Megan's Mate

by Nora Roberts

  She examined what he held in his hands. “A moldy old book. That's wonderful, honey. Now why don't you and Trent go play construction?”

  “Not just a book,” Trent announced. “Fergus's account book. For the year of 1913.”

  “Oh.” Amanda's heart gave one hard thud as she grabbed for the book.

  Curiosity piqued, Megan rose to join them in the doorway. “Is it important?”

  “It's the year Bianca died.” Sloan laid a comfort­ing hand on Amanda's shoulder. “You know the story, Meg. How Bianca was trapped in a loveless, abusive marriage. She met Christian Bradford, fell in love. She decided to take the children and leave Fergus, but he found out. They argued up in the tower. She fell through the window.”

  “And he destroyed everything that belonged to her.” Amanda's voice tightened, shook. “Every­thing—her clothes, her small treasures, her pictures. Everything but the emeralds. Because she'd hidden those. Now we have them, and the portrait Christian had painted. That's all we have of her.” She let out a long breath. “I suppose it's fitting that we should have this of his. A ledger of profit and loss.”

  “Looks like he wrote in the margins here and there.” Trent reached over to flip a page open. “Sort of an abbreviated journal.”

  Amanda frowned and read a portion of the cramped handwriting aloud.

  “Too much waste in kitchen. Fired cook. B. too soft on staff. Purchased new cuff links. Dia­mond. Good choice for opera tonight. Showier than J. P. Getty's.”

  She let out a huff of breath. “It shows just what kind of man he was, doesn't it?”

  “Darling, I wouldn't have brought it out if I'd known it would bother you.”

  Amanda shook her head. “No, the family will want it.” But she set it down, because her fingers felt coated with more than dust and mold. “I was just showing Megan her new domain.”

  “So I see.” Sloan's eyes narrowed. “What hap­pened to relaxing?”

  “This is how I relax,” Megan responded. “Now why don't you go away and let me enjoy myself?”

  “An excellent idea.” Amanda gave her husband a kiss and a shove. “Scram.” Even as she was hurrying the men along, Amanda's phone rang. “Give me a call if you need anything,” she told Megan, and rushed to answer.

  Feeling smug, Megan shut the door of her office. She was rubbing her hands together in anticipation as she crossed to her briefcase. She'd show Nathaniel Fury the true meaning of the word shipshape.

  Three hours later, she was interrupted by the thun­der of little feet. Obviously, she thought even before her door crashed open, someone had given Kevin the directions to her office.

  “Hi, Mom!” He rushed into her arms for a kiss, and all thoughts of balancing accounts vanished from her mind. “We had the best time. We played with Sa­die and Fred and had a war in the new fort. We got to go to Suzanna's flower place and water millions of plants.”

  Megan glanced down at Kevin's soggy sneakers. “And yourselves, I see.”

  He grinned. “We had a water battle, and I won.”

  “My hero.”

  “We had pizza for lunch, and Carolanne—she works for Suzanna—said I was a bottomless pit. And tomorrow Suzanna has to landscape, so we can't go with her, but we can go out on the whale boat if you want. You want to, don't you? I told Alex and Jenny you would.”

  She looked down at his dark, excited eyes. He was as happy as she'd ever seen him. At that moment, if he'd asked if she wanted to take a quick trip to Nai­robi and hunt lions, she'd have been tempted to agree. “You bet I do.” She laughed when his arms flew around her and squeezed. “What time do we sail?”

  At ten o'clock sharp the next morning, Megan had her three charges on the docks. Though the day was warm and balmy for June, she'd taken Suzanna's ad­vice and brought along warm jackets and caps for the trip out into the Atlantic. She had binoculars, a cam­era, extra film.

  Though she'd already downed a dose of motion-sickness pills, her landlubber's stomach tilted quea­sily as she studied the boat.

  It looked sturdy. She could comfort herself with that. The white paint gleamed in the sun, the rails shone. When they stepped on board, she saw that there was a large interior cabin ringed with windows on the first deck. For the less hearty, she assumed. It boasted a concession stand, soft-drink machines and plenty of chairs and benches.

  She gave it a last longing look as the children pulled her along. They wouldn't settle for a nice cozy cabin.

  “We get to go to the bridge.” Alex strutted along importantly, waving to one of the mates. “We own the Mariner. Us and Nate.”

