Salvage

by Meljean Brook

“Yes.”

  Her soft reply was a heavy condemnation. Thom knew he’d never stop feeling its weight. “Who’s been supporting you, Georgie?”

  “I have been, Thom. Sea Bloom came into my possession. I made use of her.”

  Throat thick, he nodded. He’d let it all fall out of order. Her father had told him, over and over. Thom’s place as a husband was to support his wife, support any children. And not to come back until he had something worth bringing.

  Go on, Thom, and make yourself a man. I’ll look after her while you’re gone.

  But her father hadn’t. And Thom shouldn’t have relied on anyone to help him. He’d been so focused on trying to do what a man should, on trying to make her happy, that everything had lost its place. Georgiana had been supporting herself, while Thom had come home with nothing.

  And she wouldn’t be arguing with him, he realized. Not his strong, practical Georgiana. She’d see all the wrong here, too, and let him go.

  With a sigh, she took her seat again. “The money you sent was appreciated.”

  “It wasn’t much.”

  “It was enough.” Her steady gaze held his. “What are your intentions now?”

  “I’ll be going again.”

  “Without a ship?”

  Without anything. No home, no work. But he’d been there before. He’d left England with nothing, and had found everything here.

  Now it had gone all wrong. Even if he found work, found a place to sleep, Thom didn’t think his life would ever be right again. It didn’t matter where he went, what he did.

  But he had to give some kind of answer. He picked the name of the nearest town. “I’ll try to find work in Fladstrand. Maybe on the docks.”

  “Not in Skagen?”

  “No.” He made himself say it, though the ache in his chest felt like it would rip open and swallow him whole. “It’ll be for the best. I’m hardly a husband to you. Never bringing you anything worth having. Not doing what makes you happy.”

  For a long second, Georgiana didn’t react. Just looked at him. Finally, she nodded. “We’ll go into town and see the magistrate together, then, and set about drawing up papers of separation.”

  “Papers?”

  “Legal papers, Thom. Marriage binds us together by law. Those ties have to be dissolved.”

  He hadn’t even known there’d been anything official to it—he’d thought the marriage had just been a ceremony and a promise. But she’d been tied to him by law. Something as real and as solid as the emotions that were choking him. And no sooner had he learned of them, those bonds were to be broken.

  The ache in his chest burrowed deeper, threatening to overwhelm his control. But he wouldn’t let pain be his master.

  Jaw clenched, he gave a sharp nod. “That seems sensible.”

  “We’ll have to decide how to divide the money and property.”

  Thom didn’t want any of it. “What I have is yours. Though it’s not much. I never made much.”

  And when he had, he’d lost it all.

  She slowly nodded. Then her gaze fell to his gloved hands. “You made enough for those arms.”

  Which would have cost more than Thom had earned in four years, if he’d bought them. But he hadn’t paid anything for the prosthetics, except for the time he’d spent helping a blacksmith build a better diving machine.

  He could imagine how it appeared to Georgiana, though. Sending her tiny bits of money, yet coming home with arms fit for a king.

  “They were a gift,” he said.

  “From Ivy Blacksmith?”

  A new note had entered her voice, something hard and trembling. No surprise, that. He’d kept notorious company when he’d helped Ivy.

  “Yes. You know of her?”

  “I heard rumors of your acquaintance. And Mad Machen’s obsession with her is just as well-known. He came into town about three years ago, searching for her, and there weren’t many people who dared leave their houses while he was here.” She looked down at her cup, her thumb rubbing along the rim. “Is he the pirate who shot you?”

  Why would Mad Machen have reason for that? Thom had no argument with the man.

  “That wasn’t him. It was some nobby gent.” But even as Thom spoke, he realized what she’d been getting at. Sharp anger spit up his throat. Had people told her that he’d been carrying on with Ivy? “Whatever you heard about me and her, it wasn’t anything like that. Is this why you’re agreeing to the separation?”

