Wild Yearning

by Penelope Williamson

  “Oh, Anne … How can I ever thank you for all you’ve done for me? For making me these new clothes and giving me the lessons. And the fine hospitality of your beautiful house.” She looked around the bedroom that had come to feel so much like home to her, the home she had always dreamed of. A wistful sigh escaped her lips. “I’m going to miss living here with you and the colonel.”

  “But you’ll be coming back three mornings a week to continue with those lessons,” Anne said, her voice vinegar tart. “I didn’t spend all those hours teaching you to read and write and speak properly only to see you stop at this rudimentary level. I intend to educate you, girl, if I have to do it with the end of a switch.”

  Delia laughed. “Afore long I should be able to recite aloud that Pope fellow’s poems you’re so almighty keen on while I’m out doing my milking. Nat’s she-goat should be mightily impressed.”

  Anne pretended to snort with indignation. Then she picked up a silk-wrapped package from the chest and handed it to Delia. “I thought you might like to wear these. They were a gift from my mother to me and I wore them for my first wedding. I want you to have them, Delia.”

  Delia looked at Anne in surprise, for she hadn’t known the woman had been married once before. She hesitated to pull open the silk material; the wrapping itself was more valuable than any gift she’d ever received before. Except, she thought with a sudden stab of pain, for a certain pair of calfskin shoes with red heels.

  “Well, don’t just stand there frozen like a hunter in a blind,” Anne said. “Open it, girl.”

  Delia pulled apart the folds of silk. Inside was a pair of delicate white lace mitts intricately embroidered with tiny seed pearls. She gasped at the wonder of owning anything so fine. “Oh, Anne, they’re beautiful. But I could never …”

  “Nonsense. You can and you shall.” She stroked Delia’s cheek with one bent, rough knuckle. “I never had a daughter of my own to give them to.”

  Tears oozed from Delia’s eyes and she brushed them with the heels of her hands. “Oh, Lord above us…” The two women shared watery smiles and then fell into each other’s arms, exchanging fierce hugs.

  Anne stroked Delia’s back. “Be happy.”

  “I will,” Delia said, her mouth against Anne’s bony shoulder.

  But inside she felt an ache of disappointment so strong she wanted to cry. Every girl dreams of this day, her wedding day, when she will be joined for life to the man she loves. But the man Delia loved didn’t love her and the man she was marrying loved his dead wife.

  The only person likely to be happy on this day, she thought, was Tyler Savitch—who would at least be rid of his bothersome tavern wench and the guilt-filled memory of a warm and windy afternoon in the forest on Falmouth Neck.

  Delia walked slowly down the stairs, her lace-covered palm trailing lightly along the banister. Nathaniel Parkes waited for her in the hall, twisting his hat in his hands. He looked up, took a step forward, and then paused. She saw surprise cross his face, the creases alongside his mouth deepening with an involuntary smile.

  “Why, you look dreadfully pretty, Delia!” The words had burst out of him, startling himself as much as her, and a vivid blush immediately suffused his face.

  “That’s the nicest compliment anyone’s ever paid to me,” Delia said, wanting to put him at ease and wishing it wasn’t necessary for her always to have to be so mindful of what he was thinking or feeling.

  Her efforts failed to get the desired result anyway, for instead he frowned and, although he took her arm to lead her down the hall and out the front door, his fingers barely touched her. They walked with their bodies so far apart her skirt didn’t even brush against his leg. His limp seemed worse today, the wooden foot scraping across the boards of Anne’s diamond-patterned hall.

  A thick lump, like soggy dough, formed in Delia’s throat and she could barely swallow around it. Quit being a wooden-headed fool. Just what did you expect to find on walking down these stairs—Tyler Savitch standing here in Nat’s place, waiting for you with undying love in his eyes? Nat Parkes needs a wife and you need a home, and few marriages begin with love anyway and even fewer wind up with love at the end of them, so quit wishing for the moon. Marry the man and have done with it.

  The short marriage ceremony was to take place in front of the manor house on the village green. It was a good excuse for a frolic and everyone in Merrymeeting was already gathered on the green, waiting for the marriage to be over with so the fun could begin. When the front door to the manor house opened, everyone stopped what he was doing or saying and turned of one accord to look at the bride and groom.

