Again Jane’s question came back to Laura. Who’s to know it woutdn’t be an accident if you ran into him on the moors?
She studied the man stretched out below her in a field of Queen Anne’s lace. Who’s to know? Who’s to know? With the wind on her face, sun on her hair, and a heart dancing triple-time, she headed down the hill.
Laura knew the exact moment Rye saw her coming, though he lay as before, relaxed, only his blue eyes moving as they followed her progress. When she came within earshot, he shifted the blade of grass to the corner of his mouth to say, “Here comes your mother.” Then, slowly, he uncrossed his ankles and sat up, rolling onto one buttock, lifting a knee, and draping a forearm over it.
“Do we hafta go yet? Do was hafta?” Josh pleaded, charging up the path to meet Laura, throwing himself into an enormous hug that pulled her skirts against her thighs.
She smiled down at him, ruffled his hair, but her eyes passed to Rye as she answered softly, “No, not yet.”
The boy let go, and Laura moved to stand near Rye’s outstretched foot. The hem of her skirt brushed his pant leg as his gaze drifted down the line of her shoulder, breast, and midriff, then rose once more to her brown eyes.
“Would y’ like t’ go for a walk around Hummock Pond?” he asked.
Instead of answering directly, Laura asked Josh, “Would you like to go for a walk around Hummock Pond?”
He spun toward Rye. “Is Ship coming, too?”
“Aye.” The grass bobbed in the corner of Rye’s mouth. “Then, aye ... me too!” the boy answered his mother.
She watched Josh and Ship scamper off ahead while Rye remained where he was, his eyes following the boy until Josh was safely out of hearing. Then he looked up at Laura and his gaze drew hers as the shore draws the surf. For a moment neither spoke, then Rye spit out the blade of grass. “I asked if you’d like to go for a walk around Hummock Pond,” he said.
“More than anything else in the world,” she answered simply.
He raised his palm. Her glance shifted from it to the child trudging up the hill, then back to the calluses. And without further hesitation she laid her hand in Rye’s, and his strong fingers closed about hers as she tugged him to his feet.
Hummock Pond was one of a chain stretching north to south across the western center of the island. It was shaped like a lazy J whose lower curve extended to Nantucket’s southern shore, where the pond’s fresh water almost touched the briny Atlantic. As children, Rye and Laura had fished it for white and yellow perch, and he’d taught her how to bait her hook with angleworms. Years ago they’d picnicked in Ram Pasture and walked as they walked now, from North Head toward the ocean, which could be heard in the distance but not seen.
“I’ve dreamed about doing this with you and Josh,” Rye said, just behind her shoulder.
“So have I. Only in my dreams you taught Josh to fish like you taught me.”
“Y’ mean he doesn’t know how yet?”
“Not yet.”
“Then y’ haven’t raised him proper.” But his voice held a smile.
“He does all right with kites and stilts.”
“Aye, he told me all about his stilts.” His tone grew serious. “You and Dan’ve done a good job of it. He’s a delightful child, Josh is.”
They moved through a patch of white violets, the sun on their cheeks, conscious solely of how close they were, of how much closer they wanted to be. So much to say, so much to feel, so little time.
“I want Josh to know you, Rye, and to know you’re his father."
“I, too. But I begin t’ see the problem we’ll have tellin’ him. He loves the one he’s got as much as I love my own.”
The earth had grown tussocks here. Rye reached for her elbow to steady her. Red-winged blackbirds bobbed on thready reeds of cattail and sedge along the pond’s marshy shore, scolding, holding tight while Rye, too, held tight to Laura’s elbow as she leaped along to more even ground.
“But I do want us t’ be a family,” he wished aloud.
“So do I.”
They held the thought and moved on slowly through the gift of afternoon, their time together at once luxuriant yet metered by the walk’s length. They circled the pond’s irregular shoreline, coming upon places where thick broom crowberry—mattress grass—invited them with its resilient cushion. But they could only walk, contenting themselves for the moment with an occasional touch of fingers or a meeting of eyes while the boy and the dog explored ahead.
