A gust of wind, the boat heeled, I lost my footing and slipped, crashing onto the deck so hard I lost my breath, sliding. I grappled for something, for anything. I heard Daniel shout my name, and then I was plunging into the roiling water, the cold like ice, the shock of it taking my breath, blind and gasping while it grabbed my boots and my coat and pulled me down and down and down, and I couldn’t breathe or swim or see—it was too hard, and I knew I was going to drown.
Still, I fought it. I struggled against the water, trying desperately to make my way to the surface, making it only to have a swell surge over me again. My skirt tangled about my legs, impossible to get free. The wind and the water were in my ears. My coat was so heavy. My boots...I could swim, but this was impossible. Impossible to fight the wind and the water and my own clothing. Impossible to catch a breath. Surrounded by darkness and cold so I could not see which way was up, and my arms pressing against the sides of the basket and the suffocating and I was so afraid...
And then I felt it. The tug at my waist, the rope I’d tied around myself. I felt it pull at me, dragging me up, dragging me to the surface, and I broke through, breathing air and water, the shadow of the boat in front of me and Daniel leaning over the side, a panicked look on his face, the rope tight in his hands, and I realized I was not going to die, that there was the side of the boat and all I must do was grab for it, which I did, and then he grabbed at me hard and desperately, jerking me onto the deck so I fell into him, and we both crashed back into the hold and all I could do was lie there and gasp.
His hands were on my face. “You’re all right?” he asked. And then again, “Are you all right?”
I managed to nod.
His relief turned to brutality. His hands tightened on my face. He screamed at me, “Christ, this is stupid! Why the hell are we even out here?” He nearly threw me from him, jerking back. “You could have died! And all because—”
I grabbed his arm. “I’m...fine.” My voice was too quiet, the wind would not let me be heard. The jib and the mainsail flapped ceaselessly, slapping against the wind. I was lying in water, two inches at least.
Daniel jerked his arm away and put his face in his hands, hunching his shoulders. I tried to take a deep breath and coughed up water, rolling to my side, coughing until I thought I would never stop, and then, suddenly I did. Suddenly I could breathe. It was then I felt how cold I was. Colder than I’d ever been. Deep, unceasing cold. I shook so hard I could do nothing else. The boat rocked, buffeted by the waves and the wind.
“Daniel,” I gasped. He did nothing. I think he didn’t hear me through the storm. I reached out, touching his arm, and then he looked up, and I said through chattering teeth, “You’ll have to get us home. I...cannot.”
“How?”
“L-listen to me,” I managed. “The...compass. We need to go west and then south. Do you...understand?”
“You’re freezing.” He leaned forward as if he meant to take me into his arms.
I slapped him away. “The compass. We have to get...home.”
He hesitated, and then he nodded. He grabbed the oilcloth from where we’d shoved it into the hold and then he steadied himself against the wind, pulling me with him as he sat, drawing me between his legs, wrapping the oilcloth around me before he grabbed the rudder and the compass. I told him what to do, pointing out the sheet that managed the mainsail, telling him to reef it, and then I could do no more. I pulled the wet and slimy oilcloth closer and huddled into the vee of his legs, absorbing what little warmth from his body there was to offer, shaking as I laid my head in his lap. The oilcloth smelled of oysters and the sea. I was soaking wet and colder than I’d ever been in my life, though the oilcloth kept off the worst of the rain and sheltered me from the wind. But I was dripping water, sodden. I could no longer feel my hands or my feet or my face, and I could not stop shivering.
After that, I don’t remember. I drifted in and out—sometimes I saw only rain and wind and the faint glow of the lamp against the dark and sometimes it seemed as if the storm had cleared and I was watching Daniel’s shadow against a starlit sky, and I was warm and the scent of sun-burned grass filled my nose and my mind so I could taste it. It seemed both forever and only the blink of an eye before I realized Daniel was helping me over the side of the sloop, stepping knee deep into water. We were beached, I thought, and saw the boat tip to one side and the sail flap in the darkness, and I could do nothing, move nothing. I could not think, I felt caught in a dream, and I was so tired and so cold, and suddenly he slapped me hard, stinging, jerking me from the dream. “Wake up, Lea. Stay awake, damn you. Damn you!”
