The Iron Fin

by Anne Renwick

  In a small town, blood purity meant much, and Finn were conditioned to think of Finn and Scot as two separate entities never-to-be-intertwined. Here in Glasgow where Finn and Scot worked side by side and occasionally intermarried, the stigma lessened. Separation benefited no one; together they were stronger.

  Except when one sought to take advantage of the other. She took a deep breath. “About the boy, Thomas. He’s the son‌—‌legitimate‌—‌of my former friend, Maren. I questioned him, when I was able, and from the child’s words I suspect he’s being used to ensure Lord Roideach’s cooperation. Not that the gentleman in question had any hesitation performing tests upon me.” Her hands curled into fists. He’d treated her as if she were no better than a laboratory rat.

  “Maren.” A groove formed between Alec’s eyebrows. “Your uncle’s wife, mother of the child whose seaside baptism I witnessed?”

  “Yes. There was a scandal when she returned from Glasgow. Someone let slip that she’d abandoned a husband and child. I objected when my uncle began to court her.” A vast understatement. “When their intent to marry was announced, I spoke with Mrs. Carr.”

  “Bigamy,” he said simply.

  She nodded. “But not, I was told, in the eyes of the Finn people. Lord Roideach is Scottish and by leaving the child with him, their marriage was dissolved.”

  Alec’s eyebrow rose. “About that term, Finn…‌”

  “Finnfolk. The origins of my people go back so many generations that they’re lost.” She almost sagged with the relief of turning to a more familiar‌—‌and therefore more comfortable‌—‌topic. “I can’t turn into a seal. But I can hold my breath for up to twenty minutes and swim in the cold sea for hours.”

  “How deep?”

  “Perhaps one hundred feet?”

  “On one breath alone?” He stepped closer, bringing with him a raw fascination that stole the air from her lungs. Her blood started to hum again, and all she could manage was a nod. He lifted her hand, tracing the scars between her fingers with his thumb. “And these?”

  “Syndactyly,” she said. “Webbing on our fingers and toes. A common and once highly valued feature among my people, said to aid in swimming, though we do well enough without. Most choose to remove the extra skin, the better to fit in among the Scots.”

  He pushed the hair from the side of her face and skimmed the tip of his finger over the top of her ear. “And cut away the points?”

  She shivered at his touch. “Yes.”

  “What else?” He stared at her intently, hanging on her every word.

  “Gray eyes, ancient traditions, a language most can no longer speak.” She turned her face into the warmth of his palm, indulging herself for a fleeting moment. But Alec needed to contact his brother, needed to read with his own eyes the notes Anton had scribbled. Whatever her uncle and Lord Roideach were up to, it involved factor Q. “Come.”

  She caught at his hand and pulled him down the hall and into the kitchen, intent on retrieving the notebook from its hiding place on a ledge inside the chimney, one she’d discovered when the cast iron cookstove had been retrofitted to fill the space of the kitchen’s fireplace.

  “Here,” she said, handing the details of their research‌—‌of Anton’s discoveries‌—‌to him. “Factor Q is linked to Finn syndactyly. The tentacles are able to sense the glycoprotein in our blood. How or why, I don’t know.”

  “We’ll sort this out and stop them, one way or the other.” He held her gaze. “But you realize we might not be able to keep all this information secret, though I will try.”

  “I understand.” She believed him. Trusted him. But though he took the notebook from her hand, he set it aside. “What‌—‌”

  “A moment, Isa.” Eyes smoldering, Alec caught her waist, lifting her with his two large hands and depositing her onto the end of the kitchen table. “I wanted to do exactly this the last time we were in this room. Alas, there was an interruption.” His voice dropped to a low pitch. “A woman who can swim better than me?” The corner of his mouth hitched into that smile that melted her insides. “Have you any idea what that does to me?”

  From the pulse that jumped at his throat, she had a very good idea indeed. A man aroused at her prowess? And not just any man. Alec, a man among the Navy’s elite. Desire flooded her with warmth, then settled hot and wet at her core. Given how events kept conspiring to keep them apart, the notes could wait. Time to put theory into practice and take advantage of the heat simmering in his eyes.

