Riveted (16 page)

Except for the way he looked at her. There was no weariness in his gaze, only intense gravity, pure focus.

“I’m sorry,” he said. “I shouldn’t have threatened you or your people. I’d never have carried it out. It was said in frustration, and I’ve regretted it from that moment.”

Recalling his horror when she’d thrown his mother’s words back at him, Annika believed him. “Thank you.”

He nodded, holding her gaze. “I won’t ask again. I understand
that you have your reasons to protect them, and no reason to trust me. But I hope…I hope for another chance.”

Annika wanted to give him one. But her secret would stand between them, and revealing it would never be her decision to make. “A friendship created on the hope that I might eventually tell you wouldn’t be much of a friendship.”

“There’d be no conditions.” He lowered his head slightly, seemed to erase the distance between them. “Would I like to know? Yes, of course. But that isn’t why I ask. We
did
get along well. I’d like to try again.”

To go on as they’d begun. Oh, she wanted to. But could she trust him? “Let me think on it.”

“I leave
Phatéon
tomorrow.”

Her gut twisted at the reminder. He was leaving
Phatéon
—and so was she. Their paths would likely never cross again. Extending a friendship was all well and good, but Annika knew that her attraction to him could easily deepen, she
knew
that a part of her longed for more…and he didn’t. Continuing their acquaintance would only serve as fodder for her silly daydreams. For her own sake, she should end this now.

She couldn’t find the words to do it. Each one seemed to catch in the ache beneath her breast and refuse to surface. Perhaps they didn’t have to. David seemed to take her silence as a response and looked away from her with a weary nod.

Her throat tightened. This wasn’t what she wanted, either.

But the opportunity to give another answer passed when Dooley joined them. Taking the open spot on her right, he rested his elbows on the rail and cast his gaze over them, grinning.

“You two have made up, then?”

“No,” Annika said.

He must have thought she was joking. “I’ll say, never have I seen him mope as he did this week.”

“You don’t see it now,” David said quietly.

The older man’s smile froze in place. He glanced from David’s face to hers, and seemed to realize that she’d been speaking the truth. Smoothly, he grinned again and tilted his bearded chin back toward the deck. “Well, I should have said it of Goltzius, of course. Awake until the single hours last night he was, composing a poem to Miss Neves. It’s apparently not gone over well, because now he’s all in a tiff—though he’ll tell you it’s because there’s no flag flying over the harbor. It’s still Dutch land, he says.”

Annika didn’t agree with Goltzius or Dooley’s assessment of him. The younger man didn’t look upset; he looked thoughtful, standing at the starboard rail and staring out over the southern peninsula.

Dooley sighed. “At least there’s no doubt where his loyalties lie.”

“Or yours,” David told him.

“It’s truth. Many an Irishman stood by on these freezing shores, waiting for the Horde. We’ve as much reason to fly our colors here—though by current count, I’d say the Castilians outnumber us all.” His good humor dimmed a bit, and he looked past Annika to David. “Komlan asked us to supper in town, and offered to give us a copy of the survey they made of the lower rim. Shall we join him?”

“That depends on Miss Fridasdottor’s plans.” David looked to Annika. “I owe you a meal.”

“Oh.” No, he didn’t—the obligation had been hers. Turning that obligation around must be part of his apology. She’d have liked to accept. “I can’t go with you.”

“You’re welcome to come along with all of us.” Dooley angled his head toward hers. “Kentewess isn’t familiar with ladies, you understand. He doesn’t realize they can’t be running off alone with a gentleman.”

“I can,” Annika told him. Never would she be accused of proper
behavior. She met David’s gaze and explained, “I have only two hours before my watch begins. I must attend to my personal business while I can.”

“Tomorrow, then.” His last day aboard. “I’ll give you time to think. You’ll tell me what you decide.”

The determination in his expression said that even if she didn’t go to him, he’d seek her out. That even if she avoided him, he’d track her down.

He needn’t worry. Annika would let him find her.

She just didn’t know what her answer would be.

David didn’t often fall into a foul mood. He’d learned long
ago to focus on that which pleased him, not let himself be eaten up by doubt or anger. Now and again, however, everything irritated him. He sure as hell didn’t want company or dinner. He should have remained on the ship—or walked through Smoke Cove, contemplating how best to persuade Annika not to cut all ties with him. The dread that she might was a dull knife twisting through his gut.

