Delia looked out the window. It was true that black, ominous clouds were piling up overhead, their low bellies snagging on the distant hills. The air smelled salty and damp, of the sea and rain. The wind whipped through the trees in intermittent gusts, making a low moaning sound that drowned out the sifting noise coming from the barn where the girls were winnowing the grain their father had threshed four days before.
Ty cupped her chin in his hand and turned her head. “I want your word you’ll stay off that leg again today.” “But—”
He put his fingers against her lips. His touch was warm and soft. Delia stopped herself just in time from pursing her lips and kissing them. “Your word, Delia.”
She nodded slowly.
His hand fell, leaving her lips feeling naked. “Now tell me what chores you have to do and I’ll do them.”
Her eyes rounded in disbelief. “You’d do women’s work?”
His mouth slanted crookedly. “For you, I would. Only don’t tell anybody or I’ll never live it down.”
She lay in bed while he did her work, drifting in and out of sleep, lulled by the sound of his voice speaking to the girls. She’d never had this luxury before, having Ty in the same house with her. Once, he brought her a cup of mint tea. He sat beside her on the bed, drinking with her, and they talked. Not about anything earth-shattering, but Delia knew she’d never been happier.
A storm struck with violent fury late that afternoon.
It had grown dark and the wind began to blow harder and steadier. It made a mournful wailing sound as it whistled through the eaves. Suddenly the rain poured down and the wind caught it, flinging it like buckets of water against the house.
Delia got out of bed, limping over to the window to pull the shutters closed. As she did she saw Ty coming back from putting the mares in the barn, running across the yard in his long-legged stride. The rain slashed down in sheets of black water, instantly turning the clearing into mud.
She hurried through the keeping room, hitching her stride to favor her wounded leg. Delicious smells wafted from the direction of the hearth and she cast a passing smile at the girls, who were setting the table with Mary’s fine pewterware.
She met Ty at the front door as he was cleaning his boots on the scraper. The rain had plastered his shirt against his body, detailing the contours of his muscles. Water fell in rivulets down his face from the soaked tendrils of his dark hair. His eyes glinted silver-blue in the weird half light.
“You’re soaked!” she exclaimed, laughing and repressing the urge to brush the wet hair from his eyes.
The creases beside his mouth deepened with his grin. “That wind out there is strong enough to lean on,” he said, panting.
He slouched against the porch wall to pull his boots off so he wouldn’t leave muddy pools on the floor that he had cleaned and sanded for her. She couldn’t help noticing how his wet buckskins clung slickly to his slender hips and long, lean thighs, seductively revealing … everything.
“Take that shirt off before you catch a chill,” she said, pretending to scold to cover the thudding of her heart. “I’ll dry it by the fire while we eat supper. You are staying for supper, aren’t you?”
He tossed another grin at her. “Damn right. Since I fixed it.”
“Hunh. From the way I heard it, you had poor Meg and Tildy doing most of the work.”
He peeled off his wet shirt as he padded in his stocking feet into the keeping room. Her eyes fastened onto the sight of his broad, smooth back, tapering to a narrow waist and tight buttocks, and her insides felt warm and melting. “Oh Lord above us…” she prayed on a sigh.
Normally supper was the lightest meal of the day, but Ty and the girls had prepared a feast. Roast turkey, succotash, bake-kettle biscuits, and for dessert a blackberry pie. He sat opposite her at the table, with a blanket draped around his shoulders. The firelight bronzed his bare chest and struck golden lights off his rich brown hair.
She watched him as he speared a piece of the turkey with the point of a knife. “I’m sorry we don’t have one of those newfangled eating tools like they have up at the Bishops’.”
His lips curled up as he chewed and his eyes smiled. “Don’t you like my cooking?” he asked when he noticed she wasn’t eating.
“Oh, no, it’s delicious, Ty.”
“I made the biscuits!” Tildy proclaimed.
“You did not,” Meg countered. “I made them. You only stirred the batter a few times.”
