“Do you suppose he found it while searching through those sunken ships, ma’am?”
Georgiana smiled. It was a lovely thought, but despite their depiction in popular adventure tales, salvagers rarely discovered anything of value that wasn’t already claimed by the ship’s owner. Most were hired to recover recent wreckage before the cargo spoiled completely. They didn’t keep any of it for themselves.
Perhaps Thom had found a single coin or it had been given to him in payment. And if he’d found more than one, they were gone now, anyway. “If this is part of a treasure, Marta, it must have been cursed.”
Because Thom’s ship must have sunk, too. He hadn’t dropped into the ocean out of the æther, and unless he’d shot himself, his ship must have come under attack. Her secretary had confirmed that Oriana hadn’t sailed into Skagen’s harbor, and Georgiana hadn’t seen the old herring buss’s familiar silhouette on the water the morning she’d found Thom on the sand. She’d spent too many days searching the horizon for Oriana to have mistaken her for any other ship.
Georgiana’s smile faded. She put the gold coin on the side table where Thom could find it when he woke up. The coin and their separation settlement would easily buy him a new ship.
Then he could be off again.
* * *
A dry whisper penetrated Georgiana’s sleep. She opened bleary eyes. Darkness had fallen outside. A blanket covered her legs, curled up in the armchair. From the adjoining kitchen, Marta’s soft hum and the scent of roasting lamb wafted through the room.
The whisper came again from the pallet on the floor. “Georgie.”
Thom.
She sat up. His eyes had opened. Not looking at her, though he repeated her name again on a rasping breath, as if through a parched throat. Unfocused, his pupils had dilated, his irises just a thin ring of dark blue.
Not truly awake. Still in the opium’s grip.
Though not lucid yet, he could take a few sips of broth. Untangling her blanket from her skirts, she rose from the chair and retrieved a small bowl from the kitchen. She sent Marta home and returned to the bedchamber. Spoon in hand, she knelt beside his left shoulder, the mattress cushioning her knees.
That dry rasp came again. “Georgie.”
His gaze had fixed on the ceiling. He wasn’t speaking to her—or at least, not the real Georgiana. She might very well have featured in his drugged dreams.
“I’m here, Thom.” Cradling the back of his head in her palm, she tipped him forward and brought the spoon to his lips. “You need to swallow this. It will help your throat.”
She didn’t know if he heard or if he simply swallowed in automatic response to the broth being spooned into his mouth. Not a single drop spilled, even now. He’d always been a fastidious man. Not overly concerned by his appearance—he just preferred neatness and order in all things.
That was something Georgiana had learned about Thom before she’d ever met him. Eight years ago, her father had hired him on as chief mate of his whaling ship, and within a day, the gossip from Skagen had been laden with the complaints of the sailors taken to task for sloppy stations and berths. At the dinner table, however, her father spoke nothing but praise.
Although she’d heard much about him, five months passed before Georgiana had actually seen her father’s new chief mate. And although Thom gave little thought to his appearance beyond keeping himself neat, she had not been able to stop thinking of it.
Not because Thom was handsome—though he was that. His dark hair held just a hint of curl, in a sensibly short style that he trimmed himself. Taken one at a time, his features were too heavy: thick slashing brows over deep-set eyes, a prominent nose, and a wide mouth. But the strong frame of his angular jaw and cheekbones prevented the boldness of his features from overwhelming his face, and complemented his height and breadth. Altogether, he made a striking figure.
But it hadn’t been his face or his size that had captured her interest. It had been his stillness. It had been the intensity of his gaze when he’d looked at her in return. It had been his quiet manner, and how he used as few words as possible when he spoke, so that each one felt significant—like a promise.
So when Thom had asked what would make her happiest, Georgiana had told him. After years of watching her mother pacing in front of the window facing the sea, her gaze searching the horizon, and waiting weeks and months for Georgina’s father to come home, she’d known exactly what would make her happy. A husband who will hold me in his arms every night. And she’d believed Thom when he’d sworn that he would.
