Chapter 32
Thirty-Two
It stank.
Good heavens, it stank.
The mud was thick and gelatinous, studded with sharp sticks and worse.
A coil of wet rope landed with a sudden slap by his head. He wiped mud from his eyes, flat on his back, and caught a glimpse of a white face looking at him from high up before it disappeared back over the side of the boat.
Did he deserve it?
In truth, yes. But the knowledge didn’t do much to abate his anger.
The distant end of the rope was tied to the boat. Grimly, he wound a loop around his wrist and pulled himself upright, sinking knee deep. There were several inches of freezing water on top of the mud. The mud was worse than freezing.
He couldn’t climb the rope, not slippery like this with mud and water. Instead he used it to haul himself along the boat’s edge then around the prow.
It was hard work, the mud sucking his every step. Within a yard of the wharf’s edge, he felt a few rocks underfoot. Then some old rotten pilings. He reached the side of the wharf and spied a ladder set some yards away in its side. He fought his way to it.
He climbed up, exhausted from his fight against the deep mud, hands numb. On the wharf, he stood for a moment, getting his breath back, probing his mood now the fear of his predicament was gone. He discovered he was still angry. Good. It gave him a nice warm feeling. Something to fend off the cold.
The boat waited, rocking ever so slightly. There was a light inside the cabin, shining merrily through a thin curtain. He eyed it, spitting mud, using the falling rain to wipe his face. Then he stalked back towards the boat and crossed the gangway once more.
The cabin door was shut. A bucket of water had been placed outside it. A bar of soap sat on the rim. The message was clear.
No, he thought for a moment, his pride making a stubborn last stand. He wouldn’t comply. He’d walk down the harbour to the tavern.
But he didn’t want to do that. He’d walk through fire to get through that door.
His numb fingers were already at work on his buttons. She was in there. Wet. Perhaps removing wet clothes. Perhaps drying her hair before a stove, combing the tresses. He smelt smoke, saw a dark curl coming from the cabin’s chimney.
The only thing that mattered was that she was in there.
His sodden coat hit the deck. His boots came off with a sucking sound, dribbling muddy water.
Ruined. All his clothes were ruined. The knot of his necktie took an age to undo, wet and shrunk, his fingers stiff and clumsy.
He finally dragged it off and threw it from him in irritation.
His buckskins peeled off, his skin goosebumped.
When he was down to his shirt, he paused.
He took it off. He washed himself in the freezing water, wincing and cursing. He scrubbed his hair until only clean water dripped down his chest. Then he picked up his shirt, scrubbed it too, and put it back on, soaking wet.
He stood for a moment, dripping, so cold even the rain seemed warm.
Then he knocked.
“Come in.”
Oh, she sounded very airy, a laugh bubbling under her words. She was having a marvellous time.
He snapped the door open, closed it behind him with a slam, arm straight, his palm flat against it. Even the sight of her stripped to her stays and chemise, sitting on a stool before the stove’s glow, didn’t stop the look he gave her, the murder throbbing in his pulse.
“You—” he managed, through gritted teeth.
She smiled, finger-combing her hair, exactly as he’d imagined. The way she sat, with her head tilted to the side, the ends of it reached her thigh.
“Pleasant, isn’t it? Being humiliated. Being made to feel worthless.”
He could only look at her. No matter how many times he thought she’d broken him, she could always manage to do it again.
His heart had no defence. He forgot he was cold. He didn’t hear the rain thundering on the roof. He didn’t feel the boat tilt. He only looked and listened.
“Especially by someone you had begun to care for.” She wasn’t smiling anymore. There was a crack in her voice. “Someone you had begun to trust. Someone you had begun to love.”
He went to her, unworthy as he was. He went down on his knees. She let him take her hand. Hers was stiff and cool. His trembled.
“Madelaine…”
A shiver went through her. His head was bowed, his hair dripping, making translucent patches on the chemise that covered her thigh. She smelt of both storms and sweetness. Her fingers were chilled, but the rest of her was warm.
“I’m sorry. I’ve said I’m sorry.”
“Words aren’t enough.”
“Then marry me.” He met her eyes. “Marry me and let me show the whole world how much I esteem you. How much I love you.”
“I don’t care about the world.”
“Then let me show you.”
Firewood shifted in the stove. The heat of it burnt his frozen skin. Rain battled at the rattling windows.
Slowly, because he had to, he turned her hand in his and brought her palm to his cheek. He pressed it there, eyes closed. He turned his head. Kissed her palm.
“Did you mean what you said?” she asked, her voice unsteady. “That you don’t expect me to forget Alfred?”
“I’ve spent the summer knowing you were trying to forget me. I wouldn’t wish that on any man.”
“So…”
“So I just want you to find room, here in your heart…” His other hand lifted to trace a line down from her collarbone to her breastbone, where her stays cinched the top of her chemise. “I pray you can love the both of us.”
“You don’t believe in God.” There was the faintest smile in her voice.
“I’d believe in anything. If it gives me hope.”
With her free hand, she covered his, pressing his palm against her chest, over her heart. He was no longer cold at all. The swell of her breast filled the base of his palm.
“Shouldn’t you pray to me?” she said, smiling again. “Your goddess Eleos?”
“I no longer know what you’re the goddess of.”
“Vengeance? Justice?”
“I only know I worship you.”
The breath she drew was shaky, but it was with a deliberate motion that she let go his hand on her chest and reached out, running her fingers down his temple, along his hairline, then taking a wet strand between finger and thumb.
She let it pass through her fingers, watching the drop that formed on its end, letting it fall to land on his wrist.
She stirred the drop with a fingertip as though it was a magic spell, making the bone and sinew of his wrist glint in the fire’s glow. “You should take that wet shirt off. You’ll catch a chill.”
That wasn’t why he’d shuddered. She knew it.
“I’ll decide in the morning if I marry you,” she said. “Tonight…let it just be this.”
“No…” His hand fell from her chest, but she caught it and brought it to the nape of her neck.
She was close enough to kiss.
Her eyes held his. “I need to know it isn’t just this. I need to be sure what remains after we…”
“I love you. Madelaine, for God’s sake, I love you.”
“And I can’t think around you. I feel a hundred things, half of them conflicting.”
He searched her eyes, first one then the other, a desperate hunt. “You don’t love me?”
“Sometimes I hate you. I told you that on the beach. Sometimes you frighten me. Sometimes I think you’re awful, and cruel, and cold beyond belief.
And sometimes… When I saw you, it was like my life restarted.
As though I’d been floating somewhere not quite in the world and you brought my soul back down to earth, right back into my body. What is that, Sebastian? What is that?”
“Whatever it is, I feel it too.” He traced the side of her face, cupping her cheek. Her unbound hair brushed the back of his fingers. “It’s love. If it isn’t love, then the word has no meaning.”
“It isn’t like it was.”
She sounded lost. A whisper. It plucked a string deep inside him, made him bend towards her, head bowed to hers until their foreheads touched. Their mingled breath made the most intimate hothouse; tendrils seeded, roots deep inside him.
“You’re not like you were. You’ve been through so much. And I’m not him. You can’t love me like you loved him.”
A stray tear tracked down her cheek. A blurred diamond, unfocused, with his eyes so close to hers. He kissed it away, tasting salt, a hot, lingering graze against her damp cheek.
There wasn’t a single thing he could do to fix this. All that he owned, all that he was…none of it gave him any power to shape this moment to his will. It was in her hands. His life. His heart. There wasn’t a single thing he could do except hope.
She took a shaky breath. Her head turned. She moved her mouth to brush against his.
All thought stopped.
“I want you,” she breathed.