Fire & Frost Page 3

  On a deep breath, she closed her eyes. Debating whether to trust him, he knew. After a long second, she shook her head. Not rejection—resignation. Acknowledging how few choices she had.

  But Caius swore that by the time they reached the Ivory Market, she would have as many choices as she wanted.

  She reached for her coat and satchel. “Let’s go up, then.”

  HER MIND WHIRLING like an autogyro’s blades, Elizabeth didn’t know what to think or what to believe. Everything was different. Caius had found her…but he wanted to help her. And when he looked at her or when he spoke, she didn’t see coldness in his eyes or hear ice in his voice, as she always had before. There was no frost now. Only fire.

  She couldn’t make sense of it. She couldn’t make sense of anything.

  Especially those kisses. The first one, maybe he’d meant to silence her scream. But the second…

  No. She wouldn’t think of it. Because she couldn’t make sense of her response, either, and remembering the heat of his mouth and his taste made everything inside her clench into an unbearable ache.

  And he’d called her Elizabeth.

  She hadn’t even had to remind him that was the name she preferred now. All her life, she’d been called Mary—after her mother, Mary Elizabeth. Growing up, she’d taken comfort knowing that her father had given her the name of the woman he’d loved beyond any other, even though Elizabeth’s birth had killed her.

  After she’d learned the truth, the name hadn’t comforted her any longer. And when Caius had captured her in the Ivory Market, she’d demanded that he call her Elizabeth instead of Mary…though not a single person aside from herself ever had. While on the run, she’d always used false names. But Caius had done as she’d asked—though he’d obviously thought she was being ridiculous. And he hadn’t believed her when she’d told him why she called herself by another name.

  Yet he’d remembered. And he’d called her Elizabeth.

  Maybe he believed her now.

  Or maybe he just wanted her to believe that he did. This could all be a lie.

  He’d said his shackle of indenture was gone and that a friend had helped him remove it, but taking off the clockwork device wasn’t easy. If it had been, many more indentured servants would tamper with them. Few people knew how to remove a shackle and even fewer could do it without triggering the blades or the poison inside the device; it was difficult to believe that he’d found someone who could help him.

  If Caius had removed the shackle, she was glad for him. Abandoning her father’s service would make him a fugitive and jeopardize his mother’s and sister’s freedom, but of all people, Caius would know how to protect his family and hide them away.

  But he might have lied. Her father might have removed the shackle so that Caius could pretend to help her and lull her into complacency—not hunting her down but setting a trap. Giving her reason to trust Caius and to keep him near after she arrived at the Ivory Market, until her father could catch up.

  Yet that made no more sense than anything else did. Caius must have boarded the airship in Brighton. He could have taken Elizabeth to her father then.

  And she didn’t know what to believe anymore.

  Caius preceded her up the ladder to the main deck and took her hand as she emerged into the stinging cold. The wind caught the long length of his coat and swept it behind his legs like a brown woolen flag. The snow was falling more heavily than before. The speed of their flight made the flakes whip by at a near horizontal angle. Near the bow, an aviator cleared a drift piled up by the storage crates, tossing shovelfuls of snow over the rail. Lanterns cast a warm glow over the deck and illuminated a thick halo of white around the ship. Elizabeth couldn’t see anything in the darkness beyond.

  Caius adjusted his grip on her hand, turning their palms together and lacing his gloved fingers through hers. Her heart thumped. He didn’t hold her hand like a captor holding a captive’s. He held her hand like a lover.

  No matter what he thought, Elizabeth wouldn’t have jumped. He had no reason to keep hold of her. But she didn’t pull her hand away.

  He led her along the deck toward the stern, and she didn’t look at the aviators they passed. She knew what they must be thinking—that she and Caius had planned an airship tryst. She’d heard it was common for illicit lovers to book different cabins to give the appearance of propriety and then spend the trip together. No doubt the crew believed that was what she and Caius had done.

