Once, he glanced up and met her eyes, but she couldn’t read the look on his face. She wondered if he would spend the coming night in Susannah Marsten’s bed.
Caleb had just started reading Delia’s favorite, the Twenty-third Psalm, when he was interrupted by a sharp rap on the door. Ty set his rifle on the floor and got to his feet, but the latch string had been left out and so a second later the door opened and an enormous woman came bustling through. She paused on the threshold and her eyes raked the room, settling on Ty.
Ty’s eyes widened at the sight of her. “Oh, shit,” he said beneath his breath, and looked behind him as if hoping there had suddenly appeared a second door out the back.
The woman advanced and Ty retreated, going around behind the barrel chair. She stopped halfway down the path along the counter and pointed a fat finger at him, wagging it menacingly. “You can’t escape from me, you riphell, though you might think to try. My sister said she’d seen you skulking into town early this morning.”
“I rode in quite openly, if I remember, Sara Kemble,” Ty told the formidable-looking woman. “Hello, Obadiah.” He nodded to a small, thin man who hovered behind her. The man had a white mustache stained yellow at the ends and edges and small, pale pumpkin-seed eyes with heavy drooping lids. Ty gave him a quick smile. “What are you folks doing over here in Falmouth Neck?”
Obadiah Kemble opened his mouth to answer, but his wife did it for him. “We’re visiting my sister, but never you mind about that. I didn’t come here to talk about my affairs.”
Sara Kemble advanced, banging the swinging door open with her hip, stopping just inside the living area. Her husband slunk behind like a puny shadow.
She wore a heavy quilted petticoat and a white mobcap with trailing ribbons, and the whole effect when added to her bulk reminded Delia of a ship under full sail. She put her fists on her broad hips and looked around her. Her eyes passed over Delia, pausing only briefly on the Hookers. Caleb had risen politely when she first entered the room and now he offered her a tentative smile, which she ignored. Then her narrow, short-lashed eyes fastened back onto Ty. “Well, where is he? What have you done with him?”
Ty had attempted to arrange his features into a look of pure, cherubic innocence. “Done with whom?”
“Don’t you play dumb with me, Tyler Savitch. We sent you to Boston to bring us back a parson and I don’t see him anywheres. Knowing you, I suppose you drank and wenched away your time there, instead of seeing to the business at hand.”
Ty’s eyes were now brimming with laughter, although Delia noticed he still kept the barrel chair between himself and the awe-provoking woman. “You just looked right at him.”
Sara Kemble’s two chins snapped around and she peered again at Caleb, only more carefully this time, starting with the round crowned hat on his head and going down to his square-toed shoes.
Caleb swallowed so hard that his Adam’s apple bobbed. “How do you do, uh … Mrs. Kemble.”
Sara’s eyebrows disappeared into her cap and her small mouth formed a perfect circle as she drew in a deep breath. “Why, he hardly looks old enough to be out of hanging sleeves!”
“He’s old enough to have earned a divinity degree from Harvard,” Ty said, grinning at Caleb.
“Harvard!” Sara Kemble sniffed and her whole—and considerable—body trembled. “We’re simple folk at Merrymeeting,” she said to Caleb. “God-fearing folk. We don’t hold with fancy, educated ways.”
“Yes … Well, I…” Caleb cast an imploring look at Ty, which he ignored.
Sara Kemble’s fists went back on her hips. “Haven’t you got a proper tongue in that head of yours? You can’t expect to preach a decent sermon if your tongue ties itself in knots every time you open your mouth to use it. Didn’t they teach you that at Harvard?”
“I, uh…” Caleb swallowed noisily and pulled at his collar. Reaching behind him, he yanked Elizabeth off the settle and gave her a slight push forward. “Uh, this is my wife. Elizabeth. Elizabeth Hooker.”
Having thus been thrown to the lioness by her fearless mate, Elizabeth handled herself quite well, Delia thought, feeling proud of her new friend. First, she met and held Sara Kemble’s eyes until the older woman was the first to blink, then she dropped into a polite but restrained curtsy. “How do you do, Goodwife Kemble,” she said, using the old-fashioned term of address for a woman of the middling sort, a respectable craftsman’s or farmer’s wife, and most effectively relegating Sara Kemble to her proper place in the order of things.
