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  Praise for the authors of Enthralled

  LORA LEIGH

  “Lora Leigh delivers on all counts.”

  —Romance Reviews Today

  “Erotic, fast-paced, funny, and hard-hitting.”

  —Fresh Fiction

  “The incredible Leigh pushes the traditional envelope.”

  —RT Book Reviews

  ALYSSA DAY

  “Alyssa Day creates an amazing and astonishing world.”

  —Christine Feehan, #1 New York Times bestselling author

  “Hot, fast-paced action.”

  —San Francisco Book Review

  “An epic thrill ride.”

  —Romance Reviews Today

  MELJEAN BROOK

  “Meljean Brook has brilliantly defined the new genre of steampunk romance. I loved it!”

  —Jayne Ann Krentz, New York Times bestselling author

  “Smart, sexy, breathtaking, and downright addicting.”

  —Ilona Andrews, New York Times bestselling author

  “Masterful storytelling.”

  —Booklist

  LUCY MONROE

  “Lucy Monroe is one of my favorite indulgences.”

  —Christine Feehan, #1 New York Times bestselling author

  “Enthralling from beginning to end.”

  —Publishers Weekly

  “[A] sexy, stay-up-all-night read.”

  —RT Book Reviews

  LORA LEIGH

  ALYSSA DAY

  MELJEAN BROOK

  LUCY MONROE

  THE BERKLEY PUBLISHING GROUP

  Published by the Penguin Group

  Penguin Group (USA) Inc.

  375 Hudson Street, New York, New York 10014, USA

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  Penguin Books Ltd., Registered Offices: 80 Strand, London WC2R 0RL, England

  For more information about the Penguin Group, visit penguin.com.

  ENTHRALLED

  This book is an original publication of The Berkley Publishing Group.

  Copyright © 2013 by Penguin Group (USA) Inc.

  “The Devil’s Due” by Lora Leigh copyright © 2013 by Christina Simmons.

  “The Curse of the Black Swan” by Alyssa Day copyright © 2013 by Alesia Holliday.

  “Salvage” by Meljean Brook copyright © 2013 by Melissa Khan.

  “Ecstasy Under the Moon” by Lucy Monroe copyright © 2013 by Lilles Slawik.

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, scanned, or distributed in any printed or electronic form without permission. Please do not participate in or encourage piracy of copyrighted materials in violation of the authors’ rights. Purchase only authorized editions.

  Berkley Sensation Books are published by The Berkley Publishing Group.

  BERKLEY SENSATION® is a registered trademark of Penguin Group (USA) Inc.

  The “B” design is a trademark of Penguin Group (USA) Inc.

  Berkley Sensation trade paperback edition ISBN: 978-0-425-25331-1

  eBook ISBN: 978-1-101-62248-3

  An application to register this book for cataloging has been submitted to the Library of Congress.

  PUBLISHING HISTORY

  Berkley Sensation trade paperback edition / July 2013

  Cover art by S. Miroque.

  Cover design by Rita Frangie.

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the authors’ imaginations or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental. The publisher does not have any control over and does not assume any responsibility for author or third-party websites or their content.

  Contents

  Praise

  Title Page

  Copyright

  SALVAGE by Meljean Brook

  DEDICATION

  ONE

  TWO

  THREE

  FOUR

  FIVE

  SIX

  SEVEN

  SALVAGE

  A Tale of the Iron Seas

  MELJEAN BROOK

  To Cindy, who let me save my brain by writing this story, and who miraculously hasn’t killed me yet.

  ONE

  When Georgiana came across her good-for-nothing cheating bastard of a husband washed up on the beach with a bullet in his side, she considered leaving him for dead. Then she wrapped both hands around his iron wrist and dragged him up to the house.

  Despite the tiny mechanical bugs that lived inside her body and enhanced her strength, hauling him wasn’t easy. Big Thom, everyone in town called him. Taller and broader than any other man of her acquaintance, her husband deserved the appellation. But Georgiana had other names for him.

