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  (Back Cover)

  “Go away, Rye! I’m afraid of what you do to me!”

  Five long years ago, lovely Laura Dalton waited on the bleak Nantucket shore for the day her beloved husband Rye would return ... and then she learned his ship was lost at sea.

  Only Dan, Rye’s closest friend, was a shining beacon to light the dark hours ... a father to her baby ... a husband to a grateful widow.

  But who could foretell that a wind-roughened sailor with sun-bleached hair would anchor again in a port that had given him up to the briny deep? That he would walk down a scallop-shell path toward the familiar gray clapboard?

  He stands at the doorway, vowing he will have her. And Laura knows that even though she gave herself to another, her heart still belongs to him.

  For Rye is home again ...

  “A story so powerful it will wash over you like the Nantucket tides in a Nor’wester and sweep you away to a new realm of tender sensuality...”

  —Affaire de Coeur

  “Incredibly poignant ... a masterly exploration of the relationship between a man and a woman..

  —Jennifer Blake, author of Royal Seduction

  “The emotions of the lovers are so real and so intense, they become your emotions. You are sure to be swept away for a rewarding interlude.”

  —Vivien Lee Jennings, Boy Meets Girl

  “An excellent plot theme, sensitively rendered ... a thoroughly enjoyable book.”

  —Esther Sager, author of Only 'Til Dawn

  “A story so compelling and exciting that you won’t want to put it down.”

  —Terri C. Busch, Heartline

  LaVyrle Spencer is the author of such well-loved novels as The Fulfillment, The Endearment and Hummingbird

  Also by LaVyrle Spencer

  THE FULFILLMENT

  THE ENDEARMENT

  HUMMINGBIRD

  SEPARATE BEDS

  YEARS

  A HEART SPEAKS

  THE GAMBLE

  VOWS

  JOVE BOOKS, NEW YORK

  A Jove Book / published by arrangement with the author

  PRINTING HISTORY

  Jove edition / June 1984

  All rights reserved.

  Copyright © 1984 by LaVyrle Spencer.

  This book may not be reproduced in whole or in part, by mimeograph or any other means, without permission. For information address: The Berkley Publishing Group, 200 Madison Avenue, New York, New York 10016.

  ISBN: 0-515-09065-4

  Jove Books are published by The Berkley Publishing Group, 200 Madison Avenue, New York, New York 10016.

  The name “JOVE” and the “J” logo are trademarks belonging to Jove Publications, Inc.

  PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA

  20 19 18 17 16 15 14 13 12 11 10

  To the three people I love most— my wonderful husband Dan and our darling daughters Amy and Beth

  Chapter 1

  1837

  It HAD BEEN five years, one month, and two days since Rye Dalton had seen his wife. In all that time only the salty kiss of the sea had touched his lips, only its cold, wet arms had caressed him.

  But soon, Laura, soon, he thought.

  He stood on the deck of the whaleship Omega, a two-masted schooner riding low in the brine just beyond the shoals of Nantucket Bay, her hold crammed with brimming oil casks, “bung up and bilge free,” so that none of the precious cargo would be lost. The hand on the larboard rail was burnished to the shade of teak, as was the face that contrasted starkly with thick brows and unruly hair bleached almost colorless by years of sun and salt. That hair, badly in need of cutting, added a ruggedness to the bold Anglican features. A thick tangle of side-whiskers swooped almost to his jaw, emphasizing its squareness, then jutting toward the hollow of his cheek. A handsome man with a mariner’s wide stance, he stood rock-ribbed and anxious, studying the distant shore.

  Just short of Nantucket Shoals, the Omega’s sails were reefed, her anchors dropped, and the lighters used for unloading were lowered from their davits. Her crew boarded the boats, babbling eagerly, their ribald banter laced with excitement. They were home.

  The lighter slipped through the calm waters of Nantucket Bay, but across the sun-splashed surface it was difficult to make out the crowd awaiting their arrival at Straight Wharf. The May sun transformed the top of the water into a million gilded mirrors, each shaped like a tiny, flashing fish, blinding the blue eyes of the man who squinted quayward. He need not see her—she’d be there, he knew, just as most of the town would be. The watchtower out on Brant Point had spotted the Omega long since, and word would have spread; she was coming in, plowing deep: the voyage had been successful.

