“Yes, sir. If you say so, sir.” The sailor raised his ax and slammed it down on the pin.
Tess’s head spun with the boat as it lurched the wrong way, not toward the sea but straight into the onlookers on the deck. The boat battered through them like bowling pins. Cries of fear and pain and the thud of breaking bones and shattering wood echoed through Tess’s ears as she was flung sideways into Robert, her life belt cutting painfully into her ribs.
“Steady on,” murmured Robert, his breath warm against her hair as he held her tight against his chest. Too tight.
Tess wriggled free, trying to sit up. One shin was going to have a powerful bruise, but Robert’s chest had borne the brunt of her weight; she’d banged her already sore head on his breastbone. “What’s that in your pocket?” she asked huskily. “A flask or a brick?”
But the words died on her lips as she looked up at Robert’s frozen face.
“Oh Lord,” muttered Tess.
It looked like a scene from a hellfire preacher’s most dismal imaginings. People crawling, keening, cradling broken limbs. Blood trickling down people’s faces, bones sticking out of skin.
“The Lord hasn’t anything to do with this,” said Robert grimly. “This is sheer, human stupidity.”
“We didn’t—” Tess couldn’t make herself voice the words.
“Straight into the crowd,” said Robert. His voice was hard, but she could feel him shaking next to her, holding her as though it was as much for his comfort as hers.
The man with the revolver was crawling from beneath the boat, dragging one leg behind him, his face a red mask of blood. He paused beside what looked like a crumpled pile of clothes, lifting something. A hand. A limp hand.
Not clothes. A woman. And there was another beside her, her neatly coiffed gray hair mussed, her modest skirts up over her knees. But she wouldn’t care. Not anymore. Her sightless eyes stared up at the gulls circling above, cold and glassy.
Dead. They were dead. A moment ago, those two women had been standing there, talking, alive. And now they were dead.
The child in the water, the women by the wall. Only a day ago—an hour ago—there had been children in starched pinafores skipping rope, women in flowered hats promenading the deck, with no greater concern than which cake to choose for dessert. And now . . .
Damp crept down her cheeks. Tess lifted a hand to dash the moisture away, but it wouldn’t seem to go. It just kept seeping down, dripping onto her lips, as salty as the sea.
“Hochstetter.” Robert set her aside, his voice clipped, urgent. “Are you all right?”
“I’m fine,” Mr. Hochstetter said.
Tess blinked. He wasn’t fine. His lips were white, and the smile he gave his wife looked like a skull’s grin, all stretched bone.
Buck up, Tess told herself. No time for vapors. Even if her head ached and her cheeks were wet with tears she couldn’t remember shedding.
Ripping the scarf from around her neck, Tess thrust the cloth at Caroline. “Here. You need that set. Wrap it round as tightly as you can. It should be splinted, but—I think we’ll be needing those oars.” When Caroline just stared at her, she added defensively, “My father was a pharmacist. I know a broken arm when I see one.”
“Thank you,” said Caroline. She made no move to reach for the scarf. Her eyes were wide, dazed.
Tess dangled it impatiently. “Oh for the love of—it’s not poisoned. Just take it. Or I’ll do it, if you can’t.”
“I’m fine,” said Mr. Hochstetter again, even less convincingly than last time. He was cradling his left arm, trying to look nonchalant and failing.
A spark awoke in Caroline’s eyes. “I can do it, thank you.” But before she could take the scarf, the boat rocked on its ropes. Two sailors were straining, pushing the boat out with the help of half a dozen bystanders, all enthusiasm and no skill.
“There she goes!” shouted someone, in half-exultation, half-terror.
A wavering voice began to sing, “Eternal Father, strong to save / Whose arm hath bound the restless wave . . .”
Another voice joined in, and another, “Who bidd’st the mighty ocean deep / Its own appointed limits keep . . .”
