The Paper Marriage

by Bronwyn Williams

  The official sailing lessons had begun little more than a week ago. Once she’d mastered the art of sitting quietly without expecting to lose her dinner at any moment, Sandy had offered to teach her how to handle the small sail skiff. “Having something to focus your mind on will go a long way toward keeping it off your belly,” he’d told her.

  So far it had worked, at least as far as her belly was concerned. She was no sailor and probably never would be. Twice she had nearly knocked him overboard by losing her grip on the rope—the line—it was also called a sheet, which had only added to her confusion when he’d yelled at her to grab it. The stick thing that was attached to the mast to hold the bottom of the sail swung around and struck him in the back before she could catch it. It had been one of several minor disasters, but at least she hadn’t disgraced herself by getting seasick.

  “Sandy, today’s not really a good time, but thank you for offering. I started my riding lessons yesterday.”

  “And?” he prompted. Sandy Dixon had an easy, disarming way about him. He would have made a wonderful brother. As it was, he was becoming a good friend.

  “Shall we say, I’m every bit as good a horse-woman as I am a sailor?”

  “That bad, huh?”

  “With blisters and bruises to prove it.”

  They were laughing—even Crank indulged in a cackle or two—when Matt strode into the kitchen. He looked from one to the other, nodding at Dixon, glaring at Rose, then turned to Annie.

  Rose watched his reaction. His eyes widened, then softened, and her heart nearly burst her bodice when he knelt down and captured one tiny, sticky hand.

  “She’s changed.” It sounded almost like an accusation. “Her hair’s longer.”

  It was also matted with cereal at the moment. Annie blinked solemnly and stared back at him. Even plastered with oatmeal she was irresistible. If anyone could soften his heart, Rose thought, it would be Annie. And she definitely wanted his heart as soft as possible when she told him who she was.

  “It’s even starting to curl,” she said proudly. “She has a tiny little tooth right in front, and she’s learning so fast—show him, sugar. Show your papa how you can drink from a cup.” She carefully held the cup to Annie’s mouth. Obediently, the baby slurped, then with the cup still in place, she grinned. Milk leaked out from both sides of her mouth to soak her sticky bib.

  Rose beamed approvingly. Crank looked proud enough to crow.

  Dixon looked utterly bored.

  As for Matt, he looked almost—well, she didn’t know what it meant, but his eyes were suspiciously bright.

  A moment later, his scowl firmly back in place, he told her he would see her in his office as soon as he got back from the village.

  Rose was pinning the last few diapers to the line when Peg came to say good-bye. Her gaze flew past him to where Matt waited with the horses. If she’d been busy, he’d been even busier. Their paths hadn’t crossed since breakfast.

  Peg was wearing a rusty black suit and a leather-brimmed hat. He smelled suspiciously of vanilla extract. “You take good care of him, y’hear? He don’t sleep much when he’s worrying, and he’s real tore up about the Swan. Don’t let him go to fretting. If he gets real quiet and broody, you swish your skirttail at him. He’ll likely fuss at you, but he don’t mean nothing by it, it’s just his way. He feels real deep, but he don’t like to admit it. What he needs is a good woman to pull him up short when he sinks too low. Strikes me, you’re just the woman to do it.”

  The old man was obviously referring to Matt. Confused, Rose stammered, “But I—he—”

  Faded eyes sparkling with good humor, he said diffidently, “I weren’t always this ugly. Had me a few good women in my day. I know what I’m talking about, Rosie. The wrong woman can cripple a man, but the right one’s like a good sea anchor. Come a hard blow, she’ll keep him off the rocks. Trouble is, the boy never learned how to tell a good’n from a bad’n.”

  “But—but what about—I mean, he has a wife.”

  Peg shot her a knowing grin and looked as if he would have said more, but Matt’s patience finally snapped. “Dammit, let’s shove off! Once the mail’s called off, the boat’ll be bound out, and you’d damned well better be aboard her!”

