by Nora Roberts
Ky swam smoothly through the water, using his feet to propel him at a steady pace. Their lamps cut through the murk, surprising more fish, illuminating rock formations that had existed under the sea for centuries. Kate discovered shapes and faces in them.
No, she could never dive alone, Kate decided as Ky slowed his pace to keep rhythm with her more meandering one. It was so easy for her to lose her sense of time and direction. Air came into her lungs with a simple drawing of breath as long as the tanks held oxygen, but the gauges on her wrist only worked if she remembered to look at them.
Even mortality could be forgotten in enchantment. And enchantment could too easily lead to a mistake. It was a lesson she knew, but one that could slip away from her. The timelessness, the freedom was seductive. The feeling was somehow as sensual as the timeless freedom felt in a lover’s arms. Kate knew this pleasure could be as dangerous as a lover, but found it as difficult to resist.
There was so much to see, to touch. Crustaceans of different shapes, sizes and hues. They were alive here in their own milieu, so different from when they washed up helplessly on the beach for children to collect in buckets. Fish swam in and out of waving grass that would be limp and lifeless on land. Unlike dolphins or man, some creatures would never know the thrill of both air and water.
Her beam passed over another formation, crusted with barnacles and sea life. She nearly passed it, but curiosity made her turn back so that the light skimmed over it a second time. Odd, she thought, how structured some of the shapes could be. It almost looked like…
Hesitating, using her arms to reverse her progress, Kate turned in the water to play her light over the shape from end to end. Excitement rose so quickly she grabbed Ky’s arm in a grip strong enough to make him stop to search for a defect in her equipment. With a shake of her head Kate warded him off, then pointed.
When their twin lights illuminated the form on the ocean floor, Kate nearly shouted with the discovery. It wasn’t a shelf of rock. The closer they swam toward it the more apparent that became. Though it was heavily corroded and covered with crustaceans, the shape of the cannon remained recognizable.
Ky swam around the barrel. When he removed his knife and struck the cannon with the hilt the metallic sound rang out strangely. Kate was certain she’d never heard anything more musical. Her laughter came out in a string of bubbles that made Ky look in her direction and grin.
They’d found a corroded cannon, he thought, and she was as thrilled as if they’d found a chest full of doubloons. And he understood it. They’d found something perhaps no one had seen for two centuries. That in itself was a treasure.
With a movement of his hand he indicated for her to follow, then they began to swim slowly east. If they’d found a cannon, it was likely they’d find more.
Reluctant to leave her initial discovery, Kate swam with him, looking back as often as she looked ahead. She hadn’t realized the excitement would be this intense. How could she explain what it felt like to discover something that had lain untouched on the sea floor for more than two centuries? Who would understand more clearly, she wondered, her colleagues at Yale or Ky? Somehow she felt her colleagues would understand intellectually, but they would never understand the exhilaration. Intellectual pleasure didn’t make you giddy enough to want to turn somersaults.
How would her father have felt if he’d found it? She wished she knew. She wished she could have given him that one instant of exultation, perhaps shared it with him as they’d so rarely shared anything. He’d only known the planning, the theorizing, the bookwork. With one long look at that ancient weapon, she’d known so much more.
When Ky stopped and touched her shoulders, her emotions were as mixed as her thoughts. If she could have spoken she’d have told him to hold her, though she wouldn’t have known why. She was thrilled, yet running through the joy was a thin shaft of sorrow—for what was lost, she thought. For what she’d never be able to find again.
Perhaps he knew something of what moved her. They couldn’t communicate with words, but he touched her cheek—just a brush of his finger over her skin. It was more comforting to her than a dozen soft speeches.
She understood then that she’d never stopped loving him. No matter how many years, how many miles had separated them, what life she had she’d left with him. The time in between had been little more than existence. It was possible to live with emptiness, even to be content with it until you had that heady taste of life again.