The boat was over the rail now, hanging out over the sea. This must be what it was to be a bird, coasting high above the waves, weightless on the wind. The voices rose around her, and Tess felt a strange elation grip her with the swell of the music, the motion of the ropes. Everything would be all right; how could it not be? They would sail away for a year and a day, or at least for as long as it took to get to the coast, and Ginny would be there, and this would all be a distant memory, an adventure to be told to one’s grandchildren.
The sun shone above from a clear blue sky and Robert’s voice joined the chorus in a well-trained tenor. “O hear us when we cry to Thee / For those in peril on the—”
The boat lurched. The song faltered. They were toppling, tumbling, falling, the final word of the hymn lost as they plummeted down into the sea.
Chapter 28
Sarah
Devon, England
May 2013
A sensation of falling overcame me. I startled awake, gasping and terrified. The air pressed against my skin, so gray and damp and chilled that for a murky instant, I lost my place in the universe.
Then a hand touched my bare hip. “Sarah! What’s wrong?” asked a sleepy voice.
I closed my eyes and sank back into the pillow. “Nothing. Goose walked over my grave, I guess.”
“Mmm. Can’t have that.”
John’s arm draped across my belly. He pulled me gently back against his chest and nuzzled the nape of my neck, and now I knew exactly where I was, exactly where I existed in the universe.
I was home.
* * *
But I didn’t fall back asleep. The echoes of that terror continued to pulse down my limbs, striking each nerve, and though John’s arms anchored me securely to earth, I still felt the faint, unsettling vertigo that had awoken me.
I stared at the outline of the window, hidden by old, dark curtains, and I whispered, “Awake or asleep?”
“Awake. Unless I’m dreaming.”
“Nope. Not dreaming. Unless we’re dreaming together.”
“So we really are in bed with each other? Naked? Made love twice last night?”
“Affirmative.”
He exhaled into my hair. “Thank God.”
I turned in his arms, so we lay on our sides, face-to-face. The dear, soft expression on his face made my eyes sting, and I smiled in order not to cry. “Not bad for rebound sex,” I said.
A serious expression sank across John’s face. He picked up a piece of hair that lay across my cheekbone and brushed it back over my temple. And another piece. Apparently I was somewhat disheveled. “Sarah,” he said slowly. “Last night was a lot of things, but it wasn’t rebound sex.”
“No?”
“Not for me, anyway. What do you think?”
“Um, well.” I stared at the tip of his nose. “I mean, obviously, it was . . . very special.”
“Very special, hmm?”
“Very.”
He made a small, gentle laugh. “All right. I’ll be the brave one. I know you Americans expect vast outpourings of sticky emotion—”
“Ewww.”
“So I’ll try to accommodate you as best I can, in my humble, restrained English way.” He picked up another piece of hair, but instead of brushing it back, he kissed it. “Let me explain something. If I’d wanted to ease my sorrows by indulging in rebound sex with somebody, I would’ve done it by now. As it happens, however, I’m not that kind of bloke. I did recklessly snog one of the Parliamentary aides at the Christmas do last year, I’ll admit, but as we were both quite drunk on the cheap prosecco, I managed to get my baser instincts back under control before any mistakes were made.”
I glanced at the spot on my wrist where my watch would lie, if I had a watch. “Still waiting for the outpouring of emotion, here.”
“I don’t know. Are you?”
“No. I’m not. But neither am I going to allow you to leave this bed—to fly away from all this thinking—because it’s too important—”
“John—”
“All right. Here it is, in plain language. Sarah Blake, the truth is, I’ve suspected for some time that I, John Langford—that it’s possible—actually quite likely—almost certain, that I am, in fact—”
“John—”
“—falling in love with you.”
I opened my mouth, but I had no breath to speak.
“All right?” he said.
I whispered, “All right.”
“And?”
I cleared my throat and said huskily, “And I think it’s possible—actually quite likely—that I feel pretty much the same.”