Delia put a biscuit smeared with molasses into her mouth. “Mm-mm,” she crooned, rolling her eyes. The children laughed. Ty laughed, too, and a warmth uncurled deep within her stomach at the rich, throaty sound.
But she was too excited to eat. She had dreamed of such a moment hundreds of times—sitting across the table from Ty of an evening, sharing a meal and talking of the day’s events, with the chatter of children to interrupt them.
“Did you hear that it’s official, Ty—Anne Bishop’s going to be Merrymeeting’s schoolmaster,” she said.
“Thanks to you.” He gave her such a warm smile that she blushed. “Bringing you here to Merrymeeting was the smartest thing I ever did.”
Delia’s cheeks pinkened even more with pleasure. “Anne’s really the one who’s doing it all. She’s starting the lessons up after the harvest. In her library.”
Ty’s eyes danced. “I also heard that Sara Kemble promised to write the authorities in Boston and inform them that our new schoolmaster is really a mistress.”
“Oh, no!”
“Oh, yes. Whereupon Obadiah threatened to take a switch to her if he so much as caught her looking at paper and quill.” They all laughed at the picture of the diminutive Obadiah going after the huge Mrs. Kemble with a switch.
Ty wouldn’t let Delia clear away the dirty dishes, ensconcing her instead on the settle with her leg propped on a cushioned stool. With the girls’ help, he soon had the keeping room set to rights and they all joined Delia around the fire.
Tildy crawled into Ty’s lap. “Tell us a story about Goosecup.”
“Goosecup?” Delia asked, smiling.
“Glooscap,” Ty said, correcting the mispronunciation. “He’s the giant who came down from the sky in a stone canoe to people the land on the edge of the sunrise with men and animals.”
“Go on with you!” Delia scoffed.
“Oh, but it’s true,” Ty said, looking as if he truly believed it. “Once, in the days before the light of the sun first touched the earth…”
Under the guise of listening to the story, Delia openly watched the animated face of this man she loved so much. She let his soothing voice wash over her as he spoke of the giant Glooscap, who with his magic belt of wampum could change himself into any form; of the great battle he fought to save the Abenaki people from the rule of his evil brother Malsum, another giant with the head of a wolf; and other strange spirits: Keskum, the frost giant; and Wokwotoonok, the north wind giant, who was even now unleashing his fury on the world outside their snug little clapboard house. She watched him and she thought: when he marries and has children of his own, this is how he’ll be. Oh, how she envied the woman who would come to know the joy of living with such a man.
She realized with a start that Ty’s voice had slowed and faded. “And there,” he said, low and soft, his eyes locking with hers, “kespeadooksit … our tale ends.”
Delia jerked her gaze from his, finding a sudden fascination with the flames in the hearth. “It’s late and you girls should be in bed,” she said in a voice that croaked. Ty started to get up, but Delia stopped him. “No. I’ll see to them. I’ve been sitting about all day long and I feel the need to stretch.”
When she came back down after tucking the girls in bed, she paused in the doorway to look at him. They had not lit the tallow dip, so the only light in the room was the fire. He lay sprawled before it, sitting on the bench with his back braced against the table. He’d discarded the blanket, and his chest was bared to the flames. He had drawn a tank
ard of spruce beer from the brew kettle in the corner and it rested in his lap. He looked rumpled and lazy and adorable.
A log on the fire fell with a burst of sparks and a licking of flame. He turned, fixing her with eyes that seared her with their intensity.
“They went right to sleep,” she said. Damn, why did her voice keep croaking like a frog’s?
“That’s good.” Draining the tankard of beer, he set it on the table. It was so quiet she could hear the ticking of Mary’s lantern clock and the sound of the rain dripping off the eaves. For the moment the wind had eased.
She came into the room, although she didn’t sit down. “They’ll probably wake up in the middle of the night though, screaming about cannibal giants who devour little girls.”
His mouth slanted into a delightful, lopsided smile … and her heart flipped over.
“Glooscap will watch over them.” He stretched his legs out, linking his fingers behind his head, elbows spread wide. The movement rippled the muscles on his chest and exposed the dark shadow of the hair beneath his arms to her fascinated gaze.
