Twice Loved Page 2

  “But you took the cowpox inoculation before you left.” She touched the scar on his upper lip.

  “Y’ know it’s not foolproof.” Indeed, it wasn’t. The current method of inoculation was to let the pus of the cowpox scabs dry on the ends of threads, then apply the virus to a scratch in the skin. Though it didn’t always prevent the disease, it nevertheless greatly reduced its severity.

  “Anyway, I was one of the unlucky ones who caught it. At least, I thought I was unlucky when they put me off ship. But later, when I heard that the Massachusetts had piled up on Galapagos and gone down with all hands...” A haunted look came into his eyes and he sighed deeply at his near brush with death and memories of his lost shipmates. Then he seemed to draw himself back to the present with a squaring of his shoulders. “When the fever and rash were gone, I had t’ wait for another ship in need of a cooper. I made my way t’ Charles Island, knowin’ they all put in there, and I got lucky. Along came the Omega, and I signed articles on her, then headed into the Pacific, all the time believin’ my letter would reach y’ and y’d know I was still alive.”

  Oh, Rye, my love, how can I tell you?

  She studied his beloved face—long, lean, handsome, and hardly marred by the scars. She counted each one—seven, she could find—and resisted the urge to kiss each of them, realizing that the physical scars of this voyage were nothing compared to the emotional scars yet to come.

  His thick hair was the color of corn shocks darkening in the weather, and her eyes followed the L-shaped side-whiskers as they jutted toward his cheeks, then she lifted her gaze to his beautifully shaped eyebrows, far less unruly than his hair, which always seemed styled by the whims of the wind, even after he’d just combed it. She smoothed it now—ah, just this once—unable to resist the familiar gesture she’d performed so often in the past. And while she touched his hair she became lost in his eyes, those eyes that had haunted her so when she’d thought him dead. All she’d had to do was step to the doorsill and scan the skies on a clear day to know again the color of those pale, searching eyes of Rye Dalton.

  She looked away from them now, haunted anew by all he’d suffered, by all he must yet suffer, through no fault of his own.

  They had fought before he left, bitter arguments, with him promising to go whaling just this once, to return to her with his cooper’s “lay”—his share of the profits—and put them on easy street. She had begged and pleaded with him not to go, to stay and work the cooperage here on Nantucket with his father. Riches mattered little to her. But he’d argued, just one voyage—just one. Didn’t she realize how much a cooper’s lay could be if they filled all their barrels? She had expected him to be gone perhaps two years and at first had schooled herself to accept an absence of this duration. But the Nantucket whalers could no longer fill their barrels close to home. The entire world sought whale oil, baleen, as whalebone was called, and ambergris, a waxy substance used in making perfume; those who went in search of these products of the deep found them harder and harder to find.

  “But five years!” she half-moaned.

  Moving again to cradle her face in his hands, he said now, “I’m not sorry I went, Laura. The Omega chocked off! Filled ’er hold! Do y’ know how rich—”

  But just then a small voice interrupted. “Mama?”

  Laura leaped backward and pressed a hand to her hammering heart.

  Rye spun around.

  In the doorway stood a lad whose pale blond head reached no higher than Rye’s hip. He peered up uncertainly at the tall stranger while one finger shyly tugged at the corner of a winsome mouth. A burst of emotion flooded Rye’s chest. A son, by Jesus! I have a son! His eyes sought Laura’s, but she avoided his questioning glance.

  “Where’ve you been, Josh?”

  Josh, Rye thought joyously. Shortened from my father’s Josiah?

  “Waiting for Papa.”

  Panic tore through Laura. Her mouth went dry, her palms damp. She should have told Rye immediately! But how do you tell a man a thing like that?

  His face, alit with joy only seconds ago, suddenly lost its smile as he turned a quizzical expression to his wife. She felt the blood leap to her cheeks and opened her mouth to tell him the truth, but before she got the chance, steps crunched on the shell path outside and a square-built man stepped to the doorway. His attire was very formal: square-tailed black frock coat, bowed white cravat, and twilled pantaloons stretched faultlessly taut between hidden suspenders and the straps riding under his shoes. He removed a shiny beaver top hat and hung it on a coat tree beside the door in a smooth, accustomed movement. Only then did he look up to find Laura and Rye standing like statues before him. His hand fell still halfway down the row of buttons on his double-breasted topcoat.