  Her gaze lifted to his. “We have been separated, Thom. This just makes it official.”

  Official. And he was suddenly desperate for her to argue, to persuade him to stay. Maybe that’s what he’d wanted all along. So he could be secure knowing that he’d tried to do right by her, telling her that he’d leave—yet remaining here when she asked him to. Now he wanted to beg her not to let him go.

  But this was for the best. He knew it. Now he just needed to persuade his heart of it.

  Softly, she asked, “Why did you keep leaving, Thom?”

  I wanted to make you happy. But he hadn’t. And his throat was so rough, he could hardly speak. But this might be the last she ever asked of him. He’d give her this, at least.

  “I wanted to bring something back to you.” And he’d brought a little. “This is what I have left. It’s yours.”

  He slid the gold coin across the table. She barely glanced at it before her solemn gaze returned to his.

  “You should keep—”

  “You’ll take it, Georgie! Let me give you one damn thing worth having, then maybe I can pretend that I—” Clenching his jaw, Thom bit off the rest. He was losing control. Not with her. Abruptly he stood, chair legs scraping across stone. “I’ll haul that bed out.”

  * * *

  Georgiana gathered her coat and reticule while Thom went to fire up the steamcoach’s furnace. She expected him to return to the house and wait for the boiler to heat, rather than staying out in the cold morning air, but as the minutes passed she realized that he wasn’t coming. She made her way out the roadside entrance of the house and to the shed, but stopped before going in. By the trickle of steam rising from the coach’s vents, she could see that the boiler wasn’t ready—and neither was Thom. He stood at the side of the coach, his hands braced against the aluminum frame supporting the roof. His head hung down between his arms, eyes closed and face rigid.

  Feeling as if she were intruding, Georgiana hesitated. Telling her that he wanted to separate had been hard for him. Her husband was a man of few words, but Georgiana had never seen him have any trouble finding them. Yet when he’d said he was leaving, Thom almost hadn’t gotten the words out.

  That difficulty had been a surprise in a morning of surprises. She’d never thought his character was a mystery. He was quiet, sturdy. Calm and controlled, not given to strong emotion. And what Georgiana had known of him, she’d loved. But she was realizing that she hadn’t known her husband at all.

  He was a man of few words. But he was also a man of powerful emotions.

  And she shouldn’t be wondering what those emotions were. They’d agreed. Separation was best. But she couldn’t help wanting to look under the surface of Thom’s quiet facade now that she knew much more lay beneath it.

  How much had she known of him before? A substantial amount, she’d thought. She knew that he’d been born in England just over thirty years ago, when that country had still been occupied by the Horde. He’d grown up in a crèche, like an orphan, though his parents had probably still been alive. But they wouldn’t have been parents as Georgiana knew them—just a man and a woman caught in a mating frenzy produced by radio signals broadcasted from the Horde’s controlling tower. Thom had been taken from his mother at birth and raised with other children, and when he was a young man, his occupation had been determined for him. His arms had been replaced by skeletal iron, and hydraulic braces across his back and chest offered additional hauling power. Then he’d been sent to work on the Horde’s fishing boats.

  Tho
m had never spoken of that history. She only knew of it because, before her father had hired him on as chief mate, Thom told him that he had experience hauling nets. The arms and his braces had been self-evident. The rest of it was the same awful story shared by so many laborers during the Horde’s occupation, so Georgiana assumed the same was true for him.

  And because of his silence, she’d also assumed that Thom hadn’t wanted to speak of his past. So she hadn’t wanted to hurt him by dredging up terrible memories simply to satisfy her curiosity.

  But perhaps she should have. Perhaps she would have had a better understanding of the man who would be her husband. Perhaps she would have better understood why he’d left each time. He’d wanted to bring something back to her.

  And that sounded exactly like her father.

