Heart of Steel - Meljean Brook [37]
“Yes. It wasn’t a boiler explosion.” A sharp claw scraped down his jaw. “And you don’t have my twenty-five percent, do you? Do you even have the sketch?”
Could she see the flush of his skin? He wasn’t often ashamed or embarrassed, but admitting that someone had stolen the sketch was pure humiliation. “I’ve been searching for it.”
“At the bottom of a pint?”
“I’ve found treasures in odder locations.” He’d found one sitting on his chest.
“Who took it?”
“I wish to God I knew. But if the idiot thief didn’t use the sketch for privy paper, he’ll try to sell it. So I’ll hear word of it soon.”
“Find me when you do. Goodbye, Mr. Fox.”
Her weight lifted suddenly, and he sat up, blindly trying to follow her. His searching hands caught her thigh before she could move away, and he snaked his arms around her hips. Her fingers fisted in his hair, but she didn’t rip his head off.
“Yasmeen. I’m sorry for the hideaway. And I’m so very, very—” He cut himself off, recognizing the swelling through his chest, the choking grief that would come, now overwhelmed by incredible joy. He finished in a rough voice, “Very moved by your survival.”
He released her. She didn’t let go of his hair. “Because of you, Mr. Fox, I couldn’t protect my crew. Instead of fighting when my lady was boarded, I was lying in that closet.”
God. Archimedes closed his eyes.
Pain tore through his scalp as she yanked his head back, forcing him to look up at her. “But I also suspect that if I hadn’t been in that damn hideaway, I’d be dead, and no one would be left to avenge them.”
He would have. If he’d known, he’d have hunted them to the ends of the earth.
If he’d known . . . and now he knew.
Determination filled him. “Who are they?”
“I don’t know. Yet.”
Abruptly, she let him go. A spark lighter scraped. The flickering glow illuminated her face. She drew on the cigarillo, the tip burning orange. He stared at her, all but overwhelmed again by the beautiful angles of her cheekbones, the point of her chin, the fullness of her lips.
Icy amusement curled her mouth as her gaze ran from his head to his toes. “Did you have company?”
He looked down at himself. Naked. Ah, yes. It had been snowing when he’d stumbled home. He’d slipped into a garbage heap, and the matron hadn’t allowed the stink to enter her house. Walking up three flights of stairs without a stitch of clothing obviously hadn’t offended her, however. She’d watched him the entire way.
Lying back, he folded his arms behind his head and offered Yasmeen a more flattering view. “My only companions have been my dreams of you.”
She snorted and turned for the door. Terror ripped through to his bones. No, he couldn’t lose her this quickly again. He reared up out of bed, but stopped in surprise when she said, “Zenobia sends her greetings from London. You ought to let her know that you’re not dead.”
Greetings from—“What? When?”
Yasmeen grinned over her shoulder. “Take a bath, Mr. Fox. Then come find me at dawn. Perhaps I can think of a use for a man with balls of iron and a silver tongue.”
He was dreaming. “Find you where?”
“If you can’t figure that out, you’re of no use to me after all.”
By the time the door closed behind her, leaving him in the dark again, he’d already figured it out. Vesuvius had sailed into Port Fallow that evening. He’d find her on Mad Machen’s ship. But that was the easy one—because if an exploding boiler hadn’t destroyed Lady Corsair, then who the hell had attacked her? He’d need to figure that out, too . . . but the why was all too obvious.
They’d been looking for the sketch.
Yasmeen’s knees always ached in the mornings now, as if during the short hours of sleep, her body returned to the three weeks she’d spent in bed, healing her shattered legs. Upon every waking, she stared up at the deckhead over her narrow berth, thinking that she ought to have just let Mad Machen cut them off after his men dragged her out of the water. His blacksmith could have given her better legs. Stronger. Faster. Impervious to pain. Maybe with a few concealed weapons that let her shoot