  Chapter Thirteen

  She had them all eating out of her hand, Matt thought angrily. Every last one of them. If he didn’t know better, he might’ve been taken in as well. Thank God he’d learned the truth about her in time, that she was as deceitful as all the rest, Bess included. Else he might have been tempted to—

  Forcing his mind away from a matter that could wait, back to one that couldn’t, Matt told Peg, “I’ve arranged with the bank to honor your signature. Make yourself known to them before you write a check, though. We’ve got credit at Stevens’s Lumber Yard and Shoemaker’s Chandlery. Luther will be signing on a crew. Remind him they’ll be working directly under him. Try to find older, more experienced men, but choose carefully. Pay bonuses if necessary, but get sound men, no drunkards, no bullies, no grumblers.”

  “Round up a bunch o’ hymn-singers, ’n’other words.”

  Matt acknowledged the remark with a wry grin. He’d never known a sailor who didn’t drink; a bit of grumbling was only to be expected, but he wouldn’t tolerate a bully. “The four he hired on in Boston will do for a start if they’re still around.”

  Peg nodded. “I’ve got a few more good years left, if we can’t find us another chips.”

  “I’m obliged to you,” Matt said, but they both knew which way that particular wind blew. After more than forty years at sea, Peg had settled surprisingly well ashore. With Crank for companionship and enough work to keep him occupied, he was content with his lot. And while Peg would miss his old life—and Matt would sorely miss the man who had served first under his father, helping to raise and train the boy Matt had been then—neither man would have dreamed of voicing the sentiment.

  “Them new iron ships don’t need no carpenters,” Peg muttered. “Reckon half the hands’ll be scaling rust.”

  “No worse than holystoning, but you’re right. Times are changing,” Matt agreed.

  The two mares, Peg’s a handsome bay, Matt’s a rawboned claybank, plodded through the powdery sand. Had the tide had been low they would’ve taken to the beach and made better speed, but with high tide lapping at the dunes, the rutted cart road was easier to navigate.

  “Time was, I thought you’d be building yourself a shipping line,” the older man commented.

  “Time was, I thought so myself,” Matt admitted. He had picked up his father’s dream when the elder Powers had retired. “Start with one good ship, a good crew and a bit of luck, son. Put your profits where they’ll grow, build a solid reputation for speed and dependability. After a few good years you’ll have enough to invest in a second ship.”

  And then a third. Matt had quickly expanded the dream. Small, fast schooners designed specifically for hauling freight from the West Indies to every port along the mid Atlantic. It was a modest enough dream in a day when great ships were sailing every sea in the world.

  Oh, yes, he’d inherited his father’s dream along with his name and his reputation for fast, dependable service. That reputation, he was proud to say, had never been sullied. Thank God he’d let it be known the day he’d sold the Swan that she was no longer associated with the Powers name.

  Just when, he wondered now, had the dream begun to fade? Had it ever been truly his own? After four restless years spent ashore, he was beginning to wonder. He’d been born at sea, reared at sea, treated by his own father as one of the crew until he’d earned his salt and the rank of chief mate.

  The invisible wall between a captain and his crew, so vital to maintain a proper chain of command, had included the captain’s son. After his mother had deserted ship when he was eight years old, Matt had been consigned to crew’s quarters, eaten at crew’s mess, expecting no quarter from his father, receiving none. The crew had become his family. Crank and Peg, st
anding in for his father, had meted out punishment for boyish misdemeanors and stood between him and one or two unsavory characters until he’d grown old enough to look after himself in that respect.

  Matt had been given his first command the same year his father had retired. Nearly every man who’d sailed for his father had signed aboard. They’d still been with him two years later when he’d bought the Black Swan, good men, one and all. By then he had learned firsthand the necessity of that invisible wall between captain and crew.

  It was over the past four years spent ashore that the wall had tumbled, brick by invisible brick. The last fragment had crumbled when Billy was murdered. Since that day he hadn’t even attempted to maintain a semblance of rank. Not that it would have done him much good, not with two old men who had known him since he’d been scampering about the decks on all fours, bare-ass naked.

