Chapter 13
“Do you love me, Jack?” she said.
“Of course. I’m marrying you.”
“That’s not what I asked.” Her voice with that flip edge, like she might have been testing him. The water was cold and clear. He’d seen that smile before.
It’s not that he doesn’t love her. Not that at all. The marriage is useful. He knows that, and everyone reminds him. Her breeding, the sheen of wealth. Well read, well traveled, well mannered, well bred. Not malleable, Bobby once remarked. Their father laughed at that, then said, “No, but she knows how it works.”
And she’s different. From his sisters, from other girls and women, the ones he still goes after. She is curious. A fiery wit. Ruthless insight. She makes him think. And when she’s quiet and he can see her thoughts tick, he feels a kind of thrill—the same thrill he felt when he first recognized the magnitude and reach of her mind.
No one else.
The thought strikes him. He knows it’s true, and he doesn’t quite want it to be.
She is not like anyone else.
“Do you love me, Jack?” she asked, and he felt a momentary impatience.
He knows what she wants when she says a thing like that. Magic. A fairy tale.
And part of him wants to promise her that, and part of him wants to tell her there’s no such thing.
He loves the banter between them, but she’d thrown that question out there like a dare. Waited a moment for his answer, then turned away, like she might not wait. He felt a sudden doubt. He hates that feeling. Too much of his life has been built on it. Doubt, charade, illusion. A charlatan’s sleight of hand. The glint of what’s unreal.
She’s waded farther out in the water now. Up to her thighs. The water breaks as she walks. Drops of sunlight shimmer on her skin, her body long, casually erotic. She stops, noticing something through the surface. She reaches down through the water, her arm disappearing past the elbow; she brings up a stone and turns it in her hand. She catches him watching her. Surprise at first, her features still. Her gaze shifts, deliberate, calculating, that little play. Her arm draws back, and she throws that stone. It wings across the surface, heading out, skip after skip. She looks at him then, her face with a faint expression of triumph, as if to say:You want to watch? Then see.
All of this happens.She happens. Long body, arm reaching, stone in flight, her blazing face, a collision of imperfect features adding up to a cogent enigmatic whole. He just stares back, a sharp desire for her he can feel.
She dives in. The surface closes. Her dark shape, underwater. He thinks he sees it, then is less sure. She’s gone for so long. He waits, eyes scanning, seeing nothing but the pale reflected sky, the water empty, mocking him somehow. She surfaces twenty yards away. She looks back, he goes to wave, but she’s already started to swim, straight out, that lean grace of her arm rising, dark head turning to breathe, her cheek against the surface, lips parting for air, the strong loaded rhythm of her body, ocean rolling off her shoulders like she is made of that water.
Ten years from now, he will remember this moment. Everything he would ever need to know about her was right there.