by Nancy Butler
“Something like that.”
“Well, it hasn’t happened yet. And going to church on Christmas Eve is part of the ritual Papa and I share. We’ve never missed it.”
He piled up the lengths of driftwood and the pieces of a crate that had been dashed on the shore, and proceeded to make a fire. Then he stretched out near the heat of the flames and leaned back on one elbow with a weary sigh.
“So tell me about Christmas with the Prescotts. When I worked for your father, I seem to recall most of his men spent the holiday getting foxed in the waterfront taverns.”
She tucked her knees up under her cloak and rested her chin on them. “On Christmas Eve the workmen and their families would come to our house and sing carols in the great hall. My mother and I served them punch from the wassail bowl, which we spent all afternoon preparing. Papa always said we came up from the kitchen smelling of cinnamon and nutmeg, like the finest sweetmeats.”
“He was right. You still smell of spices and sweets.” MacHeath just barely prevented himself from raising up her hand and tasting it with his mouth.
“After Mama died,” she continued, “we kept up the same ritual. Church, and then the carolers. It became my duty to distribute the wassail punch to them. But I never saw you with the singers ... I would have known it if you were there.”
He looked away from her. “I never had much fondness for Christmas. I probably spent the holiday holed up in my lodgings with a book on navigation or a paper on hull design.”
“At least you weren’t off getting foxed at the Mermaid’s Tail.”
“A fellow can get just as foxed in the privacy of his own rooms, Alexa.”
She suspected there was a telling glimpse of his own experience in those words. “And so did you?”
His gaze slid away from her. “In the beginning I did. I was new to Devon, and the other men who worked for your father didn’t exactly welcome me. I had a Scots burr back then, if you will recall, and a hasty temper. I did not feel a part of things. So I ate my meals alone, I spent my free time alone. And when I felt the urge to take a drink, I did that alone, as well.”
He leaned toward her and ran one finger along her arm. “And then the damnedest thing happened. This black-haired hoyden tumbled into the water right in front of me. I tried to rescue her and got a thump on my nose for my troubles. But after that, the girl’s father took me under his wing. Doors opened to me ... God, worlds opened to me. Suddenly I was part of the whole. I never got to thank you for that, Alexa, for putting me where someone could finally see my true mettle.”
“I was always sorry I punched you. But it was very mortifying to stand there beside you all sopping wet and with my hair drooping down in elf locks.”
He tsked gently as he began to dig into the sack for their supper. “Such vanity ... you couldn’t have been more than eleven at the time.”
“Shows all you know. Do you think wanting to make a good impression on someone you admire is only the province of adults?”
“How could you admire me? I’d been there less than a month.”
She took the biscuit and piece of dried beef he held out, and then cocked her head. “Why do you think I was walking along the pier? I was hoping to catch a glimpse of you. I’d seen you several times before from a distance; Quincy pointed you out to me once from our carriage—he made some rude comment about you being a shiftless Scot. I told him that the Scottish regiments were famous for their bravery and that anyone who had a brain knew it.”
“Thank you, I think.”
She looked down quickly. “I couldn’t bear him making fun of you. You looked so ... so different from all the others. Finer, somehow, not rough or unkempt.” Her voice lowered to a whisper. “And you had such beautiful hair and the most remarkable eyes ...”
MacHeath sat up then, setting the food sack to one side before he gathered both her hands together.
“Listen to me, Alexa. I know you had a childish infatuation with me. I used to wonder why you were always dogging me when you could barely utter a civil word when we were together. It took me a while to sort it out—that you grew tongue-tied or shrewish precisely because you did like me, and hadn’t a clue how to express it. Am I right?”
“Yes,” she said with a little sigh.
“But those days are far behind us. Who I was back then, what I was ... they’ve ceased to exist.”
“You think I don’t know that? I don’t understand why you even need to bring it up. What lies between us now is—”
“There is nothing between us,” he said brusquely.
“But—”
“Nothing,” he repeated for emphasis.
“You kissed me,” she said, scrambling onto her knees. “Why would you kiss me if you felt nothing for me?”
“Men like to kiss women, Alexa, it’s as simple as that. They enjoy it enormously, and they take every opportunity to do it.” He rubbed his hand along the back of his head in frustration. “Christ, what did they teach you in school? Have you no common sense when it comes to men?”
She drew back, and her face darkened. “I refuse to believe you were merely dallying with me.”
“You can think what you like. But I will not be fodder for your daydreams any longer. If you insist on mooning about over a man who barely gives you a thought—”
“You are such a wretched liar,” she stormed at him. “If you barely gave me a thought, you wouldn’t have risked your life to rescue me on the bridge. You certainly wouldn’t have stirred yourself out of the East End to carry me off.”
“That was only because of a wager I made with myself.”
“What!”
“I had a little money put by, and I bet myself that if I could increase it at cards in one night, I would ride off and intercept your coach. If I lost then ...” He shrugged.
“You let my safety, my virtue, hang on the turn of a card?”
“And why not? You were a stranger to me, Alexa. A very old, very distant memory. A child I recalled with some fondness, it’s true, but an adult I had no feelings for one way or the other.” He coughed once and added gruffly, “I still don’t.”