  Having foolishly thrown away everything two generations of Powers men had built up, Matt was only now coming to realize where the true value lay. It was not in the ship he commanded, but in the men who stood with him along the way.

  Which meant, God help him, that the rules he’d lived by all his life might no longer apply.

  The mailboat was ready to cast off when Peg tossed his duffel aboard and leaped onto the deck, his nimbleness belying his age and infirmity. “I’ll get back to ye soon’s I look her over,” he called across the widening strip of water.

  Matt nodded acknowledgment, his mind torn between Norfolk Harbor and Powers Point. Under normal circumstances he would have personally supervised every nail driven into her hull, every board foot of lumber, every inch of oakum used to caulk between the planking. It was his duty as captain and owner.

  But circumstances, he told himself as he turned away and headed home again, were far from normal. Not only did he have a child whose welfare depended on him, he had a wife. A wife he didn’t want. A wife he was in the process of shedding. A wife who was supposed to take Annie off his hands so that he could go back to his profession.

  And now, dammit, he couldn’t seem to steer a straight course no matter which way the wind blew.

  He knew what he had to do.

  He also knew it wouldn’t be clear sailing, not when all he had to do was glance out his window when she was hanging out the wash, with the wind blowing her gown against her body, revealing the curve of her breasts, the inward sweep of her waist, even the handspan of roundness that was her belly and the slight mound at the juncture of her long limbs.

  He’d be salivating. Hard as an ax handle.

  Devil take it, he was swelling now, just thinking about her.

  After talking to Bagby, he’d been convinced she had done it deliberately. But since then he’d had time to think, and he was no longer as certain. Could the best actress in the world sustain a role this long? The first week she’d been there she’d been timid as a ghost, afraid of her shadow. She had gradually come around, mostly because of Annie. He had to admit that whatever game she was playing, she had done him right on that score.

  The first time she’d laughed aloud it had stopped him dead in the water. Who would have thought such a grim female, one who dressed in thick, ugly black gowns, could make a sound like water running over small pebbles in a stream?

  Not long after that she’d started singing to Annie. He would find himself lingering outside her door to listen.

  Could she have known? Had she done it deliberately?

  She fell into the habit of sewing outside on the porch where the light was better. Was it so he could look up from whatever he happened to be doing and see her there? See the way she frowned and bit her lower lip. He’d told himself it was only because she needed reading glasses, but maybe it had all been an act.

  He couldn’t count the nights he had lain awake burning, throbbing, cursing his own weakness. Reminding himself that Rose was a respectable woman, a friend of his aunt’s, and that he was a married man.

  And then she’d started leaving off her corset. He’d noticed it right off—a new freedom in the way she moved, the way she breathed. Even the look on her face, part relief, part guilt, as if she expected to be hauled before the mast for indecent exposure.

  He’d wanted to expose her, all right. Expose every hidden wonder, explore every delicate curve, every soft swelling, every secret treasure…

  The claybank twitched her ears as he began to swear. Peg’s bay picked her way daintily along behind. “Damn your lying tongue, Mrs. Littlefield,” he said aloud.

  His wife, he reminded himself bitterly. To think that all the time he’d been lusting after the woman, he could have had her in his bed.

  Had it amused her to torment him that way? She had to have known the shape he was in, it wasn’t something a man could hide.

  Besides, she’d been married before, unless that, too, was a lie. He hoped to hell she’d enjoyed herself, making a fool of him, because the last laugh would most definitely be his.

  As he neared the Point, the various structures looming above the ever-present salt haze, he set about charting his course. If he faced her directly with what he knew, he’d have no choice but to send her packing.

  But if he sent her away, he’d be right back where he’d been when this whole disastrous chain of events had started. Needing a woman to look after Annie; stuck here, high and dry, until he found one he could trust.

  As much as he hated to admit it, he still needed her.

  Worse, he still wanted her.