That pain was enough to rouse the sleeping bear of his choler. He shouldn’t have tried to ignore it, and remained alone with his dour thoughts until the mood left him. Instead he watched the town pass outside a steamcoach window, brooding while Komlan and Dooley held a conversation around him. The lorries carrying laborers and supplies rumbled on ahead to di Fiore’s section camp near the lake, where a stately residence overlooked the laborers’ bunkhouses.

Goltzius had remained behind in town. David was already wishing he had, too, if only to ask why no one was patronizing the shops. It didn’t make any damn sense. After years of watching his father sweat over a ledger, he was acutely aware of how many customers a shop needed to get by. His father had barely survived on
velocipedal sales and repairs, plus the odd tinkering commissions unrelated to pedaling. The number of laborers di Fiore had brought in should have been a boon to shop owners. Instead the locals looked tired, worn—resentful.

Dooley must have thought so, too. “I’d have wagered that we’d see more activity, given that there’re five hundred laborers with money in their pockets just come to town.”

“Only two hundred and fifty men in Smoke Cove,” Komlan said. “Di Fiore insisted that we don’t make any problems for the town. Our men eat at the station and they can order anything else they need through our stores so that we don’t put a hardship on the town, eating through their supplies and leaving them nothing.”

So all the money spent went back into company pockets. That wasn’t how David remembered Paolo di Fiore. He’d been a generous man. David’s father had said so, too, until the day of his death. Paolo di Fiore had given everything he’d earned back to the people of Inoka Mountain—until he’d accidentally destroyed it.

Though Dooley frowned, he nodded. “I suppose it’s no simple thing to restock.”

“That’s truth. Months might pass before an order arrives—and this has been a hard winter for trading.” Komlan grinned suddenly. “But if you’re looking for activity, you’ll only have to wait a few hours and visit the public houses. There’s enough to keep a man entertained.”

David knew that Dooley wouldn’t be looking for entertainment, but rather for stories from local fishermen. What would they say of the railroad men who’d moved in? “Is di Fiore in town?”

“He is.” Komlan gripped the carriage strap as the steamcoach turned onto a narrow drive and stopped. Unlike the houses in town, which were small buildings constructed from dark wood siding and peaked tin roofs, or the weathered stone church, the station house was a three-storied, whitewashed block of a building. “The younger di Fiore, at least—Lorenzo. That was his ferry cruiser floating over
the harbor. The elder has his head up in the æther, and is usually at the camp on the southern rim. Smoke Cove is as far as I go. I oversee the work here, while Lorenzo takes his pick of men inland, where the going is rougher. You all right getting down, Kentewess?”

David frowned. Why
wouldn’t
he be all right? Rutted snow and chopped ice wouldn’t trip him up. But he bit back his irritated response. The man had probably been trying to be courteous, not condescending.

Though cold, the wind wasn’t nearly so bitter as it was aboard the airship. Dooley caught his gaze as he stepped out of the steamcoach. The older man wore a tight smile. David hadn’t spent much time with Komlan on this journey, but his friend had often visited with the man the first few days. Midweek, David had noticed Dooley begging off from further visits, pleading work that had to be finished before they arrived in Iceland. Obviously he wanted to like the other Irishman, but was having a hard time of it.

Hopefully the survey they’d receive would be worth the time spent at this dinner. Of course, if not for this supper, he’d likely be haunting the airship’s main decks, hoping to see Annika.

Moping. Brooding.

Any supper had to be better than hours of that.

David stomped the snow off his boots and followed the others inside. Whatever money di Fiore had made back from the laborers, not much of it had gone into furnishing this house. Though well-appointed, nothing in the front parlor seemed overly grand or ostentatious, but could have come from Dooley’s own house—though his house could have also fit into this one several times over.

The man who rose from the sofa and greeted them wasn’t much older than David, with finely tailored clothes and a neatly trimmed beard. Well kept, but not soft. He looked the sort who might traipse alongside them on a jungle expedition, hacking away at undergrowth. His gaze rested an extra second on David’s hand
and eyepiece, then came back for another look when Komlan made introductions.

