Her chest jerked with her efforts not to sob, although she couldn’t stop her eyes from becoming brimming golden-green pools of hurt. Or her lips from trembling open. He came within a hair’s-breadth of crushing his mouth down over hers. Never had he wanted to kiss a woman more in his life and he almost hated her for it. That she could make him want something so badly, and so beyond his control…
“I d-didn’t d-do that, Ty,” she choked out. “I didn’t t-try t’ trap ye, I swear—”
“Didn’t you?” He let her go so abruptly that she stumbled back a step. “Christ, just look at yourself! You were nothing but a ragged, filthy tavern wench the night I found you … in my bed. Nobody would ever blame me for thinking you were just a two-shilling tart all hot for a little roll—”
Guilt and fear had sent the lacerating words spewing from his mouth, but he shut them off at the sight of what they had done to her. The blood had drained completely from her face, as if he’d torn open her heart. Her eyes fluttered and she swayed. He reached out a hand to steady her.
“Ah, God, Delia. I didn’t mean—”
She shuddered violently. “Let go of me,” she said, her voice hoarse and strained.
He dropped her arm. Jesus, Savitch, what kind of bastard are you?
Ty made himself face her, feeling low and small and mean. He wished she had hauled off and slapped him, or screamed that she hated him. But he could tell by the way she let her gaze roam unselfconsciously over his features, as if she were etching them onto her heart, that she didn’t hate him, no matter how much he deserved it. She loved him and the knowledge terrified him. He didn’t want such power over another human being and he certainly didn’t want to give someone that power over him.
“I never set out to hurt you, Delia.”
Her hand started up to his face, but she let it fall without touching him. “Oh, Ty, I know ye didn’t. The whole thing was all my fault, wishing for somethin’ I couldn’t have an’ lettin’ myself believe …”
Oh, Jesus. “Delia, don’t—”
“That first night when I saw ye an’ ye touched me, I thought there never was anythin’ in this world more wonderful than you. I fell in love with ye then, Tyler Savitch. But I shouldn’t have given up my honor t’ ye like that. I shouldn’t have let ye take me like a whore.”
She turned then and walked away from him, and he came so close to calling her back, to begging her to forgive him, even, for Christ’s sake, to promising to marry her. But although he thought he would do almost anything to wipe the torment from her face, he knew that in the end calling her back would only hurt her worse. For what she wanted from him was love, and that he couldn’t give.
He stood in one place for a long time after she had gone. Then, slowly, he bent and picked up his shirt. He started to put it on when he saw that it was stained with blood. Her blood.
He walked out of the forest, down the long path, around to the sea. He knelt in the sand beside a tidal pool and immersed the shirt. He watched the bloodstain seep out of the cloth and mingle with the water, becoming steadily weaker until it had dissipated altogether. Somehow, it seemed that with her virgin’s blood he was washing away something within himself, something that had been such an integral part of him he hadn’t even known it was there until now, when he missed it.
Then he realized what it was. It was joy. For the last three weeks, since she had burst upon his life, he had felt unbounded joy just on waking up in the morning and knowing he would see that impish, smiling face, hear that husky voice. She had made him laugh and she had made him angry, but above all she had made him glad to be alive. She had made him want her with a hunger unsurpassed and still—damn her and that damn consuming, sensuous body of hers—unsatisfied. Yet he couldn’t find within him the courage to let himself love her, and so he cast her aside.
Taking his joy with her.
The pretty, beaded moccasins lay on top of his haversack, looking forlorn, the toes touching and the heels slightly apart. Ty squatted and reached out to pick them up. For a moment his hand hovered as if he couldn’t bring himself to touch them, then with a snarl of anger he snatched the moccasins and shoved them deep inside the haversack and out of his sight.
“Goddamn you, Delia McQuaid.”
He stood up, draping the haversack over his shoulder, and walked out of the trading post and into the bright morning sun. Susannah Marsten was in the yard waiting for him.
“I wish you could stay longer,” she said, blushing slightly as he walked up to her.