  “Judas Priest,” he muttered aloud, “How the devil did I fetch up on this particular reef? My ship’s barely afloat, my land is mortgaged, I’m married to a shameless liar.”

  The one bright spot on the horizon was Annie. Matt didn’t even attempt to define his feelings where Billy’s daughter was concerned. He only knew that from the very first day—well, perhaps it had been the second or the third—that tiny speck of humanity had laid claim to a portion of his heart that had never before been touched. Whatever it took to insure her welfare, he would do it, and if that meant dealing with Rose, so be it.

  Turning toward the paddock, he weighed the two courses open to him. He could either confront the woman with the truth and watch her try to spin her way out of the tangle, or he could pretend he didn’t know the truth and see just how far she would go.

  No closer to an answer than ever, he unsaddled Peg’s mare, rubbed her down and turned her into the paddock, then did the same for the claybank. Glancing at the sky, he judged the time to be just past four. An hour before Crank would have supper cooked.

  His belly grumbled, reminding him that he hadn’t taken time to eat dinner. Should he tackle her on an empty stomach?

  The wind was out of the southeast, laden with moisture from having traveled thousands of miles over the warm waters of the South Atlantic. “A mean wind,” his father’s old bosun had called it. Jerome Guidry, dead these past ten years, had carried more charms than a gypsy peddler. He used to warn the crew against bickering when the wind was out of the southeast, claiming it invariably led to bloodshed.

  Matt had never put much stock in superstitions; nevertheless, it wouldn’t hurt to wait a day or two longer before he set his plan into motion. Hell, he didn’t even have a plan. Seducing the woman and sending her on her way was no plan, it was an outright catastrophe.

  Dripping with sweat, he sloshed a dipperful of water from the wooden trough over his head, savoring the momentary coolness generated by his wet shirt. He turned toward the house, but before he’d gone many steps, he heard the sound of laughter coming from the sound side.

  Rose’s laughter. He would recognize it anywhere. She’d been here almost two months before he’d heard her laugh at all, but now it was an all-too-familiar sound.

  And for some reason, it made him mad as hell.

  Having placed Annie’s basket in the only spot of shade, under a twisted live oak tree, Rose stood in the dappled sunlight, trying discreetly to scratch her various itches while she watched her two visitors attempt to outdo one
another. Amused and even a bit saddened, she thought of all the years when she would have given a king’s ransom to have even one young man trying to impress her.

  The only thing worse than being homely, awkward, without a smidgen of style, was being intelligent enough to know it. She’d been all of that, to her sorrow.

  How very young they were, she thought now, watching the two good-looking men showing off like two little boys on the playground. And how very sweet. Sandy was two years younger than her own twenty-four years, but tried to appear older. John was probably about her own age, but with his serious mien and his weathered features, he looked older.

  “Watch this, Rose,” called Sandy. “I’m going to throw a bowline around that piling.”

  With nothing better to do, she had strolled with him down to the dock so that he could show her a few more knots. He hadn’t offered to carry Annie’s basket, which was getting almost too heavy for her to lug around. Then John had joined them, riding a horse he claimed to have cut from the wild herd that roamed the Banks. “I’ve had her less than a week and she’s already saddle-broke,” he said with that quiet pride that was so much a part of him.

  Rose admired the shaggy mare, then turned and watched dutifully as Sandy flung a rope toward the post, flicked his wrists just so, and then stepped back to show off what looked like a perfectly ordinary knot.

  She applauded.

  From her basket, Annie chortled and waved at a butterfly.

  John grunted. “You like rope tricks? How about this?” He swung a loop of rope over his head a time or two, then let fly. The loop drifted down over Sandy’s startled face to settle about his waist.

  It was the expression on Sandy’s face that set her off. She was laughing so hard she didn’t notice when Matt joined them, his approach silent in the soft sand.

  “If you’ve nothing better to do, madam—”

  Caught off-guard, Rose turned too quickly, caught her foot in a tendril of vine and flailed her arms wildly to recover. “Of all the sneaky, underhanded things to do!” she exclaimed.