Iron Seas 03 - Riveted

She would have arranged passage for him and his laborers aboard another ship.”
    Ah. So Komlan was di Fiore’s man—and they were apparently building a locomotive railway in Iceland. Perhaps the man hadn’t fully regained his sanity, after all.
    He squeezed her hands. “I won’t think anything of it. And you?”
    “No.” She exhaled a long, shuddering breath. “It is painful. Not to have him aboard, but to see…to know how it all changes with hardly more than a blink. Oh, David. Do you know I have not stepped foot off this airship in three years? Because every time I go down, I see less and less of the world I shared with your uncle, and feel everything from that time slipping away.”
    Then David had arrived at her door and brought the change to her. He couldn’t be sorry for coming—and knew she wasn’t, either—but he could be sorry that it hurt her.
    “Oh, I’m a foolish old woman.” She laughed through her tears when he shook his head. “Yes.”
    He held on to her trembling hands. “You’re not.”
    Almost everything from that time had slipped away—and they were left to cling to what they could…or hunt down the remains.
    When she nodded and smiled at him again, he gave her fingers another squeeze and leaned back. She wiped her cheeks, then lifted the watch at her breast.
    “Oh, now look. You’ll barely have an extra moment to ready for dinner.”
    David glanced down at his jacket and trousers. They were rough, but the best he had with him. “I’m ready.”
    “No, my dear. That was my polite way of shoving you through the door so that I can repair the damage that all of this weeping has done to my face.”
    Laughing, he stood. “You’re still beautiful.”
    “And you’re forgiven for lying.”
    She turned her cheek for his kiss, which he happily bestowed. At the door, however, he couldn’t help himself. Hat in hand, he faced her.
    “I spoke with another passenger on the docks, but I forgot to ask her name. Have you met any of the others aboard?”
    “A woman, David?”
    He heard the laugh in her voice. “Yes. Young, vibrant.”
    “Beautiful?”
    Rather pretty, but with such lively expressions that her features appealed to him far more than any beauty’s. “Yes.”
    Lucia nodded. “There is one such young woman aboard. She’s bound for Heimaey, in the Vestmann Islands.”
    She spoke the name as if it should have some import, but David didn’t recognize it. “Heimaey?”
    “Hymen Island.”
    “Ah.” Heat filled his cheeks. The island off the south coast of Iceland was inhabited only by women, and was where some Catholic families sent their unmanageable daughters, keeping them pure for advantageous marriages. Rumor was, however, that the womenwere simply left there—and since no men were allowed to set foot on the island, distasteful stories of virgin cults and women who would steal a man’s virility had begun to spread. “Her family requested that she be taken to the island?”
    “Accompanied by her nurse, yes. They have the stateroom on the second deck. You saw her on the docks?”
    “Yes.”
    “I hadn’t realized that she’d been allowed to leave the ship.”
    Perhaps she hadn’t been. David hadn’t seen how the trouble at the port gates had started, but he felt certain that her birth documents were false. Had she been trying to escape?
    Maybe he should have helped her. “Do you know her name?”
    “Maria Madalena Neves.”
    “Lusitanian?” That couldn’t be right. She hadn’t spoken Portuguese at the gates.
    “I believe so. She boarded Phatéon in Nova Lagos—though I do recall she said that her grandmother was from one of the northern kingdoms. Sweden, perhaps.”
    That might be the answer, then. If she’d been unmanageable, she might have been sent away before, to family in the north. Would she know his mother’s family? “Will she be at the captain’s table?”
    “She has been these past two nights. I can see to it that you have a seat next to her, if you like.”
    “I would.”
    His aunt nodded, but a hint of uncertainty weakened her smile. “David, I hate that this must be said, but I hope that she has not misled you in any way. It hasn’t happened on this ship, but I’ve heard that some of these girls will attempt to make themselves…ineligible. And they’ll use any man to do it.”
    David grinned wryly. “She must not be that desperate. I asked her to join me for dinner at the inn. She refused.”
    “She refused —?” Lucia