  Laura swallowed. The face of the man in the doorway suddenly blanched. Rye’s glance darted from the dapper man to Laura, to the beaver hat on its peg, and back to the man again. The sound of stew bubbling in the pot seemed as loud as the roar of a nor’easter, so silent had the room become.

  Rye was gripped by a sick feeling of dread, a dread much stronger than any he’d experienced while rounding Cape Horn in the jaws of two oceans that ripped at one another and threatened to dismember the ship.

  Daniel Morgan was the first to recover. He forced a welcoming smile and came forward with hand extended. “Rye! My God, man, have you been regurgitated from the bowels of the sea?”

  “Dan, it’s good t’ see you,” Rye returned automatically, though the words were suddenly half lie, if his suspicions proved true. “The fact is, I wasn’t aboard the Massachusetts when she went down. I’d been left ashore with a case of smallpox.”

  The men, dear friends all their lives, clasped hands and pounded each other’s shoulders, but the hearty sincerity of the handclasp did little to lighten the strained atmosphere. Neither was certain of what the situation was.

  “Saved ... by smallpox?” Dan said.

  The irony of it made them laugh as they broke apart. But the laugh drifted into uncomfortable silence and each glanced at Laura, whose eyes skittered from one to the other, then fell to Josh, who studied the three of them in puzzlement.

  “Go out back and wash your hands and face for dinner,” Laura ordered gently.

  “But, Mama—”

  “Don’t argue, now. Go.” She gave the child a nudge, and he disappeared out the rear door while the pale blue eyes of the seaman followed.

  The tension was as thick as the shroud of fog that covered Nantucket one day out of four. Casting about, Rye took in the trestle table for the first time—it was set for three. A humidor stood on a finely made table of cherrywood beside an upholstered wing chair with a matching cricket stool. The bed that had been in the room when he left was no longer there. In its place was an alcove bed, a single bunk situated above a built-in storage chest, the entire setup fronted by folding doors, open now, revealing some carved wooden soldiers standing at attention upon the counterpane—obviously the child’s bed. Rye’s gaze moved to the new doorway that had been cut into the wall on the left side of the fireplace. It led to the linter room beyond, where a corner of the familiar double bed was visible.

  Rye Dalton swallowed hard. “Y’ve come t’ have lunch with Laura? ” he questioned his friend.

  “Yes, I ...” It was now Dan Morgan’s turn to swallow, and it appeared he didn’t know where to put his hands.

  Both men silently appealed to the woman, whose fingers were clenched tightly before her. The room had the kind of pall usually presaged by the news that someone had died, brought about now, ironically, by the news that Rye Dalton lived.

  Laura’s voice was strained, her cheeks blazing, as she worked her palms together nervously. “Rye, we ... we thought you were dead.”

  “We?”

  “Dan and I.”

  “Dan and you,” Rye repeated expressionlessly.

  Laura’s eyes sought Dan’s for help, but he was as speechless as she.

  “And?” Rye snapped, looking fr
om one to the other, his dread growing with each passing second.

  “Oh, Rye.” Laura reached a beseeching hand toward him, and her face seemed to melt into lines of pity. “They said all hands. How could we know? The log was never found.”

  They stood, appropriately enough, in a perfect triangle. Finally, Dan suggested quietly, “I think we should all sit down.”

  But being a man of the sea, Rye Dalton was used to facing calamities on his feet. He faced them both, challenging. “Is it ... is it what it looks like here?” His eyes made a quick arc around the room, encompassing all the signs of Dan’s residence in that single sweep, and came to rest on his wife. Her lips were open, trembling. Her hands were folded so tightly the knuckles were white. Her brown eyes were luminous with unshed tears and bore an expression of deep remorse.

  Softly, she admitted, “Yes, Rye, it is. Dan and I are married.”

  Rye Dalton groaned and sank into a chair, burying his face in his hands. “Oh my God.”

