He looked genuinely sorry. "I think not, Tess. If you want to stay on, decide now. We must weigh anchor at once if we're to catch a favorable tide through the Race. With or without you, the Enchanta must be on her way. Tess!" he added in a voice that sent her blood racing. "Can you walk away from last night? Can you?"
Put that way, it seemed that she couldn't. Aaron had claimed her heart's secrets, and then her body, and now her free will. And yet he was making her feel as though it was she who had dominion over him. She shook her head slowly to herself. One of us has become enslaved to the other, and I don't know which.
Aaron saw concession in her face; his own lit up. "You're staying. It's the best thing." He slid his arm around her waist and lifted her to him in a kiss of pure joy. As for Tess, she swept all thoughts of fallen women aside in her determination to take each day one kiss at a time.
And although time and tide wait for no man, they traded a little of both for the chance to make love again. Their coming together was lilting and carefree, the happy play of two children about to set off on a raft downriver, with all the world before them.
Afterward Tess had just time enough for one draft of a note to Maggie. It was horribly inadequate, but Tess promised a longer letter to follow. Aaron gave her the addresses of several yacht clubs which would hold mail for them: In Greenwich and Fishers Island in Connecticut; and in Larchmont and Manhasset Bay and New York after that. It seemed unlikely that the Enchanta and a letter from poor Maggie could end up in the same place at the same time, but Tess knew that Maggie, who was barely literate, would probably not write.
I will be back after the races, she finished up. And then I will tell you the most amazing tale yet. Be happy, Maggie. Our lives will be so much better now. You need not stay at that house. Use these funds to find someplace nice for you and Will and father. All will be well, now. Be happy.
Tess put the note and fifty dollars in an envelope and sealed it, and Aaron had it sent ashore. The crewman had some machinework to do on an engine part ashore and would not rejoin the Enchanta for days; Tess would not be able to learn her sister's fate until then. Not until that moment did the awful truth hit her: she was being separated from her family for the first time in her life.
Maggie would be on her own for the next week or two. There was little doubt in Tess's mind that her sister was about to be given the sack. But the money would arrive in time; Maggie could take a nice flat in town and wait for Tess. Maggie could shop, and buy treats, and dream of good times to come.
It was the best possible outcome, Tess told herself. She remained below in Aaron's cabin while the Enchanta weighed anchor. Aaron had not asked her on deck, which bothered her. Nothing about him had struck her as overly discreet. Was he ashamed of having her on board?
I'll have to learn proper protocol for floozies, she thought wryly as she stared out a cabin porthole, sensing the yacht being pulled link by link to its anchor. It was a brilliant and cool summer day. For only the second time, she was seeing Newport's shoreline. It was such a pretty little jewel, this city by the sea. Church spires poked through green trees as the town crept up the hill away from the historic, protected harbor. She searched for St. Mary's brown stone tower. Would Maggie go to mass this Sunday without her?
From her vantage she could see no evidence of the royal opulence that lined both sides of Bellevue Avenue, but farther down the hill and closer to the water she was able to pick out a dozen fenced-in widow's walks on the slate roofs of the well-built houses of Newport's sea merchants. There might be a wife on one of them now, pacing anxiously, absent-mindedly taking in the black hull of the Enchanta as it glided out of the harbor, en route to—where?
"I must be mad!" she said, jumping up. "The deed is done, the money is mine, Maggie is as fearful as any captain's wife—and yet I sit cowering in a man's cabin, waiting to satisfy his immoral whims!"
She slipped back into the guest stateroom. Her black dress was in the armoire, dry and neatly brushed, and for a moment she thought she'd been too drunk to remember hanging it up. A servant did this for me, she realized in a daze. For me. After changing out of the brocade dressing gown into her own clothes, she returned to the leather settee in Aaron's cabin.
He came in a little while later, wearing full yachting regalia: flannels, a blazer, a cap, and waistcoat.
He took one look at Tess and said, "I'm sorry, darling. There were one or two gowns in the other stateroom that might have fit you. Didn't you see them?"