  Always-Gone Thom. Empty-Hearted Thom. Abandon-Her-Bed Thom.

  Not that his cold heart or her bed mattered now. Georgiana’s hopeful expectations for their marriage and her burgeoning love had wilted the first time he’d sailed off and left her alone. All remaining affection had withered to ashes during his most recent absence, which had passed without any communication from her husband—just an occasional bit of money in an envelope stamped with his ship’s seal, and no note to accompany it. Georgiana hadn’t needed the funds, but there had been days when she’d have given anything for a single word from him. Now nothing he ever said could soften her heart toward him again.

  If he’d sent even one message, she might have attempted to carry him up the stairs to the seaside entrance of the house. Instead she dragged his body up the steps and listened to the four solid thunks.

  One for each year he’d been gone.

  * * *

  She had lit the stove before setting out on her morning walk. Georgiana usually welcomed the cozy warmth after the brisk ocean air, but while sweating and flushed with exertion, the kitchen seemed stifling and cramped. Her shoulder muscles burning, she pulled Thom through the entrance, leaving a trail of seawater, blood, and sand. Her mother’s hand-knotted rugs slid across the stone floor with him, bunching under his head and shoulders. Her bottom bumped into the table before his boots cleared the door.

  The big, heavy dolt. She let go of his wrist. His arm dropped to the floor, his sodden gloves and woolen coat muffling the clink of iron against stone.

  Where to now? Unwrapping her scarf, she eyed the door leading to the second level. The bedchamber she’d shared with him was up there, but she’d closed that part of the house years ago. It made no sense to open the upper floors now, and her husband wasn’t worth the effort of hauling him up the stairs or the expense of heating the rooms. She would put him in the single bedchamber downstairs, then send him on his way the moment he was well enough to walk out of it.

  That wouldn’t take long. Thom was infected by the mechanical bugs, just as she was. They’d have him on his feet within a day or two.

  After shedding her coat and gloves, Georgiana bent for his arm again. The iron forearm beneath the wool sleeve was thicker and more solid than she expected. His prosthetics were of the skeletal kind, resembling metal bones. But perhaps his iron arms always felt bigger than they appeared. Georgiana didn’t know. She’d only seen them once, after walking in on Thom while he’d been changing into the nightshirt he’d worn to their wedding bed. He almost always wore gloves, as well—not for warmth, but with a lightly oiled lining to prevent exposing his jointed iron fingers to the rusting effects of the salty sea air. She’d seen his hands only a few more times than his arms. And although she’d often rested her palm upon his coat sleeve, which had given her some idea of the shape beneath, she’d never had to wrap her fingers around his wrist and drag him around before.

  The bedchamber stood on the opposite s
ide of the kitchen. With her skirts swinging around her booted feet, Georgiana huffed her way past the table and stove and through the door. Once inside, she let his heavy arm drop again.

  Soaked and bloody. Thom wasn’t going into the bed like that. She stripped the quilts down the mattress, then covered the sheet with towels.

  Thom needed to be stripped, too. She reached for his cap, damp but warm. Too warm. Heat radiated through the knitted wool. Tugging it off, she laid the backs of her fingers to his forehead.

  Burning.

  Oh, no. No, no, no. When she’d first found Thom on the beach and rolled him over, she’d touched his face. His skin had been cool. Not now. And the bugs wouldn’t heal this—they created the fever. It only happened rarely, and with severe wounds. The tiny machines worked so hard to heal him that they overheated his body. Infected men and women almost never sickened or died from anything but old age, unless an injury killed a person faster than the bugs could heal him. But bug fever was often fatal.

  Rushing to the window, Georgiana threw it open. Frigid air swept inside the room. She flew back to Thom’s side. She needed ice, opium. His temperature had to be lowered, and the drug slowed the bugs. They wouldn’t repair his wound as quickly, but the opium might keep the healing from killing him. He probably only lived now because his body had lain half-submerged in the freezing ocean water.

