Riveted

by Brook, Meljean

  Unlike David, who faced away from her to study the slope of the cliffs. “Tomorrow, I’ll climb up and make certain there’s nothing else we need to avoid ahead of us.”

  Annika nodded, looked back at the waterfall. Inside the bowl, ice from the mist covered the bottom half of the cliffs. “When I was here last, it was a cloudless night and the moon was full. There was a rainbow.”

  “At night?”

  “Yes. During the day, too, with the sun shining down on the mosses against the rocks, catching all of those drops like sequins. Beautiful. But the rainbow at night was so unexpected, so incredible. Do they know what does it?”

  “No. We know water acts like a prism, but we don’t know why the light is made of different colors—though there are several theories.”

  He knew so much. Annika felt as if she’d been constantly learning since leaving Hannasvik, whether she put any effort into it or not, and there was still so much more to know. So many things it never occurred to her to ask about. She tilted her head back.

  “Sometimes on clear nights, lights dance across the sky. Have you seen them?”

  “In Norway, and in Far Maghreb.”

  Far north and south. “When I was a girl, I used to stay up on clear nights, waiting. They always came on the nights I didn’t wait, so I was never ready, rushing out in my nightclothes—and then shivering while watching.” Perhaps they were up there tonight, above the clouds. “Do they know what makes them?”

  “No. A few think that the world moving in orbit forces the æther to compress near the poles, and that the greater density creates a prism. Others think that the æther is already denser in some spots than others, and the lights come and go as we move through the different densities.”

  “You don’t think so?”

  “Not just me—many others don’t. The pattern isn’t regular enough. If we’re orbiting at the same speed, through the same space every year, we should be able to predict the lights. But we can’t. So the rest of us just admit we don’t know.”

  She was surprised. “I’ve noticed that’s difficult for New Worlders: admitting you don’t know.”

  His laugh burst out on a frozen puff of air. “Perhaps. But for my mother, too, I remember.”

  Ah, well. She grinned. “My mother, too.”

  “So it is not just a New World affliction?”

  “I suppose not. But at least we don’t always try to take the brown out of bread. Why do you do that?”

  Still laughing, David shook his head. “God knows.”

  “It’s like eating raw dough.”

  “I wouldn’t know—but at least I’ve never eaten raw dough.”

  She wrinkled her nose at him, then sighed. “I stole it. My mother wouldn’t let me try a piece. I should have listened to her.”

  “That bad?” His laughter quieted as she nodded. “Do you miss home?”

  “Yes. My mother more than anything. I’d have gone back long ago, if not for Källa.” Now she was desperate to know how and why di Fiore’s men had trolls. “I want to go back now.”

  David looked away from her, toward the roaring falls. “There are no males at all?”

  “No.”

  “What about the boy children?”

  “There are fewer than you might believe. Many of us are abandoned children from the New World or England. The old stories of seducing men were true. The first women thought they’d been blessed by the gods to bear only girls. That wasn’t true. Bearing a girl was a blessing—not because of the girl, but because the mother didn’t have to make such a terrible choice. Many of the women who bore male children stayed away rather than abandon him. So in the more recent generations, it’s understood that if a woman chooses to lie with a man, to make certain he is a good man who will raise the boy well…but not many of those women ever return, anyway.”

  She paused. That was part of the reason why her mother had been so angry when Hildegard left. Not just because she’d been unfaithful, though that had hurt; the terror that she wouldn’t come back was even greater. And when Hildegard had come back, her mother clung to the reason of infidelity to keep her anger alive…and the fear of being hurt so deeply again.

  Annika loved Hildegard, and understood what had driven her. Her twin sister, Inga, had left; no one knew what had become of her. Their mother had recently died. She’d been desperate for a child, and in Hanna’s family line they’d always borne children of their blood. But Annika also understood her mother’s anger. Hildegard had put her through hell then refused to apologize for causing that pain, believing that any apology would suggest she’d also been sorry for having Källa.