That was another thing. Why were there women's clothes on this widower's yacht?
"I need to get off, Aaron," Tess said without preamble.
"Now?" His smile was wry.
"If you would. Or if not now, then at the first port you put in to." She tried not to look at him, focusing instead on the Rhode Island shoreline as the Enchanta steamed south.
"I see." There was a pause. "Is it because you're frightened of deep water?"
"Don't be absurd!" Her lower lip trembled; she bit it angrily. "You know why, Aaron."
"Let me guess. You're having too much fun?"
She swung on him. "Yes—you could say that," she answered, flushing. "If I were intended to lead this sort of life, I would have been raised—well, differently."
"And if the rose were intended to shrivel on its vine, it would have been made to look like a thistle," he said impatiently, drawing close to her. "Don't you see that, Tess? If you had stayed behind at Beau-Rêve like a good little girl, the chances are you'd have been wooed—perhaps seduced—by some lout of a footman. A life in service, a brood of brats—is that how you see yourself, Tess? What good would you be to Maggie then? And young Will?"
He touched her hair as if it were spun of glass. Once again, it was not only his logic, but his reverence for her beauty that brought her around. Tess felt more than flattered; she felt ... chosen. For what, she had no idea. It didn't seem to matter, somehow. The long-lashed lids of her eyes drooped and her full lips parted, waiting for his kiss: it was an opiate, and Tess was well on her way to addiction.
They kissed long and deep, until Aaron said in a voice slurred with desire, "Tess, you gave me your word that you would stay. It tore me apart just now when—damn you, Tess," he said weakly. "How can you torment me this way?"
The ache in his voice, more than his words, moved Tess deeply; she had never been the object of anyone's obsessive desire before.
"I'll stay," she whispered tenderly. "Until the seventh. I promise."
****
Three days later, the Enchanta was tucked all alone in the lee of Shelter Island. It was hot and still, a typical late summer afternoon on Long Island Sound. Tess was seated on the afterdeck sipping a ginger-beer, her mood languid and pleasure-sated. In the morning she and Aaron had gone shelling on a deserted beach. When they returned to the yacht Aaron had wanted to make love, but first Tess had insisted on setting out her shell treasures all around them. Aaron had stood by patiently, complaining good-naturedly of the torture she was putting him through, and later Tess, without feeling any shyness at all, had rewarded him by satisfying him in the manner of the French. Afterward, as they lay in one another's arms, he confessed to her that his wife had steadfastly refused to indulge him in the act, which he said all men enjoyed to an intense degree. Tess found his confession fascinating, as she found everything about him fascinating.
She was also fascinated with the yacht. Aaron had given her a complete tour, from the wheelhouse to the engine room, and Tess had met Captain Oberlin and most of the crew. They called her Miss Moran and were brutally polite. Tess had not yet found the courage to look any one of them in the eye. It was much easier, she was discovering, to serve than to be served; it took skill and practice to accept a ginger-beer without feeling gratitude.
Lunch was being served to them on the afterdeck. After the last dish was set down, Tess sighed happily: they were alone again. It could not last, this isolation—they were getting closer to New York and to Aaron's circle of friends—but
for the moment Tess was serene. She felt utterly feminine in the ice-blue gown he'd bought for her on the Connecticut shore. And she had a hat to match: In her time alone, while Aaron reviewed his stock portfolio, she designed hats. Hats and gowns, but mostly hats. She had a drawer full of sketches, and two or three actual hats she'd made from scraps of trim she'd scrounged from the small shops in New London. Aaron seemed genuinely impressed by her ability to create something from nothing. Tess had responded, "You must have terribly low expectations of women. Some of us can be quite useful ornaments, you know."
And he had scolded her, again, for being so defensive.
He was watching her now, in his thoughtful, appraising way, stroking his goatee, a look of beguiling tenderness in his eyes.
"You don't like this dress, after all," she teased. They had laughed over the fact that Mrs. Astor took ninety gowns to Newport with her for the season. Tess had three.
"The dress is perfect on you."