She rose abruptly from the fireside, hauled up a blanket, and then stomped off in the direction of the ketch.
“Where are you going?”
“To sleep in the boat.”
“You’ll freeze.”
She spun to him. “And why the devil should you care? You just told me that your feelings for me are nonexistent.”
“I still have a duty to you ... to see you are kept safe.”
“Duty be damned,” she growled, stalking back toward him. “Do you know what I think ... I think you are afraid of me. Yes, afraid. Because I have higher expectations for you than you’ve had for yourself in ten years. I want to see you achieve something, create something. You had such talent, Simeon. Papa said it was a gift from God, the way you could make ships come to life on paper.”
“Not any longer, I’m afraid.” He raised his arm to display the false hand, and she kicked a gout of sand at him by way of comment.
“Oh, stow that,” she muttered loudly. “I saw the drawing you made for the Gable boy. You’ve just as much skill with your left hand as you ever had with the right. The only place you’re really lacking is in your heart. You’ve given up, Simeon. Nat said you weren’t afraid of anything, and maybe that was true years ago, but now you are just a whimpering coward who starts at his own shadow.”
When he made no response, she steeled herself and let her temper carry her onward. “Oh, you stand up to bullies well enough, waving your pistol about and acting brave. But do you know what is truly brave, what really takes courage? Looking inside yourself, facing up to life. Seeing the opportunities and reaching for them. It doesn’t require two hands, it only requires determination. You’ve still got that, I’ve seen it in your eyes. Reach out, Simeon ... and be part of the whole again.”
She drew a deep, ragged breath. “I got you back to sea, and I’ll be damned i
f you won’t let me finish the job and get you back to humanity. I won’t let you go skulking off to the East End, Simeon. I won’t.”
She slipped to her knees, clutching her hands against her skirt, as she looked at him beseechingly. “I really won’t.”
He rose from the fire and went to her, leaning down to wrap his arms around her before he drew her to her feet.
“Are you finished now, hoyden?” he asked softly as he set her away from him, his hands on her shoulders.
She nodded, and then gulped.
“Good. First of all, I think your father would be very proud of you. That’s the best tongue-lashing I’ve ever heard coming from a Prescott, and believe me, your father could part the waters with his voice when he was riled.”
She gave him a weak grin.
“Secondly, I am not going to argue with you. Everything you said is totally true.” He shook her gently. “But it’s my life, Alexa. To win or lose, to strive or not. My life. It’s gratifying that you care enough to berate me. And I thank you for that concern. Perhaps you are not old enough yet to have learned this, but sometimes we come up against things we cannot surmount, that confound us at every turn.
“You would, I think, batter yourself against such an obstacle until you were worn down. Admirable, maybe, but not very wise. I am different ... I have stopped throwing myself against that wall, stopped fighting against my fate. I chose a life, I lived it, it has failed me. You have too much ahead of you to want to waste your time with a man who has no horizons left to him.”
Her eyes brightened slightly. “Then, you do care for me.”
His cheeks drew in and one side of his mouth curved up. “As you observed that first night, I am not a very good liar. Of course I care for you. Not the way you want me to, perhaps, but enough to keep away from you from now on.”
She opened her mouth to protest, and he set his palm over it.
“Let it go, Lexie. Please. This isn’t easy for me, either.” He coaxed her down by the fire and then turned away from her.
“Now, where are you going?” she called out.
He swooped down and picked up the blanket she had dropped just prior to her tirade. “Where do you think?” he said without turning around. “To sleep in the blasted boat.”
* * *
The next morning the sky overhead was a crisp, crystalline blue—several shades lighter than Alexa’s eyes, MacHeath noted, but nearly as intense.
He made the boat ready before he roused her, and they shared a breakfast of biscuits and tea with little conversation. It was Christmas Eve, and he felt the lack of good cheer between them like a malediction. Even though he’d paid the Christmas season little mind during most of his life, he knew this was supposed to be a day filled with anticipation and excitement. His heart felt like a cinder blown up from a cold, dark hearth.
Alexa made idle small talk with him, like a lady at afternoon tea who had more pressing things on her mind. He sensed that she was drawing away from him at last, and his relief was coupled with a wrenching feeling of loss.
Can’t have it both ways, old fellow, he reminded himself. By tonight he would have settled his business with her father and by tomorrow he would be heading back to Nat’s in the ketch. Maybe he would spend some time with his former captain. The old man surely needed someone to look out for him.
Oh, there’s MacHeath, rowing to the rescue again, he thought ruefully. This white-knight business was strangely addictive. Still, he needed to think of something to fill his time after today. Alexa had been right about one thing—he could not return to the bowels of London. It was too bright, too clean, too invigorating here in the outside world for him to ever consider going back. And now he had the sea again, thanks to her.
He might never be the man she envisioned, with the confidence to overcome every obstacle, but neither would he fall back into that pit of despair and self-loathing that he had wallowed in for nearly two years. This adventure he’d shared with her had shaken him awake. His life was in his grasp once more. Not the life he desired, not the life that had been stolen from him ten years ago, but a far better circumstance than he’d had in London, dwelling on the fringes of Society like a whipped cur begging for scraps.
