by Tracy Sumner
"Tomorrow, Miss Ellie," Rory mumbled around a mouthful of chocolate filched from his father's pocket.
"Tomorrow?"
"The beach. We're taking the skiff to the beach."
She fluffed his hair, traced Hannah's dimple. He smelled lovely, like sweets, dirt, and little boy. "I promised, didn't I?" Over Rory's tousled head, she captured Zach's gaze. "Caleb?"
Zach shifted from one foot to the other and popped two buttons loose at the neck of his shirt. Avoiding her question, he grabbed Rory's arm and hustled him through the doorway.
Elle just managed to pluck Zach's sleeve between her fingers as he moved past. "You have to tell him. Everyone in town will know by tomorrow. The next day at best. Caleb will be home by then."
"I know," Zach said, tugging his arm free.
"See ya, Miss Ellie," Rory called, racing down the jail's narrow walkway, trailing his father like a pup.
Elle sighed and sank onto a stiff wooden bench, the music of Pilot Isle wafting inside the open door. Pounding waves and squawking gulls, the crunch of wagon wheels over crushed shell, ships' flags snapping. She accepted the meager solace, willing to accept anything but the sight of Noah's eyes, guarded and full of torment. A deep, enduring sadness armored by a wall of restraint.
In his trenchant gaze, she witnessed every misstep, every foible, every foolish poem wrapped around a rock and tossed through his bedroom window. If he cared to differentiate, and of course, he did not, Noah would find an independent woman, not a bothersome child. A competent teacher, an active member of a thriving community, a woman no longer infatuated with a young man who did not return her feelings. She had become the sensible person he had encouraged her to be. The proper woman her father demanded. She had relinquished her hopes of true love and an education, prudent enough to realize they weren't in the cards.
A gust of putrid air filled the room, signaling a receding tide on the marsh. She wondered if Noah smelled the scent and remembered. Elle's slick palms slid along her skirt. She gripped her knees and bowed her head. The man she'd encountered this afternoon was a stranger, yet she'd recognized him in a purely elemental way. Detected his wounds, as visible to her as hers were to him.
She had nothing to fear; the silly girl in need of a young man's acceptance had departed years ago. The mature woman who'd taken her place had enough good sense to stay out of trouble.
Only, her good sense had come at the price of her dreams.
2
"The tangles certainly make a sad mess of the specimens."
~ C. Wyville Thomson
The Depths of the Sea
Walking along a narrow street, who, oh who, should I meet?
Noah pressed his cheek into the sand, humming the ditty he'd sung as a boy. The rush and swirl of the sea mingled with the lilting tune. A strange dream, he thought drowsily. He blinked. Darkness. And heat. Vapor fogging his spectacle lenses. The warehouse in Chicago never got this warm.
Pushing to his elbows, he knocked his hat from his face.
"No bite yet."
Noah turned to find a young boy sitting beside him, legs spread, trousers rolled to the knee, a fixed grip on his fishing pole.
The boy gestured to the hat. "Your face looked kinda burnt."
"Burnt?" Noah mumbled, his mind clouded by sleep.
"You come to Devil Island to fish?"
"Um, well, I came out here to"—hide—"yes, fish."
"Name's Rory."
Rory? The mover of boxes into his coach house Rory? Elle's fiancé? Damn. The kid looked about six years old, tops.
"You didn't sail here alone, did you?"
Rory laughed, the skinny end of the pole dipping toward the sand. "My pa'd skin me then." He jumped up and dashed to the water's edge. "My friend brung me," he yelled and reared, pulling hard on the line. "Can't swim near the dock in Pilot Isle, with the boats and all anchored about. Devil is the nearest beach."
Rory raced back and plopped to the sand at Noah's feet. "Got any more? I had a couple shrimp, but used 'em." He waved the empty hook, the bait long gone.
Noah passed Rory the bucket sitting behind him.
"Sand fleas?" Rory's expression soured. "No wonder nothing biting." He shrugged, secured the pole between his knees, and easily baited the hook.
"Did you bring a pole?" Noah plucked his hat from the sand and adjusted the wrinkled brim.
"Nah. I'll just use yours."