  The bright reflection paled and the crowd came into view. Weeping women waved handkerchiefs. Old retired sea-dogs scraped crusty wool caps from graying pates and hailed the returning whalers with flapping arms, while lads with salt in their dreams gaped in awe, impatiently awaiting their day for becoming heroes.

  The lighter thumped against the pilings, and Dalton’s eyes scanned the crowd. Within minutes the wharf was a melee of happy reunion: sweethearts hugging, fathers holding children they’d never seen, wives dabbing happy tears from their eyes, while horse-drawn buggies and carriages waited to bear the arriving seamen away to their homes. Other lighters were already arriving from the Omega, and stevedores began unloading heavy wooden casks of whale oil and blubber, rolling them down a wooden gangplank with a rumble like low, constant thunder. Horse-drawn drays waited to haul the cargo off to warehouses along the waterfront.

  At last Rye’s boots touched solid planking that neither rolled nor pitched. He shouldered his heavy sea chest, caught his pea jacket under one arm, and moved through the crowd, searching anxiously. All about were skirts flared over baleen hoops and waists pinched tight by whalebone corsets. His gaze swept them cursorily, searching for only one.

  But Laura Dalton was not there.

  Frowning, Rye swayed up the length of Straight Wharf, picking his way between clusters of townspeople, his stride wide and balanced even under the weight of the sea chest. In his wake, matrons gaped at each other in stunned surprise. A pair of young girls tittered behind their palms, and old Cap’n Silas, knees crossed, back hunched against the weather-bleached wall of a bait shack, nodded silently to Rye, squinted at the tall young cooper as he moved up the street, puffed on his pipe, and grunted, “Uh-oh!”

  Leaving the excitement of the wharf behind, Rye passed warehouses redolent with tar, hemp, and fish. From the noisome tryworks where blubber was melted down into whale oil came its omnipresent reek, mingling with billows of gray smoke from the cauldrons.

  But the rangy seaman scarcely noticed the stench, certainly not the occasional eye peering inquisitively at him from chandlery, ropewalk, and joiner’s shop as he strode along the cobbled streets toward the heart of the village. At the head of the wharf he entered the lower square of Main Street itself. Before him, rising from the great harbor and ascending in gently rising slopes toward the Wesco Hills, spread the town where he’d been born. Ah, Nantucket, my Nantucket!

  A lonely outcropping in the North Atlantic, the island lay thirty miles asea, off the clay cliffs of Martha’s Vineyard, to the west and the windswept moors of Cape Cod, due north. The Little Gray Lady of the Sea, Nantucket had come to be called, and she certainly looked it today, sleeping beneath an arch of blue sky, her silvery cottages gleaming like rough-hewn jewels in the high May sun. The cobbled streets contrasted sharply with the startling green of new spring grass along the walkways, giving way to paler paths of sand and shells farther inland. Salt breezes swept across the open heath, carrying with them the fragrance of blossoming beach plums and bayberries, while in dooryards apple trees bloomed in scented explosions of whi
te.

  Rye paused long enough to pick one, hold it to his nose, and savor the delicate fragrance, made the more precious for being a product of land instead of sea. He drank deep, as if he might make up for the five-year dearth of such pleasure. Then, thinking again of Laura, he frowned in the direction of home and strode on purposefully.

  Within minutes he came to a quaint lane of startlingly white scallop shells. They clicked beneath the crush of his boots, and he hoisted the sea chest higher, reveling in the remembered sound, the scent of the apple blossoms, and the familiarity of the cottages he passed. A wild thrum of expectation pounded through his vitals at the thought that he was, at last, walking home.