She might have panicked. She might have run if she hadn’t been trapped there, fathoms deep in the midst of a discovery. Instead she accepted the knowledge, hoping that time would tell her what to do.
He wanted to ask her what was going through her mind. Her eyes were full of so many emotions. Words would have to wait. Their time in the sea was almost up. He touched her face again and waited for the smile. When she gave it to him, Ky pointed at something behind her that he had just noticed moments before.
An oaken plank, old, splintered and bumpy with parasites. For the second time Ky removed his knife and began to pry the board from its bed. Silt floated up thinly, cutting visibility before it settled again. Replacing his knife, Ky gave the thumbs-up signal that meant they’d surface. Kate shook her head indicating that they should continue to search, but Ky merely pointed to his watch, then again to the surface.
Frustrated with the technology that allowed her to dive, but also forced her to seek air again, Kate nodded.
They swam west, back toward the boat. When she passed the cannon again, Kate felt a quick thrill of pride. She’d found it. And the discoveries were only beginning.
The moment her head was above water, she started to laugh. “We found it!” She grabbed the ladder with one hand as Ky began to climb up, placing his find and his tanks on the deck first. “I can’t believe it, after hardly more than a week. It’s incredible, that cannon lying down there all these years.” Water ran down her face but she didn’t notice. “We have to find the hull, Ky.” Impatient, she released her tanks and handed them up to him before she climbed aboard.
“The chances are good—eventually.”
“Eventually?” Kate tossed her wet hair out of her eyes. “We found this in less than a week.” She indicated the board on the deck. She crouched over it, just wanting to touch. “We found the Liberty.”
“We found a wreck,” he corrected. “It doesn’t have to be the Liberty.”
“It is,” she said with a determination that caused his brow to lift. “We found the cannon and this just on the edge of the area my father had charted. It all fits too well.”
“Regardless of what wreck it is, it’s undocumented. You’ll get your name in the books, professor.”
Annoyed she rose. They stood facing each other on either side of the plank they’d lifted out of the sea. “I don’t care about having my name in the books.”
“Your father’s name then.” He unzipped his wet suit to let his skin dry.
She remembered her feelings after spotting the cannon, how Ky had seemed to understand them. Could they only be kind to each other, only be close to each other, fathoms under the surface? “Is there something wrong with that?”
“Only if it’s an obsession. You always had a problem with your father.”
“Because he didn’t approve of you?” she shot back.
His eyes took on that eerily calm, almost flat expression that meant his anger was lethal. “Because it mattered too much to you what he approved of.”
That stung. The truth often did. “I came here to finish my father’s project,” she said evenly. “I made that clear from the beginning. You’re still getting your fee.”
“You’re still following directions. His directions.” Before she could retort, he turned toward the cabin. “We’ll eat and rest before we go back under.”
With an effort, she held onto her temper. She wanted to dive again, badly. She wanted to find more. Not for her father’s approval, Kate thought fiercely. Certainly not for Ky�
��s. She wanted this for herself. Pulling down the zipper of her wet suit, she went down the cabin steps.
She’d eat because strength and energy were vital to a diver. She’d rest for the same reason. Then, she determined, she’d go back to the wreck and find proof that it was the Liberty.
Calmer, she watched Ky go through a small cupboard. “Peanut butter?” she asked when she saw the jar he pulled out.
“Protein.”
Her laugh helped her to relax again. “Do you still eat it with bananas?”
“It’s still good for you.”
Though she wrinkled her nose at the combination, she reminded herself that beggars couldn’t be choosers. “When we find the treasure,” she said recklessly, “I’ll buy you a bottle of champagne.”
Their fingers brushed as he handed her the first sandwich. “I’ll hold you to it.” He picked up his own sandwich and a quart of milk. “Let’s eat on deck.”
He wasn’t certain if he wanted the sun or the space, but it wasn’t any easier to be with her in that tiny cabin than it had been the first time, or the last. Taking her assent for granted, Ky went up the stairs again, without looking back. Kate followed.