  Briefly she considered appealing for help from the aviators before discarding the idea. Caius wouldn’t be an easy man to subdue, and any attempt would just endanger the crew.

  And if Caius was telling the truth about his intention to help her, she might lose a strong ally. If he wasn’t telling the truth…she couldn’t do anything about it now except play along. Eventually, he might lower his guard, just as he had in the railcar two years before.

  They passed the quarterdeck. The wheel stood at the center of the deck, behind a thick plate of glass that shielded the pilot from the wind. Approaching the stern, the noise of the engine rose until it reached a deafening roar. The twin propellers spun in a blur of steel, spitting swirling sheets of snow into the billowing trail of steam and smoke.

  Without relinquishing his hold on her, Caius pointed beyond the propellers.

  Elizabeth struggled to see anything beyond the white. The lanterns’ glow illuminating the nearby flakes made it all but impossible—but even if the lamps had been extinguished, the snow fell so heavily she doubted there would be more than a few dozen feet of visibility beyond the sides of the airship.

  How had Caius seen anything in this snowstorm, let alone an airship in the distance?

  He couldn’t have, she realized. He couldn’t know whether her father was following them.

  So he’d lied.

  The pain of that realization was an unexpected knife through her chest. Blindly, she stared into the distant dark, her throat thick and her eyes watering.

  Except…there. A pinprick of yellow light. She blinked.

  It was gone.

  Heart pounding, she watched the same spot, wondering if the light had been her imagination or if she’d truly seen it.

  There it was again. A faint light in the distance. A lantern from another airship.

  Caius hadn’t lied.

  The ache in her fingers made her realize how tightly she’d been gripping his hand. Now he was looking at her with concern, and when she eased her hold on him, he gently squeezed her fingers—as if reassuring her.

  Because he thought that seeing her father’s ship had upset her. It should have. But she’d been far more upset by the belief that Caius had lied to her.

  Now she was overwhelmed by relief that he’d told her the truth, but she had nothing to be relieved about. Her father’s hunters were on that airship, and they wouldn’t wait until they reached the Ivory Market before attempting to capture Elizabeth. As soon as they flew near enough to Kingfisher, they’d come aboard.

  And Caius intended to stop them. Two hunters against one. Why would he take that risk?

  She glanced up at him with a frown. “Why are you helping me?”

  Shaking his head, he leaned closer. To kiss her again? Her stomach clenched in anticipation.

  But he turned his face away at the last moment and waited with his ear near her mouth. Just coming closer so that he could hear her over the engine’s roar, she realized.

  Elizabeth didn’t know which was sillier: the anticipation she’d felt in that moment when she’d thought he might kiss her, or the heavy weight of her disappointment when he didn’t.

  Pushing that disappointment away, she called over the noise, “Why are you helping me?”

  He pulled back to look down at her, the golden light from the nearby lantern warming the left side of his face and casting dark shadows over the right. His gaze searched her features for a long second before he answered.

  His mouth moved. She didn’t hear him over the engine. Yet
she recognized the shape of those words, and they made her heart careen wildly in her chest.

  But she couldn’t believe them. His reply had to be a lie.

  She’d thought he’d been lying about her father’s airship, though—and he hadn’t been. There was no reason to believe he’d lie now.

  So she’d just mistaken the words, had misread the shape.

  “Because I lost you” made more sense than what she thought he’d said. And he had lost her in that railcar. She’d escaped him.

  But that wouldn’t be a reason to help her. He’d failed to bring her home. If anything, that would be more reason to hand her over to her father.

  It had more likely been “Because I loathe you”—because he had for so many years. She’d seen his resentment and dislike every time he’d come into the sanctuary. But that wouldn’t be a reason to help her, either.

  What she thought he’d said made no more sense, though—and Elizabeth was too afraid to ask him again.

  Too afraid to find out it wasn’t what she’d thought.