  He reached a Y in the path, the left branch leading away to Quarter Mile Hill, the right narrowing toward a gentle rise upon which rested a little story-and-a-half saltbox, typical of most on the island, its sides and roof sheathed in silvered shingles, unpainted, polished by wind and salt and time until each board gleamed like a lustrous gray pearl. Its leaded windows were long gone, melted down for bullets, decades before as a sacrifice to the Revolution, but on either side of the door small panes gleamed in wooden frames and white shutters spread like open arms to allow the spring day inside.

  Geraniums—Laura’s favorite—had already been set out beside the wooden step. A new line of evergreen shrubs bordered the west end of the house, where a lean-to—called a linter on Nantucket—snuggled against the fireplace wall. Surprised, Rye scanned its angled roof. The linter had been added on since last he was home.

  As he crunched his way the last twenty feet up the shelled path, the noon clarion rang out from the tower of the Congregational church below. Fifty-two times a day it struck, and had for as long as Rye remembered. It now called Nantucket’s citizens to take their midday meal, but the reverberations seemed to explode within Rye Dalton’s heart as a personal welcome home.

  Just short of the house, he stepped off the path to approach silently. The front door was open, and the smell of dinner drifted out as if in welcome. A thrill of expectation again lifted his heart, and suddenly he was grateful she’d chosen to await him in the privacy of their home instead of on the public wharf.

  He set his sea chest beside the path, ran four shaky fingers through the bleached hair that lay about his face like tangled kelp, heaved a nervous sigh that momentarily lifted his chest, and stepped to the open doorway.

  It faced south, leading directly to the yard from the keeping room into whose shadows Rye peered blindly, his eyes still dazzled by the brilliance outside. He made not a sound, though it seemed his heart clattered aloud and must forewarn her of his presence.

  She leaned before a giant stone fireplace, dressed in a blue flowered floor-length dress and a white homespun apron, which she held like a potholder while stirring the contents of an iron cauldron hanging on the crane.

  He stared at the back of her head with its heavy knot of nutmeg-colored hair, at her slender back, at the faint outline of hip beneath blue cotton. She was humming quietly to the accompaniment of the spoon clanking against the pot.

  His palms went damp and he felt almost dizzy at finding everything so dearly close to the way he’d left it. In silence he watched her, basking in the simple familiarity of homing to such a woman, such a house.

  She clapped the cover back on the pot and reached up to set the spoon on the mantel while he imagined the lift of her breasts, the coffee brown of her eyes, and the curve of her lips.

  At last he knocked softly on the open door.

  Laura Dalton looked over her shoulder, startled. A tall man was silhouetted in the door space, haloed by the blaze of noon light behind him. She made out broad shoulders, a full shock of hair, something bulky draped between wrist and hip, feet spraddled wide as if against a hearty wind.

  “Yes?” She turned, wiping her palms on the apron, then lifting one to shade her eyes. She squinted, and moved forward with uncertain steps until the hem of her dress was lit by the sunlight slanting across the wooden floor. There she stopped, making out familiar blue eyes, copper skin, bleached brows and hair... and the first lips she had ever kissed.

  She gasped, and her hands flew to her mouth. Her eyes widened in disbelief while she stiffened as if struck by lightning.

  “R ... Rye?” Her heart went wild. Her face blanched, and the room seemed to spin around crazily while she stared at him, shocked. At last her hands fluttered downward and she stammered again in a choked voice, “R ... Rye?”

  He managed a shaky smile while she struggled to comprehend the incredible: Rye Dalton, hale and vital, was standing before her!

  “Laura,” he got out, half choking on the word before continuing with gruff emotion. “After five years, is that all y’ve got t’ say?”

  “R ... Rye... my God, you’re alive!”

  He dropped his pea jacket to the floor and took one long step, head bending, arms reaching, while she flew forward to be gathered high and hard against him.