I stumbled; I could not use my numb and useless feet, I fell face first into the water, feeling the jarring into my shoulders, though I could not feel my hands at all, and then he was lifting me, carrying me, pulling me tight into his chest. I was vaguely aware that he was stumbling, cursing beneath his breath, and then we were there, up the porch steps, plunging through the door into a house cold and dark as the night had been, but with no wind and no rain, and he fell to his knees as he crossed the threshold as if his strength had carried him as far as it could, dumping me onto the floor so hard I groaned—not from pain but from the jolt of it, crashing my bones together, but not my teeth, which were locked hard against the cold.
Through a daze I realized he was jerking off my boots, my coat, wrapping me in that Hudson’s Bay blanket on the settee, not warm enough. Then he was gone. I heard clanging, more cursing—the noise kept me from settling into the dream, and then he was there again, pulling me up, pulling me to where I felt the beginning surge of warmth—the kitchen, the stove. Wood and heat, but I felt so stupid. My thoughts would not coalesce. He pulled the blanket from my shoulders, unbuttoning my dress, and I thought I should not let him do this but could not remember why. Like a child, I submitted. He peeled the sodden dress from my skin. I let him drag off my flannel petticoat and my stockings so I had on nothing but my chemise, clinging wetly to my skin, and then he cocooned me again in the blanket and rubbed my hands and my feet vigorously. I could see him doing it but I could feel nothing, and then suddenly I could, pins and needles, and I gasped in pain and tried to pull away. He rose then and shoved something into my hands, something hot—a mug. “Drink it,” he said, and his voice came to me like a muffled echo, but I did as he said. Tasteless, but warm. It burned down my chest so I gasped, and he took off his sodden jacket and threw it aside, and then he was beside me again, pulling off the blanket and wrapping himself around me, then the blanket over both of us, and I realized with some faraway part of myself that he was shaking too, that his hands were white with cold. I closed my eyes and leaned back against him as the faint stirrings of warmth crept through me—a burning torment, tingling, sharp and painful and I wanted to cry with it, but he held me close, and gradually it faded and I was warm, and this time when I fell into sleep, he did not wake me.
CHAPTER 17
I WOKE TO warmth, cocooned in it, Junius wrapped around me, drawing me back against his chest, his fingers tangled in the twine of the bracelet, clutching a shell charm. I snuggled deeper into him, and in his sleep he tightened his hold in response. I was so warm, and he was here, and I felt safe—
But then I realized it was no soft bed but a hard floor beneath me, and in drowsy surprise I opened my eyes, staring into the gray of morning and the still warm stove in front of me. I did not know where I was or how I’d got there; I could not orient myself. Then he stirred, and the night rushed back, and with a little shock I realized that this wasn’t Junius cradling me so closely but Daniel.
I should move away. I knew that but I didn’t do it. Instead I went still, afraid to wake him. I was so warm. There could be no harm in staying here for a few moments longer. He’d meant only to comfort me, to keep me warm, and I was alive and that was due to him and it seemed ungrateful now to jerk away or to wake him, as it was obvious he’d kept the stove going all night long. So I stayed there, listening to the rain beyond the windows,
how it beat so furiously upon the roof, though I heard no wind. The day was gray and muted, the morning shadows dark, and I felt drowsy and languid.
I knew when he woke. The change in his breathing, a little startle and then a stillness, as if, like me, he’d remembered where he was and did not wish to come back to who we were and what we should be to each other. He drew his fingers from the bracelet, and I said nothing, did nothing, his conspirator in pretending there was nothing wrong in this. We lay this way for a few minutes, perhaps a quarter of an hour, before I knew I could delay no longer.
The first thing I said to him was a whisper. “I’m sorry.”
“For what?” Spoken into my shoulder, the heat of his breath against my skin, close enough that I imagined I felt the touch of his lips.
