by Susan Wiggs
Tom Silver threw back his head and roared with laughter. His reaction caught her by surprise, and she lowered her hands to watch him. His voice rang across the flat water and bounced off the sides of the rock cove. Mirth transformed him from a brooding, angry woodsman into someone quite human. Human and attractive, with remarkably straight, strong teeth and lively character etched in the lines of his face. Except, she reminded herself, that he was laughing at her.
“You’re amused by this?” she asked coldly.
“You were too, a minute ago.” He was still chuckling. “Lady, I’m the one losing out here. I’ve got nothing. No justice, no ransom, nothing but your father’s assumption that I took your virginity. And here I never even got the pleasure of taking it.”
She gasped, her fist flying to her mouth. She hadn’t considered that. Yet now that she thought about it, her father’s assumption was perfectly logical. He believed she had been compromised by her captor. Of course he would. He had seen Tom Silver at his wild-eyed worst. A hun, or a Nordic chief, bent on raping and pillaging like the Viking hordes of legend.
“What?” he asked through his laughter. “You’re looking at me funny. What are you thinking about?”
“Viking hordes.”
“What?”
“Never mind.” She thought fast. “Now you have more reason than ever to let me go. I must tell my father that you weren’t—you never—” She broke off, turned away.
“Now, why would you defend my honor?” He looked genuinely amused.
She heard him take a step closer, could feel the aggressive heat of his nearness. “It wouldn’t matter if I did,” she conceded. “I am unfit to marry.”
“What, because he thinks I—” Silver broke off and chuckled. “Guess I’ve heard of men who prize an untried wife.”
“All men do,” she whispered. “It is a factual certainty.”
He laughed again, briefly. “That something they taught you at that fancy-ass ladies’ school?”
She put her hands down. “Believe me, if it were up to the ladies, it would not be the case.” She took a gulp of air. “I cannot believe we are having this conversation.”
“Then you should know,” he said, “it’s not the case.”
“But—”
“Maybe with that Ascot fellow,” Silver said with a grimace. “But I don’t know of a man with a lick of sense who would judge a woman by that standard.”
“I don’t know a man with a lick of sense, period,” she said, surprising herself with the insight. She stared pointedly at him.
“It’s a bluff.” He indicated the printed paper. “Sinclair’s a fool, but he’s bluffing.”
“No, he’s not,” Deborah said. “My father always says exactly what he means.” She stared out at the long blue horizon of the lake, the hard line where water and sky met looking so close and clear she thought she could touch it.
You took her, you keep her. Like a stray cat, she thought, and a wave rolled through her, gathering momentum. She knew she was about to burst, to break, and she could do nothing to stop it. Her father had been her anchor. Without him, what did she have to hold her? Why did she need anyone? She would have to make her own way in the world but did she want to? The only thing she knew for certain was that she did not belong in this wild, haunted place.
“There is no point in keeping me here further,” she said to Silver. “I am only an extra mouth to feed. And now you have no hope of recovering what you’ve spent to kidnap me. The only possible solution is for you to send me back to Chicago at once.”
“Doesn’t sound like you’d find much of a welcome there.”
She clung to an image of Kathleen, the sister of her heart. Kathleen and Lucy and even Phoebe would shield her, support her, perhaps one day restore her faith in herself. “I have other options besides my father,” she insisted. “That should not concern you.”
“Believe me, it doesn’t.”
She studied his face. He was looking at her with hard, assessing eyes, but the singular thing was, he seemed to see her. Not a commodity to be traded. Not a possession to be used and discarded. Not a brood mare to be bred. But simply herself. Which was more than she saw when she looked in a mirror.
“Please,” she said. “Let’s declare this entire thing over. I won’t hold you responsible for dragging me to this island and you won’t hold me responsible for the tragedy caused by my father’s mining company. We shall both put this behind us.”
“It’s not that simple. There’s not a boat on the way to Chicago every day of the week.”