  It was all Laura could do to keep from going to him, kneeling before him, comforting him, for she felt the keen agony as sharply as he. She wanted to cry out, “I’m sorry, Rye, I’m sorry!” But Dan stood there, too. Dan, Rye’s best friend. Dan, whom Laura also loved, who had seen her through the worst times of her life; who had comforted her when the news of Rye’s death came; who had been so much stronger than she in the face of their mutual loss; who had cheered her during her utterly despondent pregnancy and given her the will to go on; who had been her right hand whenever she needed the strength of a man for the thousand things she, as a pregnant woman, was unable to do; Dan, who had grown to love Rye Dalton’s child as if he were his own, who had taken Josh as his son when he took Laura as his wife.

  Josh came charging in now, face shiny, a rooster tail of hair standing straight up from the crown of his head. He ran directly to Dan, hugging the man’s legs, gazing up his body with a cherubic smile that tore at Rye Dalton’s heart.

  “Mama made one of your favorites—guess what.”

  Rye watched Dan Morgan ruffle the boy’s hair, then smooth down the rooster tail, which immediately popped up again.

  “We’ll play our guessing game at supper, son,” he said without thinking, then immediately colored, and glanced up to meet the pained expression on Rye’s face.

  The pale blue eyes dropped to the boy—how old? Rye wondered frantically, Four? Five? But he couldn’t tell.

  His slumped shoulders straightened by degrees, and he raised his gaze to Laura, silently asking the question. But the boy was there, and Rye understood that she could not answer before him. He looked down at the lad again, wondering, Is he mine or Dan’s?

  The tension built and Laura felt like the rope in a tug-of-war. She felt light-headed and nauseated and removed from herself, as if this farce must certainly be happening to someone else. Some sense of propriety surfaced and made her lips move to say, “You’re welcome to stay for dinner, Rye.” Even to her own ears it sounded strange, inviting a man to a table that was his own.

  Rye Dalton heard her stilted invitation and held back a bark of tormented laughter that almost escaped his lips. For five years he’d sailed the seas, eating unsavory ship’s biscuits, unpalatable lobscouse stew, and salt fish, all the while savoring the anticipation of his first meal at home. And now he was here; in his nostrils was the aroma of the meal he’d dreamed of. Yet he could not possibly sit and share it with Laura and her... her other husband.

  Rye reeled to his feet, suddenly in a hurry to get away and sort out his thoughts. The boy still looked on, making questions impossible. “Thank you, Laura, but I haven’t seen my parents yet. I think I’ll go down and say hello t’ them.” His parents would know the truth.

  Laura’s heart seemed to drop to the pit of her stomach. She and Dan exchanged a secret glance while she telegraphed a silent plea for him to understand. “I’ll walk a little way down the path with you, Rye,” she offered.

  “No ... no, that’s not necessary. I remember the way well enough.”

  Quickly, Dan interjected, “You go with him, Laura. I’ll spoon up for Josh and me.”

  The tension grew while Rye pondered whether to gesture Laura ahead of him or insist again that she need not go.

  Josh lifted his face to Dan, asking, “Is that man going to go for a walk with Mama?”

  “Yes, but she’ll be right back,” Dan answered.

  “Who is he?” Josh inquired innocently.

  “His name is Rye, and he’s an old friend of mine ... and your mother’s.”

  Josh perused the tall, strapping stranger whose clothes were whitened by salt rime, whose hair was streaked by sun, whose boots were soaked with whale oil, and whose speech was clipped and different from theirs.

  “Rye?” repeated the child. “That’s a funny name.”

  With an effort, Rye smiled at the precocious child, taking in every freckle, every gesture, every expression, wondering yet if Josh was his.

  “Yes, it is, isn’t it? It’s because m’ mother’s name was Ryerson when she was a girl.”

  “I gots a friend, his name is Jimmy Ryerson.”

  He’s your cousin if you’re my son, thought the man, whose blue eyes moved to Laura, only to have the answer forestalled once more while she knelt down on one knee to speak to the boy.

  “You and ... and Papa get started. I’ll only be a minute.”

  Hearing her own hesitation over the word Papa, Laura felt guilty, confused, and embarrassed. Dear Lord, what have I done? From the corner of her eye she saw Rye lean to scoop his pea jacket off the floor, then stand waiting.