“It might be good for you,” Kate commented as she took the first bite, “but it still tastes like something you give five-year-olds when they scrape their knees.”
“Five-year-olds require a lot of protein.”
Giving up, Kate sat cross-legged on the deck. The sun was bright, the movement of the boat gentle. She wouldn’t let his digs get to her, nor would she dig back. They were in this together, she reminded herself. Tension and sniping wouldn’t help them find what they sought.
“It’s the Liberty, Ky,” she murmured, looking at the plank again. “I know it is.”
“It’s possible.” He stretched out with his back against the port side. “But there are a lot of wrecks, unidentified and otherwise, all through these waters. Diamond Shoals is a graveyard.”
“Diamond Shoals is fifty miles north.”
“And the entire coastline along these barrier islands is full of littoral currents, rip currents and shifting sand ridges. Two hundred years ago they didn’t have modern navigational devices. Hell, they didn’t even have the lighthouses until the nineteenth century. I couldn’t even give you an educated guess as to how many ships went down from the time Columbus set out until World War II.”
Kate took another bite. “We’re only concerned with one ship.”
“Finding one’s no big problem,” he returned. “Finding a specific one’s something else. Last year, after a couple of hurricanes breezed through, they found wrecks uncovered on the beach on Hatteras. There are plenty of houses on the island that were built from pieces of wreckage like that.” He pointed to the plank with the remains of his sandwich.
Kate frowned at the board again. “It could be the Liberty just as easily as it couldn’t.”
“All right.” Appreciating her stubbornness, Ky grinned. “But whatever it is, there might be treasure. Anything lost for more than two hundred years is pretty much finders keepers.”
She didn’t want to say that it wasn’t any treasure she wanted. Just the Liberty’s. From what he said before, Kate was aware he already understood that. It was simply different for him. She took a long drink of cold milk. “What do you plan to do with your share?”
With his eyes half closed, he shrugged. He could do as he pleased now, a cache of gold wouldn’t change that. “Buy another boat, I imagine.”
“With what two-hundred-year-old gold would be worth today, you’d be able to buy a hell of a boat.”
He grinned, but kept his eyes shaded. “I intend to. What about you?”
“I’m not sure.” She wished she had some tangible goal for the money, something exciting, even fanciful. It just didn’t seem possible to think beyond the hunt yet. “I thought I might travel a bit.”
“Where?”
“Greece maybe. The islands.”
“Alone?”
The food and the motion of the boat lulled her. She made a neutral sound as she shut her eyes.
“Isn’t there some dedicated teacher you’d take with you? Someone you could discuss the Trojan War with?”
“Mmm, I don’t want to go to Greece with a dedicated teacher.”
“Someone else?”
“There’s no one.”
Sitting on the deck with her face lifted, her hair blowing, she looked like a finely crafted piece of porcelain. Something a man might look at, admire, but not touch. When her eyes were open, hot, her skin flushed with passion, he burned for her. When she was like this, calm, distant, he ached. He let the needs run through him because he knew there was no stopping them.
“Why?”
“Hmm?”
“Why isn’t there anyone?”
Lazily she opened her eyes. “Anyone?”
“Why don’t you have a lover?”
The sleepy haze cleared from her eyes instantly. He saw her fingers tense on the dark blue material that stretched snugly over her knees. “It’s none of your business whether I do or not.”
“You’ve just told me you don’t.”
“I told you there’s no one I’d travel with,” she corrected, but when she started to rise, he put a hand on her shoulder.
“It’s the same thing.”
“No, it’s not, but it’s still none of your business, Ky, any more than your personal life is mine.”
“I’ve had women,” he said easily. “But I haven’t had a lover since you left the island.”
She felt the pain and the pleasure sweep up through her. It was dangerous to dwell on the sensation. As dangerous as it was to lose yourself deep under the ocean. “Don’t.” She lifted her hand to remove his from her shoulder. “This isn’t good for either of us.”