  “I do.” She lifted her fingers to the topmost button of his shirt and popped it free. Alec unleashed a boldness she’d never known she possessed. No more waiting, no more wishing. Leaning forward, she pressed a soft kiss to the base of his neck. “But I’ve not seen much evidence of your desire to conduct that torrid romance you promised.”

  “I’ve been a bit busy.” His hands slid to her knees, parting them as he stepped closer. “Rescuing you. It’s hard to romance an injured, bleeding woman.”

  True. But his intense concentration on her shoved away recent memories. She couldn’t bear it if he stopped. “Minor injuries.”

  His fingers brushed the skin near the nasty gash the hyena fish had left. “Have you any recollection of how ill you were, of how they managed to cure the amoeba infection?”

  “They called it the caeruleus amoeba.” As Isa recounted her time in the freezing water, Alec’s fingers curled into fists, as she systematically listed every treatment, every comment, every horror.

  “Maggot fish,” Alec said. “It’s a wonder you survived. A wonder none of my team were infected. Shaw himself was bitten by the hyena fish.”

  “I was delirious and confused, but something they said made me think this particular amoeba was altered with the specific intent to infect Finn alone.”

  “And seeded inside the mouths of hyena fish,” Alec mused. “Any Finn attempting to escape a megalodon attack would either be shredded alive by hyena fish, or die shortly thereafter, consumed by amoeba one cell at a time. Horrible.”

  “It is. It was.” But she didn’t want to think about it anymore. Not right now. “Stop delaying and kiss me.”

  With a rumbling laugh, his lips came down on hers. Softly. The kind of kiss a man might give an injured woman. She wanted none of that. He’d shown her mad passion before on the ship, against a wall. That was what she wanted.

  Skimming her fingers over the rough beard on the edge of his jaw and into the dark, silky hair at the base of his neck, she opened her mouth, tugging, urging him to sink into her deep and hard. With a growl, he accepted, his tongue plunging and plundering as his hands swept behind her, cupping the swell of her arse and yanking her core tight against his thick, hard column of flesh.

  She moaned and flexed her hips in encouragement. Her mistake for not inviting him into her bed that very first night, but how could she have known?