“Lorenzo di Fiore, and here I’ve brought Patrick Dooley and David Kentewess from the Scientific Society in New Leiden.”

A shaggy wolfhound sleeping in front of a fire trotted across the parlor to greet Komlan and immediately stole Dooley’s attention. Di Fiore’s gaze sharpened on David.

“Kentewess? Are you acquainted with Stone Kentewess?”

“My father,” David said.

“And so you are the one who lost his legs.” He looked David over again. “You seem to have done well enough despite that. It’s incredible how technology aids us.”

He’d done well enough? Undoubtedly. But his legs weren’t the only thing he’d lost, and technology sure as hell hadn’t helped his mother.

Courtesy
, David reminded himself. Di Fiore likely had no idea. As his father had often reminded him, every man had a choice: feed that which makes you happy, or feed that which makes you rage. David wasn’t certain what Lorenzo di Fiore had chosen, but he seemed to have done well enough, too.

David always chose that which pleased him—and his life
did
please him. Still, it was an effort to say, “Yes.”

Di Fiore must have realized his misstep. “Not that it was easy, of course. You must still feel the effects of that disaster. I do, too. It seems we are forever visited by the sins of our fathers, however good their intentions. And how is your father?”

“Dead.”

“I’m sorry to hear that. My father said he was a clever machinist.”

“He was.”

“Your father once sent mine a letter, forgiving him and praising him for attempting to create good in this world, because so few men ever did. That letter meant very much to my father, so much
that it was one of the few things he took with him from the insanitarium. Have you ever been inside one?”

An insanitarium? “No.”

“Pray that you never are. I read that letter during one of my few visits. I’d spent many years wishing that I was someone else’s son—my mother changed her name to escape the stares and the hateful accusations—but your father’s words made me understand, for the first time, what a great mind my father had, the importance of what he’d tried to do, and the tragedy of locking him away in that place. I vowed that I’d get him out, and dedicated the next decade to seeing him freed.”

A tragedy to lock him away? Thanks to di Fiore, thousands of others had suffered a different sort of tragedy. But there were few things David despised more than conversations where the participants tried to outdo each other by comparing woes and suffering. Perhaps the man had paid enough for it. That wasn’t for David to say.

But he perfectly understood being driven by a promise. “It appears you succeeded.”

“Too late, perhaps.” Di Fiore was silent for a moment, then clapped his hands together. The effort he made to lighten the mood made his smile appear as if fishhooks had been caught in the corners of his mouth and given a tug. “Let us go on up and eat, shall we? The dining room is on the second floor. Can you manage the stairs, Kentewess?”

Goddamn it. He knew the man only meant to be thoughtful, but if David needed help, he’d bludging well ask for it. His gritted teeth prevented every response but a nod.

Dooley clapped him on the shoulder before preceding him up. Yes, his friend had seen this before. Too often, after someone learned of his legs, it was all that they saw in him, all that they thought about, and took a full pendulum swing away from ignoring the prosthetics’ existence. Instead, they became overly concerned, coddling
him before every move. All well intended, but by God, even good intentions could rub a man raw and threaten to emasculate him.

At least it gave him a good account of Lorenzo di Fiore’s sincerity. The man had just said that David had done well despite losing his limbs, and had gone on about the wonders of technology. Now he was asking whether David could climb stairs. Apparently, di Fiore’s “done well” had been little more than stroking David on, a bit of flattery and condescension toward a man he thought not truly capable.

David took his time climbing the stairs—why not, at this point?—breathing deep, pushing away his resentment. His father had possessed a talent for saying exactly what a man needed to hear, and David thought of that now. More than once, he’d reminded David that a man wasn’t made by what happened to him, but how he responded to those events.

Anger wouldn’t serve him now. Explaining rarely did, either; he knew that too well.

David had once broken an engagement over a flight of stairs. Emily had been so sweet, so pretty, one of the most sought-after girls in their town—and she’d told him that she didn’t mind his injuries. David, barely past eighteen, and who’d lived for years on the outside of society, always outside, had fallen quickly in love. Though he’d been embarrassed by some of the unnecessary help she’d given him, her concern, he’d ached for it, too—the attention she bestowed so willingly. He’d longed for every gentle kiss she gave to his scars, the tears she’d wept while she wished for each drop to heal him.