Riveted (15 page)

He couldn’t believe it, either. He had no excuse. Desperation wasn’t a good enough reason to threaten a woman—not if his life wasn’t in danger. Frustration was no excuse at all. His mother wouldn’t have just said that; his father would have been ashamed of him, too.

He’d seen how Annika protected them, and had thought a threat would give her an excuse to tell him—to continue protecting them. He’d never have actually followed through. But she couldn’t have known that.

Now, she’d never have a reason to believe otherwise.

God. It had been hard enough to decide between his promise and her goodwill. Yet he’d chosen, knowing he’d lose her newfound friendship—and douse the fire that had sparked between them, too. They
had
been getting along, so well. When was the last time he’d felt anything like this toward a woman? He couldn’t even remember one. Tossing that away, choosing her hate, had been one of the most difficult choices he’d ever made.

David hadn’t realized he’d bring that hate down on his head so quickly.

“You’ll apologize, and it’ll be all right.” Lucia patted his hand. “She’s not unreasonable, David. Odd, certainly. But surely she won’t hold words spoken in haste against you.”

Remembering her fury, David wasn’t so sure. She’d understood the promise driving him; after he’d told her how his mother had died, she hadn’t been angry with him for that. Not until he’d threatened her people.

She might not forgive him. David wasn’t certain he could blame her. He tipped the bottle, took another swallow.

His aunt watched him, her eyes dark with concern. “Does she know of the vow you made to your mother?”

“Yes.”

“Oh.” The soft disappointment said Lucia believed that knowledge should have won Annika over. Hell, David had thought it would, too. “She’s
not
unreasonable. So I suppose that means she has a reason to deny you?”

“She’s protecting those she loves.” He pushed his fingers into his hair, held his head in his hands. Despair spread through him with the burning in his gut. “What could I say to convince her to risk them? Nothing. There is no hope.”

And he’d ruined everything else between them as well.

“You’re a stranger to her, David. When she knows you better, she’ll know you won’t hurt them. You’ve waited all these years; a bit more won’t matter. Give her time to trust you.”

“I’ll only be a week on this ship.”

“Yes, my dear, but she isn’t going anywhere. Next year, when this survey is over, you can try again—and in the meantime, write to her. I’ll pass on your letters. Give her a chance to know you.”

His body suddenly feeling as heavy as his heart, David nodded. First, he’d apologize—not to win her good opinion again, but because it was the right thing to do. Then he’d beg for a chance to prove himself. His mother wouldn’t have asked this of him if she hadn’t trusted that he wouldn’t expose her people, whatever the danger was.

He’d seek her out…as soon as his tongue didn’t feel so thick, and his head stopped throbbing. Jesus Christ. What had he just drunk?

The pounding in his brain was soon echoed by a pounding from outside. David looked toward the door. The noise was coming from the passageway, and seemed overly loud—even for an airship.

“It’s nothing.” Lucia was shaking her head. “Chief Leroux refuses to use the ear horn that I gave to him, which means that he hears nothing and we hear everything.”

He smiled with her, then stilled at the first shout. Lucia’s lips parted, and they both looked to the door again.

“Fridasdottor! Come in here, girl!”

Annika answered, too low for David to make out—and apparently too low for the chief to make out, too.

“Eh?”

Her voice rose to match his.
“I will be leaving Phatéon, monsieur, as soon as we return to Port-au-Prince!”

No. David stood, staggered. Bracing his fist on the table and holding on to the back of his chair, he waited for the dizziness to pass. Lucia caught his arm, looked up at him with dismay.

Walls and the passageway couldn’t muffle the chief’s irritation.
“Why would you do that?”

“I’ve been looking for my sister. She’s not on this route, so I’ll be seeking a position on another ship!”

“So now I’ll have to find two new men?”

“Or women, monsieur!”

“You smile at that, girl? Go on, then. It’ll be a waste teaching you about the generator now, but I suppose a stamp on your license will make it easier to get rid of you.”

“Thank you, Chief!”

He made a sound of dismissal. Lucia released David’s arm and moved quickly to the door, opening it.

“Annika!”