He shifted the pack on his shoulder, met her eyes, and then looked away. After edging up to it for months, Susannah Marsten had finally invited him into her bed last night. He’d at least had the decency not to take her up on it. Still, not going had turned out to be almost as hurtful to her as his going would have been. Within the last twenty-four hours he had managed to hurt two fine women, and all in all Tyler Savitch wasn’t feeling particularly good about himself this morning.
“I’m going to have to turn right around and come back again next week,” he said. “There’s a woman expecting over at Cape Elizabeth. She’s so tiny it’s going to be pure hell for her and I promised I’d be on hand in case something went wrong.”
Susannah twisted her fingers in her skirt. “Well, then … you’re welcome to stay the night here. On your way.”
Ty managed to nod noncommittally, while saying nothing.
They stood beside the big black kettle in her yard. The fire was out; the soap lay half-congealed in the pot. They looked down the slope toward the pier where Delia and the Hookers watched while the oxen were being coaxed up a gangplank onto the schooner that would take them to Merrymeeting. Caleb pointed out something to Delia and they heard her delighted laughter carried to them on the morning breeze.
“Are you thinking of marrying that girl yourself?” Susannah asked, trying for teasing nonchalance and failing miserably.
Ty’s eyes had been on Delia, but now he pinned them on Susannah and they darkened with sudden anger. “I have no intention of getting married. Not now. Not ever.”
Her face paled and the fingers she had tangled in her skirt trembled. Ty regretted the blunt cruelty of his words, but he didn’t regret saying them. He wanted no repetition of what had happened yesterday.
He clenched his jaw, glowering at the dark-haired slip of a girl on the dock, the real cause of all the turmoil, frustration, and guilt he was feeling. Dammit, take a woman to bed, even think of taking a woman to bed, and the next thing you knew she was talking about marriage and humming lullabies.
Delia would have had to turn around to see that Ty watched her. But she didn’t need to do so for she could feel those intense, dusky blue eyes boring into her back. The throbbing ache between her thighs, though fading now, reminded her of what had happened between them yesterday—as if she could ever forget. She knew she would have to face him eventually, talk to him … But not, please God, just yet.
Delia felt something brush her arm and she turned to look into Elizabeth Hooker’s concerned face.
“Delia, are you all right? You look as if … well, as if you’ve been crying.”
“I guess I’m a little homesick,” Delia lied. “An’ maybe a little nervous, too. About meetin’ Mr. Parkes today an’ all.”
That certainly wasn’t a lie. Letting herself fall in love with one man while promising herself to another, giving herself to Ty like that, so wantonly—Delia was sure her shame was etched in letters on her face for all the world to see. She had thought Merrymeeting would be a new beginning for her, a life of respectability. She didn’t deserve such a life now, and poor Nat Parkes and his daughters, they hardly deserved the likes of her.
Caleb boarded the schooner to ensure his precious oxen were properly secured in the hold. Elizabeth watched her husband walk across the deck and disappear down a hatch, then she took a step closer to Delia, lowering her voice. “Are you sure you should be marrying Mr. Parkes? What about Dr. Savitch? It seemed you and he … well
, that you two were …”
Delia bit her lip and looked out over the water, blinking back fresh tears. It should be impossible for there to be any tears left in her, but they seemed to be springing up from a bottomless well. And there was such a big lump in her throat. It felt as if she’d tried to swallow an egg whole and it had gotten stuck in there.
“I asked Ty t’ marry me, Elizabeth. He wouldn’t have me.”
“Oh, Delia …” Elizabeth looked back toward the trading post where Ty and Susannah Marsten stood talking by the big soap pot.
Delia’s chin went up. “ ’Course no doubt there’ll come a day when I’ll look back on all this and consider myself lucky things turned out as they did.”
“Oh, Delia, I’m sure you’re right,” Elizabeth said with heartfelt enthusiasm. “He’s a good man, but I don’t think Dr. Savitch would make a particularly good husband.”