“There’s the mail boat. I’ll take that to the mainland and then take a stage or a train.” She forced herself to hold his gaze even though she wanted to look away. “It’s over, Mr. Silver. Can’t you see that it’s over?”
Saying the words aloud broke her. The wave rolling through her grew too strong to resist. Shock gave way to the acute perception that her own father had rejected her. She felt her soul shrivel up, and nothing stood between calm and hysteria. At first, her sobs were silent, as voiceless as her pain, but when she drew in her breath, it came out on a moan of anguish so searing that Tom Silver actually flinched and glanced around as if he wanted to run from her.
But he didn’t. Instead, he put his hand on her shoulder in an awkward attempt to console her. “Don’t cry,” he said. “Don’t cry.”
Deborah fought for calm. She took the red bandana he offered her and crushed it against her burning eyes. Don’t cry. And at length, she drew composure from a well of strength she had never tapped before. “All right,” she said unsteadily. “All right. I shall not cry anymore.”
He made no attempt to hide his relief as he shook the telegram, then crumpled it into a ball. “You claim he’s not bluffing. That must mean he’s serious about this ‘unmarriageable’ horseshit.”
“What do you care? You just said you didn’t.” In spite of herself, she felt a welling of relief. Being unable to marry anyone was exactly what she wanted…wasn’t it?
“You think your Philip Ascot had something to do with this?” Silver stuffed the paper in his shirt pocket.
“I have no idea what Philip thinks. Please,” she said, feeling desperate. “You must let me go.”
“Back to Chicago,” he said flatly. “Back to your father.”
“Yes.”
“For God’s sake, why?” His earlier mirth took a dark turn. “Do you understand what he means by this?” He yanked out the telegram, thrust it into her hand. “Do you know what he’s saying?”
“Yes, but—”
“And you want to go back to this son of a bitch? You want to be his daughter again?”
“I can’t simply stop being his daughter just because you hauled me to this godforsaken island.”
“He thinks you can.”
She felt tears crowding her throat again, pushing behind her eyes, but with Tom Silver, tears didn’t mean a thing. “I need to see him, to explain—”
“You’ve probably been doing that all your life. Justifying yourself to a man not worth the effort.”
“You can’t stand the idea that I might forgive him.”
“He doesn’t deserve forgiveness.”
“From me, he does. You’ve hardly given me an attractive alternative,” she snapped. “Why would I want to stay here with a person who hates me, holds me in contempt, thinks I’m barely competent?” She glanced at her burned hand.
“I don’t hate you,” he said. “I don’t hold you in contempt.” He didn’t address the competency issue.
“Hah. You’ve given me no reason to want to stay.”
“You’re not supposed to want to, damn it. You’re a hostage.”
“Rendered worthless. And I’m asking you to release me.”
She longed for the genteel quiet of Miss Boylan’s staid halls and tasteful parlors. She longed for a life in which her biggest dilemma of the day had been whether to wear the blue serge or the cream silk to the afternoon musicale. Yet she wasn’t that p
erson anymore. She knew now that she couldn’t find fulfillment in such things ever again. But she had to find…something. A new purpose, a new direction in life. Simply hiding away in the north woods wouldn’t accomplish that. “I want to know what became of my friends.”
“They could be dead,” he speculated. “Judging by what the papers said, half the city was left homeless.”
“How did you get to be so callous?”
“I’m just stating the obvious.”
“Then you understand that I am frantic to see them,” she replied. “It is the height of cruelty to hold me here, where I can do nothing but worry.”
“Worrying. That’s something.” And with those final words, he turned and left her standing by the lake.
SIXTEEN
Deborah resigned herself to waiting out the rest of the season on Isle Royale. It was only a few weeks, she told herself, trying to stave off desperation. Just a few weeks, and then she would evacuate the island with the rest of the people. Once on the mainland, she would find a way back to Chicago. She refused to speculate on what might happen after that.