The thrum of the ocean grew louder, its breakers now white feathers in the distance. Soon its boom surrounded them and they stood on the outwash before an ebbing tide that had scattered jellyfish, which the boy and dog found.
“Don’t touch!” Rye called. “They sting!”
The dog knew and kept her distance. The boy waved back before moving on to the next find. Rye hid half his hands within his waistband while taking up that wide-legged stance he’d acquired on a listing deck. His expression was loving as he followed Josh. “There’s so much I’ve missed. Just callin’ out a small warnin’ t’ him that way becomes a joy t’ me.”
Their eyes met, a mingling of the sweet and the bitter in the exchange.
“When I heard you’d gone to the mainland, I thought you meant not to come back.”
“I went t’ contract for rough staves.” He turned his eyes back to the ocean. “But while I was there, I spoke to a lawyer about this .... this situation we’re caught in. I’d hoped he’d tell me different, but it seems y’ truly are Dan’s wife.”
Laura watched the rim of the world undulate far out on the horizon. “I’ve thought of divorcing him,” she said softly, surprising even herself, for she hadn’t meant to admit it.
She sensed Rye turn to her in surprise. “It’s not often done.”
“No, but it’s not often a dead sailor returns from the bowels of the sea. They’d have to understand.” She turned to search his face pleadingly. “How could I have known?” she asked with a plaintive note in each word.
“Y’ couldn’t.”
They were on open sand with nothing but surf, a boy, and a dog visible for the white stretch of a mile. But resolutely, Rye refrained from taking her in his arms.
“Rye, does it bother you, what we’ll be doing to Dan?”
“I try not t’ think about him.”
“He’s taken to drinking almost every night.”
“Aye, I’ve heard.” His head moved sharply toward Mia-comet Rip, and his face looked drawn.
“I feel as if I’ve forced him to start that,” she said.
He turned back to her with a new intensity. “It’s not our fault anymore than it’s his. It’s ... providence.”
“Providence,” she repeated sadly.
He felt her slipping away and scowled down at her. “Laura, I can’t ...” he began, then his hand came up and worked across his unsmiling lips before he asked abruptly, “Will I have t’ wait until then—until a divorce is granted?”
“No.”
His eyes snapped to hers, but she was looking out at the horizon. “How long, then?”
“Until tomorrow,” she answered quietly, still searching the sea.
His fingers closed on her elbow, and he gently turned her toward him. “I want to kiss you.”
“I want to be kissed,” she confessed. Not even when contemplating her first time with him had she known sexual impatience such as this. “But not here... not now.”
His breath hissed out and he released her elbow. They turned and watched a sandpiper trotting the waves, eating sea fleas, and he understood her great trepidation at the decision she was making.
“I tried very hard to do the right thing. I kept away from you,” she was saying. “But today, when I saw you coming down that hill ...” She looked down at her feet. “I ... I don’t know anymore what’s right and what’s wrong.”
“I know. It’s the same with me. I keep walkin’ in all my spare time, but I can’t walk y’ out of my system. Y’re ther
e in all the old spots we used t’ haunt."
“I’ve thought of a way,” she told the sandpiper.
“A way?” He looked at her askance.
“Josh has been begging to spend a day at Jane’s.”
“Will she suspect?”
“Yes, I think so. No, I know so.”
“But—”
“She already knows how I feel. I’ve never been able to hide much from her. She’s told me she knew about you and me and what we did together even before we were married. She’ll help us now.”
“What about ... him?”
“I’ll tell him tonight.”
“Aye, and he’ll come into the cooperage tomorrow morning and I’ll have t’ kill him t’ keep from gettin’ killed myself.” A smile touched her lips. “No, I won’t tell him that. I mean I’ll tell him I want to divorce.”
Rye turned serious again. “Do y’ want me there when y’ tell him?”
She looked up into his face, his hair lifting like seaoats in the breeze. “I want you ... everywhere I am. But, no. I’ll have to do that part on my own.”
