Tethered (15 page)

Completely different from what Archimedes had thought, too. He’d planned to love her, but only until she inevitably broke his heart. They’d stumbled into forever, instead.

“Love, the great disrupter,” Scarsdale declared. “It ruins all of our grand schemes, destroys our reputations.”

So it had. She supposed that meant it was time to make a new reputation. But as for schemes…love hadn’t ruined hers.

Bilson’s scheme was another matter.

As soon as the newssheets printed that advertisement, Archimedes’ play was going to rip that damn game apart.

*   *   *

Archimedes had never paired his crimson waistcoat
with his scarlet breeches before, but he had to admit the effect was oddly dashing. He didn’t own a red jacket—an oversight that he’d have to correct upon his next visit to the tailor’s—but the sun came out midmorning and shirtsleeves became a viable option. He was waiting on deck in all his monochromatic glory when Yasmeen returned. She burst into laughter upon seeing him, and drew the red-handled daggers from her boots.

“I concede defeat,” she said.

“No.” Not defeated. “Never that.”

“All right.” She slipped the left dagger back into its sheath. “You have one. I’ll keep the other. Between us, we’ll have a matching set.”

A perfect match. He accepted the blade, still warm from her thigh—and not half as warm as the emotion that moved through him when she smiled.

She looked round the decks, at the crew engaged in their work. “So how goes the sky, Mr. Fox?”

“Well.” He walked with her toward the companionway. “We ought to be finished loading by midafternoon. We’re only waiting on the second delivery of coal. And how goes your fashionable earl?”

“He sketched New Eden’s layout, and gave us a way in—if we need it. The advertisement will be at the printer’s tomorrow, and he’ll also be directing a fleet of airships to search for
The Kite
around the North Sea, which is Berge’s usual territory. He’ll find her.”

No doubt. But the hint of trouble in her eyes told him there was more. “And how is
he
?”

“Not well. But he hasn’t been for years.” She stopped at the head of the ladder, reached up to cup his jaw in her palm. Her gaze captured his, saw through him. “It’s…difficult, loving someone, and fearing you’ll lose them. I say I don’t like my belly exposed. You say you don’t want me with you when you rescue Zenobia. We don’t want someone to be hurt, so we try to protect them, and hurt them while we do it. It’s irrational.”

Irrational, yes. He smiled against her hand. “That’s why I’m so good at loving you.”

She laughed. “Probably.”

“I want you with me, Yasmeen.”

“And I’m not sorry my belly is exposed. Perhaps I’m more vulnerable, but it doesn’t make me weak. The opposite is true.” She lowered her hand, gripped his, and held him tight. “I lost my crew, my ship. I
know
what it is to lose and how much it hurts, and I’ll do anything to keep it from happening again. And so being vulnerable now means that I’m far, far more dangerous than I ever was before.”

“My God, that’s so arousing.” Her grin all but finished him off. “You’re a cruel woman, to tell me this while in full view of the crew.”

With a wicked tilt of her brows, she stepped closer. “You’ve been fondling your dagger since I came aboard.”

“Only because it was still warm from your sheath, Mrs. Fox.”

Her laughter faded; intense heat replaced the humor in her
gaze. She inhaled deeply—drawing in his scent, he knew. All a tease, a delicious and exquisitely frustrating one that aroused her, too. Need quickened her breath, made him ache.

“Tonight,” he promised softly. “I’ll sheathe myself so deep. I’ll make you scream.”

“By the lady, you’d better,” she breathed, then closed her eyes. “Tonight.”

He had to force himself to step away, or tonight would begin within minutes at the head of the companionway. Her skin was flushed when she looked at him again, but she was every inch the captain.

“Has Bilson awoken?”

Archimedes nodded. “An hour ago. Still groggy, but mostly healed. He knows he’s infected with my strain of nanoagents.”

Her gaze turned speculative. “As soon as we’re under way, we’ll let him out of the stateroom and move about the airship as any passenger might.”

Clever. “And hope he speaks to the person with the device?”

“Yes. Longcock and Vashon know to keep an eye on him.” She took a deep breath, met his eyes. “How many of the aviators have decided to leave?”

“One, but not because of New Eden.”