  But she shouldn’t care what it was or wasn’t—she needed to focus on what to do now. Either Caius was truly here to stop her father, or he was just keeping her occupied and complacent until her father arrived. If it was the first, she would let him help her. And if it was the second…Elizabeth wasn’t sure what she would do.

  One thing was certain, however: jumping wasn’t an option this time. The fall would kill her. And even if she used one of the emergency gliders stored near the lifeboats, the zombies would kill her shortly after she landed.

  If Caius meant to hand her over to her father, she would have to let him do it—then escape as soon as she could. Until then, she would ally herself with Caius, and prepare to run again at the first opportunity.

  God. She was so tired of running. Just the thought suddenly exhausted her, and a heavy ache settled in her chest when she imagined Caius betraying her after promising to help.

  Could she trust him? She shouldn’t.

  But she desperately wanted to. Probably because he was her only hope of escaping her father.

  No other reason.

  Chapter Three

  SHE HADN’T BELIEVED HIM. CAIUS hadn’t expected her to. But his throat was tight and his heart pounding as he watched her struggle with his declaration.

  Because I love you.

  Emotions chased wildly across her face. Her expressive features were an open plain, concealing nothing—and after years of trying not to see her, he didn’t want to look away.

  Finally she tore her gaze from his. Doubt settled into her furrowed brow and wariness haunted the shadows in her eyes. Still uncertain of his motives and afraid he would hurt her.

  As he had so many times before.

  After entering her father’s service, every time he’d returned to the sanctuary he prayed she would be there—and he prayed she wouldn’t be. Her face had been as transparent then, sweet and earnest, but he’d never trusted what he’d seen. He’d never let himself trust it.

  In turn, Caius had hidden everything he’d felt for her. Elizabeth was the woman he’d wanted from the day he’d first understood what wanting was. Not just arousal or an erect prick. It was needing not just anyone, but someone.

  But he couldn’t have her.

  The law would have allowed it. He’d been in service to her father, but an employer couldn’t prevent his indentured servants from marrying or living as they chose, as long as they fulfilled their duties. Indentured servants weren’t owned; they weren’t slaves. But with a shackle around his wrist that would poison him if he didn’t return to her father at regular intervals to have the clockwork counter rewound, Caius hadn’t seen the difference. He hadn’t been his own man—and until he was, Caius couldn’t call a woman his.

  And the woman he wanted had been right in front of him.

  So her sweetness had angered him, because he wanted to hate her, wanted her to be shallow and cruel and use her status as a weapon. Every breath she took angered him, a breath he wanted to feel on his skin and never would. Her attempts to flirt angered him, because he wanted everything her smiles promised.

  But Caius hadn’t understood any of that then. At the time, he’d only been angry with her—and angry with himself for wanting her even though anything between them was impossible. She’d had to know it was impossible, too. She was beautiful and wealthy, and he was bound to serve her father for thirty years. So he’d told himself that she was playing with him.

  When she’d run away, Caius had been glad of it, because he thought she’d finally demonstrated that she was everything he’d told himself she was. A flighty, capricious, stupid girl, running into danger when she had love and security at home. He’d thought she was a fool for tossing it all away. For so long, he’d tried to make himself believe she was spoiled and selfish, and she’d suddenly proved him right.

  Five years ago, his anger—and his shame that he’d ever wanted her—fueled his chase. He’d been determined to take her back to the sanctuary and wipe his heart clean of her.

  But it hadn’t been so easy. Tracking her meant seeing the places she lived and speaking with the people who’d known her. None of them described her as thoughtless or capricious or haughty, but friendly and quiet and sad. Just as she’d often been in the sanctuary.

  Just as he’d told himself she couldn’t truly be.