"What, then? You've hardly spoken in the last hour."
He reached into his blazer pocket and tossed a small envelope across to her. "From your sister," he said. "Mac came aboard at eleven."
"He's back then! What news of Maggie?" she cried, snatching up the letter.
"I assume it's all in there," Aaron answered in a terse voice.
"You should have told me about this at once," she said excitedly, tearing it open.
"Tess, must you look so damned young? You look like a schoolgirl at Christmas holiday!"
Tess heard none of it. She read:
Dear Tess,
Well a surprize! How awful re M. Hillyard. The other man sounds ever so nice. I gave the man who bruought your note one $ to take this back, not too much I hope. It doesn't matter about my job because you will never guess. Birget is going it on her own & wants me. I may need a bit of your mony but only at frist. I do miss you. Yours sincerly with love, Maggie.
Tess's face skidded through half a dozen emotions before coming to rest in a bank of sorrow.
"Well? Has the wicked Cornelia extracted her revenge? Is Maggie cruelly dismissed?"
"Maggie doesn't say, but then she wouldn't," Tess admitted, oblivious to his sarcasm. "She would hate to alarm me. The head laundry maid has decided to start up her own business and wants Maggie. Of course, I should have guessed all this. Even though Maggie is much too slow for a rush-around like Bridget, Bridget will get around that—she'll pay Maggie by the piece and Maggie will work 'til she drops. Oh, damn. Oh, damn."
"May I see the letter?"
Tess handed it over, her mind and heart racing back to Newport. Aaron read it through and said, "Your sister sounds far more spunky than you give her credit for."
"You don't know her. She puts on a brave front."
"You're convinced that her health will suffer adversely if she goes to work for this Bridget?"
"Of course. What was I thinking of?"
"Hold on, Tess. Rein in that Irish fatalism for once. Send Maggie another letter offering her a job in your millinery shop. Spell out the terms—her wages and responsibilities. Be businesslike. Try not to sound like a mother hen, or a charity warden."
Her face lit up with gratitude. "That's just the right tone to take!" She reached across the table for his hand. "Aaron—oh, Aaron, I seem always to need bailing out. Why do you bother with me?" she murmured.
His look was steady. "Because I love you, Tess. Don't you know that?"
"I never thought of you and ... of love," she answered quietly, taking up her fork again.
"There are all kinds of love, Tess. You said so yourself."
She was afraid to ask which kind was his. For now, it was enough that he loved her. Without him, where would she be?
****
The Enchanta continued on her rambling trek westward. Except for the time they put into New London for supplies, the Enchanta had stayed to herself, searching out quiet anchorages which lacked the amenities that attracted the more glittering New York yachts. Tess rarely went ashore; with no chaperone aboard, there was not even the illusion of propriety. Besides, they were utterly content in one another's company. Tess had much to learn, and Aaron, it seemed to her, knew everything.
He liked things American: wine from California; Herman Melville's romances; the Caribbean watercolors of Winslow Homer. He railed against Newport's slavish and ignorant devotion to Continental art and went to great pains to explain to Tess that there was, indeed, life after the French Renaissance. Some of it she took in, some of it she didn't; but always, always she was in awe of him. And intensely curious: she never stopped asking questions, and he never lost patience with her.
One afternoon, about a week after they left Newport, the Enchanta was anchored in a snug, clear lagoon behind Eaton's Neck, and Tess and Aaron were enjoying the afternoon, she with her sketchbook, he with his ever-present correspondence, when a large schooner-rigged yacht reached smartly up the narrow channel, headed into the wind, and dropped its anchor. Sails were lowered and furled, and a pretty little rowing skiff put over the side immediately.
Aaron, watching through binoculars, said, "It's the Xanadu, Jim McAllister's schooner. He's coming over."
Tess stood up immediately, clutching her sketchpad. "I'll wait below."
"No, you won't. Stay where you are. From now on it's useless to hide." Aaron strolled forward to the gangway to greet his friend.