She stopped in the passageway just outside the cabin, her expression tightening. Her flat gaze met David’s for an instant before she looked to his aunt. Her voice was a thin layer of civility over steel. “Doctor?”

“I’m sorry, Annika, but we heard—You’re leaving
Phatéon
?”

“Yes. It’s been four years, and I’ve been to every American port
and around the North Sea several times over. I should have done this before, but I kept making excuses not to.”

“I see,” Lucia said, and so did David.
He
had spurred her into finally making this decision. “What route will you take now?”

“To the Ivory Market, or to Australia.”

“No.”
David’s rough reply brought her gaze to his again. She stared at him for a long second, then dismissed him. His fingers tightened on the back of the chair.

What could he do? Tie her here? Force her to stay?

Threaten her again?

He might. God help him, he might.

Lucia wrung her hands. “Those routes are so dangerous for airships.”

With a shrug, Annika said, “I cannot return home until Källa does.”

“Will you send us word, letting us know where you are? How you are?”

“No.”

Clearly taken aback by Annika’s blunt response, Lucia tried again. “If your sister finally answers the advertisement, she will be looking for
Phatéon
—”

“I’ll change the advertisements and tell her to go home instead.” Her expression softened as she regarded his aunt, but David didn’t see any fondness there. Only the same terrible sadness that he recognized from the wardroom, in the moment after he’d chosen to let her hate him. Only the same terrible hurt. “I’ve been thinking back to the conversations that we’ve had—and in almost all of them, you pried into my past. Why didn’t you just say that I reminded you of Inga Helgasdottor?”

His aunt seemed at a loss. “I didn’t want to intrude on your privacy,” she finally said.

“Yes, you did. You just didn’t want to be caught at it. I thought we’d built a friendship. But when created through an agenda,
friendship and trust is nothing. It does you no credit.” Annika’s mouth trembled before she shook her head, firmed her lips. “And it does me even less, that I could not see what you wanted. I’ve learned well, though. I won’t be so eager for company and conversation, next time.”

She walked away, out of David’s sight. As if in a daze, Lucia closed the door and returned to the table, pouring herself a drink.

“I cannot even refute it,” she said softly. “With every conversation, I attempted to discover more about her—but I remembered your mother’s secrecy, and didn’t want to make her wary. So I tried to be clever about it, instead. But I like her so well; that was never a lie.” She sipped the clear liquor, looked up at him with watering eyes. “What did I say about having time?”

Only a week. And David didn’t see a way to have more. He would be leaving
Phatéon
to begin his survey. Annika wouldn’t be here when his expedition was finished, and she refused to receive any letters from his aunt—and likely from him, too.

“I’ll talk with her,” he said. Though he didn’t know what good it would do.

If nothing else, he would apologize. At least then his threat wouldn’t weigh on him, in addition to the knowledge that he’d lost the chance to fulfill his promise.

But David felt as if he’d lost more than that.

Bound by the confines of the airship, there were few places
to escape someone determined to find her. With assistance from her cabin mates, however, Annika managed to avoid David for the remainder of the journey. When he waited in the passageway on the engine deck, Mary warned her to leave through the boiler room. Elena turned him away at their cabin door and sat beside Annika at the wardroom table; when their watch rotations didn’t match, Marguerite brought Annika’s meals to their cabin.

Annika knew they all thought that a budding romance had turned sour, and she didn’t correct the misperception. She was simply grateful for her friends’ help.

Despite what she’d told Lucia Kentewess, Annika didn’t intend to lose touch with everyone aboard
Phatéon
when she left the airship—Elena in particular. The second mate had already offered to check on her advertisements, but Annika would have corresponded with her regardless. And despite her angry response to David’s threat, she didn’t want him to be killed. As soon as they reached Smoke Bay, Annika planned to send word to Hannasvik,
letting them know Inga’s fate—and that her son sought to bury her beads on the nearby volcano.

As soon as Hildegard heard about Inga, the woman would probably seek out David herself. Annika couldn’t guess what resolution they might reach, but one way or another, Inga’s runes would find their way back to Hannasvik.

They’d probably reach home before Annika did. Flying another route on a different airship, years might pass before she saw Iceland again.

