Riveted (21 page)

“Yet you still make something good out of it.”

“Volcanoes do that, too.” He was determined to make a believer of her before the night was through. She listened so closely, rapt—no doubt she’d soon be fascinated, too. “For all of their destruction, they create even more. New islands, new lands. All of Iceland.”

She slanted him a disbelieving glance.

“I swear it,” he said.

With a nod, she looked out over the water, her gaze sweeping the mountains in the distance, the shoreline nearby. Seeing them differently, he thought.

“That’s a much better answer than glory,” she said softly.

“Don’t think too much of it. I wouldn’t reject glory if it came to me.” He loved her quick laugh, her wry nod. Though in truth, he
had
rejected it—or at least the greatness that di Fiore had offered. David glanced toward the bow, where the ferry cruiser was tethered twenty yards away. “That’s Lorenzo di Fiore’s ship.”

“The man building the rail?”

The rail.
She must have been one of the few people who didn’t hear the di Fiore name and immediately think of Inoka Mountain. “Yes. Dooley and I had dinner with him.”

“What was he like?”

Broken, he thought. Broken long ago by his father’s disgrace, and put back together in the wrong way. David couldn’t pity him for that—but perhaps that was his own failing, the effect of his own past.

And what was di Fiore like now? “He’s the sort of man who never seems to listen during a conversation. He only waits for his turn to speak.”

Annika wrinkled her nose and made a strangled noise in the back of her throat.

David laughed, nodded. “Yes. Exactly like that.”

“So you didn’t like him.”

“Not particularly, no. But I never expect to get along with anyone quickly.”

Her gaze lifted to his, her humor softening into a wistful sigh. “Neither do I.”

He wanted to see her smile again. “I had an advantage, if you recall—my odor wasn’t offensive.”

He was rewarded by the curve of her lips, a flash of her teeth.

“Oh, yes,” she said, and leaned closer, her face nearing his throat. David froze. He felt the warmth of her breath, caught the scent of her hair—like rosemary, or the heated pine of a forest in the summer. She inhaled and drew back, turning toward the warmers with her hands pressed to her cheeks. “You’re still all right.”

“Good.” David could barely manage that. He turned again, hiding his body’s response.

She glanced at his face before looking away. Her eyes closed briefly, then she peeked at him again. “Was that a soap? It was nice.”

“Shaving soap.”

He heard the roughness of his voice. God. She could come close again, if she wanted to, smell it for as long she liked.

“Oh.” She bit her lip, seemed to hesitate before saying, “Mary Chandler is the worst person to learn anything from. She said that native men don’t have to shave, and that is why they never wear a beard.”

“Perhaps some don’t. I do, but I don’t have to shave often—yet I know others who shave every day. Others pluck out the hairs as they grow in, starting when they are young men.”

“So it is a fashion.”

“For some. I know others who’ve grown out a beard—and most have been living in the cities for some time.”

“Trying to fit in?”

Or because they already did. “Yes.”

A heavy sigh escaped her. “I don’t think I ever will fit in. Only at home—and even there, not in every way that I would like to.” She glanced up at him. “Sometimes I think it would be nice to be normal somewhere.”

He knew that feeling—though he wasn’t feeling it now. “I think that place is here.”

Her gaze followed the path of his hand as he indicated the space around them. She glanced up with a smile and a curious look.

“Did you ever try to fit in?”

“Not with the whites.” David thought of stopping there, but knew they weren’t just talking about him because he was in the conversation queue. At different moments, he could feel her weighing his words, as if she needed to make a judgment or come to a decision. And he supposed she did—tomorrow.

If he wanted her to trust him, evading or lying would do him no good.

He looked out over the water. “Many of my father’s people were among those who converted when the Europeans first came. My name—Kentewess—identifies me as one. When I was a boy living in the east, the reclaiming of the old ways had just begun, so I didn’t think of it much. But when we moved to the mountain builders’ city with di Fiore, many of those around us took great pride in never having converted, never having lost history to Europeans. And when I was with the other boys, I would do everything I could to avoid mentioning my name, and gave them instead the name of an ancestor. I’d ask my father for legends, for tales—not even to truly honor them, but because knowing them made it easier to not feel…European.”