  She tore open the buckles of his coat, her mind racing as quickly as her fingers. A few blocks of ice were stacked in the ice house, but she would have to send a wiregram to town for more. The physician could bring opium.

  But she had to get Thom undressed first. She wrestled the thick coat down his arms and tossed it aside. A woolen fisherman’s gansey lay beneath, the gray weave soaked in blood. She yanked the pullover up to his chest, taking his linen shirt with it and exposing the bullet hole in his side.

  The small wound had stopped bleeding. Carefully, she turned him. The bullet’s exit had done more damage, the injury larger and more ragged, but no blood seeped out. The edges had already healed.

  Thank God. Even if the healing slowed, this wound no longer threatened his life. She just had to worry about the fever.

  Gripping the hem of his gansey and shirt, she stripped them the rest of the way off, almost losing her balance in the process. His prosthetics thunked back to the floor, and—

  He had new arms.

  For an instant, astonishment froze Georgiana in place. No longer dull, skeletal iron. These were steel, and shaped in proportion to his body—a combination of intricate machines designed to resemble a pair of long, muscular arms.

  Where on Earth had he gotten them? Who could have made such incredible devices?

  But Georgiana knew. She’d heard the whispers, rumors that had flown by airship and sailed by boat across the North Sea to the small Danish town of Skagen. Yet although she herself had called him a cheating scoundrel in her mind, that was only when she’d been at her angriest, her most hurt. She hadn’t believed the rumors. After all, Thom had only visited her bed three times. Three awful times that he’d seemed to enjoy even less than Georgiana had. So she hadn’t believed that he’d gone to another woman’s bed.

  And maybe he hadn’t. Perhaps there was another explanation. It hardly mattered. As soon as he was well again, she would say good riddance to him.

  He would go, anyway. Thom always did. But this time, for the first time, Georgiana would have the satisfaction of knowing that he went after she’d told him to leave—and not after she’d asked him to stay.

  * * *

  By evening, the rash that signaled the worst stage of the fever began spreading over Thom’s throat and chest. The doctor didn’t say anything as he administered another injection of opium, but Georgiana didn’t need the grim-faced man to tell her how little hope was left. Those small red dots marked the beginning of the end.

  Thom would leave again. He wouldn’t come back. Not because she’d told him to go, but because he’d made her a widow.

  But that was not how this would end. She had accounts to settle with her husband before he left, so Thom could not go like this.

  Georgiana would simply not allow it. And in recent years, she had become very good at getting her way.

  The lamps flickered throughout the night, the flames dancing in the draft from the window. Accompanied by the roar of the ocean, Georgiana bathed his nude body in ice water until her fingers shriveled and ached. In the morning, the doctor pumped Thom full of opium again and helped her replenish the chunks of ice piled around his motionless form. She resumed bathing his skin, her frozen hands stiff and her mood too heavy to lift.

  Exhaustion finally claimed her in the middle of the second night. She fell asleep in an armchair next to Thom’s bedside and woke at dawn with a crooked neck. Her husband lay still, with only a sheet over his hips for modesty. The gray light through the window paled his skin, washing away the flush of the fever. The ice surrounding his big body had melted almost to nothing.

  The dour Doctor Rasmussen stood at the vanity, snapping his black case shut. He wore his scarf and gloves, and the brim of his hat shadowed his humorless features. From outside, Georgiana heard the chattering engine of his steamcart.

  She jolted upright, her back and neck protesting. “You are already leaving? But we must add more ice.”

  In a tone as somber as his expression, the doctor replied, “There is no need for more, Mrs. Thomas.”

  No need . . . ? Fear yanked Georgiana to her feet. Her gaze shot to Thom’s pale, still form.

  The doctor continued, “The rash receded during the night. I’ve administered another dose so that your husband continues to rest, but he should not need another.”