He checked the beach in both directions. It was empty but for them. Josh was teasing the edges of waves as they crept up and back. Impulsively, Rye dipped his head and gave Laura a quick kiss.
“I’m sorry, I couldn’t help it. I thought I’d been through hell on that whaleship, but I’ve never been through such hell in my life as the last ten weeks. Woman, when I get y’ back, I’m never letting y’ out o’ my sight again.”
“Rye, let’s look for a place.”
They smiled into each other’s eyes, scarcely able to resist this craving.
“It should be easy. We know ’em all, don’t we?”
A shiver of anticipation skimmed her arms. “Aye,” she replied, low and sensuously. “Aye, we know them all, Rye Dalton.”
He gave a sharp whistle between his teeth. The boy and dog perked up. “Come on! Let’s head on!” he called.
They found a spot in the lee of Hummock Pond, where its south end looped around, almost closing in on itself. Here, within a sheltered woodlet of pine and oak, they found a secret clearing where bramble and briar seemed to have walled out the rest of the world. Upon these natural trellises wild grapes clung, creating an arbor of fluttering green tiers. Hip-high grass carpeted the glade while tiny wildflowers peeked through shyly. In spots the grass was flattened where deer had made their beds. Squirrels chased and chattered in the oaks. The wind was absent while the sun beat down on them, and on Ship and Josh, playing across the meadow.
“Here?” Rye asked, looking down at Laura.
“Here,” she confirmed.
And their hearts raced, and they prayed for sun.
Chapter 11
THEIR PRAYERS WERE ANSWERED, for the following day was as faultless and clear as a perfect diamond. Laura delivered Josh to Jane’s house and arrived at the clearing first. Parting the grapevines, she ducked inside to stand motionless for a moment, listening. The afternoon was so still, she thought she could hear hammering from the shipyards four miles away. But maybe it was only the hammering of her own heart as she surveyed the woodsy oval before her—protected, private, perfect.
It smelled of grass and pine and time alone as Laura lifted her skirts to her ankles, then her face to the sun, eyelids closing, feeling only warmth and a sense of rightness upon her skin. She opened her eyes and turned in a slow circle, but all around were only shades of green enclosing her in a summer world of her own. She whirled faster, faster, arms flung wide in gay abandon, skirts twisting about her legs like a pinwheel.
He’s coming! He’s coming!
The thought of him tightened her chest and sent currents of anticipation to her limbs.
A movement flashed at the corner of her eye and she stopped twirling, the fingers of one hand moving to the underside of one breast as if to keep her heart confined within her body.
At the edge of the clearing Rye poised, the dog, as usual, coming to a halt beside the knees of her master. Blue eyes took in a vision in airy white dimity turning round and round while the shadow of a wide-brimmed straw hat flitted across her uplifted face. A mint-green ribbon fluttered from its crown, trailing over her shoulder and drifting to rest on the bare skin above the square-cut neckline of her bodice.
Their eyes met. Their senses thrummed while Laura remained totally unabashed at being caught in such a display of abandon, for she loved Rye too well to hide her impulses from him today.
He was dressed in tight tan breeches and a white muslin shirt that stood out strikingly against the green grape leaves behind him. One thumb was hooked in his waistband, the other in a drawstring bag slung over his shoulder.
He surveyed the waiting woman, neither smiling nor moving, but his heart drummed wildly. Laura, you came! You came!
Around her slim waist was tied a green satin ribbon to match that about her hat brim. Wide, white skirts, like a puffy cloud, were lifted by the grass while the bodice hugged Laura’s ribs tightly and pressed firmly upward on breasts, which—even from a distance, Rye could clearly see—rose and fell more sharply at first sight of him.
He let the bag slip slowly to the ground, eyes riveted on Laura while he gave a soft command. “Stay.”
Across the silence she heard him utter the word, and while the dog dropped to the ground to wait, Laura stood stalk still and breathless, as if the command were spoken for her.
