Either wealthy people didn’t keep anything that could be used as a weapon in their staterooms, or this cabin had already been cleared out.

  Holding the mattress angled up with one hand, Thom turned away from his examination of the bed frame. “Nothing?”

  “No. If I were more clever, I would know how to make an escape balloon with the lamp and the skirts cut from my dresses. I’d sew them together and we’d fly off.”

  “I’ll be glad to take a ride under your skirts, Georgie.”

  “Thom!” So outrageous. And wonderful. She blushed and laughed, shaking her head.

  His response was a grin that she felt down to her toes. A man of few words, but he didn’t need many. He could lift her from sorrow and shame with the widening of his mouth and a laughing flash of his teeth.

  Why had he never teased her in such a bold way before? Was this new—or another part of him that he’d hidden? Wherever it stemmed from, she hoped he would continue. Forever, if possible. But forever could only happen if they escaped.

  And after they did, Georgiana was determined to win her husband back.

  If she could. He’d wanted to stay—but he’d intended to leave her, anyway. He’d thought himself a failure as a husband. That hadn’t changed. He probably still intended to leave; and maybe he would. But whether he stayed or left, Georgiana would do everything she could to prove that he hadn’t failed at anything.

  Thom let the mattress flop back to the frame. “There’s nothing here, either. But looking at you, I don’t doubt we’ll figure out something.”

  Her determination must have been apparent on her face. As well it should. She was determined to get through this.

  Her gaze f
ell to his arms. Thom and she weren’t completely without weapons. And Thom wore gloves, sleeves. Lord Pinchpenny probably knew of the prosthetics, but he likely didn’t know that they weren’t the typical skeletal sort, or what was hidden beneath.

  Even she didn’t completely know. “But you have a gun?”

  “Yes.”

  “What else?”

  “Anything I might need underwater or hauling sail alone. A diving knife. Cables. Grapples. Clamps.”

  All useful, but Georgiana’s mind couldn’t work past the initial part. “Hauling sail alone? What of your crew?”

  Not a large crew. Just two other men. If their trip into town had gone as planned, Thom would have given their names to the magistrate, listing them lost at sea—though they might both still be on Oriana. A pirate would kill a captain, but he needed someone to sail a stolen ship.

  Thom shook his head. “About two years ago, I rigged her so that I could handle her alone. With no crew to pay, I could send more of my earnings to you.”

  And he’d thought that amount wasn’t a lot, but it must have cost him so much more than the money he’d sent. The past two years, as alone on his boat as she’d been at home—but sailing and diving were far more dangerous. Anything could have happened to him and there’d have been no one to help.

  Her heart twisted. She could have changed that. She’d sent out messages to Thom when her mother and father had died. Not knowing where he was, she’d sent them to towns and harbors where she knew he’d been. But when he hadn’t replied, she hadn’t tried again.

  She could have. A few more messages, a few months later. Eventually, he’d have received one. But she’d been so angry and stubborn and hurt.

  Thoughtless and cruel. Angry and stubborn. Georgiana was not liking this new view of herself at all. He had not been a failure of a husband, but she might have been a failure as a wife. And she understood why, feeling this way, he’d want to leave. Because now Georgiana wasn’t certain that she deserved to keep a man like Thom, either.

  But she had to try. And also try to be something that she’d thought she was: just a little bit clever. Because she wouldn’t lose him again. Not like this.