Riveted

by Brook, Meljean

  “You know her.”

  “I know what she tells me in her letters.”

  Annika wouldn’t have thought that a man who hadn’t visited his aunt in ten years cared very much, but Kentewess obviously did. A quiet plea lay in his words, to tell him anything that she hadn’t told him herself. Did he hope to ease his aunt’s sadness? Perhaps he could. Judging by Lucia’s smiles, he already had.

  “She’s often melancholy. I think she must have loved your uncle deeply.”

  “She did. It was returned.” His gaze was troubled as he looked across the room. “Does she get along well alone?”

  “Yes. She has friends here.” His aunt was sad but not broken. Annika never worried that she’d fling herself over the side of the ship. “She’s very proud of you. I wasn’t aboard more than a week when she showed me a photograph.”

  “She says she doesn’t leave Phatéon.”

  “It’s true. If she needs anything, though, she doesn’t hesitate to ask for it. Elena—the second mate—and I often bring back items for her in the port cities.” Annika pursed her lips. “Except she doesn’t let me pick out her ready-made dresses. She relies on Elena for that.”

  His gaze returned to Annika’s. “What would you pick for her?”

  “A gown of deepest green. She once told me that she enjoys flying over the forests better than the water—she likes looking out over the trees. A damask, I think. It would be heavy and warm, which is always welcome on the deck of an airship, and the fabric has such a lovely texture when you run your hands over it. I think such a gown would make her happy just to wear it. She wouldn’t need the bows or the lace—but of course, that is what she fears I’d bring her.”

  “Do they make you happy?”

  “Oh, yes. They’re so pretty, aren’t they? If possible, I would wear nothing but a bow every day—especially if it was silk. Nothing compares to silk.” She’d never felt anything like it before coming to the New World…but they weren’t talking about her. She looked to Lucia again. “A year ago, Phatéon carried a passenger who fancied her—another physician, he was. She took him to her bed, but though he proposed a marriage, she wouldn’t leave with him. She was even more melancholy for a while after that. I’m not sure if she regretted her refusal, or if she was sorry that he hadn’t been your uncle.”

  Perhaps it had been a combination. For as long as Annika had been alive, her mother, Frida, had suffered from similar regret and grief—even though her lover still lived, and only a stone’s throw from their home. That they’d shared a fierce love had never been in doubt, but Hildegard had also wished for a child of her blood. She’d claimed that lying with a man would mean nothing; even the goddess Freya had taken many lovers without regret, and Hildegard’s heart would remain with Frida.

  But it had mattered—at least to Annika’s mother. A terrible row had parted them, and even after Hildegard had returned a year later with the infant Källa, Frida hadn’t forgiven her. She’d refused to take Hildegard back into their home. After asking one of the other women to bring her a daughter from the New World, she’d poured all of her love into Annika instead.

  It hadn’t been enough. For two decades, Annika bore witness to her mother’s silent longing, her pain—and the two women had remained apart.

  She and Källa had grown up as sisters, regardless. Everyone in Hannasvik knew that their mothers belonged together, and that they were both too stubborn and prideful to do anything about it. Heartache ruled them instead.

  So it was for Lucia, but stubbornness couldn’t be blamed. Her love was dead. And even if she tried to find another, love didn’t always come.

  Silence was Kentewess’s only reply. When she glanced at him, a flush had darkened his face. He seemed at a loss for words.

  Well, his aunt had not likely written that in her letters, had she?

  “Will you reprimand me for my impropriety?”

  “No.” Embarrassment receding, he shook his head. “I wasn’t prepared to think of her in that manner.”

  He preferred a warning? Very well, she would give him one. “Then prepare yourself for this: If you hope to take me to your bed, please understand that I cannot. It may be easy for others to take a lover, but it isn’t easy for me. I understand that I might enjoy it. But I would rather not take the chance of regretting it afterward. I’m not very adventurous.”

  He stared at her, his face unreadable. When he finally spoke, his voice was low and rough. “You are bold in other ways.”