  Relief descended in a bone-dissolving wave, but Georgiana didn’t trust it until she flattened her palm against Thom’s chest. Still too warm, but not burning. His heart beat in deep, even thuds. The angry rash and the swelling in his throat had faded.

  She glanced at the fresh bandage wrapped around his abdomen. “And the wound?”

  “The nanoagents have sealed the skin. I removed the stitches. As long as he does not reopen it, he should be out of danger.” The doctor paused. Though he only seemed to have one attitude—grim—Georgiana detected a hint of apology from him. “You will likely have a visit from the magistrate today.”

  Because Thom had been shot, and the physician was required to report such wounds. Well, he didn’t need to be sorry for that. “I understand your duty, sir. But you might tell him to come tomorrow, after my husband has woken. I have no answers for his inquiry.”

  Now surprise put a faint twist in Rasmussen’s lips. But he only nodded and wished her a good day, and had already quit the room when Georgiana realized that the doctor assumed she had shot Thom.

  Which was ridiculous. Not that Thom hadn’t given her reason to shoot him, because he had. But if Georgiana had wanted to murder him, she wouldn’t have missed his heart, and she certainly wouldn’t have called on a physician to heal him. Georgiana would have buried his body in the steamcoach shed, where her digging wouldn’t be observed—though there was slim chance that someone would happen by her isolated home at the same moment she needed to conceal a body, it was better not to risk discovery.

  Not that she had often pondered his murder—or anyone else’s. But planning for unexpected events was just common sense.

  She hadn’t planned well for this, however. She didn’t know who might have shot him, either. On the seas, attacks could come from any direction, but salvagers like Thom weren’t usually targets for pirates or thieves. Perhaps it had been a personal matter . . . but Georgiana would not let her mind dwell on that, any more than she dwelt on how he’d obtained his new prosthetics.

  Whatever the answers, they had nothing to do with her.

  Georgiana set about clearing away the ice. Meltwater soaked the bed. The day maid arrived at eight o’clock full of gossip from town, of an aristocrat’s airship that had flown into Skagen’s harbor and of twin babies that h
ad been born. Aware that Thom’s condition would soon be more fodder for wagging tongues, Georgiana only listened with half an ear while they wrestled a mattress down the stairs. On the bed, the sodden mattress was too heavy to drag off the frame. They made a pallet on the floor and, together, she and Marta transferred Thom onto dry sheets. He didn’t lie so quietly now, turning his head against the pillow and restlessly shifting his legs, as if swimming through rough dreams.

  Her secretary came shortly afterward, bearing a stack of cargo receipts and inventories. The following hours were spent catching up on two days of neglected work. After lunch, Georgiana sent him back to her offices in town with the assurance that she would be in the next morning.

  Perhaps with Thom in tow. She didn’t know what the terms of their separation would be, but she’d make him a fair offer for his part of her shipping business. Though to her mind, any offer would be more than fair. His involvement in her venture had begun and ended four years ago, and only comprised an envelope containing a bit of money. All of the risks and the work had been her own.

  Tired, she returned to the armchair in the bedchamber. She’d barely closed her eyes when Marta came in carrying Thom’s clothing, a frown on her softly lined face.

  “I patched up the holes, ma’am, but the shirt and gansey are still showing the bloodstain. Would you like me to give them another wash?”

  “There’s no need. Clean will do well enough.”

  Marta nodded and turned toward the wardrobe before abruptly turning back. Her fingers dipped into her apron pocket. “Before I forget and make a thief of myself—this fell out of Captain Thom’s coat.”

  The maid dropped a heavy gold coin into Georgiana’s palm. Not a livre, though by weight, it must have been worth as much as one of those valuable coins. A shield was stamped on one side and a crowned rose on the reverse, with a diameter as wide as her two middle fingers together. She didn’t recognize the lettering along the edge.