Then the morning after they were married, he’d sailed off in the salvaging boat her father had given him as a wedding gift.
With a sigh, Georgiana put aside the empty bowl. These weren’t memories that she wanted to revisit. Their wedding night had been painful enough—and she’d understood that remorse and guilt had driven him away, despite her asking him to stay. But it didn’t explain the second and third time. That last visit, he had not even waited until morning to go. He had not even waited long enough to spend his seed inside her, but abandoned Georgiana in the middle of their coupling—even though it hadn’t hurt that time, and he’d had nothing to be sorry for.
Nothing to be sorry for, except staying away for four years. That had been more painful than anything she’d experienced in their bed.
But those years had apparently treated him well. Despite the fever and bullet wound, he appeared healthy. Shadowed by dark hair, thick muscles carved his broad chest and strong thighs, their shape well-defined even at rest. He was just as handsome. Like many men at sea, he wore a beard to protect his face from the elements—and kept it neatly trimmed, so that even after two days’ growth his whiskers didn’t look unkempt.
The last time Georgiana had seen him, he’d been clean-shaven. Each night he’d taken her to bed, he’d always taken a razor to his beard first, and his skin had been smooth when he’d kissed her.
But not now. Frowning, she ran her fingers down the short, silky strands covering his jaw. He wasn’t clean-shaven now, despite the rumors that he’d been in another woman’s bed.
When she’d first heard the whispers, her instincts told her not to believe them. This beard told her the same. And it was hardly solid evidence that he’d been faithful during his absence—he could grow a beard within a few weeks, after all—but whispers were no more substantial. Georgiana preferred to trust her instincts over rumors.
Not that it mattered. His fidelity had never been the problem; his absence was. But believing that he’d been true to his vows hurt less than believing he hadn’t been.
And she would not think about how substantial his new arms were.
Those arms moved restlessly at his sides, steel fingers clenching. He turned his cheek against her palm.
“Georgie?”
His voice didn’t sound so painfully dry now, more like his own; her name was a low, deep rumble.
“I’m still here, Thom.” Right where she’d been for years.
His unfocused gaze looked beyond her shoulder. “I failed you, Georgie.”
“Yes.” A hard little laugh escaped her. “Yes, you surely—”
“I was coming to stay. To hold you every night.” A rough hitch of his breath was like a hook through her chest. “But I lost it. I lost it all.”
Coming to stay? Her heart suddenly seemed pinched in a vise. She couldn’t breathe.
It meant nothing. The words of a man blissed on opium. And even if they were true, he’d said them far too late.
But despite the stern reminder Georgiana gave herself, almost a minute passed before she could speak again. “You were coming to stay?”
He didn’t respond. Still only seeing the Georgiana in his dream—or perhaps seeing nothing at all now.
She tried again. “What did you lose, Thom? Oriana? Your crew? And who shot you?”
Silence. She wanted to shake his shoulders and rouse him. To make him answer. But there would be time for answers tomorrow.
<
br /> Nothing he could say would change her mind. But she would need the time to ponder what she would say if Thom’s answer was that he’d hoped to stay.
TWO
He never should have married her.
Sitting naked on the pallet, Thom flicked the coin over in his palm. Just a small bit of gold—and all that was left of his hopes and intentions.
Almost nothing.
He’d wanted to give Georgiana so much more. He’d been arrogant enough to believe that he could. But this coin had been waiting for Thom when he’d awoken, as if to make certain he didn’t spend another second fooling himself. In sleep and dreams, her face and her touch had been so close. Then he’d seen that glint of gold, and the memory of everything he’d lost had crashed through his mind like a cold wave, sweeping those dreams away.