  With a sigh, she glanced up at the house. Georgiana had been a young girl when her father had tired of the crowded landscape and overfished waters of Prince George Island, as well as the disapproval of his wife’s well-to-do family. He’d left the English territories in the Americas and brought Georgiana and her mother here, to the very tip of the Jutland Peninsula, where the North Sea met the Baltic. He’d built their new home on a stretch of flat beach two miles from the nearest house, a home unlike any of those in town, but in the style her mother had grown up in. Three steep gables contained windows overlooking the sea. A widow’s walk surrounded the chimney, and on fine days her mother had abandoned the windows of her room to search the horizon from the roof, instead.

  Georgiana loved Henry Tucker. He’d been a wonderful father, a good man.

  But he’d been a terrible husband.

  So had Thom. Except . . . he’d obviously been trying to be a good one. They’d simply had opposite ideas about how to go about it. He’d wanted to do the right thing by her. Maybe she should have asked before they were married what he considered right.

  But Georgiana hadn’t. Not really. Theirs had been a smooth courtship. He appealed to her. She had appealed to him. And she’d liked him, in every way. Her father had approved of the match, no doubt lining Thom up as his successor. They’d known each other three years before they’d married, but they hadn’t been delayed by doubts or hesitation. Thom had simply been gone—away on whaling expeditions. He’d spent months at a time on a ship with her father. There was no question how he’d formed such strong notions about a husband’s duties.

  Each time he’d returned, however, they hadn’t spoken of that. He’d told her of the oddities and dangers he’d seen while at sea. She’d told him of the town, the people who lived there—always trying to make him laugh, and so gratified when he had. She’d asked his opinion of everyone they knew, to judge the sort of man he was, how he saw others.

  But she hadn’t asked Thom about himself. She hadn’t asked what he wanted from their marriage or what he expected of her. He’d asked what would make her happy. She’d never asked the same question in return.

  Now they were on their way to dissolve their marriage. But the fault wasn’t all his. It was hers, too, for failing to ask so many questions.

  Georgiana didn’t like knowing that. And she wasn’t sure what to do, now that she did know—or whether she should do anything at all. Perhaps it would still be best to continue on to the magistrate’s, and be done with the wreck they’d both made of their marriage.

  In the shed, Thom pushed away from the coach. The thin eddies of steam had begun to billow. He walked toward her through them, like a large ship emerging from fog. “I’d have come for you when the engine was ready.”

  “I thought I might enjoy a few extra moments of sun.” And the way it glinted in his dark hair.

  Nodding, he said, “Best enjoy it while you can. We won’t have much of it today.”

  “That is what you said on every walk we took,” she reminded him with a curve of her lips. “You were always wrong.”

  And they’d walked often. On the road to town, along miles of beach—close to his side, her arm occasionally brushing against his, and every part of her feeling heavy and light all at once, as if her body hadn’t known how to settle when Thom was near.

  “Wait and see,” he said with a slight smile. “Maybe I’ll prove you wrong this time.”

  Maybe he would, at that. “If you’re right, at least we have the coach.”

  He glanced back at the canvas-topped vehicle. “Did you buy it?”

  “Yes.”

  “So you don’t always trust the sun.”

  She laughed and shook her head. “Not at all between October and March. And I go into town more often now. There is little time for leisurely walks.”

  Very little time at all. Her friends had urged her to move into Skagen so she wouldn’t have to make that journey every day. It would have been more practical. Her offices were there, and the expense of the wiregram lines she’d installed to connect her business to her home—and the cost of repairing them after every storm—could hardly be justified. No one waited for her at the house. But Georgiana couldn’t bring herself to leave it.

  At first she’d worried that if Thom returned, he wouldn’t know where she’d gone. But after hope for his return had faded, she’d stayed, anyway. She loved the house. She loved the beach and the constant roar of the ocean. She loved being able to leave the town behind.

  She also loved driving into town, because every day, she had a purpose there. In the steamcoach, her gaze was fixed on the road ahead of her instead of on the horizon.

  And not every day was a sunny one. She appreciated the roof over her head.

  She frowned a little. Thom wouldn’t have one.