He took a first slow step, then another, coming on deliberately, eyes never wavering from her. The grass whispered as his high boots brushed through it. Her heart clamored beneath the slim fingers still pressed to her breast. When he stood close, they drank in each other’s faces for a long, silent moment before he lazily lifted a hand to the side of her ear, caught the green streamer in the crook of a finger, and trailed it slowly downward until he grazed the bare skin above her straining bodice.
“Satin,” he said quietly, rubbing the back of the index finger up and down between her chest and the ribbon.
Beneath his knuckle her flesh rose and fell faster. She watched his eyes travel the path of the green streamer to the fullest part of her breast, then slowly back up to her lips. From low in her throat came a single, strained word. “Aye.”
It brought an easy smile to his lips. “It’s in my way.” Still, he toyed with the skein of ribbon, brushing up and down, up and down, while the flutter of satin against her collarbone made goosebumps erupt along her arms. He stood so close, his shiny boots were buried within the mountainous billows of her skirts.
His eyes, as blue as the skies behind him, lingered on her every feature while hers traversed his face with its skin lit to nut-brown by the afternoon sunshine, his hair with its new sideburns making him seem partly stranger. Curiously, Laura’s fingers still cupped her own breast. She could feel her hastened heartbeat there and wondered if he, too, detected it as he leaned slowly, knuckle slipping away to be replaced by his warm, open lips. Lightly, he touched the satiny skin of her collarbone, pushing the ribbon aside.
An ecstasy of emotions flooded Laura as her eyelids drifted shut and she touched his face for the first time. “Oh, Rye,” she breathed, cupping his jaw, resting her lips against his hair. The scent of him was as she remembered, a mixture of cedar and his father’s pipe tobacco and the flavor she thought of as sea breeze, knowing no other name for it.
He raised his head, seemingly unhurried, though within, he, too, knew great impatience. But it was too good to hurry, too fine, with Laura, to plunge through the luxury they’d been afforded in this golden afternoon.
“Turn around,” he ordered gently, still having touched no more than that tantalizing bit of skin at her collarbone.
“But ...” His lips were too inviting, his touch too enticing.
“Turn around,” he said more softly, putting his wide brown hands on her tiny waist. She covered them with her own, turned away from him very slowly, scarcely able to breathe. His hands slipped from under hers and she felt the tug of the brass
pin leaving her hat while he asked, “What am I wearing?”
“A white muslin shirt, the tan summer breeches you wore the day we ate oranges in the market, new black boots I’ve never seen before, and a whale’s tooth on a silver chain in the open collar of your shirt.”
“Ahh ... very good. You get a reward.” The hat was pulled from her head and rustled onto the grass at her side. His hands, spread wide, came back to span her ribs, as if she were a ballerina he was guiding in a spin. Then his lips touched the side of her neck above the scooped back neckline. She tilted her head to one side, luxuriating in the touch of his mouth on her skin.
“You’re very stingy with your rewards, Mr. Dalton,” she murmured, feeling as if her body would rebel if it couldn’t soon know more of him than he chose to dole out in tantalizing deliberation.
“I seem to remember y’ liked it lingery ... or have y’ changed? Do y’ want it all at once?”
She laughed throatily, for her head was thrown back, the sun warm on her jaw as he bit the side of her neck and wet it with his tongue.
“Mmm, y’ taste good.”
“Like what?”
“Lilacs.”
“Aye, lilac water.” She moved sensuously. “You, too, get a reward.” She knew he was smiling, though his face was buried in her neck and hers turned toward the Nantucket sky. She covered his hands with her own. For a moment neither of them moved but for his driving breaths against her shoulder and hers that raised their joined hands on her ribs. The backs of his hands were wider than hers, the fingers longer, the skin harder. She guided them slowly, slowly upward while the smile dissolved from her lips, which parted as she held his palms cupped tightly against both of her breasts. For a moment his breath stilled beside her ear and she pictured him with eyes closed as hers were, sunspots dancing in crazy, exhilarating patterns against her lids.