  His lips left hers. “We have to wait.” Cold air shocked her back to reality as Alec released her, his chest heaving. “If we’re to have any hope of stopping your uncle and Lord Roideach, I must send a letter to my brother. Now.” His finger trailed down her face as his hot gaze scorched her skin. “Point me to your skeet pigeons. I’ll scratch out a message while you bathe. Then we’ll continue our…‌ discussion.”

  ~~~

  Isa stared at the tub, her clammy hands wrapped about a towel as memories of those dark hours in the tank swelled, nearly engulfing her. Perhaps she would use the ewer and basin instead. She took a step backward.

  No. No, she would not let Lord Roideach or her uncle‌—‌a man who ought to have done everything he could to see to her safety, health and happiness‌—‌steal the many pleasures of water from her.

  She turned on the hot water tap. Steam rose as the tub filled. Gripping its enameled sides, she climbed in, wincing as intense heat triggered brief, sharp pains where the tentacles had punctured the skin of her legs. She grabbed a cloth and a bar of castile soap and scrubbed her skin pink before attending
to her hair. With a yank, she pulled the plug and sat there, watching the water swirl down the drain, carrying away all the dirt and blood of the past few days.

  But memories of that horrible tank hadn’t washed away. The time she’d spent in it had left both mental and physical scars, a stark reminder of the value placed on her life by the men who sought to control it because of who she was, what she was.

  Not entirely Finn. Yet certainly not Scottish. She’d spent her entire life moving about the edges of both societies, making tentative bids at acceptance, waiting for some stamp of approval that would never be awarded.

  Enough. She was both.

  Finn by birth, upbringing and mindset, she could not‌—‌would not‌—‌turn her back on her people by allowing her uncle to experiment on those Finn he deemed “inferior” by blood or by birth. Neither would she dismiss her growing feelings for Alec‌—‌admiration, friendship and most certainly lust‌—‌simply because he was Scot. Again and again he’d demonstrated that he would stand by her side. As unaccustomed as she was to such assistance, if she had any hope of stopping her uncle, a traitor who had risen from the depths of their own and moved among the Scots as a powerful officer in the British Navy, she needed Alec’s help.

  She refilled the tub and sank into its warmth, focusing on the glorious buoyancy within the delightful warmth that the miracles of modern plumbing provided. As the knots in her muscles began to untwist, her thoughts drifted down a more pleasant pathway to Alec. To his kiss. To his promise of finishing what they’d started in the kitchen. Her hand skimmed over her skin.

  He’d developed a habit of plucking her from the water, but perhaps this time she could convince him to join her in the tub? For all that she was Finn, she’d yet to experience that kind of pleasure in the water and, aether, she wanted Alec to be the one she shared it with.

  Closing her eyes, she rested her head against the tub’s edge. She’d wait right here for him to find her. A few inked words on a scrap of paper tied to a skeet pigeon’s ankle. A twist of a key to wind its clockwork. A quick launch from a window. Then all that was left between them was a single flight of stairs and an unlocked door. She smiled, feeling both wanton and resourceful.

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  FLOATING. UNABLE TO MOVE her hands. Unable to see. A man with gray, sandpaper-like skin stood above her holding a harpoon-gun in his hand. He smirked, revealing a mouth filled with sharp, triangular teeth.

  With a gasp, Isa woke, her heart pounding. She blinked, and the nightmarish images washed away. Bright afternoon rays of sun slanted through a window, highlighting the edges of a familiar jagged crack in the plaster ceiling overhead. Nestled deeply into a feather mattress and swaddled in soft blankets, she was safe in her bed. She hated that crack, one she’d first noticed on her wedding night, years ago, then watched spread, slowly, inexorably toward the wall. She’d vowed never to sleep again in this room, in this bed. Why, then, was she staring at that blasted crack?

  Memories of the recent past flooded back.

  A faint snore drew her attention, and she turned her head. Her breath caught and the rhythm of her heart took up a different beat. An arm’s length away, Alec slept, sprawled in an armchair that he’d dragged from the corner of the room to her bedside. Bare-chested and bare-legged, he wore nothing but a damp, linen towel wrapped about his waist.

  She must have fallen asleep in the tub from exhaustion and missed his entrance. Disappointing. Yet touching, for he’d carried her to bed, leaving her to rest.

  A shiver of delight skittered across her skin as she rolled onto her side, brazenly cataloguing the features of a man that she’d only seen awake and alert. And fully dressed. His dark hair was rumpled, his eyes and cheekbones shadowed. The beginnings of a beard roughened his jawline. All evidence of the effort he’d expended‌—‌much of it on her behalf‌—‌these past few days.

  Sunlight highlighted the cut edges of muscles hewn by countless field exercises and missions‌—‌and a number of scars she imagined he had also collected in the line of work. She wondered at the story behind each. The slight pucker of an elliptical mark atop his shoulder. A thin white line stretched across the curve of his biceps. A still-raw gash upon his chest concealed by a sprinkle of coarse hair. A few faint lines scattered upon the sculpted ridges of his rectus abdominis. But it was the creases leading from each hip downward, diving beneath the towel that made the tips of her fingers tingle with a growing need to touch.