  “Daddy says the bank owns it.” Jenny scrambled up the iron steps, a red ribbon trailing from her hair. “But that's a joke. Dutch says it's a crying shame for a real sailor to haul around weak-bellied tourists. But Nate just laughs at him.”

  Megan merely lifted a brow. She had yet to meet the infamous Dutchman, but Jenny, clever as any parrot, would often quote him word for word. And all too often, those words were vividly blue.

  “We're here.” Alex burst onto the bridge, breath­less with excitement. “Kevin, too.”

  “Welcome aboard.” Nathaniel glanced up from the chart he was studying. His eyes fastened unerringly on Megan's.

  “I was expecting Holt.”

  “He's helming the Queen.” He picked up his cigar, clamped it between his teeth, grinned. “Don't worry, Meg, I won't run you aground.”

  She wasn't concerned about that. Exactly. In his black sweater and jeans, a black Greek fisherman's cap on his head and that gleam in his eye, he looked supremely competent. As a pirate might, she mused, upon boarding a merchant ship. “I started on your books.” There, she thought, the ground was steady under her feet.

  “I figured you would.”

  “They're a disorganized mess.”

  “Yeah. Kevin, come on over and take a look. I'll show you where we're heading.”

  Kevin hesitated, clinging to his mother's hand an­other moment. But the lure of those colorful charts was too much for him. He dashed over, dozens of questions tripping off his tongue.

  “How many whales will we see? What happens if they bump the boat? Will they shoot water up from that hole on their back? Do you steer the boat from way up here?”

  Megan started to interrupt and gently tell her son not to badger Mr. Fury, but Nathaniel was already answering questions, hauling Jenny up on one hip and taking Alex's finger to slide over the lines of the chart.

  Pirate or not, she thought with a frown, he had a way with children.

  “Ready to cast off, Captain.”

  Nathaniel nodded to the mate. “Quarter speed astern.” Still holding Jenny, he walked to the wheel. “Pilot us out of here, sailor,” he said to her, and guided her eager hands.

  Curiosity got the better of Megan. She inched closer to study the instruments. Depth sounders, sonar, ship-to-shore radio. Those, and all the other equipment, were as foreign to her as the cockpit of a spaceship. She was a woman of the plains.

  As the boat chugged gently away from the docks, her stomach lurched, reminding her why.

  She clamped down on the nausea, annoyed with herself. It was in her mind, she insisted. A silly, imag­inary weakness that could be overcome through will­power.

  Besides, she'd taken seasickness pills, so, logically, she couldn't be seasick.

  The children cheered as the boat made its long, slow turn in the bay. Megan's stomach turned with it.

  Alex was generous enough to allow Kevin to blow the horn. Megan stared straight out the bridge win­dow, her eyes focused above the calm blue water of Frenchman Bay.

  It was beautiful, wasn't it? she told herself. And it was hardly tilting at all.

  “You'll see The Towers on the starboard side,” Nathaniel was saying.

  “That's the right,” Jenny announced. “Star­board's right and porf s left.”

  “Stern's the back and the bow's in front,” said Alex, not to be outdone. “We know all about boats.”

/>   Megan shifted her eyes to the cliffs, struggling to ignore another twist in her stomach. “There it is, Kevin.” She gripped the brass rail beneath the star­board window for balance. “It looks like it's growing right out of the rock.”

  And it did look like a castle, she mused as she watched it with her son beside her. The turrets spear­ing up into the blue summer sky, the somber gray rock glistening with tiny flecks of mica. Even the scaffold­ing and the antlike figures of men working didn't de­tract from the fairy-tale aura. A fairy tale, she thought, with a dark side.

  And that, she realized, was what made it all the more alluring. It was hardly any wonder that Sloan, with his love of buildings, adored it.

  “Like something you'd expect to see on some lonely Irish coast.” Nathaniel spoke from behind her. “Or on some foggy Scottish cliff.”

  “Yes. It's even more impressive from the sea.” Her eyes drifted up, to Bianca's tower. She shivered.

  “You may want to put your jacket on,” Nathaniel told her. “It's going to get chillier when we get out to sea.”

  “No, I'm not cold. I was just thinking. When you've heard all the stories about Bianca, it's hard not to imagine what it was like.”

  “She'd sit up there and watch the cliffs for him. For Christian. And she'd dream—guiltily, I imagine, be­ing a proper lady. But propriety doesn't have a snow­ball's chance in hell against love.”

  She shivered again, the statement hit much too dose to home. She'd been in love once, and had tossed propriety aside, along with her innocence.