Judging by Tom Silver’s contempt, it should not be too difficult to persuade him to send her on her way.
She would not let herself think too long or too hard about her father. She would not let herself believe she meant nothing to him. His judgment had been addled by the fire, that had to be the answer. Surely he valued her for more than her worth on the marriage market. He loved her…didn’t he?
She remembered the way he used to sit at her bedside when she was small, tending the lamp himself because she was afraid of the dark. When Nanny MacGregor had warned him against spoiling her, he’d laughed and said, “She’s only a child.” And Deborah would secretly smile and snuggle down under the covers and fall asleep with his scent of aged leather and ink in her nostrils.
To keep from going mad, she decided to move beyond the confines of the cabin and explore the unique community of fisherfolk and loggers. Ilsa Ibbotsen and Celia Wilson had accepted her. They taught her the craft of quilting, and she showed them how to make absurd, elaborate hats. The news that her father had abandoned her actually worked to Deborah’s advantage. Now she had people’s sympathy, for she had been forsaken by the man who was their common enemy.
Except Arthur Sinclair was not her enemy; he was her father.
Desperate to stop herself from thinking about his refusal to come for her, she observed the people of the settlement, wondering with increasing interest about their way of life. In a shake house across the way lived the Lindvig sisters, who corked nets by day and in the evenings sat by their stove, knitting big colorful sweaters. They spoke in Norwegian, but always managed a smile and a charmingly formal bob of the head when Deborah passed.
Mabel Smith and Jenny Nagel were two young mothers, both widowed by the explosion. As their children raced around the settlement, the mothers looked on with a quiet desperation that tore at Deborah’s heart. She adored children, though she had never actually known any personally—another lack she had barely noticed in her busy Chicago world. She had always assumed that children were none of her affair, even though she expected to become a mother one day. Among her set, youngsters occupied the private, shadowy realm of nursery and boarding school, appearing only when commanded by their parents, spit-shined and as well-behaved as trained spaniels. The small boy and girl standing in the clearing at the end of the roadway were most definitely not spit-shined.
Neither am I, thought Deborah, and she was perfectly comfortable being that way.
“Hello,” she said, smiling down at them. Ilsa had told her their names were Paul and Betsy Smith. “What are you doing?”
The girl held up a battered kite and pulled a long face. “We can’t make it fly.”
“Papa could make it fly,” Paul said.
“Papa’s gone,” his older sister pointed out. “He won’t be back.”
With those words, Deborah felt a tremendous flash of anger against her own father, but concealed it behind a smile. “Then we must make it fly on our own.” She held up the kite and eyed it critically. “I know just what this needs.”
“You do?”
“Of course. When I was your age, I used to fly my kite in a great green park far away from here.” She did not tell them how closely supervised those outings had been, how she had only been allowed to hold the string for a few minutes before Nanny MacGregor had hustled her home. “It needs a lot more string and a long, beautiful tail,” she declared, pleased with herself for remembering the mechanics of kite flying.
“A tail?” Paul lifted his eyebrows comically, and she laughed, knowing he was picturing the wrong thing.
“Come,” she said. “We’ll need to go to the trading post.”
It was a strange and wonderful feeling to be walking across a field of knee-deep meadow grass, two eager children in her wake. Inside the dim shop, she looked Tom Silver right in the eye and said, “We need some string for this kite.”
He didn’t smile, his expression didn’t even change, but she thought she saw a twinkle in his eye as he gave her the string and a horehound candy for each of the children. They fashioned a tail from quilting scraps and went to the field again. Deborah instructed Betsy to hold the kite up to the wind while she and Paul ran, paying out the string.
“Now,” Deborah called, and Betsy launched the kite. It dipped, then caught the breeze and started to climb. The children cheered, their faces lifted to the sky, and the blue heavens were reflected in their shining eyes.