His face was so close in that narrow, inconvenient bed. His heavy bones lay carefully around mine, so that I seemed to be tucked into every nook and cranny of him. I thought I felt his skin everywhere, the vapor of his breath, his enormous warmth, the weight of the words we’d just spoken, and the intimacy was so intense, I couldn’t stand it. I started to shift away, but John gathered me up swiftly and rolled me onto my back. “Good,” he said. “That’s settled, then.”
His eyelids were swollen with sleep, his skin creased. I laid my palms along his warm, thick cheekbones, and as I met his gaze at last, I felt it again: the sensation of falling.
“Sarah? What’s wrong?”
“It’s real, isn’t it? This is real.”
“Yes. Quite real. We are lovers, Sarah. No going back.”
“Oh my God,” I said. “The complications.”
“Don’t think about them. We’ll sort everything out when the time comes. Right now, it’s very simple, isn’t it? You and me.” He lifted my left hand away from his cheek and kissed the fingertips. “Just stop worrying and bloody enjoy it.”
“Stop worrying.” I looked away, up over the top of his head to the octagonal ceiling.
“It’s not impossible, you know. You can lay aside your neuroses for a minute or two.”
The paint on the woodwork was starting to peel. I stared at a faint, irregular tea stain and said, “John, in less than thirty-six hours I’ll be on an airplane to New York.”
“I told you, we’ll sort it out. Do you think I’m simply going to wave goodbye and resume my old life? We’ve got a great deal of research left to do, Blake. A great deal. Months and months.”
“But I don’t have months and months. I have a mother, John, a mother who needs round-the-clock care, very expensive care, and I’m all she’s got. And last night was terrific—more than terrific—I meant what I said—but—I mean, I can’t ask you to turn your life upside down over some American girl you met ten days ago, who comes with more baggage than the Orient Express.”
“Shh.” John brushed his thumbs under my leaky eyes. “Sarah, please. Trust me, all right? We’ve all got baggage, loads of it. It doesn’t matter. We’ll find a place to unpack it all somewhere, God knows. This is what really matters. This is real. This is—worth overturning one’s life for. I knew the moment I sat across from you in that damned grotty basement bar in Shepherd’s Bush—”
“Knew what? That I couldn’t hold my liquor to save my life?”
“I knew I could trust you. I knew you were that sort of person, despite your money-grubbing American ways and your pathetic inability to hold your drink. You’re true, Sarah, and God knows that means everything to me.”
Falling, I thought. Falling in love. This is what it feels like. As if the world’s gone quiet and tender around you, and there’s no bottom, nothing to hold you. Just his eyes searching yours, and his words hanging like stars.
“And that’s why you brought me here?” I said. “To Devonshire? Because you knew you could trust me with the family history?”
“Oh God, no. I brought you here to seduce you.”
I made a noise of outrage and tried to wriggle out from beneath him, but he caught my wrists and started to press kisses along the line of my jaw and the quivering side of my neck.
“I thought to myself, Langford, you’re a sorry prospect on your own, I’m afraid, gaunt and oversized and frankly, no David Beckham in the looks department—can’t cast a smoldering glance to save your life—”
“John, stop—that tickles—”
“—to say nothing of all the disgrace and notoriety. But then I thought, there’s no aphrodisiac like a massive ancestral pile, is there? I mean, look what it did for Darcy.”
“Pemberley had nothing to do with it! She loved him because of what he did for Lydia.”
“Bollocks. It was the house, full stop. And his Byronic good looks. And while Langford Hall is no Pemberley, and it’s technically owned by the National Trust, you’ve got to agree it does come with a damned fine folly.” He stopped kissing me and drew back an inch or two, and his face turned serious. “Which, if I’m not mistaken, has brought happiness and good fortune to at least one lucky couple before.”
* * *
By the time we rose and found our clothes, it was past eleven o’clock. We walked hand in hand across the damp grass to the house, where I showered and dressed while John made coffee. He gave me a kiss as he handed me the cup, and for a moment we stood there in the middle of the kitchen, smiling idiotically at each other and at the new, unexpected intimacy of being allowed to kiss over a cup of coffee.
