Riveted by Meljean Brook

also made it impossible to ever live among his father’s people. There were days when David was absolutely sure he’d done the right thing—and he thought that Lucia hoped this was one of those days. But the unequivocal “yes” wouldn’t come.
    “Oh, David.” Her voice gentled. “Was there anything for you in that town?”
    That was easier to answer. “No.”
    No job. He couldn’t have continued his father’s work. No status, no future, and no desire to stay.
    “Then you’ve done what your father would have wanted.”
    “And what he told me to do.” His father’s last wish. David had fulfilled that, but not his mother’s.
    Soon, though.
    “And it was the first time you obeyed without adding an impertinent remark, I imagine.” She smiled again when he laughed. “I’m sorry that I’ve never made certain our paths crossed before. How can ten years pass so quickly? And yet, here we are.”
    “Whenever I came back from an expedition, I always anticipated your letters.” The only personal correspondence that David received. “They were the best part of my return.”
    “As were receiving yours. But there was no mention of a wife?”
    With a chuckle, he shook his head. “No.”
    “You cannot let that girl stop you.”
    His former fiancée, Emily. David hadn’t thought of her in a few years. “She won’t,” he said. “I’ve had no time to court a woman.”
    And hadn’t met any women who wanted to be courted.
    “You’ve said Dooley is married.”
    “And met his wife while he recuperated from bullneck fever. Will you wish that on me?”
    “Lesions aren’t as dashing as prosthetic eyepieces, but if it was successful for Dooley…” She trailed off when he laughed. As she watched him, her eyes softened, and her smile seemed to tremble. “I’m sorry. Seeing you now, like this…Oh, you were such a joy to us—to your father and me, after the disaster. You were so fearless, so unstoppable. Some of my very best memories are of you driving your little cart around town.”
    He cupped her hands between his. “Those are some of my best memories, too.”
    “You were so happy.”
    Yes. “But only you and my father believed it.”
    Everyone else believed he must be miserable and had simply worn a brave face. They must have also thought him a brilliant actor; David knew he wasn’t.
    “All those damn fools.” Lucia shook her head. “And now, are you still happy?”
    “I get along.” Whether in a cart or on mechanical legs, nothing had been the same after his father had gone. He’d once been filled with laughter, bursting with possibility. Much of that had seemed to leave with his father’s last breath.
    Perhaps that exuberance had simply been youth. David enjoyed his work, was continually excited by it. He had fine friends to share meals and conversations with. Still, he sensed that something was missing…or unfulfilled.
    Such as his promise to his mother. Was he only lacking that? He hoped so. When he spoke with the woman whose accent so closely matched hers, maybe he’d be closer to fulfilling that promise, and he’d discover whether anything else was absent in his life.
    The silence between them had gone on for too long. He saw Lucia’s concerned gaze, and smiled in response.
    “I’m well,” he reassured her.
    She nodded, and seemed to hesitate before saying in a rush, “One of Paolo di Fiore’s men is aboard
Phatéon
.”
    David’s chest tightened. Paolo di Fiore—the man who’d attempted to build a machine inside the heart of an artificial mountain. In a land devastated by territorial disputes, the great device would filter the soot-laden air and clean the polluted river waters, and bring the warring peoples together in a common goal. He’d intended to bring renewed life to an entire region but had instead destroyed the mountain and half a city. His mother and his uncle had both died in the disaster, along with thousands of others. David had always counted himself fortunate that