The Drifter

by Susan Wiggs

  This was getting ridiculous, she realized, hurrying through her ablutions. Purely ridiculous. She was obsessed, a lovesick mooncalf. Most girls got over this sort of affliction by the age of fifteen.

  Except when Leah was fifteen, she was thinking about natural philosophy, not affairs of the heart. The only man she had thought of had been her father. Looking back, she could see that her complete adulation suited him just fine. She didn’t realize it then, but his male pride had needed her unwavering worship. Not her love, though. That was something she kept hidden inside, a gift without a recipient.

  In some ways, she thought, drying herself off and dressing again, she was as crippled as Bowie Dawson.

  On her way in to supper, she passed through the kitchen, stopping to inhale deeply. Catching Iona’s eye, she said, “Roast salmon?” Iona nodded vigorously and angled a bowl of freshly hulled strawberries so Leah could see. Her mouth started to water. She made herself ask, “Is Mr. Underhill back?” She gestured toward the front guest room.

  Iona shook her head and pointed out the window at the harbor. Leah turned away quickly, hiding a scowl. Then, with jerky, exasperated movements, she filled a tin pail with salmon and strawberries and half a loaf of bread.

  “I’ll have to take this down to the stubborn fool,” she said.

  Iona nodded, a sly smile on her silent mouth.

  Leah realized just who the fool was, but she didn’t stop in her dogged march to the waterfront. A new ship had arrived—a whaler, by the looks of it, but the whalers usually went on to Seattle or Tacoma after a brief stop in Coupeville. A pair of sailors ambled past, and she heard their insolent murmurs. Whether the comment was for the food or for her, she couldn’t tell. She didn’t care.

  She stomped down the dock and dropped onto Jackson’s boat, grabbing the ratlines as the schooner listed. She went down the ladder to the galley.

  “Mr. Underhill,” she said loudly, “you need to eat some sup—oh!”

  Leah froze.

  Like her, Jackson had obviously had a notion to bathe. Only on shipboard, one didn’t immerse oneself in the tub. He stood with his foot propped on a low stool, scrubbing himself dry with a long yellow towel. He wore nothing but a grin.

  She was a physician. She had studied anatomy. The male physique was not supposed to have this effect on her. Maybe he wasn’t a man at all, she thought wildly, but a god. Some mythical being unrelated to mundane creatures.

  “Hello, Doc. Brought me something to eat, did you?”

  She changed her mind. He was a man. One hundred percent pure, obnoxious man. She dropped the pail, spun around, and started to scramble up on deck.

  “Leah, wait!” he called.

  The hem of her skirt caught on a peg. She jerked it free, tearing it a little.

  “Doc, if you don’t wait, I’ll come up there buck naked and chase you down, and don’t think I won’t catch you.”

  He would, damn him. She knew he would. She stopped on the midships deck and called over her shoulder, “Let me know when you’re decent.”

  “That would be a mighty long wait, honey. But I’ll let you know when I’m dressed.”

  She waited in uncomfortable silence for a few moments. The rendering fires on the whaling ship flickered on the distant horizon. She thought of the insolent sailors she’d passed in town and pursed her lips in disapproval. She didn’t care for whalers and the men who worked on them. A raucous lawlessness pervaded the big ships. Trouble often followed in their wake.

  She was almost relieved when Jackson said, “I’m dressed in my Sunday best, ma’am. Come on down.”

  She carefully descended a companion ladder and entered the main cabin. “Actually, I came to tell you that you’re not supposed to be up and about.”

  “My ship was damaged in the explosion. I have to fix it.”

  “You’re supposed to be resting with a disinfectant compress on your leg.”

  “I washed it real well,” he said, falling on the salmon and bread with an appetite she found gratifying. “Used that smelly ointment of yours. You want to have a look?”

  “That won’t be necessary at the moment.” She picked at her supper. There was never any ease with Jackson. She was always confused or at a loss or flustered...never just comfortable. She had a notion to tell him so, but that would only make him grin at her, mock her, make her feel as gawky as a girl once again.

  To distract herself, she looked around the galley. Every piece of wood gleamed with a fresh coat of varnish. It was clean and cozy, and it didn’t smell bilgey.

  “Well?” he asked around a mouthful of fresh bread.

  “It looks...different.”

  “Different!”

  “Much better.”

  “I’ve personally repaired and refinished every piece of this boat. It’s in better shape than it was when it was new.”

  Which was about seventy years ago, she judged, but she didn’t say anything.

  “It’s ready to set sail.”

  A phantom fist drove into her stomach. For a moment, she couldn’t speak, could only stare at him. “Set sail.”

  “Yeah. I stayed here a lot longer than I’d planned. It was you who convinced me.”

  “Me?”

  “Uh-huh. I was all ready to take off on a merchantman and let this boat rot in harbor, but you convinced me to stay and fix what was my own. And now I reckon it’s fixed.”

  Leah formed the word with her lips, but no sound came out. She tried again. “When?”

  “Soon.”

  “But your leg—”

  “You fixed me up fine,” he said. “I’ll heal.”

  “You didn’t finish painting the name on the stern.”