Caleb leaned over the bulwarks and called out that it was time to come on board. Elizabeth started cautiously up the gangplank, but Delia lingered on the shore for a moment longer.
Her eyes burned from the tears she had shed the previous night and her throat was raw. There was a cold, hollow feeling in the pit of her stomach and an ache in her chest that she didn’t think would ever go away. She hadn’t gone back to the trading post last night. She had spent the hours instead huddled beneath the cannon in the burned-out ruins of the old fort, weeping until she thought the weeping would kill her.
Oh, God, Ty, but I love ye so!
But he doesn’t love ye, Delia. He’ll never love ye.
So why, knowing that, couldn’t she stop loving him? Pride … Oh, she had been so proud once of her pride. But what pride was there in loving a man who spurned you? He had thought her a two-shilling girl, and so he had taken her, and she knew she ought to hate him for it, but how could she hate him when she loved him so much?
When she thought of what they had done together, instead of feeling shame, all she could think of was the ecstasy … oh, the feel of his hands, his lips, his tongue, the wondrous joy of him loving her. When he had spilled his seed inside her, it had been as if the hand of God had touched her, giving her life. How could you hate a man who made you feel like that?
“Delia…”
Delia’s heart stopped, then started up again, slamming hard in her chest. Slowly she turned, steeling herself to look into his face without letting her feelings for him show in her own.
His step faltered and then he came on, although he paused when they were still a good two feet apart. He studied her and she knew by his frown that he was noting her swollen lids and reddened eyes. A corner of his mouth twitched with a spasm of regret.
“Good morning, Delia,” he said gently, tentatively.
Delia’s eyes stung with relief. After all that had passed between them she’d been afraid he wouldn’t even want to talk to her. She gave him her brightest smile. “Mornin’, Ty.”
They stood in silence, looking at each other. Finally, Ty drew in a deep breath and blew it out in a sigh. “I want to apologize again for what I … for what happened yesterday. Especially for the things I said—”
“Oh, Ty, I reckon most any man would’ve reacted the same when faced with a hysterical female throwin’ herself at his feet.”
“Delia, stop blaming yourself, damn it!” Although he had shouted the words at her, he thrust his fingers through his hair, a gesture she knew he made when he was more upset than angry. “It … it just happened, that’s all, and—”
“No, Ty. It didn’t just happen.” Pride kept her head up and the tears at bay. “I’m not ashamed of lovin’ ye. But I promise I’ll never speak of it again. Nor will I embarrass ye by throwin’ myself at ye the way I’ve been doing. But I would like yer friendship, Ty. I really don’t know how I could bear it if I thought we couldn’t at least be friends now.”
His throat worked, as if he were having a hard time pushing the words out. His eyes moved from her face to the bay at her back. “I would value your friendship, Delia.”
Joy filled her. He would still be hers. Not in the way she wanted him, but still a part of him would be hers, and since she couldn’t have more, she would make it be enough.
The joy was short-lived.
“You realize there’s a very real possibility that you’re pregnant,” Ty said, his voice now clipped and hard.
Delia was barely able to speak around the clot of emotion in her throat. “N-no…” she protested, unwilling to accept the awful possibility that she could be with child.
“Yes,” he pursued relentlessly. “And I want your promise that if you discover you are, you will tell me.”
“An’ would ye marry me then? If I was t’ be havin’ yer baby?”
He said nothing for the longest moment, then snapped, “I suppose I’ll have to, won’t I? You might have been willing, but you were a virgin.”
The lump in her throat was in danger of choking her. He hates it, she thought. He hates the very idea of marrying me.
She started to brush past him, but he stepped in front of her. “I’d like your promise, Delia.”
“Well, ye won’t be gettin’ it,” she said, spinning on her heel and walking away from him without a backward glance.
Cap’n Abbott of the coastal schooner The Sagadahoc Maiden did not look at all the way Delia imagined a pirate should look. He wore lace at his wrists, his hair fell about his shoulders in long blond locks, and he had a smile charming enough to flutter even the coldest of virginal hearts.