“Why?” His fingers linked with hers. “We want each other. We both know the rules this time around.”
Rules. No commitment, no promises. Yes, she understood them this time, but like mortality during a dive, they could easily be forgotten. Even now, with his eyes on hers, her fingers caught in his, the structure of those rules became dimmer and dimmer. He would hurt her again. There was never any question of that. Somehow, in the last twenty-four hours, it had become a matter of how she would deal with the pain, not if.
“Ky, I’m not ready.” Her voice was low, not pleading, but plainly vulnerable. Though she wasn’t aware of it, there was no defense she could put to better use.
He drew her up so that they were both standing, touching only hand to hand. Though she was tall, her slimness made her appear utterly fragile. It was that and the way she looked at him, with her head tilted back so their eyes could meet, that prevented him from taking what he was determined to have, without questions, without her willingness. Ruthlessly, that was how he told himself he wanted to take her, even though he knew he couldn’t.
“I’m not a patient man.”
“No.”
He nodded, then released her hand while he still could. “Remember it,” he warned before he turned to go to the helm. “We’ll take the boat east, over the wreck and dive again.”
An hour later they found a piece of rigging, broken and corroded, less than three yards from the cannon. By hand signals, Ky indicated that they’d start a stock-pile of the salvage. Later they’d come back with the means of bringing it up. There were more planks, some too big for a man to carry up, some small enough for Kate to hold in one hand.
When she found a pottery bowl, miraculously unbroken, she realized just what an archaeologist must feel after hours of digging when he unearths a fragment of another era. Here it was, cupped in her hand, a simple bowl, covered with silt, covered with age. Someone had eaten from it once, a seaman, relaxing briefly below deck, perhaps on his first voyage across the Atlantic to the New World. His last journey in any event, Kate mused as she turned the bowl over in her hand.
The rigging, the cannon, the planks equaled ship. The bowl equaled man.
Though she put the bowl with the other pieces of their find, she intended to take it up with her on this dive. Whatever other artifacts they found could go to a museum, but the first, she’d keep.
They found pieces of glass that might have come from bottles that held whiskey, chunks of crockery that hadn’t survived intact like the bowl. Bits of cups, bowls, plates littered the sea floor.
The galley, she decided. They must have found the galley. Over the years, the water pressure would have simply disintegrated the ship until it was all pieces spread on and under the floor of the ocean. It would, in essence, have become part of the sea, a home for the creatures and plant life that dwelt there.
But they’d found the galley. If they could find something, just one thing with the ship’s name inscribed on it, they’d be certain.
Diligently, using her knife as a digging tool, Kate worked at the floor of the sea. It wasn’t a practical way to search, but she saw no harm in trying her luck. They’d found crockery, glass, the unbroken bowl. Even as she glanced up she saw Ky examining what might have been half a dinner plate.
When she unearthed a long wooden ladle, Kate found that her excitement increased. They had found the galley, and in time, she’d prove to Ky that they’d found the Liberty.
Engrossed in her find, she turned to signal to Ky and moved directly into the path of a stingray.
He saw it. Ky was no more than a yard from Kate when the movement of the ray unearthing itself from its layer of sand and silt had caught his eye. His movement was pure reflex, done without thought or plan. He was quick. But even as he grabbed Kate’s hand to swing her back behind him, out of range, the wicked, saw-toothed tail lashed out.
Her scream was muffled by the water, but the sound went through Ky just as surely as the stingray’s poison went through Kate. Her body went stiff against his, rigid in pain and shock. The ladle she’d found floated down, out of her grip, until it landed silently on the bottom.
He knew what to do. No rational diver goes down unless he has a knowledge of how to handle an emergency. Still Ky felt a moment of panic. This wasn’t just another diver, it was Kate. Before his mind could clear, her stiffened body went limp against him. Then he acted.