“Did it work?”

She was watching him, angling her head slightly as if to better see his expression. He turned again, suddenly conscious of his good side.

“In truth, I don’t know that it ever mattered to the other boys
as much as it mattered to me. I never felt as if I fit in, but I was never excluded, either.” He shook his head. “Now, I think about my father more than I ever do them. I remember the anger I felt toward him for converting—even though he hadn’t; our ancestors had—and I remember the guilt for feeling that anger. He never went by any name but Kentewess. And even though I turned my back on that, he was never angry in return. He said I would find my way.” He glanced at Annika, gave a wry smile. “Then the mountain came down, and I was never likely going to fit in anywhere, no matter what I called myself.”

Especially after his nanoagent infection finished off any chance of ever being accepted. After the Europeans had come, disease had devastated many of the native tribes in the east. Now, though some infected men bribed their way past the port gates and into the cities, they were summarily rejected from native enclaves—including the town where David and his father had retreated to after the Inoka Mountain disaster. The town hadn’t been much different than many European communities of similar size, but descendants of converts had begun to reject the European influence, reclaiming the past. Giving children the old names…
christening
them with the old names, and either not seeing the irony or ignoring it.

The Americas would never be as they’d been before the Europeans arrived. It would be true of Iceland, too, whether the Dutch returned or only miners came. Her village, once found, would be irrevocably changed.

No wonder Annika was terrified that they’d be discovered.

“You call yourself Kentewess now,” she said.

So he did. “But not as a statement—unless it’s the pride of being my father’s son. I can’t imagine carrying any other name.”

Her eyebrows arched. “Not even Ingasson?”

He’d never considered it before. “Perhaps I’ll add it.”

She smiled, but it froze when her gaze fixed on something behind
him. David looked over his shoulder. Maria Madalena Neves had come up to the main deck, wearing a red cloak trimmed in white fur. Her nurse accompanied her—not the older, stern woman that David had imagined, but as young as her charge, and pink in her cheeks.

Annika sighed. “She’s beautiful, isn’t she?”

“Yes.” He couldn’t deny it.

“She doesn’t fit in, either. You’ve heard where she’s going?”

“Heimaey.” When she didn’t respond, David glanced over. She was watching him again, her expression uncertain…then slowly hardening with resolve. He frowned. “What is it?”

“Do you know
why
she’s going there?”

The heat in his face wasn’t just from the warmers. “I’ve heard that it’s to keep young women…intact.”

And that was about as awkward a thing a man could say, but Annika didn’t seem to notice. “My first year aboard, we took a different girl there and I overheard a few of the aviators discussing the island. They thought the Church spread the story about them all being virgins to protect them.”

“From what?”

Annika glanced across the deck again. “
Look
at them. When she thinks no one is watching.”

He did, and Maria Madalena appeared just as haughty and regal as when she’d slammed the door in David’s face. But not at every moment, he realized. The nurse spoke to her, and he saw the softness there, the warmth—the tight smile that seemed to suppress laughter. Then she caught the eye of an aviator and tossed her head, every inch the arrogant, rich woman again.

What would the Church be protecting them from? David wasn’t Catholic, but he’d read some of the more contentious historical debates while at the university. Remembering the wake of terror following the first reports of the Horde’s frenzies, and the Church’s
call for leniency toward sodomites at the same time several kingdoms had been writing severe punishments into law, one possibility seemed more probable than others.

Carefully, because even the suggestion could harm the young woman, David said, “You think they’re Sapphists?”

“I don’t know what that means.”

“They share a bed.”

“Yes.” Her gaze didn’t waver from his. “I also heard the aviators say that it’s a sickness, and the cure is a man between their legs. Do you think so?”

He frowned. “Forcing any woman is indefensible.”

“No,” she said. “Do you think it is a
sickness
?”