Sara’s dirt-colored eyes looked Elizabeth over carefully and she nodded her approval. “Well, then. At least your missus appears to have her wits about her.” Then she rounded on Ty again. His grin slid off his face. “And that reminds me … Did you get that wife for Nathaniel like you promised?”
“As a matter of fact—”
But Sara Kemble’s scathing gaze had fallen onto Delia. “So this is she, is it? You there, girl, stand up.”
Delia stood up slowly and her chin automatically went up into the air.
“Law you, Tyler Savitch, anyone with a dab of sense can see she’s nothing but a tart!”
Delia jerked as if she’d been slapped.
“Now, Sara, you can’t expect—” Ty began.
“What I expected was that you’d have had the wit to bring Nathaniel back a decent woman to be wife to him and mother to those poor girls of his. Instead you bring the likes of this one and she no better than she ought to be. This is a fine state of affairs and I blame you for it, Tyler Savitch. I told Mr. Kemble you should never have been entrusted with the errand.” Seeking his confirmation, she turned to her husband, who still lingered outside the partition. “Didn’t I, Mr. Kemble? And you can see now how I was right.”
Obadiah cast an apologetic look at Ty. “Yes, m’dear.”
Ty spared a glance for Delia, who stood stiffly beside him, her face so drained of color that it reflected the flickering light from the fire like a windowpane. “Nat asked me to do the best I could for him. Just because Delia’s worked in a tavern, she’s—”
“We all know what she is. And you’re a lazy man, Tyler Savitch,” Sara Kemble scolded. “Where did you look? Not far beyond the tavern she worked in, I vow. You can hardly expect me to believe this little tart was the best you could turn up with the whole of unmarried female Boston to choose from—”
“Aooow!” Delia snatched up Ty’s rifle, holding it like a club. “If ye call me a tart one more time, ye old bawd, I’ll wrap this flintlock ’round yer fat an’ wrinkled neck!”
Sara Kemble’s jaw flapped open as if it had become unhinged. She backed up two steps, her hands fluttering up to her heaving bossom. “Oh, my Lord have mercy. Somebody do something. She’s threatening to shoot me!”
“Aye, shoot ye and worse!” Delia lifted the flintlock into the air. “If ye don’t take back those things ye said about me, ye old lard-faced witch.”
Sara gasped and her bossom swelled to alarming proportions. “Witch!”
“Aye, back in Boston we hang women like you. If somebody were t’ give ye a birch broom, why I bet we would see that ye can fly!”
Sara Kemble whirled around and hit the swinging door at a lumbering stride. She tottered down the length of the store so hard the puncheon floor shook beneath her feet. Fumbling frantically with the doorlatch, she craned her head around to keep a wary eye on Delia.
She flung the door open, but when she saw Delia wasn’t coming after her she stopped and whipped around. Her doughy face was mottled with anger. “You’ll rue this day, my fine hussy. And you, too, Tyler Savitch. The pair of you will come to rue this day.”
She slammed the door shut behind her, then flung it open again immediately. “Mr. Kemble!” she bellowed. “Are you coming?”
Obadiah Kemble glanced back once at Delia, a look of pure wonder on his face, then shuffled down the room and out the door.
The place now seemed suddenly quiet. To Delia’s surprise, Elizabeth Hooker ran
up and flung her arms around her. “Oh, Delia, I’m so proud of you for standing up to that awful woman.” She gave Delia a hard hug, then bestowed on both Caleb and Ty a withering glare. “And with no help from the other tongueless wonders in this room.”
Caleb smiled sheepishly at his wife, and then suddenly he bent over and began to whoop with laughter. “Criminy, Ty, did you see the look on that old battle-ax’s face when Delia threatened to wrap the flintlock around her fat neck?”
Ty’s mouth was contorted with the effort not to laugh, but he couldn’t keep it in and it burst out of him in a deep, rumbling chuckle. “She was huffing and puffing so hard I thought she was going to bust a gut!” Ty exclaimed, slapping Caleb on the back as if congratulating him on their mighty vanquishing of the formidable Sara Kemble. Only Delia wasn’t laughing.