And, once again, he owed it to her.
His turning points, his crossroads ... Alexa stood at all of them: his success at Prescott and his downfall there, as well. His recent decision to stir himself had been in her defense, and his new determination to return to the sea had been at her instigation. And finally she stood there at his side while he made the most difficult decision he’d ever been forced into—that of severing every bond between them.
Tonight, Christmas Eve, would be the last time he’d ever see her. It seemed fitting that he should give her something, offer her some gift to thank her for all she had done for him, whether intentionally or not. There were few coins left in his purse, and he possessed nothing that would be of any value to a wealthy young woman. That even a simple drawing would have meant the world to her did not occur to him. Those he handed out willy-nilly to children, but his Alexa required something more precious.
He pondered this as they continued across Lyme Bay. Yesterday’s brisk, capricious wind was gone. In fact, the bay stood almost serene, and the single sail hung loose and flaccid at times.
Alexa grew fretful at these occasional delays. She paced from stern to mast and back again, but said nothing. Her face was drawn and pale, her eyes lackluster. The quick flashes of humor and spirit that he’d grown so accustomed to were absent.
Guilt racked him, but his resolve never wavered. She might pine over him for a time, but she was young and resilient. Recovery would be swift once he was no longer in her life, either as that phantom youth or as the adult MacHeath. It was he who would carry the lifelong regret, the sorry realization that not only had Darwin Quincy stolen away his good name and his position with Prescott, he had in truth stolen away his chance of any happiness.
Lord, he had not thought of Quincy for many hours. He wondered what the backstabbing mongrel was up to. With some distaste, he placed himself in Quincy’s shoes. What would he do?
“Alexa,” he said sharply, once he’d made a calculated guess. “I think Quincy might be awaiting us at your father’s house.”
She turned to him with troubled eyes. “I thought he was behind us on the road, waiting for his men to bring me to him.”
“Maybe he was at first. But when we eluded them for so long, I suspect he might have given up that plan. The closer we got to Exeter, the less chance he could force himself on you. You are well-known in this district, Alexa, he couldn’t risk that you might find an unexpected ally before he could carry out his seduction.”
I already have found one, she wanted to shout back at him.
“Well, what is he doing, then?”
“Buttering up your father, I expect. And making a case for himself that he had nothing to do with any of this by steering clear of Finch and Connor. You’ve seen them both, but you’ve never seen them with him. I am the only one who can place the three of them together.”
“And you are also the only one who has something to gain by lying about it. I mean, that is how Darwin will argue it.”
She thought for a few minutes. “When we get to Papa’s house,” she said at last, “I will go in first. I can reason with my father. If my cousin is there, I will get Papa alone. He knows I would never tell him an untruth.”
“Unlike your cousin,” he murmured. “A pity that sorry trait runs in part of your family.”
“Only one very small part,” she said with some spirit. “Anyway, I will tell Papa about the ugly customers, and how you risked your freedom to bring me back home. That should carry some weight with him.”
She bit her lip and then added hesitantly, “And I will make sure he is generous, Simeon. Generous in hearing you out properly, and generous in seeing that you do not leave Cudbright empty-handed.”
MacHeath colored up. “It would be more nobl
e, I suppose, to say I required no reward. But if I am to stay away from the East End as you asked, I must have a stake.”
“You earned it,” she said evenly. “And like you, I make sure I pay my debts.”
Chapter 11
They reached the mouth of the River Exe by three o’clock. Cudbright was some two miles upstream. MacHeath steered the ketch around the treacherous sandbanks that had formed at low tide and then let Alexa take the helm once the river evened out. She pointed out landmarks to him along the banks, and then smiled to herself when she recalled that he would know them nearly as well as she did.
Her father’s shipyard was soon in sight, the tall masts of the ships soaring up higher than the treetops. MacHeath immediately motioned for her to steer the boat toward the shore.
“We dare not berth at your father’s wharf,” he said. “Quincy might have someone on the lookout for you there. It will be safer if we skirt the village and approach your father’s home from the fields that lie behind it. Quincy wouldn’t be expecting that.”
Alexa agreed at once. The longer it took them to get to the house, the more time she would have alone with him. Not that he was behaving in a manner calculated to reassure her. He was still remote and aloof, his eyes guarded whenever he chanced to glance her way.
She’d spent the entire morning trying to put him out of her thoughts, and decided she might just as well stop breathing. The shock of what he’d said last night had dulled slightly into an inchoate ache, but every so often his words of dismissal shifted inside her and cut like a blade.
She was too new at this game of hearts to understand how a man could kiss a woman, as he’d kissed her, and then merely walk away. Maybe other men could, the shallow, heartless ones. But for three years she’d seen the way passion had gripped Simeon Hastings, passion for his ships and his designs, so she knew that he was neither shallow nor heartless.
She might never know why he had turned away from her ... his argument that he was too beaten down by life held no sway with her, she’d seen the light of hope flash in his eyes there in Gable’s barn, and any man who could still muster that emotion was far from defeated. Nevertheless, even if she had understood why he’d drawn back from her, it wouldn’t have made the pain inside her any less acute.