  “The current name is starting to grow on me.” He eyed her inquisitively. “If I didn’t know any better, I’d say you’re stalling for time.”

  “Why would I do that?”

  “Because you like me.”

  “I don’t li—”

  “Liar.”

  “Fine. I like you. But I’ve no business meddling in your affairs. I just want to make certain you’re truly ready to leave.”

  He encompassed the cabin with a sweeping gesture of his arm. “Short of gingham curtains for the portholes, I’d say this boat’s ready for anything.”

  “You certainly have worked hard,” she conceded.

  “Honey, this thing is varnished with my sweat.” Catching her expression, he laughed. “I guess you wouldn’t understand.”

  “Understand what?” He’s leaving. He’s leaving, leaving, leaving.... She shouldn’t feel shocked, shouldn’t feel anything at all. But she felt as if he’d just ripped her heart out.

  “This is the only thing I have to call my own. It’s the only job I’ve done that didn’t depend on gambling and cheating. Forgive me if I’m a little excited.”

  “There’s nothing to forgive. I understand. I have no idea why you’d think I didn’t understand.”

  “You’ve had a privileged life. An education—”

  “Privileged!” She laughed, though without humor. Spying an amber bottle in an enclosed shelf of the galley, she said, “May I?”

  “It’s grog.”

  “I know.”

  He got up and uncorked the bottle, splashing a drink into a pair of china mugs. “Cheers,” he said.

  “Down the hatch.” She tossed back the grog, grimacing and then holding her mug out for more. She drank the second round more slowly, feeling the liquor speeding through her, rushing false courage into her heart, her limbs, her tongue. “Now, let’s get back to my privileged life. I was raised by a man who hated me, and I never knew it until after he died.”

  “Leah—”

  “No, that’s not right. I never acknowledged it. The rest of the time, I wa
s simply pathetic, thinking if I just worked hard enough to please him, he’d love me one day. Yes, I was educated. I didn’t dare be otherwise. I don’t regret my education, of course, but it’s not a result of privilege or even a higher calling. I was driven by fear—fear that he’d leave me, ignore me if I didn’t perform.”

  “He resented you because you were a better doctor than he could ever be.”

  She sipped her rum, savoring the warmth as it slid down her throat. “And what sort of education is it anyway?” She forced herself to meet his eyes. “I can describe the physiology of the human heart. I can map it in a drawing, dissect it down to its minutest part. If a heart falters in its beating, I can sometimes get it started again. But for the life of me, Jackson, I don’t know the first thing about broken hearts.”

  He sat quietly for a very long time, until she started to feel embarrassed about her frank confession. Then he said, “It doesn’t take a doctor to diagnose a broken heart. Or to mend one.”

  She laughed dryly. “Listen to us. Getting drunk and pretending to philosophize.”

  “It’s what drunks do best.”

  She finished her second cup and held it out for more. As he poured, she said, “We really shouldn’t.”

  “It does no harm, not unless it gets to be a nasty habit.”

  “Have you decided where you’ll go?” She managed to ask this without letting her voice break.

  He corked the bottle and put it away. “I guess that’ll come to me once I set sail. You know, Doc, sometimes that’s the only way to learn how to do something.”

  “What way?”

  “Just by doing it. Not reading it in a book, but doing it. Tell me the truth. Did you really know how to set a bone until you’d actually done it on a person?”

  She lifted her cup. “Touché, Mr. Underhill.”

  He touched the rim of her cup with his own. “So are you ready, Leah?”

  “Ready for what?”

  He looked at her with exaggerated patience. “To make love.”

  She nearly choked on her drink. “What?”

  “That’s what you came here for, isn’t it?”

  “What I—” With a shaking hand, she set down her mug. “I came here because you’re my patient. I was concerned about your injury.”

  “You just happened to smell like a bouquet of flowers.”

  “I make a habit of bathing.”

  “And you just happened to have a delicious supper with you.”

  “Perpetua wouldn’t hear of your missing supper.”

  “You have everything covered, then, don’t you? All the excuses.” He grinned. “But all the excuses in the world won’t explain why you’re really here.”

  She pressed her palms on the table. “I’m leaving.”

  He clamped his hands around her wrists. Sweet heaven, was he going to force her?

  Alarm must have flashed in her eyes, because he laughed, his voice as smooth and melodic as a love song. “Honey, you know I won’t make you stay if you want to go. But I do intend to make sure you know your own mind.”

  “I...know...my own mind,” she said. Her voice sounded thin. Wavering.

  His hands were warm on hers, his thumbs circling her wrists, brushing over the pulse there. He didn’t touch her anywhere else, just at the wrists in a gentle, circular motion, yet she started to tingle in places he wasn’t even touching.

  “But your body, Leah. Do you know your own body?”

  “Well, of course.” A pleasant lassitude buzzed through her limbs. “I’m a doc—”

  “Don’t give me that again. Tell me what you’re feeling.”

  “It...tingles.”

  “What does? This?” He ran his hand down her inner arm.

  “Yes, but...other places, too. Places you’re not even close to.”

  He laughed softly again. “That’s because I’m thinking about touching you there. And you’re thinking you want it.”

