“I heard rumors of your acquaintance. And Mad Machen’s obsession with her is just as well-known. He came into town about three years ago, searching for her, and there weren’t many people who dared leave their houses while he was here.” She looked down at her cup, her thumb rubbing along the rim. “Is he the pirate who shot you?”
Why would Mad Machen have reason for that? Thom had no argument with the man.
“That wasn’t him. It was some nobby gent.” But even as Thom spoke, he realized what she’d been getting at. Sharp anger spit up his throat. Had people told her that he’d been carrying on with Ivy? “Whatever you heard about me and her, it wasn’t anything like that. Is this why you’re agreeing to the separation?”
Her gaze lifted to his. “We have been separated, Thom. This just makes it official.”
Official. And he was suddenly desperate for her to argue, to persuade him to stay. Maybe that’s what he’d wanted all along. So he could be secure knowing that he’d tried to do right by her, telling her that he’d leave—yet remaining here when she asked him to. Now he wanted to beg her not to let him go.
But this was for the best. He knew it. Now he just needed to persuade his heart of it.
Softly, she asked, “Why did you keep leaving, Thom?”
I wanted to make you happy. But he hadn’t. And his throat was so rough, he could hardly speak. But this might be the last she ever asked of him. He’d give her this, at least.
“I wanted to bring something back to you.” And he’d brought a little. “This is what I have left. It’s yours.”
He slid the gold coin across the table. She barely glanced at it before her solemn gaze returned to his.
“You should keep—”
“You’ll take it, Georgie! Let me give you one damn thing worth having, then maybe I can pretend that I—” Clenching his jaw, Thom bit off the rest. He was losing control. Not with her. Abruptly he stood, chair legs scraping across stone. “I’ll haul that bed out.”
* * *
Georgiana gathered her coat and reticule while Thom went to fire up the steamcoach’s furnace. She expected him to return to the house and wait for the boiler to heat, rather than staying out in the cold morning air, but as the minutes passed she realized that he wasn’t coming. She made her way out the roadside entrance of the house and to the shed, but stopped before going in. By the trickle of steam rising from the coach’s vents, she could see that the boiler wasn’t ready—and neither was Thom. He stood at the side of the coach, his hands braced against the aluminum frame supporting the roof. His head hung down between his arms, eyes closed and face rigid.
Feeling as if she were intruding, Georgiana hesitated. Telling her that he wanted to separate had been hard for him. Her husband was a man of few words, but Georgiana had never seen him have any trouble finding them. Yet when he’d said he was leaving, Thom almost hadn’t gotten the words out.
That difficulty had been a surprise in a morning of surprises. She’d never thought his character was a mystery. He was quiet, sturdy. Calm and controlled, not given to strong emotion. And what Georgiana had known of him, she’d loved. But she was realizing that she hadn’t known her husband at all.
He was a man of few words. But he was also a man of powerful emotions.
And she shouldn’t be wondering what those emotions were. They’d agreed. Separation was best. But she couldn’t help wanting to look under the surface of Thom’s quiet facade now that she knew much more lay beneath it.
How much had she known of him before? A substantial amount, she’d thought. She knew that he’d been born in England just over thirty years ago, when that country had still been occupied by the Horde. He’d grown up in a crèche, like an orphan, though his parents had probably still been alive. But they wouldn’t have been parents as Georgiana knew them—just a man and a woman caught in a mating frenzy produced by radio signals broadcasted from the Horde’s controlling tower. Thom had been taken from his mother at birth and raised with other children, and when he was a young man, his occupation had been determined for him. His arms had been replaced by skeletal iron, and hydraulic braces across his back and chest offered additional hauling power. Then he’d been sent to work on the Horde’s fishing boats.
Thom had never spoken of that history. She only knew of it because, before her father had hired him on as chief mate, Thom told him that he had experience hauling nets. The arms and his braces had been self-evident. The rest of it was the same awful story shared by so many laborers during the Horde’s occupation, so Georgiana assumed the same was true for him.
And because of his silence, she’d also assumed that Thom hadn’t wanted to speak of his past. So she hadn’t wanted to hurt him by dredging up terrible memories simply to satisfy her curiosity.
But perhaps she should have. Perhaps she would have had a better understanding of the man who would be her husband. Perhaps she would have better understood why he’d left each time. He’d wanted to bring something back to her.
And that sounded exactly like her father.
With a sigh, she glanced up at the house. Georgiana had been a young girl when her father had tired of the crowded landscape and overfished waters of Prince George Island, as well as the disapproval of his wife’s well-to-do family. He’d left the English territories in the Americas and brought Georgiana and her mother here, to the very tip of the Jutland Peninsula, where the North Sea met the Baltic. He’d built their new home on a stretch of flat beach two miles from the nearest house, a home unlike any of those in town, but in the style her mother had grown up in. Three steep gables contained windows overlooking the sea. A widow’s walk surrounded the chimney, and on fine days her mother had abandoned the windows of her room to search the horizon from the roof, instead.
Georgiana loved Henry Tucker. He’d been a wonderful father, a good man.
But he’d been a terrible husband.
So had Thom. Except . . . he’d obviously been trying to be a good one. They’d simply had opposite ideas about how to go about it. He’d wanted to do the right thing by her. Maybe she should have asked before they were married what he considered right.
But Georgiana hadn’t. Not really. Theirs had been a smooth courtship. He appealed to her. She had appealed to him. And she’d liked him, in every way. Her father had approved of the match, no doubt lining Thom up as his successor. They’d known each other three years before they’d married, but they hadn’t been delayed by doubts or hesitation. Thom had simply been gone—away on whaling expeditions. He’d spent months at a time on a ship with her father. There was no question how he’d formed such strong notions about a husband’s duties.
Each time he’d returned, however, they hadn’t spoken of that. He’d told her of the oddities and dangers he’d seen while at sea. She’d told him of the town, the people who lived there—always trying to make him laugh, and so gratified when he had. She’d asked his opinion of everyone they knew, to judge the sort of man he was, how he saw others.
But she hadn’t asked Thom about himself. She hadn’t asked what he wanted from their marriage or what he expected of her. He’d asked what would make her happy. She’d never asked the same question in return.