Losing it all was the last thing he remembered: the airship flying in low over Oriana’s sails, the rail cannon firing a chunk out of his ship’s bow, and the turned-out pirate who’d descended from the airship and asked Thom for the chest of coins—then the crack of a pistol and the stabbing pain through his side. A dim recollection of the waves and a lighthouse might have been memories or more dreams. Thom didn’t know. There wasn’t anything solid after the bullet, until the glint of gold.
But the room he was in now told the rest of the story. Henry Tucker’s house—the bedchamber on the ground floor. Thom must have been too heavy to carry up the stairs, so Georgiana’s parents had put him in their own bed. The mattress dripped water that puddled on the stone floor. Only one reason for that. He’d had a fever and they’d packed him in ice.
It would have been better if they’d left him for dead. Now he’d have to get off this pallet and look Georgiana in the eye. Tell her that he’d come home with nothing, and that he was leaving again. But Thom thought that going this time might kill him—because this time, he would be leaving for good.
She deserved more than this. He couldn’t be what she needed. He couldn’t make her happy. He had to let her go, give her a chance to find a man who knew how to be a husband. Who didn’t return empty-handed.
Now Thom didn’t even have a ship.
He dressed, his movements slow. The bullet through his side was nothing more than a twinge now, but he didn’t want to hurry. From the kitchen he heard a woman’s light tread and the clink of utensils. Georgiana, or her mother. Though he ached to see his wife, a step out of this room was a step closer to leaving. And if it was her mother, he dreaded the woman’s cheer. He’d never seen Jane Tucker unhappy. Always simmering with joy, and a smile now would be a curving dagger through his heart.
But the delay could only last until he pushed his feet into his boots. He braced himself for whoever waited beyond the door, battening down the pain in his chest. He couldn’t falter in this. Georgiana was a stubborn woman. She wouldn’t give up on their marriage easily, and when she argued, Thom would be tempted to soften and give in. But he’d spent four years forcing himself to stay away. He would have to rely on that strength again.
Silently, he opened the door. At the table, Georgiana sat with her back to him—just like the first time he’d seen her. He’d been standing on the deck of her father’s ship, Sea Bloom, returning after a five-month whaling expedition. Georgiana had been waiting at the docks with her mother, but she’d turned to greet someone, and he’d only seen her black hair, her graceful neck, and a summery yellow dress that left her arms bare.
She was just as graceful now, but her hair had changed. Instead of a long braid, she’d rolled it into a thick ball at her nape. A dress of dark blue hugged her figure, with long sleeves for winter.
Aside from the pounding of his heart, Thom had been quiet, but Georgiana must have heard him. She turned her head just slightly, so that he glimpsed the shell of her ear and the shadow behind her jaw. “You’re awake and well?”
“I am.”
“Sit and eat, then.”
Georgiana rose and moved to the stove as she spoke. There was never any nonsense about her when a task needed to be done, even one as simple as breakfast. Always practical. Many of her father’s sailors called her cold and humorless, but Thom had appreciated her steady nature from the first.
And she wasn’t cold. Nor was she humorless. Just reserved. After those barriers had fallen away, he’d discovered that her teasing could be gentle or sharp, and usually at unexpected moments in their conversations. During the long walks they’d taken while courting, Thom had laughed more with Georgiana than he could recall laughing in all of the years that had come before, and he’d realized that far more went on in her head than ever came out of her mouth.
But there was nothing in his head except Georgiana. She’d made him happy. He’d wanted to do the same for her. He hadn’t.
Heart heavy, Thom chose the nearest chair and sat. “As soon as I’ve finished, I’ll haul out that wet bed.”
“Thank you.”
She returned from the stove. Oh, sweet blue heavens. Standing close, she set his bowl and mug on the table, and the fragrance of her filled his senses, that delicate flowery scent from a bloom he didn’t know the name of, but that he always thought of as Georgiana’s. Her hair had smelled of it the first time he’d kissed her, moments after she’d accepted his hand. Her nightgown had carried the same scent on the night of their wedding, and it had taken every bit of his control not to strip it from her body and discover if she smelled the same everywhere.