“For years, folk in Merrymeeting have been edging up to the nerve to put old Sara Kemble in her place,” Ty said, laughing some more. “Wait until this gets around. The old bitch won’t be able to poke her head out her front door without—”
“It isn’t funny,” Delia said.
They all stopped laughing and looked at her.
“It isn’t funny,” she said again. She tossed the flintlock at Ty so hard and fast he barely flung up a hand in time to catch it. “She called me a tart and then I just went an’ proved her right, didn’t I?”
“Aw, Delia-girl…” Ty stepped over and put his arm around her, but she stiffened and pulled away from him.
“A proper lady wouldn’t never have done what I did, an’ ye know it.” She looked at Elizabeth and Caleb. “Ye all know it.”
She didn’t start crying, although she wanted to. She did turn jerkily around and walk stiff-legged down the long length of the room and out the door. But unlike Sara Kemble, who had gone before her, she didn’t look back.
Delia stood on the very edge of the tiny spit of land and gazed longingly over the broad expanse of water. The bay was lumpy with dozens of islands that resembled a flotilla of ships on parade.
Leaning over, she peered down at the narrow strip of beach filled with tidal pools and kelp-covered rocks. A lone conifer clung to a ledge just at the tideline, and a pair of gulls rode the wind currents below her, cawing noisily at each other. She wondered if they were quarreling lovers.
“Delia! Come away from there!”
She spun around. Tyler Savitch stood among the charred ruins of what must have once been the stockade of an old fort. Even from this distance she could sense his tenseness, as if he feared she would jump. For some reason that made her laugh. The wooden-headed fool. As if she’d come all this way just to throw herself into the sea when she could have done the same in Boston and saved herself a lot of heartache in between, not to mention blisters on her arse from riding that damn horse.
She abandoned her perch on the ledge and walked back toward him, stopping when they stood face to face, close enough to touch. He had his hands hooked on his waist, legs spread, hips tilted slightly forward. The pose was intimidatingly manly; it made her smile.
The wind snatched a piece of her hair and plastered it across her mouth. He pulled it away, smoothing it behind her ear, and a rush of blood pulsed through her body at the gentle touch of his fingers.
“Are ye in love with Susannah Marsten?”
He looked startled at her question, then color spread across his cheekbones. He forced out a laugh. “Jesus, Delia. One of these days you’re going to trip over that tongue of yours.”
“Are ye?”
Their eyes clashed, then his mouth crooked into a mocking smile. “Now don’t go getting your dander up again, Delia-girl. Susannah and I are just good friends.”
Ye’re more than that t’ her, Delia thought, but she didn’t say it. What she did say was, “She’s pretty though.”
“She’s pretty, yes…” He picked up her hand, pressing his lips to her palm, and his eyes glinted with a teasing challenge. “But so are you.”
To Delia’s unbounded delight, he kept her hand as they walked together back through the ruins. She seemed such a part of him, walking like this, hand in hand. She could feel his strength as his fingers wrapped around hers, in the flexing sinews of his wrist as he helped her over a fallen timber. His flesh was warm, invigorating, and his strength made her feel protected, cherished. They breathed in harmony and she wondered if their hearts also beat as one. She could do this forever, walk like this with Ty, hand in hand.
“This used to be the site of old Fort Loyal.” Ty waved at the remains of a palisaded wall and a crumbling blockhouse. “It was destroyed during the last Indian war and the unit was abandoned, though it never was much use in the first place.”
A single cannon had been left behind, its barrel turned orange with rust. The cannon pointed not out to sea as one would expect, but down the slope toward the part of Falmouth Neck where the rows of flakes stood. Flakes were wooden racks used for drying the ocean cod which would later be salted and put into barrels and shipped around the world. Several men and women and a scattering of children walked rapidly among the flakes, turning the fish over. The briny smell of cod filled the air in spite of the wind that whipped off the bay.