“For making you go through that. You were right. We should have stayed at the hotel.”
“You’re alive. That’s all that matters.”
“I’ve you to thank for that. I owe you.”
“You don’t owe me anything,” he said. “There was no choice to make. What was I supposed to do, let you drown? Let you die of cold?”
The cuff of his shirt was still damp. He’d slept all night in wet clothes, a sacrifice that touched me, dangerously so. I pushed gently against his arms until he let me go, and then I sat up, my hip and my shoulder aching from the hard bed of the kitchen floor. I twisted to look at him. “You should get into some dry clothes.”
“How do you feel?” he asked me.
“Fine, I think. A little sore.”
He sat up. He pulled the blanket off his shoulders and handed it to me, and I took it, wrapping it around. He braced his forearms on his knees, giving me a sleepy, soft smile. “You look like a Pre-Raphaelite painting.”
“A what?”
“Your hair,” he said, gesturing. “Like that painting by Dante Rossetti. Beatrice, I think.”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“She has the same kind of hair you do. You’d like the painting, I think. The drama of it suits you.”
“I’ve had quite enough of drama, thank you.”
Still, that smile. He said, “Like that poem too—do you know it? Porphyria’s Lover?—‘And spread o’er all her yellow hair—’”
He stopped so suddenly it was a moment before I realized he meant to say no more, before I felt the quiet, words lingering.
“Now I’ve quoted poetry to you,” he said, and there was something painful in his voice, as if he’d done something he hadn’t meant to do, and I remembered last night, his asking whether I found such things romantic, and I clutched the blanket more closely about me—as if it were protection enough from my own yearning, from the things he saw in me that I hadn’t known were there.
“Daniel, this isn’t...We can’t...”
“No, we can’t,” he agreed, meeting my gaze, and I felt that pull again, the same I’d felt at the dance, this sense of inevitability, as if my will were a puny thing in the face of destiny—ah, but what was that but an excuse? Will was only want’s minion. And that I wanted there was no denying.
He leaned forward, slowly enough that I knew his intention, that I could have backed away, but I didn’t. I let him kiss me, his mouth soft and full, tentative, testing, and then he withdrew, a bare breath between us, waiting a moment, giving me the chance to deny, to say no, and instead I leaned forward too, and he made a little sound and then his hands were on me, pulling me to him, kissing me again, deepening it, and my arms were around his neck and I was answering, drawn without thought or question, desire burning, alive and awake at last.
The blanket loosened; I let it fall and where the air touched me, his hands followed, in my hair and then to my shoulders, down my back to my waist, over my hips, hot through the thin fabric of my chemise, drawing me closer so I felt him hard against me, and then he was falling back, rolling me beneath him, and my shoulder brushed something—burlap. I reached up to push it away. A bag. Bones chittering against each other.
The bag of bones beneath the stairs. Junius’s skeletons.
Reason broke over me like the icy water I’d nearly drowned in. Suddenly I realized what it was we were about to do, what could not be taken back or undone.
He was drawing up my chemise, his hand warm against my skin, and I clamped my own down hard on his, stopping him, twisting away from his kiss, saying, “Wait. Daniel...no. Wait.”
It was as if he heard me through a dream. He drew back, blinking. I saw the desire dark in his eyes. His breath came hard, as hard as mine. Hoarsely, he asked, “Did I hurt you?”
“No, but we...we can’t do this. We have to stop.”
He looked ready to protest. His hand tightened on me as if he meant to continue, to deny.
“We can’t,” I said again.
He looked at me as if he couldn’t hear, as if he didn’t understand. I saw him try to shake it away, and then I saw his dawning awareness of what we were doing, of what we’d almost done. His jaw tightened, desire suddenly banked; he pushed off me. “Christ. Christ.” The words were bitten off, violent. He drew up his knees and buried his face in his arms.
My heart was racing, desire not abating, throbbing and twisting, and I wished...what, that I had said nothing? That even now he was...I swallowed hard and sat up, pushing down my chemise, pulling up the blanket, drawing it close, protection from him, from myself.