  “Not in that way.” Even though she couldn’t stop imagining what bedding him would feel like. She was quite, quite certain that she would enjoy it. But that wasn’t enough. “I’d be sorry that you aren’t someone that I love.”

  “Is there someone?” It seemed dragged from him.

  “No. But there might be, one day.” She met his gaze squarely. “Is that what you want from me? Is that why you’re spending time with me now?”

  He looked at her for a long time, his jaw clenched. A struggle briefly moved across his expression. When he spoke, resignation filled his reply. “No,” he said quietly. “That wasn’t what I wanted.”

  “But you want something else?”

  “Yes.”

  Heavy disappointment weighed in her stomach. She shouldn’t feel it. His lack of interest was better for them both, because until she loved, Annika wouldn’t bed him. Until she found Källa, she couldn’t commit herself to anyone.

  Still, she’d liked thinking that he’d fancied her, too.

  “What do you want, then? Why did you rescue me?”

  He didn’t immediately answer. His mouth hardened, and he looked toward the game table. Frustration tightened his expression. He glanced back at her and seemed to wait.

  Annika frowned, then realized that he wasn’t delaying. He was waiting for her to respond to someone else. She heard her name from across the room. The first mate had mentioned her—and now everyone at the table was looking their way.

  “Go on, ask her,” Mr. James said. “She’s seen them herself. Haven’t you, Fridasdottor?”

  Irritated by the interruption, Annika shook her head. “I wasn’t listening, I’m sorry. What have I seen?”

  “The trolls on the island.” The first mate gestured to Dooley, whose keen eyes had fixed on her. “This one here is asking about any stories we’ve heard. I told him that you haven’t just heard of them, you saw one—or so you’ve said.”

  So she had. Aware that Kentewess’s focus had sharpened on her profile, she nodded. “Yes. I did.”

  Dooley twisted round in his chair to face her. “I’ve never heard an observation from someone firsthand—only from fishermen who were relating a story they’d heard from someone else.”

  “What have they said?”

  “Legend is that the fissure eruption broke open a passage to the Underworld. That all of those creatures you hear of in northern widows’ tales came through: the trolls and dwarves, the invisibles, the hidden folk, the witch women with hollow bodies and fox tails who seduced sailors and stole infants.”

  Some of that was true. No community could survive without children—and a community of women had to steal them, or find seed.

  “The only things that came out of those eruptions were ash and volcanic gases,” Kentewess said. “Whatever the basis of the stories, they originated elsewhere.”

  Yes—from women like Annika. Everyone who left Hannasvik did their part to spread the tales, in the hopes that superstition would keep others away. They had kept people away for a century…but never before had they been told to someone who would travel around Iceland, searching for scientific truth.

  Dooley wouldn’t be able to discern that truth now. There was no reason not to tell him. But Annika wasn’t certain the stories served their purpose anymore, anyway. In just the few years since she’d left Hannasvik, more people had begun to settle in Smoke Cove. Phatéon carried more men to the island now. Kentewess’s expedition would undoubtedly lead the three scientists near her villa
ge…and if the Dutch eventually returned, more communities would sprout.

  Annika felt the sick certainty that her village wouldn’t remain hidden for much longer, trolls or not.

  “Annika?” The gentle nudge came from Lucia.

  Madame Collin rapped one of her wooden game pieces against the tabletop. “You weren’t worried about looking like a fool when you told us of it. I suppose now you’re worried your tale might send that young man running.”

  Chuckles rose from around the table. Annika’s cheeks blazed. Oh, how they looked at her. Some with amusement, others with pity. Had her interest been so obvious? Or did they laugh because they knew he hadn’t returned it?

  If only she could crash through their group with a troll now.

  Beside her, Kentewess said, “I don’t run.”

  The laughter abruptly fell into uncomfortable silence—except for his aunt, who covered her smile and looked heavenward. Dooley’s eyes seemed to sparkle with humor, crinkling at the corners when he glanced from Kentewess to her.

  “Will you please share your story with us, miss?”

