“Oh.” Without looking at him, she fiddled with the buckle on his chest guard. “When you left the second time, I got it into my head that if you wouldn’t stay, then I’d go with you. And I didn’t want to be useless while on Oriana.”
So she’d learned what she could about his job. But the next time, he hadn’t even stayed long enough for her to suggest it. He’d left in the middle of the night, after leaving her whimpering in their bed.
His heart twisted. Never had it occurred to him that she might go. Her rightful place had been at home. His rightful duty was to bring something back to her.
But it was hard to care about what was rightful now. “I’d have liked that.”
“Well, I don’t know if I would have.” She gave him a wry glance. “On a boat for years on end? But perhaps a few months now and then.”
Which would have been better than what they’d done. But he couldn’t go back and change it now. He couldn’t change any of it. The long years he’d been gone. Her parents dying and Georgie being alone. The messages he’d never sent and the nothing he’d brought home. Everything that had led to her agreeing to a separation. None of it had changed. And when they returned home, she’d have no real reason to change her mind about the separation.
His throat an aching knot, Thom nodded—though he couldn’t even remember what he was responding to.
“But that was then.” Georgie’s gaze returned to the brass guards, and she gave a heavy sigh. “Now I’m just glad that I can help you.”
Gruffly, he said, “I’m glad of it, too.”
Standing again, he helped her position the guards that would protect his back and chest. Against a full-sized shark, his entire body wouldn’t even be a mouthful. But the brass plates might prevent a bite from any smaller predators in the sea—or stop Thom from gouging himself on splintered wood and twisted iron when he found Oriana. Anything to keep blood out of the water.
When Georgiana picked up the brass bracers for his arms, Thom shook his head. With a faint smile, she bent to buckle a pair of long guards around his thighs.
Standing at the rail, Southampton watched with interest—and a growing frown. “You’ll be able to swim back up carrying all that weight and the gold?”
Thom could, if necessary. But it wasn’t. “I won’t swim. I’ll haul myself up along the tether. Did your men mark off the distance along the cable?”
“A flag every twenty feet, just as you asked. Why is it necessary?”
“So that Thom knows how quickly he’s ascending,” Georgie said, fastening more brass around his lower leg. “If he comes up slowly, the divers’ disease might not affect him as badly.”
“Yes, but why?”
Thom shrugged. “I don’t know. I just know it’s true.”
“Fair enough.” Southampton glanced as a bundled-up mercenary joined them at the gangway. “You’ve both met Mr. Blade, my chief crewman. He’ll be watching over Mrs. Thomas on the platform.”
The prick who’d prodded Thom’s back with his pistol—and apparently the leader of this mercenary band. At his feet, he saw Georgie’s mouth tighten and her tug on the strap between his shin and calf guards was a little sharper than the one before. She hadn’t liked Blade any better than Thom had. None of the mercenaries had been friendly, and he wouldn’t expect them to be. They were doing their job. But none of the others had gone out of their way to poke at him, either.
“That all right with you, Georgie?”
She huffed out a breath. “Does it matter?”
“Not really, no,” Southampton said easily. “Mr. Blade will have the same instructions that I would give to any of my crew, which is to eliminate all obstacles that might prevent us from recovering my gold and to ensure that nothing unexpected returns from your ship with you.”
Blade opened his coat, exposing the pistol at his waist. There could be no mistaking Southampton’s meaning. If Thom brought up weapons from Oriana, Blade was under orders to kill them both.
But Thom didn’t intend to bring anything up. Not yet. And he already had his weapons with him.
Finished with the brass guards, Georgie rose. Anger brightened her eyes and flattened her mouth, but she only walked onto the platform. His body weighed down by brass, every step that Thom took after her felt like wading through a current.
Blade joined them, standing in the one corner of the platform not taken up by equipment. Thom hooked the airship’s tether to his belt, then pulled to make certain the cable unspooled easily. He glanced at Southampton and nodded.
With a clank and rattle, they began to descend to the water. But there was still more to do before he went in. Holding the brass helmet under his arm, Thom connected the air hose to the back of the dome. The pump sat near the front edge of the platform. Kneeling beside it, Georgie cranked the handle, testing the flow, then glanced up at him.
She spoke over the loud rattling of chains. “This fast?”
“You can go a little slower. And when you get tired, just switch over with Blade.” When she began shaking her head, Thom said, “A missed second or two won’t kill me, Georgie. Just speed it up a bit after the switch, so the flow in and out is equal again.”
“I’ll do it myself for as long as it takes.” Her tone said there’d be no arguing it, and Thom wasn’t a fool. But the frown pulling her brows together told him that he hadn’t quite escaped. “The past two years, you didn’t have a crew on Oriana. How did you do it alone?”