  Tildy Parkes sat astride the hitching rail in front of the manor house, pretending to ride a horse, kicking her legs and tossing her head and making high-pitched neighing noises in the back of her throat. When the front door opened and Delia and her father emerged, it so startled her that she fell off the rail to land with a hard jar on her hands and knees. She thought about crying but changed her mind when she remembered the wonderful thing that was about to happen.

  She pushed herself up, bottom first, and ran toward them, chubby legs pumping hard, a big rip in her new pinter. “Papa, Papa, is it happening now? Are we gonna be getting our new ma?”

  She flung herself against her father’s legs, reaching up to grasp the edge of his hip-length coat. He bent over and brushed the dirt off her pinter, fingering the tear. “Matilda Parkes, you promised me you would try to stay neat and clean, and where in heaven’s name are your shoes?” he scolded, or tried to—for there was more amusement than anger in his voice. He grinned apologetically at Delia. “I was hoping she would manage to stay put together for at least the five minutes it will take to see us married.”

  Laughing, Delia scooped the little girl into her arms, settling her down on one outthrust hip and heedless of the dusty smudges Tildy’s bare feet were leaving on her own skirts. “Yes, little puss,” she said, kissing Tildy’s fat cheek. The soft, sun-warmed skin felt smooth against her lips. “It’s happening now. Your da and I are getting married.”

  Tildy let out a delighted squeal that rattled Delia’s eardrum and made her laugh.

  Carrying Tildy in her arms, Delia stepped out onto the green. As she did her eyes scanned the crowd for a certain face. She didn’t see him at first and the disappointment she had been feeling deepened into a hollow, aching pain in her chest. Tears hovered so close to the surface they were making her eyes burn. He hadn’t even bothered to show up. Did she matter so little to him that he could treat her marriage to another man with such indifference?

  And then she saw him—at the back of the crowd, leaning nonchalantly against one of the trestle tables loaded with food for the feast afterward. His hip was hitched onto the corner of one of the plank boards, his long booted legs crossed at the ankles, his arms folded over his chest. Their eyes clashed and held, but she could tell nothing from the expression on his face, although his lips did wear that perpetual scowl. Delia looked away.

  Nat, too, was searching the crowd. “Where’s Meg?”

  “Meg’s angry,” Tildy said. She had wrapped one arm around Delia’s neck, panting against Delia’s cheek. Her breath smelled of milk and corn mush. “Meg don’t want a new ma.”

  Nat heaved a sigh, a crease of worry appearing between his brows. “I’m sorry, Delia. I don’t know what to do about her.”

  “She’ll come around, Nat, if you let her be.”

  Delia had already spotted Meg hovering in the shadows between the apple cider press and the mast house. She, too, was wearing a new dress in honor of the occasion, but it hung lankly on her thin frame, its drab brown color blending in with her hair, making her look like a scrawny grouse chick.

  Just then a stranger stepped forward, blocking Delia’s view of Meg. He was a diminutive man with a small, flattened nose from which dangled precariously a pair of spectacles. Nat introduced him as Isaac Deere, the colonial magistrate who was to conduct the ceremony. Oddly enough for a society
in which religion played such a strong part, in the Massachusetts Bay Colony marriages were deemed civil, not religious, affairs.

  Nevertheless, the Reverend Caleb Hooker was on hand to give his official blessing, for Nat had insisted on having their vows receive religious sanction as well. Caleb came up to them now, wearing such a wide smile that his upper lip seemed to catch on his overlapping front teeth. “You look lovely, Delia. Wonderful day for a wedding, Mr. Parkes.”

  Flushing, Nat tugged at the kerchief tied around his neck and mumbled something to the ground.

  “Thank you, Caleb,” Delia said. She thought about what a true friend he had turned out to be for her—he and Elizabeth. Delia hadn’t realized how few friends she’d had in her life before now and she searched out Elizabeth, who had just set a pot of baked beans on one of the tables and was walking toward them, moving with that smooth, ladylike grace that Delia so admired and despaired of ever being able to achieve.

  Elizabeth’s greeting was more subdued, although her cheeks were dusted with a light color of rose, like a bloom just fading. She took Delia’s hand and gave it a hard squeeze. “May God keep you, Delia. May God keep you and Mr. Parkes.”