  By the end, it hadn’t been anger fueling his chase, but a desperate need to see her again. Yet he’d still tried to hold on to reasons to think less of her. So when she confessed the story behind her conception and birth—and that she wasn’t truly her mother’s daughter, but her mother’s duplicate—he’d told himself that she lied. He’d thought it was a clever story, based on just enough truth to be plausible. Caius had known of her father’s machine. He’d seen tintype photographs and painted portraits of her mother. Aside from small differences in their hairstyles and weight, she and Elizabeth looked exactly alike. But he’d already made up his mind about her, and so he’d believed her tale was a ruse to persuade him to let her go.

  And it had been too difficult to believe her father would make Elizabeth take her mother’s place, to step into her mother’s role as his wife. Willem Jannsen loved his daughter. Caius had seen evidence of that so many times—and he’d seen the man’s heartbreak when Elizabeth had fled. So it had been easier for Caius to believe that she would discard that love and impugn her father’s name during her silly flight around the world.

  He’d wanted to believe it.

  But after he’d caught up to her, her panic and desperation had been real. So Caius had spent the last half of the journey talking to her, using every word to remind himself why he had to take her back to her life of ease and luxury.

  Never for one moment had he believed that she’d toss herself off the side of a mountain—and that leap had destroyed him.

  He’d driven the woman he loved to her death.

  The wall of anger he’d put up around his heart had shattered when she’d jumped. Nothing protected him after that. For days he’d searched for her body, a broken man. But losing her hadn’t been the only devastating blow. When he’d returned to the sanctuary to report her death to her father, Caius had learned everything she’d told him was true.

  No pain could compare to watching her jump. But realizing how determinedly he’d clung to his illusions about her had wrecked him again.

  Even now, with Elizabeth standing beside him and his hand holding hers, he was still wrecked. Two years of agony had receded in the joy of seeing her alive, but her jump had torn a jagged wound through his heart that he didn’t think would ever heal.

  He’d been such a fool. From the day they’d met, he’d systematically destroyed every opportunity to win her trust, her friendship…her heart. Two years before, he’d had a chance to help her. Instead he’d tossed away everything he knew about her, and had chosen to chase after the woman he’d wanted to believe she was.

  After she’d jumped, he’d t
ried to make amends. Not to Elizabeth. That would have been impossible. But he’d given a toddling young girl the help that he’d never given Elizabeth, and he’d fallen in love all over again.

  Now he had a chance to make amends to Elizabeth. Not to earn her forgiveness, and with no expectation of love; Caius knew he was too late for that. But he could help her now—and make certain she remained free.

  He watched her search through the storm behind them. By the clench of her fingers, he knew when she spotted the Mary Elizabeth’s lanterns again. She glanced up at Caius and tugged him closer.

  His body stiffened as he bent his head toward her. She couldn’t know the exquisite torture of her heated breath against his ear, the lavender scent of her hair.

  She raised her voice over the noise from the engine and propellers. “How long until my father’s airship has caught up to us?”

  Caius could have answered her by raising a few fingers to indicate the hours left, but he turned his mouth toward her to speak. A knitted cap covered the shell of her ear. Dark curls nested in the hollow between the curve of her jaw and her blue scarf, dotted by tiny drops from melted snowflakes that sparkled in the lantern light. God, he wanted to kiss those glittering beads away, taste her coppery skin.

  With need curling a tight fist in his gut, he told her, “Two or three hours.”

  She drew back to look up at him, as if seeking confirmation. When he nodded, she cast her worried gaze into the falling snow and the darkness beyond. Then determination flattened her lips, her brows drew together, and suddenly she was pulling him away from the airship’s stern toward the ladder leading below. She let go of his hand in the companionway. Reluctantly, Caius released his hold on her. He didn’t fear now that she would jump—her posture and expression told him that she was prepared to fight rather than run—but the longing ache in his chest was a continual reminder of how few of these small touches he would have. Whatever occurred with her father would probably happen tonight. Afterward he and Elizabeth would continue on to the Ivory Market, but on that journey Caius would have no more excuses to hold her hand, to lean close as he spoke.