Ty stopped and leaned against the cannon, pulling Delia in front of him until their stomachs brushed. He laced his hands behind her back and her hands settled naturally to span his waist. The wind flapped his sleeve against her arm and billowed her skirt around his legs. He pressed his linked hands into her back, pulling her closer. The heat of his body seared her, and she felt the burning fever of desire in the sudden dryness in her throat, the lack of air in her lungs.
To calm her knocking heart, Delia looked toward the bay and the ocean beyond. “I used t’ wish I could go t’ sea. I used t’ dream about sailin’ t’ somewheres excitin’, like the Indies. Or even England.” She laughed softly. “And here I am about to set sail on the morrow for some place called the Sagadahoc Territory, which is so foreign I’d never even heard of it afore that night we met, and I’m not excited a-tall. I’m scared.” Her eyes sought his face. “What did ye used t’ wish for, Ty?”
His chest rose and fell, and for a long moment he didn’t answer. Then he said, “I’ve never wasted my time on wishes.” But she had a feeling the words were a lie.
Her eyes were on his lips as he spoke. She remembered the first time she had seen him, how she had wanted to run her finger along that sensual lower lip.
She did so now.
His lip moved beneath her fingertip. “You ran off like that from the trading post, hoping I would follow you.”
“Aye,” she admitted. “An’ ye did.”
“Yes. I did.” He straightened, cupping her bottom with his widespread hands, jerking her hard against him. “And you damn well know why,” he growled.
“Why?” she asked, meaning, Show me why. And he did.
His arms tightened around her, his head dipped down. He smothered her mouth with his.
There was a desperation to his kiss, almost a savagery. He forced her lips open, invaded her mouth with his tongue. She didn’t stop him this time; she prayed he wouldn’t stop himself.
She plunged her hand into his hair, damp with sea spray, twisting her fingers in it, pulling his head back to press her mouth into the hollow of his throat. She felt the erratic beat of his pulse, and his low moan was a vibration against her lips. His splayed hands cupped her buttocks harder, fingers digging in, and he ground his hips against her. He was hard for her and he wanted her to know it.
They kissed again, long, tongue-filled kisses that seemed to go on for eternity. Delia’s heart thundered in her ears. It seemed as if the crash of the surf below had entered her blood. Their choppy, gasping breathing rivaled the soughing of the wind through the trees. The sun beat down upon her head and the earth tipped and swayed, undulating in waves beneath her feet.
She flung her head back, rubbing her breasts against his chest, and she opened her eyes to the wide blue sky spinning crazily above her. He laid hi
s open mouth against her neck.
“D’ ye love me, Ty?”
“Oh, my God, Delia …” she heard, felt him say.
Her knees were trembling so violently they couldn’t support her, and she started to sink to the ground. “No, not here,” he said, pulling her back to her feet. “It’s too rocky.” His fingers fastened around her wrist, and he dragged her off into the forest. It was darker beneath the thick canopy of trees. The air was still, the quiet dense and pervasive.
She watched his hands as he undressed her, lean, brown fingers dispatching with laces and buttons until the short gown parted open. He massaged her breasts through the thin linen of her shift, drawing her nipples into taut, hard points. She stood before him with her hands resting on his shoulders, her head flung back, while he made love to her nipples with his thumbs and to her neck with his lips, and it was ecstasy.
He crooned love words into her ear as he slipped his finger along the waistband of her petticoat until he encountered the laces in back. He found one loose end and tugged, causing it to snarl into a knot.
“Damn,” he said, laughing, his breath hot and ragged against her cheek. “Turn around.”
He gathered up her hair and draped it over her shoulder so that he could smother her neck with kisses while he picked at the knot. But he became too distracted licking at the line of hair that ran up behind her ear and nibbling at her tender earlobe, and eventually Delia had to work her petticoat around so that the laces were in front where she could untie them herself.
At last the knot came loose and she pushed the skirt down over her hips. Ty was much more adept at dispensing with her shift. He wisked it off over her head. The air felt cool and soft against her bare skin.
He stood behind her, his hands on her shoulders. His lips brushed the nape of her neck. “I’ve been wanting to get you naked for a long time, Delia-girl.” He rubbed his pelvis against her bottom. “Do you feel that, Delia? Soon … soon you will feel it inside you.”
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