  “She paid for it,” Megan said flatly, and turned away. To distract herself, she wandered over to the charts. Not that she could make heads or tails of them.

  “We're heading north by northeast.” As he had with Alex, Nathaniel took Megan's hand and guided it along the chart. “We've got a clear day, good visi­bility, but there's a strong wind. It'll be a little choppy.”

  Terrific, she thought, and swallowed hard. “If you don't come up with whales, you're going to have some very disappointed kids.”

  “Oh, I think I can provide a few.” She bumped against him as bay gave way to sea. His hands came up to steady her shoulders, and remained. The boat might have swayed, but he stood solid as a rock. “You want to brace your feet apart. Distribute the weight. You'll get your sea legs, Meg.”

  She didn't think so. Already she could feel the light coating of chilly sweat springing to her skin. Nausea rolled in an answering wave in her stomach. She would not, she promised herself, spoil Kevin's day, or hu­miliate herself, by being sick.

  “It takes about an hour to get out, doesn't it?” Her voice wasn't as strong, or as steady, as she'd hoped.

  “That's right.”

  She started to move away, but ended by leaning dizzily against him.

  “Come about,” he murmured, and turned her to face him. One look at her face had his brows drawing together. She was pale as a sheet, with an interesting tinge of green just under the surface. Dead sick, he thought with a shake of his head. And they were barely under way.

  “Did you take anything?”

  There was no use pretending. And she didn't have the strength to be brave. “Yes, but I don't think it did any good. I get sick in a canoe.”

  “So you came on a three-hour trek into the Atlan­tic.”

  “Kevin had his heart set—” She broke off when Nathaniel put a steadying arm around her waist and led her to a bench.

  “Sit,” he ordered.

  Megan obeyed and, when she saw that the children were occupied staring out the windows, gave in and dropped her head between her legs.

  Three hours, she thought. They'd have to pour her into a body bag in three hours. Maybe bury her at sea. God, what had made her think a couple of pills would steady her? She felt a tug on her hand.

  “What? Is the ambulance here already?”

  “Steady as she goes, sugar.” Crouched in front of her, Nathaniel slipped narrow terry-cloth bands over her wrists.

  “What's this?”

  “Acupressure.” He twisted the bands until small metal studs pressed lightly on a point on her wrist.

  She would have laughed if she hadn't been moan­ing. “Great. I need a stretcher and you offer voo­doo.”

  “A perfectly valid science. And I wouldn't knock voodoo, either. I've seen some pretty impressive re­sults. Now breathe slow and easy. Just sit here.” He slid open a window behind her and let in a blast of air. “I've got to get back to the helm.”

  She leaned back against the wall and let the fresh air slap her cheeks. On the other side of the bridge, the children huddled, hoping that Moby Dick lurked under each snowy whitecap. She watched the cliffs, but as they swayed to and fro, she closed her eyes in self-defense.

  She sighed once, then began to formulate a compli­cated trigonometry problem in her mind. Oddly enough, by the time she'd worked it through to the solution, her stomach felt steady.

  Probably because I've got my eyes closed, she thought. But she could hardly keep them closed for three hours, not when she was in charge of a trio of active children.

  Experimentally, she opened one. The boat contin­ued to rock, but her system remained steady. She opened the other. There was a moment of panic when the children weren't at the window. She jolted up­right, illness forgotten, then saw them circled around Nathaniel at the helm.

  A fine job she was doing, she thought in disgust, sitting there in a dizzy heap while Nathaniel piloted the ship and entertained three kids. She braced herself for the next slap of nausea as she took a step.

  It didn't come.

  Frowning, she took another step, and another. She felt a little weak, true, but no longer limp and clammy. Daring the ultimate test, she looked out the window at the rolling sea.

  There was a tug, but a mild one. In fact, she real­ized, it was almost a pleasant sensation, like riding on a smooth-gaited horse. In amazement, she studied the terry-cloth bands on her wrists.

  Nathaniel glanced over his shoulder. Her color was back, he noted. That pale peach was much more flat­tering than green. “Better?”

  “Yes.” She smiled, trying to dispel the embarrass­ment as easily as his magic bands had the seasickness. “Thank you.”

  He waited while she bundled the children, then her­self, into jackets. On the Atlantic, summer vanished. “First time I shipped out, we hit a little squall. I spent the worst two hours of my life hanging over the rail. Come on. Take the wheel.”

  “The wheel? I couldn't.”