Noah coughed behind his hand, not wanting to hurt his feelings. And, he had not laughed in months.
It felt good.
Rory squatted beside him, throwing curious glances at Noah's rucksack. Noah pulled it close, removed a short length of wire and a pair of tweezers. His hook had taken a beating at the boy's eager hands. "Where is this friend of yours?" he asked, curling the metal. A worthless chaperon, that one.
"Oh, down the beach aways. She tried to do a somsault." He wiggled his tiny toes in the sand. "Pretty wet now."
Noah dipped his head, hiding a smile.
Rory tinkered with the pole, shifting from side to side on his scrawny buttocks. "Are... are you my uncle Noah? The one I look like?"
Noah dropped the tweezers. He jerked his gaze to the boy's face and cataloged features as meticulously as he cataloged species of fish. Square jaw. Tousled gold curls. Conceivably, the jaw could be... and the eyes. Gray, like all the Garrett men. He felt a sharp prick and looked to find the wire embedded in his palm. He winced, snatched it out, and thumbed the dribble of blood.
Rory poked his big toe in a ghost-crab hole. "I heard them talking once. Real loud. Mad. Uncle Caleb said it was the same as walking 'cross a ghost, seeing me." A shoulder jerk accompanied the confession. "Then I heared my pa talking last night, about you sailing in on Mr. Stymie's skiff."
Noah reached for the small chin, tipped it high. Rory stared, curious and hopeful. "Where did you hear this?"
"Warped door at Widow Wynne's. You can listen lots if you're quiet. My pa says everything at Widow Wynne's is warped or busted."
Noah let his hand drop, unable to do the same with his gaze.
"You a professor?"
Seagulls scurried past, searching for a piece of discarded bait. Waves surged, nearly brushing their feet. Rising tide. Noah recorded this in dazed silence as he watched the boy fidget and squirm, a trickle of love seeping past his hardened heart.
"You a professor?" Rory repeated, tapping the corked end of the pole against his hip.
Zach's son. Caleb's nephew. His nephew. He swallowed, throat clicking. "That's a, a nickname someone gave me a long time ago."
"Why?"
He shrugged. "I don't remember the exact reason. People used to come by the house. The house where I lived with your father and Caleb." Where Rory lived with Zach and Hannah? "They asked me questions."
"Where'd you find the answers?"
Noah grabbed the tweezers and made little roads in the sand between his feet. "Books, usually." What year was the cotton gin invented? Why don't the numbers in my ledger add up? Is this a King Mackerel or a Spanish Mackerel? The questions had been as preposterous as the nickname. "They weren't hard to figure out."
"There's my friend," Rory said, pointing with the tip of the pole.
He shaded his eyes in time to see Elle swagger over the packed sand, her barefoot stride sure and even. In no hurry to reach them, she stopped once to skip a rock, again to stoop for a shell. The same girl, obviously. Head chock-full of mischief and frivolity. She waved at Rory and turned slightly, her stride faltering. Her hand dropped to her side. The other tensed around her basket handle.
She hadn't known he was there.
A moment's wicked pleasure flared in the face of her discomfiture. Hell, she had delivered enough in her day. He had left the coach house before dawn to avoid her.
Her uncertainty made up for his lack of sleep.
With a resigned shrug, she swiped her curls from her face, smoothed her hand over her shirtwaist, and started forward. He couldn't help noticing how
her dress clung in moist patches—a result of her poor gymnastic ability and her immodesty. Clung to her hips, the curve of her breast.
Look away, Noah.
He gave his spectacles a recalcitrant shove. No need to retreat. He didn't care how refreshingly undone she appeared. Her hair lifted in the breeze, and she captured the strands between her fingers. Even in Chicago, few women wore theirs that length, just below the ear.
Noah preferred long hair.
When she got closer, he noted that her skirt was tangled in her hand, gathered above any point of decency. Trim ankles. Narrow, fine-boned feet. Too, the years had eased the dappled preponderance of freckles.
"Such a surprise," she said and plunked her basket to the sand.
He frowned and scooted as far as he could without actually moving to a different spot.
"Thank you, Rory, for leaving me wet and floundering."
Rory giggled. "I told you not to do the somsault."