  Delia’s smile widened to include all those who had started to gather around for the ceremony—Anne Bishop and the colonel; Obadiah Kemble, who grinned and winked at her; even nasty Sara, who glared back at Delia, expressing her disapproval by drawing her pinched lips tightly together like a stitched seam.

  Delia looked at all the folk of Merrymeeting who had come together on this warm and breezy summer afternoon to see her and Nat married. Most were still strangers to her, but soon these people would be her neighbors and perhaps someday her friends. The gristmill owner, Constant Hall, and his wife, Charity. Samuel and Hannah Randolf—Sam, with his fiery red hair, was the village blacksmith, and they had seven children with another on the way. Guy and Nancy Sewall, who owned the farm closest to Nat’s…

  And Ty.

  Their eyes locked again and Delia’s smile faded. She felt the old familiar ache in her heart.

  Ty was the first to look away. He walked off, his boots cutting a swath through the grass as he strode rapidly toward the blue bowl of the bay. He didn’t look back, not even when the magistrate cleared his throat and said loudly, “If we might begin …”

  Isaac Deere pushed his drooping spectacles back onto the bridge of his nose and stared pointedly at Tildy, whom Delia still held in her arms. Delia set the little girl down, but she kept hold of her hand. It was sticky with sweat, yet Delia drew comfort from it. And courage.

  She glanced at Nat. He stared straight ahead, his gray eyes cloudy and brooding and focused on something in the distance. As if, Delia thought, he expected—no, as if he prayed—that his Mary would come walking out of the wilderness forest and save him from this terrible fate.

  “Nat,” she said softly, oblivious to the magistrate, who couldn’t help but hear, “it’s not too late to change your mind.”

  He swallowed, squeezed his eyes shut, and his head swiveled loosely back and forth on his neck, as if anchored by a peg that was coming loose. “No, Delia … No. It must be done.”

  Aye, Delia thought. It must be done.

  Yet she, too, yearned to be saved. She had to stiffen her spine to keep from whirling and crying out to Ty with all her heart to come back, come back and stop this marriage, come declare his love and save her from what she was suddenly sure was a terrible mistake.

  But she didn’t turn around and Ty didn’t come back and the magistrate began speaking the words of the marriage ritual, droning them in a bored voice that almost obscured their importance. Nat and Delia gave the correct responses automatically, because if either of them had thought about what they were saying, their throats would have seized up, capturing the words like birds in a cage.

  Then, of a sudden, Delia heard Isaac Deere say, “By the laws of God and this commonwealth, I, as magistrate, pronounce you man and wife.”

  The Merrymeeting frolic was in full swing and Meg Parkes was sulking—although she preferred to think of it as simply keeping to herself.

  She was whipping her new top on a patch of packed earth in front of the Bishops’ manor house, competing against herself to see how long she could keep it going. She leaned over and started it spinning with a quick twist of her hand. Stepping back, she lashed it with the eelskin thong just as three boys, who were part of a game of whoop-and-hide, ran past her, deliberately jostling her arm and almost knocking her over. One of them was Daniel Randolf, the blacksmith’s oldest boy, whom she detested more than anyone in the whole world.

  Daniel stopped to jeer at her. “Whyn’t ye give it up, Meg Parkes? Ye’re never going t’ be able t’ whip a top right.”

  “I’m already better at it than you, Daniel Randolf.” It was a slight exaggeration. She was as good as he was, not better.

  Daniel barked a cocky laugh. “Whoever heard of a girl bein’ any good at whippin’ tops?”

  “Whoever heard of a girl being any good at anything?” his younger brother chimed in.

  Meg tried to think of a particularly devastating remark, but all she could come up with was, “Your mother chews tobaccy,” and she’d already used that one on the Randolf boys before. She settled for sticking out her tongue and shouting, “Go to hell, Daniel Randolf.”

  Daniel and his brother merely laughed and ran off, hooting like Indians and generally showing off, to Meg’s supreme disgust.

  “He’s wrong, you know. There’s no reason why a girl can’t whip a top good as any boy.”

  Meg spun around at the sound of that husky voice, a grimace of dislike already plastered on her face, for she knew who it was: Delia McQuaid, her father’s new wife. But never, she reminded herself, never would the woman be her mother, marriage or not. Nobody, not even Papa, was going to force her to admit otherwise.