  “Where do you intend to stay tonight, Thom?”

  He shook his head. “I’ll figure something.”

  “You don’t need to. Stay at the house until we have everything settled. I’ve room enough—and we’ll avoid the gossip in that way. I’ll open the upper bedrooms.”

  “They’re not ready now?”

  Not after Georgiana had become her mother, standing at the window and waiting. “No.”

  His gaze searched her face. “I don’t want to give you trouble.”

  “It’s no trouble. I’ll leave a note for Marta.”

  He exhaled on a sharp breath, looked out over the sea. Debating. After a quiet moment, he said, “I’d best not stay. You’ll be looking for a new husband soon. I’ll be in the way.”

  “A new husband?” Surprise pushed a short laugh from her. “Why would I do that?”

  “You have to have someone.”

  She frowned at him. “You sound like my father. I did well enough on my own for four years.”

  “You wanted children.”

  Yes, she did. “Perhaps I’ll have those on my own, too.”

  He didn’t respond, but his gloved hands clenched at his sides. That was the Thom she didn’t know well. The one who kept so much concealed.

  She gave that hidden Thom a little push into the light. “Perhaps it won’t be long until I have a baby, if you stay tonight.”

  His head jerked around, gaze locking with hers. He took a step before stopping to stare down at her, eyes burning blue. Georgiana’s breath caught. He’d looked down at her like that before. In bed, his arms braced beside her shoulders and his mouth carefully tasting her lips. Everything he’d done, so controlled—but that burning in his eyes had eventually been smothered by her tears. She’d known their lovemaking would hurt the first time, yet breaching her virginity had been even more painful and bloody than she’d expected. And the second time, she’d been so tense that his entry had hurt again, even though he’d been so careful and slow.

  But the last time, he’d kissed her endlessly before finally lifting her nightgown to her waist and settling between her legs. There’d been discomfort, at first. Then just wetness and heat and Thom sliding back and forth inside her, and all of her body had been caught between the same sensation of heavy and light, but so much heavier, so much lighter. He’d been so slow and so careful, but she hadn’t been able to s
top herself from moving beneath him, or the little noises that had welled up, so that she’d had to bite her lips to keep herself from begging him for . . . she hadn’t even known. Faster. Harder. Something more.

  Now that same need rose inside her again—and he wasn’t even touching her.

  And she wasn’t crying this time, but the burning in his eyes still went dark. “I don’t know how to be a husband, Georgie. I know even less about being a father.”

  “I would be enough of a parent for any children.”

  “And I should abandon them?”

  “You abandoned me,” she pointed out, and the edges of his mouth whitened. She didn’t know if it was anger or hurt.

  It was anger. His face hardened, cold steel that matched his voice. “Only because you asked me to.”

  Georgiana gaped at him. “What?”

  Through gritted teeth, he repeated harshly, “You asked me to. Don’t you—”

  He abruptly stopped. Not controlling his emotions again, she realized. Something had changed. His gaze had fixed behind her, a frown slowly darkening his features.

  “You have your pistol, Georgie?”

  Oh, dear God. Without question, she dug into her bag, spinning around to scan the beach and road. Ravenous zombies roamed the continent, but they didn’t cross water. A shallow sound to the south prevented almost all of the creatures from venturing this far up the peninsula, but now and again one made it through and wandered into a town. In all of the years she’d lived here, none had come near her home or as far north as Skagen. Yet she always kept a pistol with her, nonetheless.

  Nothing moved. She glanced up at Thom, saw that he’d focused on the sky—on an airship flying along the shoreline. A white balloon over a small wooden cruiser. Such airships were a common sight . . . except that it flew silently, using its sails instead of propellers. This far from town, there was little reason to stay so quiet, unless they didn’t want the engines to announce their approach.

  “Thom?”

  “The shed.” He didn’t wait for her to make sense of that. His arm wrapped around her waist and he hurried her through the humid clouds of rising steam and into the shed. “You have more bullets?”