"Somersault. I agree. The first try was shoddy. Perfectly shoddy. Hence, I tried again, much to the delight of a group of fishermen sailing by."
Noah cut his eyes to her, his jaw dropping.
"Oh, Noah." She wrapped her arms about her stomach and laughed. The only other word he understood was, he believed, "fussbucket."
Fussbucket? He moved to stand, sand squeaking beneath his heels.
She circled his wrist with a finger and a thumb, a gentle appeal. "Stay." She nodded to the basket, curls bouncing against her cheek, smile teasing her lips. "I've brought lunch. Enough for an army."
Yes, he smelled her lunch. He smelled her. Honeysuckle and a dash of something woodsy, like moist earth. "I couldn't—"
"Yes, you can. You're too thin. You must be hungry."
Famished, in fact. A turkey sandwich in the train's dining car had been his last meal. Still....
His gaze sliced to her feet, her pink toes digging in the sand. Skin as soft as it seemed, he would bet. Scooting over another inch, he stared hard at a flock of sanderlings bustling around a beached jellyfish. "I don't—"
She shushed him, so he sat. Completely bewildered, while she chattered and shuffled, unpacking enough food for her army. Slices of ham, four chicken legs, a loaf of bread, a small round of cheese, three pickles, two apples, one orange, and a jar of lemonade. The necessities: tablecloth, napkins, forks, plates, cups. Once she'd placed the items in an admittedly handsome composition, she sat, skirt bunched beneath her.
She handed him a napkin. He folded the linen square neatly in his lap, yielding to the surge of relief to see her limbs adequately covered.
"I've brought dessert," she said and tucked Rory's napkin into his rumpled collar.
The males leaned forward, peering into the basket. A feast, a child's feast, lay inside. A chocolate bar, a bag of vinegar taffy, and at least ten different penny candies, everything getting mushy in the sun. Rory released a delighted whoop, which Noah silently echoed. He tilted his head her way as a small smile curved his lips, wondering if she remembered his sweet tooth.
A green-eyed glance, an impish smirk. He didn't know what to make of the teasing look. He had never known what to make of Marielle-Claire Beaumont. Mischief and shenanigans, pranks and rough horseplay, accidental touches and a fierce desire to protect. Helplessly, he glanced at her blotchy bodice, doing its best to dry under fixed sunlight and steady gusts of wind. Sinking his teeth into the chicken leg, he tore off a chunk and looked away.
Same old Professor, Elle noted with little surprise.
Deliberate chewing, measured swallows, a leisurely sip now and again. He ate like an aristocrat, long legs folded gracefully, hand propped on the blanket, not a smack or a slurp slipping past. When he finished, he plucked two apples from the basket and flipped one to Rory, who scrambled to catch it, hands cupped. Noah polished his on his creased trouser leg and took a neat bite. Rory mimicked, then attacked with enthusiasm. They shared a smile and a laugh, mouths full of apple bits.
Elle dabbed in the vinegar pooled beneath her pickle. It rattled her to see them together, looking like a matched set. Repeatedly, she turned to find Rory perched atop her kitchen table or squatting next to Widow Wynne's cat, and her vision would spot the hair, the eyes... suffering cats, the jaw. The square, handsome little face, the same stoic pout hardening the cheeks. She hated that look. Although she loved—had loved—both the faces.
In her youth, when one of Noah's dispassionate displays pushed her fury over the edge, she would make the mistake of gazing into his face long enough to witness a spark of loneliness, or merciful heavens, grief. Which only served to solidify her love like a clay pot in a kiln.
Slipping her finger between her lips, she sucked the tip clean of vinegar. The scent of wet wool drifted to her on a gentle breeze. Wool? Ah, Noah's sweater. She glanced at him, found him staring at her, a pale gray assessment. She popped her finger from her mouth as Rory hummed an off-key tune, a joyful, abstracted ditty. She wanted to know everything about him. Did he have a fiancée? Juste Ciel, a wife?
She searched, trying to read him. She could do it if he gave her enough time.
With a muttered oath, Noah bolted to his feet, scattering sand. "Rory, how about a walk?"
Rory jumped at the chance and raced toward the water; Noah followed with a stiff-shouldered stride.