  She put on her best sneer. “What do you know about it?”

  Delia smiled down at her, but there was a nervous quiver in her voice. “I was the champion top-spinner of Ship’s Wharf for five years. And I retired undefeated. I know a trick or two that’ll set those lads to spinning on their ears. Would you be wanting me to show you?”

  “No. And it’s no use your trying to make friends with me because I’m never going to see my way to liking you.”

  “Aye? That’s as may be. But then, my da always said I’m as stubborn as a hen at roosting time. So I’ll keep on trying if you don’t mind.”

  Meg shrugged her thin shoulders. She pretended to ignore Delia. She looked instead toward the trestle tables set out beneath the lone white pine with its weathervaned top. A pair of greedy, noisy whiskey jacks were trying to steal the food. Mrs. Bishop shrieked at them and flapped her apron, and the other women laughed.

  Meg nodded her small, pointed chin toward the tables. “Shouldn’t you be over yonder, helping the others to set out the food?”

  “I offered,” Delia said, sounding wistful, “but they don’t seem to want my help.”

  Meg smiled to herself. She had already seen the other women shooing Delia away just as they had the whiskey jacks. Except for Mrs. Bishop and the new preacher’s wife, the other women liked Delia not at all. Sara Kemble said she’d done bad things back in Boston. For a moment Meg felt sorry for Delia because the other women didn’t like her. She tried to harden her heart, telling herself such treatment was no worse than Delia deserved.

  But she couldn’t stop herself from holding the whip out to Delia begrudgingly. “I suppose you can show me how to whip the top. Were you really champion spinner?”

  “Aye!” Delia exclaimed, her strange-colored eyes sparkling so brightly that Meg began to regret her slight unbending. “I kept one going for a good hour once,” Delia said. “It broke all records … well, at least all the records that I know of.”

  Meg watched while Delia set the top up on its apex. She started it spinning with a hard jerk of her wrist and then began to stroke the toy with deft flicks of the whip, pro
longing the spin. She got the top going so fast it was just a blur to Meg’s eyes and Meg laughed with delight, forgetting for a moment that she didn’t at all like her father’s new wife.

  Delia’s eyes flickered up at Meg, and the smile she flashed stretched her lips wide, showing even, white teeth. “It’s all in the stroke, you see. You’ve got to do it lightly, lightly, as if you were trying to brush a pool of water with a feather without causing a ripple. Lightly, lightly…” she crooned, and the top went on spinning.

  Daniel Randolf and some of the other boys had drifted back to take a look. Meg could tell they were mightily impressed with Delia’s skill. She was whipping the top faster and already longer than any Merrymeeting boy had ever managed to do and Delia was a girl, well a woman, but a female at least, and Meg doubted any man, not even her papa, could whip a top any better.

  She thumped Daniel Randolf in the side with her elbow. “She’s going to teach me how to do that.”

  Daniel’s eyes widened. “Honest to gosh? Can ye teach me, too, ma’am?” he called out to Delia.

  Meg stiffened, holding her breath. Delia’s eyes flickered up at her again and then back down to the spinning top. “I’d like to, young Daniel, truly. But I’m afraid I can’t. It’s a secret only us girls are allowed to know.”

  The boys all looked crestfallen and Meg’s face lit up with a triumphant grin. “I challenge you to a top-spinning contest next Sabbath day, Daniel. I’ll wager you a penny I can keep mine going longer than yours.”

  But Daniel had turned on his heel, stalking off. “I don’t spin against girls!” he threw back over his shoulder.

  Meg stared after him, fists on hips. “Oooh! I hate boys!”

  “It’s in the nature of them,” Delia said. She had let the top spin itself out and bent over now to wind the whip around it. “Cocky, arrogant fellows every one of them. And they don’t improve much with the aging.”

  Rich baritone laughter filled the air. Meg had been watching Dr. Ty approach them from the direction of Colonel Bishop’s stable, leading a pretty bay mare. But Delia had her back to him and at the sound of his laughter, she straightened with a snap and spun around as fast as any top, her hand pressed to her breast as if she was trying to keep her heart from flying right out of it.