“Only one?” Astonishment swept across her expression, and a pained emotion that wasn’t relief or gratitude, but somewhere in between. She’d thought it would be much worse, he realized. “Who was it? What was the reason?”

“It was Suskind, the third engineer. A letter caught up to him in Port Fallow yesterday, almost six months out. His wife is due to deliver their first child within a week or two now, and when he saw that we were bringing on three months’ worth of supplies, he asked for leave.”

“God forbid that it takes three months,” Yasmeen said softly. “Suskind? Goddammit. They’re already short by a shoveler. Has Farnsburrow said how he’ll split the third’s duties?”

The head engineer hadn’t made that decision yet, because he was waiting for Yasmeen’s. “I offered to take them.”

Yasmeen frowned at him. “You’re not trained as a stoker.”

“Not for the engines, but under full steam, the third will spend most of his time shoveling coal. If there’s a problem with the engines or pipes on my watch, I’ll call on Farnsburrow.”

“You
can’t
be crew.”

Because it would upset the order of authority on the ship—where he already possessed an odd standing outside of the normal rankings, as it was. He knew she worried that his presence in the engine room might put Farnsburrow in the awkward position of giving orders to the captain’s husband.

“I know,” he said. “I’ve told Farnsburrow that I wouldn’t be signing on, just helping out. Just as I’ve helped out on the deck before. None of the aviators gave me orders when something needed to be done; they gave me directions about how to do it.”

It was a small distinction, but an important one. Her frown smoothed and she nodded. “So they did.”

“So I’ll just be there to help shovel during the third’s watch—and I’ll need to do it,” he added. “We had to disassemble the pugilist machine to make room for the autogyros and the extra coal in the cargo hold. I won’t be off this airship for a while, so I might as well sweat at the heart of her.”

Her expression didn’t soften, but he saw the sudden understanding in her eyes. Books and journals would keep him occupied on this journey, but not enough. “You’ll sweat,” she said. “Did Farnsburrow tell you the third’s hours?”

Two shifts every day, one in the dead of night. He nodded. “I’ll survive.”

“He might feel obligated to give you the first’s hours. Don’t let him.”

“I won’t.”

“All right. Your watch starts in thirty minutes, Mr. Fox.” Her lips curved as her gaze moved down his length. “You’ll probably want to change your clothing before you begin shoveling coal into a furnace for four hours.”

He sighed. “The one drawback.”

She laughed and started down the ladder. “I suggest you wear the clothes you use to avoid the zombies. They’re already black.”

*   *   *

It didn’t matter which clothes he wore. By the middle
of his second shift, he’d stripped down to his breeches, sweating from the heat of the furnace and the exertion, covered in coal dust and breathing the engine room’s thick air, humid with steam from the boiler. God, he loved it. Though not exciting in the slightest, the work pushed his body harder than the automaton had. His muscles would pay for it later, he knew, with soreness and exhaustion—and it would likely take a few days to become accustomed to this new schedule. During salvaging runs, he often went weeks on little sleep, but the constant threat of zombies kept him alert, aware of everything around him, and relishing the thrill of every foreign sound.

This offered a different sort of bliss—not from danger, but of shutting everything out. He stuffed cotton into his ears to muffle the deafening roar of the engines, and though his sweat belonged to the furnace, he had his brain to himself for a stretch of four hours.

His head was never a dull place to be.

Naturally, on that night Yasmeen occupied most of his thoughts. She was always a surprise to him. The most incredible surprise. And he’d always known that he’d enjoyed a fair amount of good luck in his life, but her love for him led to an inescapable truth:

Archimedes Fox was the single luckiest man to ever walk the Earth.

So it should be written…and as soon as they got Zenobia back, he’d ask her to.

His entire body was pleasantly aching by the end of his watch, and the hot water from the evaporators washed away the worst of the dust and sweat. The sound of the engines slowly quieted as he made his way to the captain’s cabin; after months on the ship, he rarely noticed the constant vibration through the decks, aside from the moments when they ceased or resumed.

Yasmeen wasn’t in bed. A lantern burned low on the table. Before his shift had begun, he’d left her on the cushions there, naked and glistening, her satisfied smile matching the purr from her chest. Since then, she’d apparently poured herself a
glass of wine and fallen asleep reading Zenobia’s latest tale. Half of the pages were stacked neatly on the table, the others turned facedown beside her. Wearing a blue silk wrap, she slept on her side, curled up on the pillows and with her back to the door.