“My turn in the shower, I suppose,” John said.
“I guess I could have invited you into mine.”
“Not with all the stormtroopers staring at us through the curtains, thank you very much. We’ll go away somewhere for our first shower together.” He kissed me again, more deeply. “Hmm. Possibly tonight.”
“What about my flight?” I asked, a little breathless. “And our research? I feel like we’re on the brink of—of finding out everything, and if we can just make that happen, I can head back home and feel like I’ve got the ground paved under me.”
John started for the stairs. “Then I suggest you head back down and get the morning’s work going, lazybones, if you’re hoping to spend the night in five-star luxury.”
I sent the oven mitt flying just in time to catch him in the small of his back.
* * *
Still, I obeyed his instructions. Not for the sake of obeying him, mind you, but because the vague, unsettling sensation had returned to me as he disappeared around the corner of the landing, and my mind flew back to last night’s preoccupations. Night Train to Berlin, and the concert program, and Sir Peregrine’s guilt.
The program still lay in the middle of the desk, where I’d left it. I picked it up, and for some reason, as I did, my face turned in the direction of the portrait of Robert Langford that hung on the wall. I’d spent the past ten days underneath that image, examining that face, and I knew it the way I knew my own reflection. Handsome, nattily dressed in a dark suit and tie, a little devilish, one eyebrow raised in perpetual mystery.
“I wish you could speak,” I said. “I wish you could just tell me what you meant.”
Robert stared back at me with his tilted, enigmatic smile.
“But thank you. Whatever you did, whatever happened on that ship, it ended in John. So thank you for John. Thank you so much for him.”
I looked back down at the program in my hand, at Mary Talmadge. The Talmadge Conservatory, I thought. Founded by her, or her family? I wasn’t sure.
I picked up my phone, which sat on the edge of the desk, untouched since last night, and prepared to Google “Talmadge Conservatory.”
But the text alert on the screen before me stopped my fingers.
“Oh, damn,” I said, and I bolted from the room.
* * *
I met John on the lawn, about halfway to the Dower House. “What’s the matter?” he asked. “Miss me already?”
“No. I mean, yes! I just completely forgot I�
��d agreed to meet this old grad school friend of mine for lunch at the pub. I’m so sorry. He’s been texting me and I couldn’t ignore him any longer.”
He raised one eyebrow. “Friend?”
“Friend. Totally. I mean, barely even a friend. Haven’t heard from him in years. But you know the code. You go to school together, you have to answer the call.” I went up on my toes and kissed his cheek. “I’ll be quick, I swear. Don’t worry.”
“I’m not worried.”
“Because you look a little worried.”
“Sarah, I trust you. It’s not that. I was just going to ask you about tonight.”
“What about tonight?”
“What we were talking about in the kitchen. I was thinking about this place on the coast, not far away, lovely spot, renovated, got a spa and a decent restaurant and—”
“Wait. Whoa. I thought you were kidding.”
“Kidding?” He looked blank. “Of course I wasn’t kidding.”
“John, you don’t need to whisk me away on some luxury getaway—I mean, I’ve still got to pack and get organized—”
“Well,” he said, squinting toward the river, pushing his hand through his hair, “truth be told, I actually chose it because there’s this facility nearby, and I thought—well, we might just take a quick look—”
“Facility?”
He looked back at me. His hair was still damp, his face was still pink from shaving, and he smelled of soap and clean laundry. The sun, perched high overhead, cast his features in deep relief. His voice, however, was gentle. “For your mother. You know, in case the book takes longer than you thought, or something like that. I—well, I know you miss her, and these publishing contracts can take the devil’s own time—”
“Oh, John—”
“And before you ask, don’t worry about the money. We’ll figure all that out. The important thing is that you’re able to focus on your work, to say nothing of focusing on sleeping with me—Sarah, what is it?”
I threw my arms around his neck and buried my face in his shoulder. “I don’t know what to say.”
“So I should book a room for tonight?”
The Glass Ocean Page 36