Deborah left them tending their kite, her spirits lighter as she walked back to the settlement. No one, she reflected, should have a life without children. They seemed so resilient, so exuberant, as wild and natural as the terns flying over the lake. Deborah wondered if she had ever been like that, and realized with a twinge of regret that, other than sliding down the banister of the Huron Avenue mansion, she had not. An army of nannies, governesses and tutors had channeled whatever natural joy she possessed into dignified reserve. Sometimes she wondered what it would have been like if her mother had lived. Would they have flown a kite or picked flowers together? Would her mother have made a difference?
She looked up at the autumn sky over Isle Royale, and just for a moment, she managed to recapture the faint, ineffable feeling from her childhood that proved to her, beyond doubt, that she’d had a mother who’d loved her. The memory of that one vivid precious moment, that voice from her past, reminded her of something she had always known in the depths of her heart—if her mother lived, it would have made all the difference in the world.
Dear heaven, she wished her mother were alive. She needed someone with the experience to know the way of things, someone who loved her enough to be honest with her about the matters that occupied a young woman’s thoughts. Was a woman required to lie in tight-lipped submission while her husband pushed at her, poked, thrust and panted? Was a woman required to endure that, night after night, for all the nights of her marriage?
No wonder no one ever talked about it. No wonder youngsters were swiftly hushed when they asked questions about men and women and the ways of married people.
But what of the yearning that sometimes swept over her unexpectedly? There was something in her makeup, something weak and needy, that made her want to be cherished and held, not fawned over but loved. She couldn’t help herself. She wanted that. And she sometimes thought she would like to be someone’s mother. For no particular reason, she thought she might be good at it.
The old, old ache of loss had a new sharp edge, because now she felt she had lost her father, too. But wallowing in self-pity would not solve a thing. Glancing at the field, she saw the Smith children with their kite, and she couldn’t help smiling. She wanted to meet the people of this new, strange world rather than brood about her past.
Henry Wick, who had fished the waters of Isle Royale for three decades, was one of the few who had not been seduced by the glittering promises of mining. He was having a legendar
y season, owned his own boat and had no need to embark on a new enterprise. The tragedy had touched the Wick family, of course, but had not wounded them as deeply as it had the grieving parents, widows and orphans created by her father’s company. Wick’s wife and daughter kept busy cleaning and salting the catch. The two women seemed friendly enough, so Deborah decided to approach them. Her father had set her adrift, but in a way it was liberating. Perhaps she should learn a new occupation, learn how other people made their way in the world.
As she walked down the rough main road, she tied on a smock apron from the shop. The day was bright and cold, the colors in the maple grove high on the bluff so vivid that it almost hurt to look at them. The lake mirrored a deep blue late-autumn sky. Even in the short time she had been here, she could see the changes sweeping across the landscape. The leaves turned color, thinning as the wind whisked them away. The afternoon sky lowered, deepened, as the days grew shorter. The birds arrowed purposefully to their winter homes, wherever that might be. The lake itself had a peculiar character—shifting in the morning, flat and placid in the late afternoon, quiet in the evening as it lapped at the shores. With the coming winter, the general restlessness of nature was more pronounced. On the north shore of the island, ice-up had begun. The shallower waters would eventually form a thick bridge of ice across to the mainland.
The fish processing plant was a long building of weathered wooden planks, built directly on the landing. That way, she supposed, the fishermen didn’t have to go far when they unloaded their catch.
She reached the landing just as the Wicks’ skipjack was tying up at the dock. His wife, Anna, and daughter, Alice, were out readying the cart to bring in the catch.
“Hello, miss,” said Anna, noticing Deborah’s approach. “You’ll forgive me if I don’t stop. We’ve a catch to haul.” Henry must have had another good day on the lake. The fisherman and his brother had brought their boat in early, and their nets appeared to be bulging.
“I know,” Deborah said, eyeing the straining nets, the flopping, gasping bodies of the fish. “That’s why I’ve come.”