  It wasn’t the same.

  Annika was sorry, so sorry that she’d put her village in danger. She wasn’t sorry that stupidity had led her here, to be with David now.

  She glanced up at his profile. “Your mother must have thought your father was a good man.”

  “He was. And she wouldn’t have left him—but later he told me that she’d missed her home, too…and that he’d always been afraid that she would leave us.” He looked away from the waterfall, offered a bleak smile. “Perhaps he should have let her go. She wouldn’t have been there when the mountain came down.”

  But she wouldn’t have been there to save David, either. “If Inga stayed, it’s because she wanted to.”

  He closed his eye, nodded. “It was difficult for him, knowing she might leave. Not knowing where to find her if she did.”

  “But if she left, she wouldn’t want to be found.” When he looked at her, the pain in his gaze made her rush to reassure him, “Obviously that wasn’t the choice she made. He ought to have trusted in that instead of fearing it.”

  That bleak smile again. “That’s not easy.”

  “I suppose not.”

  She couldn’t imagine never seeing David again, and she’d only known him a week. But she was more aware of her own vulnerability now, too—how easily those fears could hurt, the desperate need to avoid any pain.

  A distant bark. She glanced in that direction, her hand falling to the spanner at her belt. “Should we go back inside?”

  Because she didn’t want to see him hurt, either.

  David seemed to have drawn into himself. Annika quietly watched him as she put potatoes on the furnace to roast, as he pulled a leather-bound notebook and a bottle of ink from Goltzius’s pack. He rolled blankets out into a pallet on the floor, sat with his back against the hull and his legs extended. Like her, he was in his shirtsleeves and trousers; it was too warm inside the troll for anything else. He still wore his boots, however, while she’d removed her stockings and hung them up to dry. She busied herself for a while, laying out the rest of their wet clothes, checking the gauges, poking at the potatoes. Finally she joined him on the pallet, sinking down beside him with her legs crossed.

  “What is that?” She could have answered her own question: a poor excuse to sit close.

  He didn’t look up. “My journal was in the lifeboat. So I’m using Goltzius’s specimen book instead.”

  Curious, she glanced at the page. He’d already filled it—and he wrote incredibly fast. “What language is that?”

  “French.”

  “No, it’s not.”

  A smile tugged at the corner of his mouth. “It’s shorthand.”

  “Do you write this a lot?”

  “Every day.” He paused at the end of a page, finally looked up. “On an expedition, keeping a journal is more important than all else—we learn that from the very first.”

  “In scientist school?”

  “That’s different—that’s the university. But everyone who applies for expedition funds is required to take courses teaching them to survive. That is where they stress the journal. Partially, because we don’t have to rely on memory when we record our data, but it also leaves a record of the steps we’ve taken. Everything we learn about exploring, about surviving—one of the most critical is making certain the journal survives, even if we don’t.”
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  “It’s more important than a life?”

  “No. I left mine behind, after all.” His gaze fell to the page again. The ink had almost dried. “Death isn’t uncommon among naturalists. There’s tremendous value in knowing where they went…where they might have stepped wrongly.”

  “So someone else doesn’t do the same thing?”

  “Or so that someone can try it again, but in a different way.” His thumb brushed over the page. “Perhaps my work is all I’ll leave behind. Perhaps I’ll never be able to report what I’ve found here or what I might discover in the future. Perhaps I’ll never come to any grand conclusions or make any great discoveries. But if it adds to something, if someone else can use my work to reach another goal, to make another discovery, my journey won’t be in vain.”

  Her heart caught. Once, when wondering why he chased volcanoes, she’d hoped that he wasn’t like Sigurd the Deceiver, but what he spoke of resembled those old stories very much—not in an old way, but a new one.

  “So these journals are like epics of scientific study.”

  He grinned with her, but nodded. “I have my heroes.”

  “You make me want to be a naturalist.”