He hated to disturb her, but he would be glad to hold her. Intending to carry her to the bed, he crouched beside her, then paused. She wasn’t sleeping easily. A sheen of perspiration covered her forehead. Her fingers twitched. Each breath was a small, sobbing pant.

Another nightmare. He knew they’d come before, but never this often—and he hadn’t asked about them, hadn’t needed to. She’d been trapped in her cabin while her crew was slaughtered, and still aboard her lady when it had exploded. That ship had been everything to her.

And this was the third night in a row she’d woken from those nightmares…beginning when Bilson had activated that damn device, and all but stolen her ship with his demands.

“Yasmeen.” His chest tight, he gently stroked the long muscles of her back. He couldn’t erase the devastation that caused these dreams, but his touch soothed her. “Yasmeen.”

Her eyes flew open, met his, and the shattering fear he saw there undid him. With a harsh denial, he gathered her into his lap. Clinging to him, she buried her face against his throat. Hot tears burned against his skin.

“You won’t lose her,” he promised roughly. “I swear to you.”

She nodded against his neck—then lifted her head, eyes bright and lashes matted. “Her?”

“
Lady Nergüi.
”

Her lips parted, as if in confusion, before suddenly widening in a laugh. “Oh, Mr. Fox. Is that what you expected? These dreams aren’t about my losing my lady.”

“Your dreams are about me, of course,” he agreed. “The
nightmares
are losing her.”

“No. They’re about losing
you.
”

He wasn’t often lost for words. In the silence, she lowered her cheek to his shoulder, slipped her arms around him.

“You won’t,” he finally managed.

“I
can’t.
” Her breath shuddered against his neck. “It’s not
what I expected, either. A year ago, losing my ship to New Eden was the most painful thing I could imagine. And if
Lady Corsair
ever fell, I swore I’d go down with her. But when the time came, I didn’t. It all changed when I lost my crew, when I saw them bleeding on the decks. They were more important to me than my lady was, and avenging them was more important than dying with her. So I don’t dream of losing my ship. That’s not the worst I can imagine anymore.”

Losing him was. Too overcome to speak, Archimedes’ arms tightened around her.

“The irrational part of it is that I
should
be dreaming of the explosion. It truly happened, and
Lady Corsair
was destroyed. The zombies breaking that door really happened, too…but you were fine. Not even a scratch. And yet, that’s what I see over and over. Just the
threat
of losing you terrifies me. You’ve become more important than everything else: my crew, my ship. Even my own life.”

He stiffened. “No. Don’t say that.”

“I’m not rushing to jump over the side, Archimedes. Trust me when I say that I’ll go to frightening lengths to save both of us…and I’m truly not certain whether I’d be saving you or myself. It would destroy me to lose you.”

His throat closed. Somehow, he rasped, “I’m supposed to be the romantic one.”

“Blame your emerald eyes, if you must. I’ve apparently looked into them for too long.” She was smiling as she lifted her face to his, pressed a soft kiss to his lips. “I love you.”

He couldn’t answer. He captured her mouth instead, and abandoned everything to this kiss. Every promise, every thought, every feeling, they were all hers. Fierce and sweet, she clung to him, her lips tasting of wine and adventure, her hair smelling of tobacco and coconut, simply the most incredible woman God had ever created. By some miracle, she was his—and she was completely and utterly deluded if she truly thought that
anything
would ever take him from her side.

Her skin was flushed when he lifted his head, her breathing as sharp as his.

“You won’t lose me,” he vowed. “You could throw me off your ship a thousand times, and even if I landed in the mouth of Hell, I’d always come back to you.”

Her arms tightened around his shoulders as he rose to his feet, lifting her against his chest. “You have overtaken me as the romantic again.”

“If it pleases you, I will be the realist: after the hundredth time, I might come back as a zombie.” Her burst of laughter disarmed him. He couldn’t maintain a stoic façade. “But I swear to God in Heaven that even if my brains have rotted and my flesh falls from my bones, my heart will still beat for you.”