  She had little choice. A glance at the clock offered no help; a bit of time still remained before she needed to leave for her watch. With a sigh and a nod, she said, “It was four summers ago. I was aboard Freya’s Cloak—a sailing ship—on route from Norway to Smoke Cove.”

  That was a lie, too, though Freya’s Cloak often took that route. Annika’s tale would stand, though; the ship was captained by one of the Huldrene, a woman who’d found Hannasvik too small for her. Ursula Ylvasdottor hadn’t abandoned the village, however. Using Freya’s Cloak, she’d carried the village’s wool to market and procured items that they couldn’t produce themselves—including false letters of origin.

  Annika had never been aboard the ship. She’d traveled most of the distance to Smoke Cove in her troll and walked the remainder of the way, accompanied by her mother and her friend Lisbet. In Smoke Cove, they’d met with Captain Ylvasdottor, who’d given Annika her identifying documents, an engineer’s license, and a personal reference, then pointed her toward Phatéon.

  “It was August, I think,” she continued. “We sailed around the north of the island because of the number of megalodons reported to the south.”

  “That was a bad year,” Collin broke in, nodding. “Four years ago, I remember. You still hear the whalers talking about it, how they’d find themselves a pod, then the moment their harpoons drew blood, they were caught in the middle of a feeding frenzy. The megalodons would ram the hulls of any ship nearby, attacking them whether they ran their engines or not. Any little sound would bring those sharks. They sank two dozen ships that year—maybe more, because there were others that went missing, and no one knew what happened to them.”

  Annika nodded. “The captain never ran her engines, anyway—that was why I wanted an airship. Aside from the stoking, there wasn’t much to do aboard a sailing ship, so I spent most of my time on the deck, watching for icebergs. When we came around the island, we sailed as close to her shore as possible. Oh, but I remember the hills. They were so green, like a blanket of velvet beneath the sun.” She didn’t need to lie about that, or fake the wistful note in her voice. Her home was beautiful, from the black sands to the craggy, barren peaks. “I saw the troll then, sitting not far from the beach.”

  Dooley leaned forward eagerly. “What was it?”

  A machine covered by seal- and shark-skins, with a ruff made from the fur of a great Arctic bear and tern feathers collected from the nesting grounds near Hannasvik. Four times as tall as Annika, with squat legs and a square body, it had been built from the salvaged remains of the sentinels and war machines left by the defenders waiting to intercept the Horde’s navy. Its giant head could house a seated driver, who was surrounded by levers. It had enough room in the heart for three people to sleep and cook. A belly full of coal fed the troll’s furnace, and an ass made of a boiler and a steam engine moved it.

  “At first look, I thought it was a rock—black and brown and mottled. But it must have just been warming itself in the sun, because it stood.” She came up out of her chair and bent over, her hands on the deck and her bottom in the air. “On four legs, like an Arctic bear, but bigger. Much bigger. Then it rose on two legs, like this. The belly was gray and smooth. Its breath steamed, and I’ll never forget how it roared. I’ve never heard anything so terrifying before or since. Then it walked away, with long arms swinging.”

  She sat again. Dooley’s mouth had fallen open.

  “It’s an animal?”

  “I don’t know. It had a big, shaggy head, but I couldn’t see its face properly. I only had the impression of a creature that was lumpy, disfigured—particularly when it was sitting. If it hadn’t moved, I’d have never known it wasn’t a rock.” She paused and looked to the clock. Only a minute or two more. “If you’re looking for personal accounts, you can ask the captain of Freya’s Cloak. She saw it, too.”

  The first mate huffed out a laugh. “I’d wager anything that what you both saw was a bear washed in on an iceberg. And I can tell you the explanation behind what you think you saw is aboard this ship.” James waited until everyone looked at him. “It’s Hymen Island, and the virgins who live there. You want to keep men away, you spread those rumors about witch-women and spirits. And when people see a bear washed up on an iceberg, they assume it’s a troll.”

  Dooley was shaking his head. “The Church has only been using Heimaey for forty years. And though there’ve been tales of this sort for centuries, the lore specific to Iceland and those fissure eruptions dates from almost eight decades ago.”