  “The pay isn’t as much as a stoker’s.”

  Gold was fine, undoubtedly. “But it must be quite something to matter. To be a part of something bigger, despite the risk. I think you all must be very brave.”

  “Or lucky.” A flush rose on his neck. “You matter, Annika.”

  “Oh, certainly. Nobody else can shovel coal.”

  “Anyone can chase volcanoes, too. I don’t know anyone else who can drive a troll.”

  “We were both lucky tonight, then.” She smiled at him, then looked down at his notes. She wished he had his journal—she’d have learned shorthand just to read about what he’d done and where he’d been. “Do you write everything?”

  “Almost.”

  And if they found his journal, the men at the camp could read it now. Sudden alarm made her glance up. “Did you write about Hannasvik?”

  His gaze locked with hers. “No.”

  “Why leave it out? It wasn’t your secret.”

  “But it’s personal—not for the world.”

  “Will you write of di Fiore?”

  “I already have.”

  “And the troll?”

  “I only said that it was a machine we used to escape.”

  “And the watchman?”

  “Yes.”

  His expression didn’t change, but she remembered how he’d gathered his breath before, the hardness of his jaw afterward.

  “Have you ever killed anyone before?” she wondered.

  “No.”

  “I’m sorry.”

  She should have been bolder, offered to do it. Maybe with the troll.

  No. If they’d been in the troll, they wouldn’t have had to kill anyone. They would already have been safe.

  “I’m sorry, too.” He opened his steel fingers, looked at them. “I never think of it as a weapon. I know others do when they see me. They think about how easily I could snap a neck—how easily I could snap their necks. They’re right. I wish it had been more difficult,” he said softly. “More like what it felt.”

  Her throat ached. “If it had been, he could have raised an alarm. We’d be dead.”

  “I know. I don’t regret it. I’d do it again.” He closed his fist. “I’m just sorry that I had to.”

  She nodded, glanced down at the page. “Is that what you wrote?”

  “Not the part about how people see me.”

  All of them idiots. “It’s too personal?”

  “Yes. And I wrote that I’m not the same man. I recognized the threat, I knew what had to be done…yet I hoped to think of any other way to get us both across that clearing without raising any alarm. Knowing that I couldn’t find another way takes something from me. Almost everything I’ve read or heard said that I’m supposed to feel powerful now: I killed a man. I defeated him, I was stronger.” He shook his head. “But it felt the opposite. I think the power must be in the choice, because when I realized I had none, I felt completely powerless—and if I ever have a choice, if our lives aren’t at risk, I won’t do it again. I can’t imagine what must be in men who kill when there is no threat.”

  Neither could Annika. “That sounds personal, too. Not scientific.”

  His brows drew together. “But it is, in its way. A man is dead. I’ve written the effect it had on me. Perhaps that will matter one day, too.”

  “So these journals are not just tales of scientific heroics. They are also the study of men.” She would love to know the conclusion. “What will happen to your expedition now?”

  “We’ll suspend the survey.” He tipped his head back against the steel hull, stared up at the ceiling. “We lost all of our supplies. So we’ll have to wait until we’ve reported what happened, return to New Leiden, and procure new equipment—if the Society decides to pay for it again. Depending on what happens here, they might not send another expedition to Iceland for a while.”

  So he’d leave. A steady burn of pain started in her chest. And she could never ask him to stay, because that work was too important. He fought to change the world for the better, to make it safer, to do good. He mattered.

  She glanced down, picked at a stray thread on the hem of her trouser. “What will happen to di Fiore?”

  “I don’t know. Because Goltzius was onboard, the Dutch will probably send men to retaliate, then keep a physical presence in Iceland to reestablish their claim on the island.” He sighed, lowered his head to meet her gaze again. “Phatéon is gone. What will you do?”

  Try not to be miserable. Try to focus on the excitement of the new, instead of feeling alone again. “The Vashons will send for us. Then I’ll find work aboard another airship and continue looking for Källa.”