The directness of her query demanded honesty. “I haven’t thought about the reasons for it.”

“You need to. Before you pledge yourself to helping Källa, before Hildegard comes for you. If you think it’s a sickness, you need to give those runes over and let them be.”

Understanding slipped in, and in the space of a breath, tore apart every assumption he’d made. Reeling, David shook his head, trying to reorder everything he’d learned about his mother’s people, to see through this new lens.

Why hadn’t he seen it before? Good Christ, it was so obvious. She and Källa had two mothers, yet they were sisters. They were a community of only women…and both Annika and his mother had kept them secret, protecting them.

They were right to protect them. God knew what would happen if the women were discovered.

Her gaze was still on him. Her stiff expression gave little away, but she held herself tight, her mittened hands shaking. “Will you think on it, David Ingasson?”

David nodded, hoping the response would reassure her—and realized that he
had
thought on it before, though not regarding women. He knew of several male colleagues who were rumored to
have shared more than tents during their expeditions, though the rumors were quiet, for fear that the men would be hurt by them. David wasn’t interested in that sort of companionship for himself, but he didn’t care that others did. He didn’t care that his mother’s people did the same.

Except for one.

Was this why Annika had told him she wouldn’t share his bed without love? It would be a simple claim that could keep men at arm’s length without risking herself.

David had no right to ask. He knew it. There was small hope of anything ever coming of his attraction to her…but he needed to know if that little hope was actually no hope at all. “You?”

She bit her lip, clearly uncertain, and David felt like an ass.

“You don’t have to—”

“I don’t know,” she said. A worried line formed between her brows. She glanced back at the deck, and her voice lowered to a whisper. “I don’t know. There was a girl, a friend. I hoped it would become more, but it never did. Then I thought perhaps there weren’t enough women in Hannasvik, and so I couldn’t meet the right one.”

Then she’d begun searching for Källa. “But it would be difficult to find someone in the New World,” he realized. She’d be taking a tremendous risk.

“Yes.” She exhaled a shaky breath. “But I also wondered if I was like some of the other women who preferred men, even though they’d never seen one. I thought that when I left, I would know for certain. But I didn’t. Four years, and there was no one that I…no one…”

Her lips pressed together and she stared out over the water. Tension held David still. She seemed on the verge of bolting, and he feared that a word or a movement might startle her away. He couldn’t imagine the terror that must be coursing through her now in sharing this with him. He’d have done anything to ease that for her, but he knew there was little to do—only clench his fists and
wait, his chest aching for her, his mind filled with slowly building anger.

This
shouldn’t
be so terrifying to confess. She shouldn’t have to fear anything.

“I
have
felt attraction to a man, but only—” She cut herself off, hesitated before starting again. “In general, I think women are more appealing in appearance.”

“So do I,” David said, and was gratified to see her quick smile. Her expression lost some of its petrified rigidity.

She looked up, met his gaze. “What I told you is true—I want to love someone first. Man or woman, I don’t care. I want to feel as if my guts are riveted together, to feel as if I would do anything just for a kiss, or a touch, or to see them. I want to feel as if I can’t live without them, and if I have to…if I
have
to live without them, I want to feel as if every moment I had with them was worth a lifetime of love. And I want to be loved that way in return.”

Her words gripped his heart, twisted it hard. That was what he wanted, too.

Annika caught her lip between her teeth again, watching him—uncertain again, he thought. “Does that sound like a foolish dream?”

“If it is, then I’m a fool, too.”

This time her smile came more easily, appeared less brittle. The ring of the ship’s bell sounded. She startled, glancing back at the deck and blinking.

“I’m due below again.” She backed away from the rail, her eyes still on his. “So will you think on it?”

He didn’t need to. But he doubted that she would believe an answer given so quickly. “I will,” he said. “And you’ll give me your answer tomorrow, too?”

She nodded, her gaze holding his for another long second before she turned. David watched her go, then looked out over the bay. Movement near the shoreline caught his eye. Two figures in a boat, rowing north.