  “You presume a lot, Mr.—”

  He leaned across the table and pressed his lips to hers, silencing her with his mouth and still not touching her anywhere but her wrists...and her lips. His were soft, bittersweet from grog, evocative with warmth. She moaned.

  “That’s better,” he said, drawing back. “Now can we make love?”

  “We can’t— We shouldn’t—” She felt flustered; her tongue was thick. She kept tripping over it. “No,” she blurted out.

  “Why not?” Leaning again, he set his lips lightly against her mouth, brushing them back and forth, back and forth, so that she was hypnotized as if by a clock pendulum. “You smell good,” he commented. “Hell, even I smell good. Why waste two perfectly clean bodies that want each other?”

  There was a reason, she thought. There had to be a reason. But for the life of her, she couldn’t decide what that reason might be. All she knew was that she wanted him, wanted him so badly she nearly wept. She needed his next kiss as much as she needed the next breath of air.

  “All right,” she whispered against his mouth.

  Brushing, brushing, brushing with his lips. She swooned with dizziness. “All right?”

  “Yes.”

  “Say it, Leah. I want to hear you say it.”

  “I want to make love. When shall we do it?”

  “What about now?”

  “Now sounds...perfect.”

  He took her hand and helped her up from the table. She was surprised to discover that she needed help. She reeled a little. “Leah,” he said, “if it’s the rum and not you talking—”

  “It’s me. The rum just made me more truthful.”

  He smiled and drew her next to him. “God, Leah. Honey, I’ve wanted this for so long.”

  “How long?”

  “I’ll tell you later. Right now, I just want to hold you. Touch you.” He reached past her and turned down the lamp, then slid open the door to the stateroom.

  She hesitated in the doorway. Between waves of fear and anticipation, she remembered the first time she’d come here. The schooner had been a leaky hulk, and the room had housed Carrie. Leah pushed the memory aside. She didn’t want to think about that now. She couldn’t. If she did, she would lose her nerve. And then Jackson would leave, and she’d spend the rest of her life regretting the loss of this night.

  “It’s lovely,” she said as he held up the low-burning lamp. A small writing table, a chest and a bench sat against the bank of portholes looking out the stern. The captain’s bunk was above a set of drawers in an alcove. It had fresh linens on it; she could smell the clean-laundry scent of them. A wispy drape of netting enclosed the bed.

  Jackson hung the lantern on a hook. “Come here, Leah.” He held out his hands, palms up. “Come into my arms.”

  She did, and when he buried his face in her neck, she knew she was lost, lost in sensation, lost in the wonder of being held by a man for the first time in her life. It was terrible to think about it, to think how long she’d gone without this, the most elemental of human touches.

  So she didn’t think. She surrendered to him. To his touch, his warmth, his caresses. She let him kiss her mouth and her throat. She recalled fleetingly that she’d told him before to take the decision away from her. He hadn’t done that. He’d waited. Waited for her to go mad, to promise anything, to want him so badly that she had no more pride, no more principles, nothing but a need that blazed through her like a forest fire.

  He lifted his mouth from hers and stepped back. Without ceremony, without being sneaky about it, and with a frankness that she found deliciously seductive, he unfastened the row of buttons down the front of her dress.

  “The day I realized you didn’t wear a corset...” he whispered.

  “What about it?”

  “You asked me when I first started wanting you.
It was that day. I started thinking about this and I couldn’t stop. Damn. I just...couldn’t stop.”

  “What day was that?”

  “When you came aboard and helped me with repairs. I helped you down a ladder. Put my hands just here, like this.” He demonstrated, holding her rib cage between both broad hands. “Do you remember that, Leah?”

  “I remember.” She’d been frightened. And fascinated. Filled with misgivings and trepidation. She still was. Jackson Underhill was a dangerous man, not quite in the way she’d thought, but treacherous still, like the sea itself, seductive and endlessly alluring.

  He finished with the buttons and parted her shirtwaist, letting it hang down her back. Reaching around, he freed her of her skirt and petticoat, and she stood there in nothing but her fine lawn shift and a blush that burned so deep she was sure she must be glowing in the dark.

  “Leah, you’re beautiful.”

  “You don’t have to say that.”

  “I know.” He held her upper arms and drew her into a long, hard kiss. She skimmed her hands up his chest and behind his neck, studying the firm musculature in a way that the doctor in her never could have explained to the woman in her or vice versa.

  She felt feverish by the time he stood back and took off his shirt. The lamplight gleamed across his chest and struck highlights into his damp fair hair. He was beautiful, but she couldn’t say it, couldn’t bring herself to speak at all.

  “Let’s lie down.” He held out his hand.

  She knew human sexuality from her studies. But the great irony was how ignorant she truly was. Nothing—no book, no lecture, or even a demonstration could prepare her for this: the vulnerability, the terror, the anticipation. The heady, insane sense that she was about to give all control to another person.

  “I—I can’t do this,” she choked out.

  “You mean you won’t,” Jackson corrected her, idly stroking one hand up and down her body, no hint of impatience in his voice. “Why not? Because we’re not married?”

  “No. That’s not it.”

  “Because you might get pregnant?”