But then Cap’n Abbott wasn’t quite a pirate in the strictest sense. Rather he was what folks in The Maine called a contre-bandier, an intermediary in the profitable but illicit trade with the French settlers in Acadia. Of course, if from time to time The Sagadahoc Maiden came upon a lost or wallowing merchant ship, Cap’n Abbott was not above helping to lighten the merchantman’s load.
“An act of charity, you see,” he had told Delia with a delightfully wicked smile, while openly eyeing her bosom.
The light morning air fluttered the rising sails as they cast off into Casco Bay. The schooner was a smelly, bouncing vessel, but Delia barely noticed, so thrilled was she to be sailing off to the wide horizon—even if the horizon was only up the coast. She loved the sounds, the creak of the rigging and the swish of water at the bow; and the smells, fish and salt and wet canvas; and she loved the feel of the wind whipping through her unbound hair.
Elizabeth Hooker had an entirely different reaction to the rolling waves and the undulating shoreline with its stretches of rocky crags and stands of fir and pine. Caleb had taken one look at his wife’s white, sweating face and tightly pressed lips and asked the captain if they might retire to his cabin.
As they sailed across the wide mouth of Casco Bay, Cap’n Abbott pointed out the landmarks to Delia. The bay was filled with hundreds of islands and they all, it seemed, had names. A few were inhabited with old hewn-log or stone houses, and the shore was dotted here and there with fishermen’s nets and more flakes for drying cod.
Once, Delia spotted a seal swimming beside them, his sleek body cutting the waves and his head bobbing up and down on the surface. Cap’n Abbott sent one of his sailors to the stores below for some pieces of dried cod. He gave them to Delia, guiding her hand as she cast the fish out over the bulwarks to the seal in the water. Neither of them noticed Ty leaning against the gunwale, his arms folded across his chest, scowling at them. They were too busy laughing together at the seal who had rolled onto its back, flapping its fins and barking its thanks for the treat.
It took most of the day to cross Casco Bay. A large peninsula of towering pines and granite ledges marked the eastern boundary. Around the cape of the peninsula was an estuary, a broad gray channel divided by dark green islands, that stretched for seven miles into the crescent-shaped Merrymeeting Bay.
The setting sun was turning the sails crimson as the waters of the estuary began to broaden around them. Here, dozens of seals frolicked around the ship, but it would h
ave been pointless to toss them dried cod for they were already gorging themselves on schools of salmon and sea bass so tightly packed one could have dipped them up with baskets.
Delia stood at the bulwarks and stared in wonder at the stunning vista that surrounded her. “Oh, but it’s beautiful,” she said softly to herself.
She felt a movement beside her and thought it was Cap’n Abbott, but when she turned her head she saw that it was Ty. A warm flush crept up her neck and her heartbeat quickened.
“There’s a myth,” he said, “that somewhere in The Maine there lies a city made of gold. A city called Norumbega. Many have set out to look for it, but it’s never been found.”
The water was as turquoise and as clear as the sky above it, so that one seemed to be a mirror of the other. Dusky blue hills rose in the distance, but here the land sloped gently to the shore, a thick, rich carpet of dark pines, spruces, cedars, and maples. The beaches were broken up by dozens of inlets, green with wild rice and marsh grasses that rippled in the breeze. Five rivers, including the mighty Kennebec, started high in snow-packed mountains and, fed by hundreds of streams and lakes, flowed down to spill into this beautiful inland sea.
“ ’Tis here,” Delia whispered. “This is the city of gold.” When she turned to Ty again, she caught a look of almost worship on his face.
“Merrymeeting Bay …”
He loves it, she thought. He loves this place. And she was glad for him, glad there was a place where he could be so happy. A place he could think of as home.
Ty shook himself slightly as if waking from a dream. “The Abenaki call it the Quinnebequi. It’s the same name they give to the river spirit. They believe he dwells within these waters. It’s a sacred place.”
A cold shiver slithered up Delia’s spine. “Is he a friendly spirit, this Quinnebequi?”
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