The room suddenly seemed too small. They hadn’t touched once all evening, not even accidentally. Yet she had never been more aware of him than she was at this very moment. Nor more aware of how much she loved him. And how much she wanted him.
She could barely breathe from the pressure in her chest. “Ty, I thank you for all you’ve done today. But it’s not right … your being here now. I think you ought to leave.”
His eyes blazed up at her so fierce and hot she had to stiffen her spine to keep from swaying. “What are you afraid of?”
“You,” she whispered throatily. “And myself.”
His arms fell as he straightened, slowly. He stood, bringing himself up right next to her. He still didn’t touch her, but he might as well have. He was stripping her naked with his eyes.
“I love you,” he said.
For a moment a fierce joy flooded her, so raw and bright it was like the sudden flare of a pitch torch. Then reality returned. And with it anger.
She slapped him, hard. So hard his head snapped to the side and he emitted a tiny grunt of surprise. When he swung his face back around she hit him again, on the other cheek this time, and harder.
She would have slapped him a third time except she realized he was doing nothing to defend himself. He stood rigid before her, his hair tumbling over his brow, his face flushed an angry red beneath the gray shadow of his beard. Her palm burned and her heart was splintering into little pieces at her feet.
“I love you,” he said again.
“Damn you.” She had to gulp in drafts of air to keep from sobbing, from screaming … from dying. “Damn you, damn you, damn you …”
“I love you, Delia,” he said a third time. “I know it’s too late, but I … I just thought you should know.”
He plucked his shirt from the peg where it hung by the fire and headed for the door. He stopped to put his shirt on, along with his boots.
He paused with his hand on the latch. “Delia …?”
“Go!” she screamed at him. “Go! Go! Go! I hate you!”
He went.
But as soon as the door shut, she stumbled after him. Her fingers fumbled with the latch, then stilled. She pressed her cheek against the wood and slid slowly to her knees, moaning and crying his name.
The nor’easter blew for three days. It brought with it two gifts from the sea.
They heard about the gifts when the militiamen returned on the sloop from Wells. Lobsters, the men said. Lobsters in such numbers had been washed ashore that they could be collected by the wagonload and used as fertilizer for the fields. And something else had come with the tide as well—a cannon off a shipwrecked French privateer.
All of Merrymeeting gathered on the green with their carts and wagons for the trip down to the beach. Just as they were about to set off, Ty rode out of the forest on his pacer, looking —in his fringed buckskins, knee-high moccasins, and fox-fur cap—more savage than the wilderness from which he’d emerged. Delia’s eyes went immediately to him, but when he turned in her direction she quickly found something on the other side of the green to engage her fascinated attention.
He loves you! her heart sang, a refrain it had been singing for three days. He loves you!
And then, as always, came the dirge that would cause her eyes to burn with tears and her chest to feel tight and weighted with despair. Too late. Too late. Too late.
“You ever been to a clambake, Delia?” Nat asked. He sat on the cart seat beside her, relaxed and smiling for a change.
Her husband.
Delia forced a smile and shook her head. “No, I never have, Nat. It sounds like fun.”
Too late. Too late. Too late.
“And good eating too.” He turned to Meg and Tildy, who sat, legs stretched out, in back of the cart. “Isn’t that right, girls?”
Nat had been softening lately. Although they were still solemn, the haunted look had left his gray eyes and on occasion he even managed a few smiles. Delia had expected him to scold her over her carelessness with the ax, but he’d appeared more genuinely concerned than angry. He’d reacted that way as well after she’d nearly drowned herself trying to rescue Tildy’s doll.
“There’s a goodness in you, Delia,” he had said that evening just before bed. “A real goodness. It shows especially with the girls. They’re coming to love you. Even Meg,” he’d added, producing a half-smile. Then his eyes had searched her face as if seeing her, really seeing her, for the first time.
The ten-mile trail to the beach was nothing but a pair of parallel cart ruts. As they followed the estuary, Delia could see that, indeed, thousands of lobsters had been washed ashore during the storm. They carpeted the ground, their shiny gray shells glinting wetly in the sunlight. Many still lived and the earth seemed to be undulating like waves with their movement.