  “So you believe she saw a troll?”

  The first mate’s disbelief fired more color into Annika’s cheeks. That specific story was a lie, but she’d been familiar with the machines her entire life. And blast it all, she didn’t like his suggestion that she was too stupid to know the difference between a bear and an enormous, lumbering troll.

  “She obviously saw something.” Dooley smiled. “Unless she’s having her fun with us.”

  “I’m not.” None of this was fun anymore. “And I’m sorry to leave you, but I must prepare for my watch.”

  Annika stood and dared a glance at Kentewess. He was studying her; she suspected that he’d never taken his focus from her the entire time she’d been speaking. She didn’t see any doubt in that searching gaze now, only pointed speculation.

  He still wasn’t done with her, she realized. He still wanted something from her. She couldn’t imagine what it would be.

  Now she wasn’t sure that she wanted to know.

  Chapter Four

  When describing his friend to Annika Fridasdottor, David had forgotten to mention how loudly Dooley snored. The man’s sawing drowned out the noise from Phatéon’s engines, which had fired up not long after she’d left the wardroom. Finally untethered and under way, the airship no longer bucked against the wind, but despite the calm, David couldn’t find sleep.

  He couldn’t blame Dooley for that. Months spent sharing a tent had accustomed him to the man’s snores. A half hour spent with a pretty engineer was responsible, instead.

  Annika Fridasdottor was more of a mystery to him now than when he hadn’t known her name, and one David desperately wanted to unravel. Sitting with her, speaking with her had been like taking a deep breath at the top of a mountain after a month spent choking down the air in a port city.

  Every word they’d shared echoed in his head. He couldn’t stop picturing her smile, her laugh. Her worry when he’d told her about the survey. Her tension when she’d recounted her story of the troll.

  Her unwavering stare when she’d asked if David wanted her in his bed.

  God.

  David did want her. But he’d have to be a fool to hope for anything of the sort. Twice, he’d paid to be with a woman. Both times had been disasters—the first awkward and uncomfortable until she’d poured oil onto his erection, telling him any woman bedding a man who was part machine w
ould always need extra help, and flinching when she felt his steel hand. He’d gone to the England for the second, where the prosthetics wouldn’t matter. She’d needed help, too. She hadn’t flinched when he’d touched her, but she’d turned her gaze away from his face, her teeth clenched as she bore his body’s advance.

  He hadn’t been able to finish with either of them. He’d quickly left—for a time, feeling more grotesque than he’d felt since the prosthetics were first grafted on. That, because of the reaction of two women whose names he’d never learned. He’d rather not know how it would feel to have someone like Annika cringe away from him and grit her teeth when he entered her.

  Abandoning sleep, David sat up. His photomultiplying lens clicked into place over his left eye. Though still dark, the cabin appeared illuminated with a cool blue light. Dooley lay on his back, his mouth open and blanket shoved to his hips in the heated room, his chest covered by a thin nightshirt. David reached for his trousers, then tugged his boots on over the thick cotton that padded his steel prosthetics and prevented them from slipping around inside footwear designed for people with flesh over their bones.

  A glance at his pocket watch told him that it was almost midnight. Annika’s shift would be over in a few minutes…but he wouldn’t seek her out. Her intention to spend every moment of this journey with him probably didn’t include the moments in the middle of the night.

  If it did, however, he’d gladly alter his schedule to fit hers. At this hour, they’d have the wardroom to themselves. She wouldn’t lie with a man without love, but by God, she didn’t have to lie with him. Her company, given freely, had already proved more pleasurable than those earlier encounters had been. For a few hours of privacy with her, he’d happily sacrifice the sleep.

  He pulled on his jacket and left the cabin. The airship’s main deck would be cold, windy—perfect for clearing his mind and cooling down the rest of him.

  His mind cleared halfway up the companionway.

  What the hell was he doing? David needed Annika Fridasdottor, but not as a friend. She held answers, and he had no more hours to waste. A week wouldn’t be enough if she never told him what he needed to know. He’d already spent too much time trying to secure those answers—and going about it in the wrong way.