  “Sure you could.”

  “Do it, Mom. It's fun. It's really fun.”

  Propelled forward by three children, Megan found herself at the helm, her back pressed lightly into Na­thaniel's chest, her hands covered by his.

  Every nerve in her body began to throb. Nathan­iel's body was hard as iron, and his hands were sure and firm. She could smell the sea, through the open windows and on him. No matter how much she tried to concentrate on the water flowing endlessly around them, he was there, just there. His chin brushing the top of her head, his heartbeat throbbing light and steady against her back.

  “Nothing like being in control to settle the sys­tem,” he commented, and she made some sound of agreement.

  But this was nothing like being in control.

  She began to imagine what it might be like to have those hard, clever hands somewhere other than on the backs of hers. If she turned so that they were face-to-face, and she tilted her head up at just the right an­gle...

  Baffled by the way her mind was working, she set it to calculating algebra.

  “Quarter speed,” Nathaniel ordered, steering a few degrees to port.

  The change of rhythm had Megan off balance. She was trying to regain it when Nathaniel turned her around. And now she was facing him, her head tilted up. The easy grin on his face made her wonder if he knew just where her mind had wandered.

  “See the blips on the screen there, Kevin?” But he was watching her, all but hypnotizing her with thos
e unblinking slate-colored eyes. Sorcerer's eyes, she thought dimly. “Do you know what they mean?” And his lips curved—closer to hers than they should be. “There be whales there.”

  “Where? Where are they, Nate?” Kevin rushed to the window, goggle-eyed.

  “Keep watching. We'll stop. Look off the port bow,” he told Megan. “I think you'll get your mon­ey's worth.”

  Still dazed, she staggered away. The boat rocked more enthusiastically when stopped—or was it her system that was so thoroughly rocked? As Nathaniel spoke into the P.A. system, taking over the mate's lecture on whales, she slipped the camera and binoc­ulars out of her shoulder bag.

  “Look!” Kevin squealed, jumping like a spring as he pointed. “Mom, look!”

  Everything cleared from her mind but wonder. She saw the massive body emerge from the choppy water. Rising, up and up, sleek and grand and otherworldly. She could hear the shouts and cheers from the people on the deck below, and her own strangled gasp.

  It was surely some sort of magic, she thought, that something so huge, so magnificent, could lurk under the whitecapped sea. Her fingers rose to her lips, pressed there in awe as the sound of the whale dis­placing wafer crashed like thunder.

  Water flew, sparkling like drops of diamond. Her camera stayed lowered, useless. She could only stare, an ache in her throat, tears in her eyes.

  “His mate's coming up.”

  Nathaniel's voice broke through her frozen won­der. Hurriedly she lifted the camera, snapping quickly as sea parted for whale.

  They geysered from their spouts, causing the chil­dren to applaud madly. Megan was laughing as she hauled Jenny up for a better view and the three of them took impatient turns with the binoculars.

  She pressed herself to the window as eagerly as the children while the boat cruised, following the glossy humps as they speared through the sea. Then the whales sounded, diving deep with a flap of their enormous tails. Below, people laughed and shouted as they were drenched with water.

  Twice more the Mariner sought out and found pods, giving her passengers the show of a lifetime. Long after they turned and headed for home, Megan stayed at the window, hoping for one more glimpse.

  “Beautiful, aren't they?”

  She looked back at Nathaniel, eyes glowing. “In­credible. I had no idea. Photographs and movies don't quite do it.”

  “Nothing quite like seeing and doing for yourself.” He cocked a brow. “Still steady?”

  With a laugh, she glanced down at her wrists. “An­other minor miracle. I would never have put stock in anything like this.”

  “ 'There are more things in heaven and earth, Ho­ratio.' “

  A black-suited pirate quoting Hamlet. “So it seems,” she murmured. “There's The Towers.” She smiled. “Off the port side.”

  “You're learning, sugar.” He gave orders briskly and eased the Mariner into the calm waters of the bay.

  “How long have you been sailing?”

  “All my life. But I ran off and joined the merchant marine when I was eighteen.”

  “Ran off?” She smiled again. “Looking for ad­venture.”

  “For freedom.” He turned away then, to ease the boat into its slip as smoothly as a foot slides into an old, comfortable shoe.

  She wondered why a boy of eighteen would have to search for freedom. And she thought of herself at that age, a child with a child. She'd cast her freedom away. Now, more than nine years later, she could hardly re­gret it. Not when the