  As Laura preceded Rye out the door, Dan watched their backs, a tight-lipped expression on his face. He remembered the three of them as children, running the dunes together, barefoot and carefree. Down through his memory drifted his own voice, cracking into a high falsetto.

  “Hey, Laura, wanna go with me and see if the wild strawberries are ripe?”

  And Laura, calling after Rye’s retreating back. “Hey, Rye, you wanna come with us?”

  Rye, looking over his shoulder, still walking away. “Naw, think I’ll go up to Altar Rock and watch for whalers.”

  Then Laura again, choosing as she always chose. “I’m gonna go with Rye. Strawberries prob’ly ain’t ripe yet anyway.”

  And Dan, following the two of them, hands in his pockets, wishing that just once Laura would follow him the way she followed Rye.

  Outside, Rye again hefted his sea chest onto his shoulder and moved down the scallop-shell path beside Laura while both of them carefully kept their eyes straight ahead. But she was conscious of his salt-caked cuffs, and he of her sprigged skirts. It seemed an eternity before they were beyond earshot of the house, and he asked without preface, “Is Josh my son?”

  “Yes.” She knew a wheeling jubilation at being able to tell him at last, even as uncertainties came to crowd out the momentary joy.

  Rye’s feet stopped moving. The sea chest slid off his back and landed on the shells with a crunch. They had reached the Y in the path. To their left was a grove of apple trees rioting with blossom. Patches of violet-colored crocus nodded in the sun. Below, the bay twinkled, bright and blue as the eyes that sought and held Laura’s. “He’s really mine?” Rye asked incredulously.

  “Yes, he’s really yours,” she whispered, a tremulous smile lending her face a brief serenity while she watched the stunned reactions parade across Rye’s face. Suddenly he plopped backward and sat on the sea chest, drawing deep breaths, as if recovering from having the wind knocked out of him.

  “Mine,” he repeated to the shells, then to her brown smiling eyes, “Mine,” as if it were too incredible to grasp yet.

  He reached for her hand, and she could no more deny her own hand its rightful place in his at this moment than she could turn the irreversible tides of fate that had brought them to this impasse. His broad, brown hand enfolded her much narrower, much lighter one, and he drew her closer, to stand within the vee of his thighs, then
rested his palms on her hips while gazing up at her with a wealth of emotions in his eyes. With a slight pressure at her waist, he brought her still closer until her knees touched the juncture of his legs, then he softly groaned and pressed his face against her midsection.

  “Oh, Laura...”

  A pair of screeching gulls arced overhead, but she did not see them, for her eyelids were closed against the sight of the coarse, pale hair resting just below her breasts, the full crown of his skull, which she wanted so badly to pull securely against her.

  “Rye, please...”

  He lifted his pained eyes to search hers. “How long have y’ been married to him?”

  “It’ll be four years in July.”

  “Four years.” A succession of uninvited pictures flashed through Rye’s head, of Laura and Dan and the intimacies they had inevitably shared. “Four years,” he repeated, disheartened, staring at the hem of her skirt. “How could something like this happen? How!” Angrily, he leaped to his feet, turning his back on her, feeling helpless and thwarted. “And Josh ... he doesn’t know?”

  “No.”

  “Y’ never told him anything about me?” He turned to face her again.

  “We ... we didn’t consciously keep it from him, Rye. It’s just that... well, Dan’s been here since Josh was born, since before Josh was born. He grew up loving Dan as a ... a father.”

  “I want him t’ know, Laura. And I want y’ back, and the three of us livin’ in that house the way it ought t’ be!”

  “I know, but give me time, Rye, please.” Her face was etched with creases and her voice cracked. “This is ... well, it’s all so sudden, for all of us.”

  “Time? How much time?” He glowered.

  Her eyes met his directly as she wondered exactly what it was he was asking. But seeing the intensity there, the determination, she dropped her gaze to his chest, and she didn’t know how to answer.

  “I’ve been waitin’ five years for this day, and y’ ask me t’ give you time. How long do I have t’ keep waiting?” He moved toward her.

  “I don’t... we shouldn’t...” Her glance flickered past his lips. “I... please, Rye...” she stammered.