From her wicker chair Tess heard a loud voice boom out, "Pipe me aboard, you old son of a bitch! It was damn lucky that it's a spring tide and I could see you over the bar—and have the water to come in after you!"
"Lucky indeed," Aaron called down ironically.
Irony was lost on McAllister. Everything about him—from his bushy gray beard to his across-the-water voice, was exaggerated; subtleties escaped him. Introductions were made. He accepted Tess's presence implicitly. The wicker chair underneath him groaned as he leaned forward and said in a half-threat to Tess, "I suppose that like most women, you prefer steaming on an even keel to the heeled-over thrill of a sailing yacht?"
Before Tess could answer Aaron said, "Speaking of which, McAllister, that was some devilish sailing to bring the Xanadu in here. It's a pity we won't be here to see you beat out the channel."
"Oh? Where are you bound?"
"Sandy Hook, of course, for the Cup Races."
"Why, man, you can be there in a day. Stay on: fill me in on the craziness at Newport. Is it true that that fool Lehr organized a dogs' dinner for a hundred canines? The papers were full of it over here; I remember something about a dachshund collapsed over its plate of foie gras. Have things really sunk so low as that?" he asked, chuckling over his pun.
"Mac, you know better than to believe the papers."
"It isn't true, then?"
"Not at all. In fact it was a plate of stewed liver."
The men exchanged grins and tapped their glasses together. It was obvious to Tess that they shared a contempt for the summer absurdity known as high season in Newport.
"Why are you a part of it?" she asked Aaron later when the Enchanta was on its way again, steaming ever closer to their destination. "You just spent an hour with that man mocking the hollowness of Newport Society. So why do you share in their rituals?" She had never really forgiven him for having been a guest at the Servants' Ball.
"My Tess, a radical? I think I've told you that among that decadent crowd are two or three whom I call friends. And I confess I find Newport's vulgarity a refreshing change of pace: it's amusing, in a rather stupid way. And finally—well, I found you in Newport. It will always have a place in my heart for that."
He took her in his arms then and kissed her, despite the fact that they were standing at the stern rail in view of some of the crew. "I begrudged McAllister's hour aboard, Tess; it was an hour less I had with you alone," he murmured, burying his face in her hair. "I suppose it can only get worse."
"Do we have to go to New York for the America's Cup Races?" she asked in a small voice.
; "I'm afraid so, darling. I've watched every defense of the Cup for the last twenty-five years. It's become a sacred tradition between me and some of my friends. I can't let them down."
"In that case, can we hide the Enchanta somewhere until the day of the first race?" she whispered, tracing the line of his brow in the deepening September twilight.
"I don't see how. She's not that small a yacht."
"I dread having to face your friends, Aaron. I can't expect them all to be as indifferent to my position as Mr. McAllister was."
"Nonsense. Most of my friends are—call them philosophers, Tess. They're a tolerant bunch."
The sun's red flames hid the flush in her cheeks. "You mean, they all have lovers too?"
"It's not unusual, Tess. You see how it is in Newport: the wives are busy running their three-ring circuses while their husbands stay behind in the City earning the money to pay for it all. After all, to spend half a million in Newport in eight weeks is not unusual. Add to that, the marriages are almost never love matches. Does it surprise you that the men take lovers?"
"It surprises me that you speak of it so easily," she said quietly. "When Mrs. Gould was alive, did you—"
"Yes."
"Oh. And afterward—"
"Of course. But none, none like you. I sound like a dotard, I know. Well, maybe this is what age and experience have taught me: to know the real thing when at last I see it. But you are so young. How can you know the sound of truth when you hear it?" he asked her sadly. "I love you, Tess."
"You love your friends as well," she countered.
"There are many kinds of love, Tess. Do you care for Maggie any less because you are with me?"
"I suppose I must," she answered, staring at the dark, rippling wake of the Enchanta. "I'm taking from her to give to you."
"That's your head speaking, Tess, not your heart."
"It may be. No doubt it's my head that tells me I must make choices while you seem not to have the need."
By The Sea, Book One: Tess Page 12