The realization drove her up to the main deck soon after the lookout spotted the island. Though early in the afternoon, the sun was already low in the sky, piercing the clouds with thin gray light. Bitter-cold wind sneaked around the edges of her woolen scarf, carefully wrapped to protect the skin below her aviation goggles. Heart in her throat, Annika stood at
Phatéon
’s bow, watching the western shoreline and snow-blanketed mountains come ever closer, seeming to increase in height and breadth as they flew in.

The fishing town of Smoke Cove lay on the inland edge of a bay that stretched a hundred miles north; on the peninsula to the south, steam rose like smoke from numerous heated springs. Hannasvik lay hidden among the hills of the peninsula that formed the bay’s upper boundary, and on a clear day, the mountain that David Kentewess sought was visible from Smoke Cove.

Today, though Annika stared north, hoping for a glimpse of land closer to home, clouds obscured both the peninsula and the volcano. Only the smaller mountains closer to Smoke Cove were visible across the water, a long ridge of gently rounded peaks, like a handful of children huddled beneath a blanket of snow.

As they neared the settlement, Vashon ordered the engines stopped and the sails unfurled. With engines silenced, the noise from the decks seemed that much louder—the wind whistling through the lines, every voice a shout, the canvas flapping with sharp snaps. Overwhelmed, Annika covered her ears with mittened hands,
focused on the town ahead. Built up on the flats that surrounded a natural harbor, the settlement had once been a trading port until the island had been abandoned. Afterward, only a small fishing community remained.

It wasn’t so small now. Since
Phatéon
had last come this way four months ago, the number of houses and buildings had doubled—the majority of them concentrated near the lake a mile from the harbor. Unease curled through Annika’s stomach. Were so many people coming already?

She stiffened as someone joined her at the rail. No, not
someone
—without looking, she knew who he was. For a week, she’d avoided David Kentewess, but even as she’d ignored him, she’d been aware of him. Every time she’d turned her face away, every time she’d left a room, every passageway she’d walked—she’d known when he was near.

He was here now. She stood frozen, palms over her ears. Walking away would be best. It would be. But he’d be leaving the ship tomorrow; the danger was almost past. Heart pounding, she lowered her hands and clenched her mittened fingers on the edge of the rail.

If he wanted to talk, she would listen. Oh, but she
wanted
to listen. She’d liked his voice so well, the deep warmth of it, the duh
dum
rhythm of his speech.

A gust hit the airship, rocking the deck. David gripped the gunwale, his gloved hand next to her left, his steel hand bare. As the ship settled, he said, “Komlan tells us that Fiore has brought in almost five hundred laborers, not including those in the hold.”

Five hundred? She’d known that
Phatéon
carried fifty men in her cargo hold, but five hundred others had already arrived? That awful sense of inevitability weighed on her chest again. How long before they moved outward and north? “It was just a fishing community a few years ago. Some sheep farmers. Why is he bringing in so many men?”

“To build a locomotive railway from Smoke Cove to Höfn.”

That route followed the southern rim of the island—and would take them away from Hannasvik. Knowing that didn’t ease her worry. Despite Smoke Cove’s sudden growth, the population didn’t compare to any of the New World towns, and couldn’t justify the expense of a locomotive. “Why is he building one?”

“According to Komlan, they’ll mine sulphur to supply the spark lighter manufactories.”

“And the locomotive will provide transport from the mines to the ports?”

“Yes.”

That meant miners—and that likely meant families would be moving in, and the merchants and farmers to support them. Perhaps they’d all stay south for a while. Hannasvik might have a few more years yet. But not long.

Annika expected David to say something similar, to use it as an argument. Why not tell him of her people’s location when exposure was so certain? Closing her eyes, she waited. She didn’t want to fight him now. She didn’t want to run from him again.

“Annika.”

Low and solemn, he spoke her name. Compelled, Annika looked up. He didn’t wear goggles, and the darkness beneath his eyes and the grooves at the sides of his mouth made him appear tense and worn, as if he’d been the one run ragged by a week of four-hour shifts followed by four hours of tossing in his bunk.