By the time they arrived at the beach the carts were filled with the lobsters. Snagged between two lichen-covered rocks among debris from the wrecked ship awaited the sea’s second gift—a cast-iron, three-pound cannon. The men gathered around it, talking excitedly among themselves, for one shot from such a weapon would scare off a whole tribe of Abenaki on the warpath.
“We could drag her back to the blockhouse with an ox team,” Colonel Bishop said, rubbing one ruddy cheek. “She’s been partly spiked. Do you think you could get her to fire, Sam?”
The red-headed blacksmith caressed the cannon’s barrel almost lovingly. “Aye. But we haven’t any shot. Too bad that French bang-boat didn’t part with the cannonballs while she was givin’ us the cannon.”
“She’ll discharge a load of musket balls though and that can be just as effective,” Ty said. He glanced up in time to catch Delia’s gaze on him. She glared, then looked away. “All we need is a fuse and powder,” he finished, frowning at Delia’s stiff back.
With the wagons loaded down with the crustacean fertilizer and the cannon dispensed with at least in theory, the folk of Merrymeeting settled down for the main event of the day—the clambake.
It was a beautiful afternoon for a “bake”. Usually in the summer months a fog bank lay like a dirty gray blanket just off the shore. But the storm had blown away the fog and the horizon where sea met sky was a sharp blue line. The air was clear enough to ring and the sun bright enough to blind the eyes, and sea birds slashed and wheeled across the cloudless sky.
As they would need several fires for their “bake,” the settlers split into groups. Nat led Delia and the girls over to their neighbors, the Sewalls, and soon they were joined by Sam and Hannah Randolf and their brood. Delia was amazed to find Hannah up and about already. The women ooohed and aaahed over the new baby, who was nestled snugly within a pilgrim basket, sucking on a pap bag. Meg and young Daniel Randolf immediately got into an argument over who could eat the most clams.
Delia was sure Ty would soon amble over to their fire and she tried to arrange her face into the mask of polite indiffe
rence she intended to present him with that day. She waited, tense with anticipation, her eyes following his every move while pretending not to.
He joined the Bishops instead.
Each group laid stones in a circle and kindling on top. The fires were lit with a tinderbox—a quick strike of steel against flint, a flare of gunpowder, a glowing wick held to bits of birch bark. Armloads of wood were piled on the flames until the fires blazed. The stones had to get good and hot.
At low tide they walked the shingled beach, raking the sand and mud for clams to the accompaniment of the roaring, booming breakers, for the surf was high because of the storm. Delia had uncovered a small green crab and was poking it with a stick when a familiar voice behind her said, “Be careful, Delia-girl. Those are mean little devils. They latch onto a toe or finger, and they don’t let go.”
She straightened with a snap and started off down the beach away from him. His hand fell on her arm, jerking her around. The abrupt movement pulled the stitches in her thigh and she set her teeth in a cry of pain.
Ty’s eyes bored into hers, unrelentingly fierce. “Do you intend to spend the whole day alternating between glowering at me in fury and pretending to ignore me?”
“You flatter yourself, Dr. Savitch. Until this moment I hadn’t noticed you were here.”
“We have to talk,” Ty said between his teeth.
“I can’t imagine what we could have to say. Oh, perhaps you wish to discuss your recompense for sewing up my leg. I’ll speak with my husband about it. We’re a little short of hard money at the moment, so would a couple of chickens suffice? Or perhaps a suckling pig?”
Ty ground his jaws. “Damn it, Delia—”
“Excuse me, doctor, but I see my husband is trying to get my attention.” She brushed past him, hurrying toward Nat, who was busy untangling a bright orange starfish from Tildy’s hair and not even looking in her direction.
By the time the clams were gathered, the fires had reduced themselves to embers. The hot stones were swept off with a spruce limb and the buckets of clams were dumped on top the stones. Onto the clams went lobsters and over it all a pile of rockweed to hold in the steam.
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