I reached out to touch his shoulder, thought better of it, drew back. “Daniel—”
“One moment,” he snapped.
I heard his anger and his frustration and I understood it; it was all I could do to keep from saying, I want you. I don’t want to think about anything else. I want to lie with you. I fingered the charms of the bracelet around my wrist—You will need it now he is here—and I laughed wryly.
Daniel looked up. “Something amusing?”
“Nothing,” I said, and then I held out my wrist. “This. Bibi’s bracelet. She warned me to be careful. She told me it was a protection.”
“Against the mummy, you said.”
“Against you,” I told him. And then, bitterly, “And you can see how well it works, can’t you?”
“Protection against me?” He looked a little stunned. “She told you that?”
I nodded.
He ran his hand through his hair distractedly. “I shouldn’t have come here.”
“No one could blame you for wanting to meet your father.”
“It was too much a...temptation.” He went on as if he hadn’t heard me. “All of it. As if it had been set there just for me. Everything I wanted. The mummy. My father. I thought I didn’t care. I’d been looking for him for so long I didn’t want to find him anymore. I wouldn’t even have read the paper that day, but there was a wind that blew it up against the dock, and I was picking up a feather that had caught in it and I saw his name.”
“You were picking up a feather,” I said slowly, remembering the heron on the riverbank, its yellow beak, its questioning eye.
He glanced up at me. “It was a pretty color. Blue-gray. I’d meant it for...”
“Eleanor,” I whispered.
He swallowed. “Your widow is right, Lea. You don’t know anything about me. And I can’t...This”—a gesture, me, him, the two of us—“is not what either of us should want. I should have gone back with the schooner last night.”
His words filled me with dismay, though it had been what I wanted, too, what I had not been able to ask of him.
“It was all...too easy,” he went on. “I should have realized. I did realize. I just didn’t want to admit it.”
It was as if he were speaking in a kind of code. I could not quite grasp him. I frowned. “What do you mean? What was too easy?”
“Finding my father. The mummy too. It was just...It’s all right. I’ll find something else. Don’t worry about me.” And then, bitterly, “I always land on my feet.”
I found myself protesting, delaying. “At least wait until Junius returns.�
�
“I can’t stay that long.” He gave me a frank look. “You know it too. He’s only been gone a few days and already we...I couldn’t bear a week or more.”
I was quiet. I wanted to beg him not to go; I wanted him to leave that moment. I looked down at the blanket clutched in my hands, the green and red bands against the white. I fingered the soft wool. When I looked up again, Daniel was staring at me.
“I’m afraid to stay,” he said. “And I’m afraid to go. I’m afraid of what you’ll become if I leave you, Leonie.”
I tried to smile. “What I will become? What a strange thing to say. I’m already become, Daniel. Dear God, I’m nearly forty. I’m happy. I am. I’ve told you that.”
“You almost died last night. You almost died, and what then? What have you done that was your own? You’ve wasted your talents. Don’t keep wasting them.”
“You’re wrong about me, Daniel,” I said. “And I—”
Drowning.
I faltered. Daniel frowned. “What? What is it?”
I was suddenly cold. Freezing. The plunge into icy water, unable to catch my breath. I felt the lap of water at my bare feet, and I shivered and drew them up closer beneath the blanket. “I’m so...cold.”
He was on his feet in a moment. “I’ll put more wood on.”
I put my hand out to stop him. My head was reeling. I began to shiver. “No, I...it’s—”
Fear. I was falling beneath the waves, choking. A memory of last night. The water rising and rising, tangling my skirts, pulling on my coat, drawing me under, and yet...not me at all...
“What is it, Leonie?”
I struggled for breath. I struggled to see past the fear. You must come. Come now.
I leaped to my feet, letting the blanket fall. “The mummy,” I said. “The water’s rising. The river—” I rushed to the door, grabbing my coat, still wet, and pulling it on over my chemise, shoving my bare feet into my sodden boots. My hat—no hat, it was lost to the Shoalwater.
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