  “And after you find her, you’ll return home.”

  “Yes.” To Iceland, at least. Valdís might have been right; she might not be able to return home. And she didn’t want to live anywhere that David couldn’t go.

  He nodded, as if he hadn’t expected anything else. “Will you still write to me?”

  “Yes.” And hopefully meet with him. “I’d like to visit, too—whenever your expeditions allow it.”

  “Whenever you want.” His dark gaze held hers. “I also wrote that I kissed Annika Fridasdottor. I wanted the world to know. I would shout it now, but there is only you to hear it.”

  She smiled, her heart tripping over the ache. “Would you like to do it again?”

  “I wouldn’t like anything more.”

  “Well, I would like to do more than kissing.”

  “God, yes. I would, too.”

  He hurriedly put the journal aside, capped the ink. Remembering the delicious sensation of straddling him, Annika slid over his muscled thighs, her face even with his. With a soft groan, he reached for the lamp.

  “Leave it on,” she said, and pressed her mouth to his jaw.

  He pulled away—not far, tilting his head back against the hull. His voice was rough. “You don’t want to see me while we do this.”

  She frowned. Perhaps he had reason to assume that was true, some experience that told him it was, but it wasn’t. “You’re wrong. I do.”

  He was a man of science. She’d figure out a way to prove it, if she had to.

  His chest rose on a shuddering breath. “I don’t want you to remember me like this.”

  Well, then. There was nothing to prove. She capped the flame.

  So dark. She wanted to see his expression when she kissed her way across the width of his mouth, but Annika didn’t need it to tell her what he felt. The stillness of his chest said the same breathless anticipation held him in its grip. By the tightening of his hand on her hip, she knew he kept the same desire barely reined in. She coaxed open his lips for a long, slow taste.

  Oh, this need. It twisted in her gut, painful, wonderful. Hungry. She buried her hands in his h
air, pulling him closer. Wanting him all.

  With a soft growl, he pushed her over, laying her back on the blankets. Still kissing her, his hands braced beside her—his hips between her legs. Oh, yes. Her hands fell away from his shoulders to the pallet. She arched up beneath him, moaning into his mouth at the sudden, delicious pressure against her heated flesh. His erection rose behind the confines of his trousers, thick and hard.

  All for her.

  “Annika.” He groaned her name. “May I touch you?”

  She would die if he didn’t. “Hurry.”

  His head lifted as his hand slid up her side beneath her hem. He didn’t hurry. He was watching, she realized. Watching as her tunic rode up over his wrist, as he bared her to his gaze. His fingertips lightly stroked her waist, her ribs. She didn’t need to see his expression now, either. He touched her with reverence, as if she were the most incredible thing he’d ever beheld.

  And despite his wish, she would always remember him this way.

  “My God, Annika. You’re so beautiful.” He sounded almost drunk, as if each inch of skin he’d revealed had been a sip of wine. “Touching you is the sweetest pleasure I’ve ever known.”

  Oh, how she wanted to please him. “Then touch me everywhere.”

  He pulled the tunic over her head in a whisper of cotton. A shiver raced over her skin when his warm palm cupped her breast. Her nipples tightened, aching for his caress. A riot of desire tore through her. She wanted to slow down and she wanted to rush. Her fingers twisted in the blankets; her breath came in pants.

  His callused thumb swept over the sensitive peak. An exquisite jolt of pleasure stiffened her body, and slowly released her on a moan.

  His mouth found hers again, hovered over her lips. “All right?”

  Perfect. Her hands slid back up over his shoulders. The heavy weight between her legs kindled a deep, ravenous fire that burned through her veins.

  “Yes. But I want more.”

  He gave a strangled laugh. “I can’t stand much more. I’ll be all over you.”

  That confession excited her more than any touch. All over her. She wanted that so much. On a surge of need, she drew him down. “Then we’ll go until we can’t stand it anymore.”