Elle rose also. Her skin burned from humiliation, not heat. What did he think she was going to do, bite him? Of course, he had witnessed her letting the reins of protocol loosen a bit. And, she had been trying to trespass.
No matter, he was in for a blunt awakening. Elle loves Noah might be carved in every tree in the schoolyard, but that didn't make the message an eternal decree. He perplexed her, that's all, and if her knees shook, the shock of seeing him again made that happen. She stalked down the beach, determined to tell him what she thought of his haughty presumption. The nerve, the gall, oh—
She halted abruptly. Two sets of footprints cut into the sand. She shifted her gaze toward the water. Noah and Rory hunkered near the edge, heads nearly touching. Before she changed her mind, Elle settled her foot in the larger impression, heel over heel.
The smooth tickle under the arch of her foot sent a memory roaring through her mind. Running barefoot along the acorn-studded cemetery path, yelping as a sharp stem pierced her skin. Noah had stopped and offered his lanky back. She'd accepted without thinking twice and let him piggyback her the rest of the way. Accidentally, of course, and for just a moment at most, his fingers had brushed her ankle, circling and squeezing. He'd glanced over his shoulder, and something, something blustery as a summer thunderstorm, had passed between them. Something that made him avoid her for two weeks. Two weeks of tears and tantrums because the day after the incident, she found him kissing Christabel Connery in the darkened coatroom at school.
Elle blinked and lurched forward. She halted just behind where they crouched near the water's edge. Windswept and sun-kissed, they created an enchanting picture.
Her hands itched to touch.
A warning sounded, deep in her mind. Gripping her damp skirt in her fist, she leaned in, intent on telling Rory they had to leave. Now.
"There are two ways to determine its age," Noah said, flipping a bluefish in his hand. A ring-billed gull shrieked and danced nearby, begging for the pungent morsel.
"Deter?" Rory wiped a sandy fist beneath his nose.
"Oh. Tell. Two ways to tell its age."
"Is this one old? He's already dead."
"Well, growth rings on scales, or otoliths, would tell us." He tapped Rory's ear. "Otoliths are bones in a fish's ear."
"Fishes have ears?"
"Of course." Noah's lips parted in a smile as he leaned closer. "Have you ever chopped down a tree and counted the rings to tell the tree's age?"
Rory considered for a moment, nodded. "Yup, once with my uncle Caleb."
Noah stiffened, just the tiniest bit. "These... these are the same kind of rings." He drew a circle in the sand, then another around the first.
"Two circles. The fish would be two years old."
"How old is this one?"
Noah shrugged. "I'd need a microscope to tell."
"Microscope? Do you have one?"
He nodded.
"Go get it." Rory flipped his hand toward Noah's gear.
Laughter, deep and clear, rumbled from Noah's throat; he bent from the force of it. "No, no. At the coach house. The rest of my equipment is being delivered tomorrow. Next time, maybe."
Rory shook his head fiercely. "We gotta check this fish. I'm afraid he might be young. A baby without a mother."
Elle held her breath. Noah arrested his movement to throw the bluefish into the sea. He brought his arm to his side, the stiff fishtail brushing his trousers. "No mother, huh?"
"Just like me."
Noah swallowed, working hard to recover from his shock. "I'm sure he's a rather old fish. A grandfather, at least, by the look of him. I can take him home and check. If it will make you feel better."
"It will," Rory assured him, leaning close to his uncle.
They could have been father and son, two casts from the same mold. Elle sighed and pinched the bridge of her nose. Merciful heavens, how had Zach not realized the reason behind her fascination with his son? Her body overheated, neutralizing the nip of cool water against her feet.
Maybe he did realize.
The boys rose, Noah's hand clasping his nephew's shoulder, Rory making no move to shrug away. When they turned to find her directly behind them, Noah took a deliberate step back, Rory an excited step forward.
"Miss Ellie, we got a grandfather! I'll tell you how old later." He waved the fish close enough for her to get a good whiff. She didn't know how old it was, but it had been dead a long time.
Pasting a smile on her face, she ruffled Rory's hair. "We'd better go. Your father will pitch a fit if we sail home in the dark."