  Oh no, oh no, oh no! her thoughts protested, while those long-remembered arms hauled her close against a rough striped shirt that smelled of the sea. She pinched her eyes shut, then opened them wide as if to steady the senses that careened off kilter. But it was Rye! It was Rye! His embrace threatened to crack her ribs and his body with its wide-spread legs was pressed against the length of hers, his cheek of bronze very warm and rough, and very much alive! Her arms did what they’d done a thousand times before, what they’d ached to do a thousand times since. They circled his tough, wide shoulders and clutched him while her temple lay pillowed against his swooping sideburn and tears scalded her eyes. Then Rye lifted his head. Hard calluses framed Laura’s face as he bracketed her jaws with broad hands and kissed her with an impatience that had been growing for five years. Wide, warm, familiar lips slanted over hers before reason interfered. His tongue came hungering, searching and finding the depths of her mouth as the years slid away into oblivion. They crushed each other with the sweet torment of reunion driving their hearts into a ramming dance as the embrace and kiss pushed all sense of time aside.

  At last they separated, though Rye still held her face as if it were a precious treasure, gazing down into her eyes as he whispered in a racked voice, “Ah, Laura-love.” Tiredly, he leaned his forehead against hers while his eyes sagged shut, and he basked in the scent and nearness of her, running his palms over her back as if to memorize its every muscle.

  After a long moment she lifted his face, traversing it with fingertips and eyes, familiarizing herself with five added years of creases that webbed its bronzed skin. The days of gazing into high sun seemed to have bleached not only his hair and brows, but the very blue of his eyes.

  With those eyes he drank her in, standing a small space away. He lifted one long palm, as tough as the leagues of rigging it had hauled, and lay it on her cheek, pink still from the heat of the fireplace. His other palm fell from her shoulder to the gentle hillock of her breast, caressing it as though to affirm that she was real, that he was here at last.

  She reacted as she always had, pressing more firmly against his palm, letting her eyelids slide closed for a moment, cupping the back of his hand with her own as her heartbeat and breathing hastened. Then, realizing what she was doing, she captured his hand in both of hers, turned her lips into it, and pressed it instead to her face, while dread and relief raised a tempest of emotions within her.

  “Oh, Rye, Rye,” she despaired, “we thought you were dead.”

  He placed his free hand on the knot of hair at the nape of her neck, wondering how far down her back it would fall when he freed it. His rough palm caught in the fine strands he remembered so well, had dreamed of so many lonely times. Once more he circled her with both arms, holding her lightly against him while asking, “Didn’t y’ get any of my letters?”

  “Your letters?” she parroted, gathering enough common sense to push at his inner elbows and back out of his embrace, though it was the last thing she wanted to do.

  “I left the first
one in the turtle shell on Charles Island.”

  There was, atop a certain rock in the Galapagos Islands, a large white turtle shell known to every deep-water whaling man in the world. No New England vessel passed it by without putting in to check for letters from home or, if heading eastward around Cape Horn, to pick up any seamen’s letters it held and deliver them to loved ones in towns such as Nantucket or New Bedford. It often took months for these letters to reach the right hands, but most eventually did.

  “Y’ didn’t get it?” Rye studied the brown eyes with long charcoal lashes that had seen him through a hundred storms at sea and brought him safely into harbor at last.

  But Laura only shook her head.

  “I left that first one in the winter of ’thirty-three,” he recalled, frowning in consternation. “And I sent another with a first mate from Sag Harbor when we crossed paths with the Stafford in the Philippines. And another from Portugal ... why, I know I sent you at least three. Didn’t y’ get any of them?”

  Again Laura only shook her head. The sea was wet and ink was vulnerable. Voyages were long, destinies uncertain. There were myriad reasons why Rye’s letters had failed to reach their destination. They could only stare at each other and wonder.

  “B ... but word came back that the Massachusetts went down with ... with all hands.” Unsmiling, she touched his face, as if to reaffirm he was no ghost. It was then she saw the small craters in his skin—several on his forehead, one that slightly altered the familiar line of his upper lip, and another that fell into the smile line to the right side of his mouth, giving him an appearance of rakishness, as if he wore a teasing grin when he did not.

  Dear God, she thought. Dear God, how can this be?

  “We lost three hands just this side of the Horn. They jumped ship, too scared t’ face roundin’ ’er after all. So we put into the coast of Chile t’ sign on some shoalers and walked into an epidemic of smallpox. Eleven days later, I knew I had it, too.”