It took all of his control now. He closed his eyes, fingers clenching against the urge to carry her upstairs and lose himself in her warmth. Never again. Even if he’d intended to stay, never again. He’d promised himself the last time, when she’d been under him, whimpering and squirming as she bore the pain of his raging need.
Never again.
He’d done wrong, asking her to marry him. His need had been part of that wrong, coming upon him from the moment she’d turned to face him on the docks eight years ago. He’d been fool enough to believe he had that hunger under control.
He couldn’t let such needs rule him. He controlled them now. He kept them in order. Marriage should have done that, too. Marriage put them both in their proper place. Wanting a wife, then having her in bed. That was a proper order. Yet his hunger had only grown, and his control had become a bare, slight thing. He’d wanted her every second—if not inside her, then just to be with her.
Just as he wanted her now. But her presence and that fragrance weren’t a poor substitute for the bed. They were a sweet pleasure of their own.
She moved on to her chair, and her perfume was replaced by the scent of hot grains wafting up from his bowl. He glanced down. Some kind of porridge. It didn’t matter. Everything he’d ever eaten in this house was better than what he had on his ship.
Georgiana must have read his silence as a question. “I sweetened it with honey,” she told him. “No sugar.”
He hadn’t doubted. “Thank you.”
And though she drank tea, she’d given him coffee, because two hundred years ago the Horde had slipped the bugs in through sugar and tea, then put up their towers that made slaves of an entire population. He’d only had to tell her once what he would and wouldn’t eat, and she’d always provided what he needed without asking why. That was Georgiana. She hadn’t pressed him to talk about memories he’d rather forget, or of the occupation in England. Thom didn’t think about his arms being taken and replaced with iron, or the years on a boat, hauling up fish. He didn’t think of the frenzies and the revolution. All that was done. He’d left England behind and found himself in Skagen, where he’d tried to make the sort of life that other men did, men who hadn’t been born under the boot of the Horde.
He’d tried and failed. Thom was his own master now. But he would never be what other men were.
Holding her mug cupped between her hands, Georgiana watched him eat, her green eyes steady and calm. “You’ll need to speak with the magistrate about the bullet wound.”
Mouth full, he nodded.
&nb
sp; “Who shot you?”
“I ran into pirates,” he said between bites.
“Your crew?”
There was no crew. Thom shook his head, but his mouth was full again, and she went on before he could answer.
Her voice troubled, she asked, “And Oriana?”
“Stolen.”
Along with his new submersible, and a fortune in gold coins. His throat closed, making it impossible to swallow.
It was time to tell her that this was done.
But he couldn’t yet. He couldn’t meet Georgiana’s eyes now, either. His gaze dropped to the bowl. Still mostly full, but he couldn’t eat. And there was one question that still had to be asked before he could leave. “It’s been some years since I was here.”
Just the corners of her mouth tilted upward, as they did when her humor was sharp. “Yes, it has.”
“Was there a child?” He had to force it out. “The last time.”
“It’s difficult to conceive a child when your husband spills his seed on the way out the door.”
Heat rushed to his face. He hadn’t actually spent on the floor, but the way he’d rushed out of the room to escape the pain and shame of hurting her, he might as well have. “And your father, mother?”
Her smile disappeared. Her thick lashes swept down. Quietly, she said, “They’re gone.”
“Gone?” Thom stared at her. “Dead?”
“Yes.”
When she looked up again, moisture had pooled in her eyes. She abruptly rose from the table to pace its length. No task to complete. Just upset.
“How long ago?” His voice was rough.
“A month after you came home last. The lump fever swept through town. They both caught it.”
Almost four years ago. So Thom’s failure was worse than he’d known. Raised in a Horde crèche, he didn’t know what it was to have a mother or father. But he knew she had loved them. Losing them must have ripped her heart to shreds.
“I should have been here.”
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