  How long had they slept? Could they steal a bit more time for themselves, for each other? She bit her lip, but only for a second. Yes. But not in this bed. The chair, on the other hand, held no memories.

  Pushing back her blankets and swinging both legs over the edge of the mattress, Isa touched bare feet to the cool floor. A froth of white ruffles collected about her ankles. Ruffles encircled her wrists and cascaded from her neck. She smiled. He’d dressed her in her finest‌—‌and thinnest‌—‌nightgown. One she’d purchased, but never worn. Why bother, if a man only wished a quick coupling beneath a blanket in the dark?

  Yet Alec had chosen this one, tucked in the corner of a drawer and still wrapped in tissue paper, a gown that was nothing if not a flirtatious invitation.

  She would wake him slowly. Appreciatively. With the sun at her back to make the cotton voile gown all but transparent. Warmth shot through her limbs, then collected low in her core. Who better to appreciate such a garment than the only man to ever set her skin aflame with a single look?

  Lifting the hem of her nightgown, Isa slid one knee onto the seat beside his hip, then straddled him, lowering her bare bottom onto his towel-wrapped thighs. Nervous anticipation fluttered in her stomach. To be so bold…‌

  She bent forward and placed a soft, teasing kiss against the edge of his chin, brushing her lips over the beginnings of a beard. Sitting back, she traced a tiny scar at the corner of his eye, letting her fingertip skate across the angle of his cheekbone.

  His lips, the obvious next choice, twitched, and Isa knew he’d woken. Did he keep his eyes closed with hopes she’d continue? Smiling, she played along, stealing a moment to sketch the arch of his clavicle, to skim her palms over the scattering of coarse hair that curled upon a chest that rose and fell slowly, still feigning sleep.

  Time to call his bluff. She dragged her finger down the center of his abdomen, following the groove the linea alba cut, hooking her finger beneath the folded edge of the towel. She gave it a slight tug. “I see you availed yourself of my tub.”

  A smile stretched across his face, but his eyes stayed firmly shut. “I was filthy and almost as exhausted as you were. Not the best way to begin a torrid affair.”

  Laughing softly, she circled his navel with her fingertip. “Yet here we are now, all alone.” She pressed an open-mouthed kiss to the edge of his neck. Beneath the fragrance of her soap, she could smell him. An intoxicating scent that ignited a deep craving inside her that she had every intention of filling. She nipped at his skin. “Rested. Clean. Nothing between us but a scrap of fabric, and you still can’t summon the energy to move?”

  Strong hands gripped her hips, yanking her closer to pull her tight against his thick length. “Is this what you had in mind?” he growled, thrusting upward.

  “To start.” She rocked her hips against the hard column and hummed her delight when Alec’s fingers dug into her flesh.

  Threading hers through the waves of his hair, she dragged his lips to hers, opening her mouth to welcome the invasion of his tongue. Too long they’d been denied this moment, and the hunger of their kiss spoke of a desire not to be denied a single moment longer.

  He groaned, uncurled his fingers and shifted his hands upward. Cotton pulled and stretched as his hands ran over her hips, her ribs, until they cupped the weight of her breasts. Her nipples hardened beneath his thumbs and when he pinched them, she cried out, breaking their kiss.

  “Aether, you take my breath away,” he said. “Molten sunlight for hair and a gown that frames th
e glory of your breasts.” An impish grin formed. “As I’d hoped.”

  She smiled. “And yet it feels far too thick.”

  His hips flexed, pressing into the desire that pooled between her thighs. “We’ll get to thick in a moment.” A laugh rumbled deep in his chest and he closed his hot, wet mouth over the entirety of her nipple, cotton and all, teasing and toying as her fingers fisted in his hair. A low keening sound rose in her throat, and she clamped her lips tightly against its escape.

  Alec drew back, a look of extreme self-satisfaction on his face. “A screamer?”

  Heat flooded her face. Her? Screaming? Never. Well, never before.

  “I see.” His grin stretched wider. “This is a first for you. But I promise it won’t be your last. What kind of affair would I be offering if I couldn’t drag forth screams of pleasure?”

  His mouth came down on her other breast, but this time she didn’t bite back the sound of her pleasure. Nor did she stay her hands. Lifting up onto her knees, she yanked at the towel about his waist. The damp cloth parted and his hips jerked as she wrapped her fingers about his heavy length, brushing her thumb across the moisture already collected at its tip.

  Impressive. As a Finn, she’d seen plenty of men, and he was far bigger than she’d expected. And there was no duty, no expectation. The stolen moments of their affair were to be all about pleasure. Only pleasure. Hers. His.

  “And what of you?” she asked. “Will you yell? Shout?” She stroked him. Slowly. His hips bucked and he groaned, a guttural sound she wanted to hear as he sank deep inside her.

  His hand, rough with callouses, slid beneath ruffles and skimmed upward over the skin of her inner thigh. She held her breath, completely open to him as he explored her damp folds. She gasped as the pad of his thumb passed over the tiny nub of nerves at her core.