Charon's Crossing (A Paranormal Romantic Suspense Novel) (42 page)

"Nobody won it, really. I suppose you could say it ended with honor on both sides."

"Did we regain freedom of the seas?"

She nodded. "Yes."

A faint smile curled across his lips. "Are the United States and Great Britain still enemies, or have we patched up our differences and become allies as English-speaking nations should?"

"Allies, ever since."

"That's good news." Matthew hesitated. "Have there been other wars?"

Kathryn sighed and rose from the table. "Far too many," she said, as she began clearing their dishes.

His chair scraped as he pushed it back. He went to the sink, turned on the water and began scrubbing the pans they'd used.

"And were we victorious?"

She thought of conquest of the Native American tribes, the agony of Vietnam, the pain of Iraq and Afghanistan, and she came up behind him and slipped her arms around his waist.

"Not entirely. But we're still a proud and great nation."

"There is so much I don't know. I suspect I might not recognize the world as it is today."

"It doesn't matter," she murmured, kissing the hard, bony ridge of his spine.

"Aye," he said, "you are right, it does not, for I shall never be a part of it."

She felt the sudden tension in his muscles, heard it in his voice, and cursed herself for having been so thoughtless.

"This world, the one at Charon's Crossing, is the only world that counts," she said fervently, "because it's ours."

Matthew turned off the water and dried his hands.

"Aye," he whispered, "for a little while, at least, it is."

He turned and took her in his arms. He kissed her, gently at first, and then with a desperate hunger Kathryn met and quickly matched.

Between them, they forced reality to slip away.

* * *

At noon, they packed a picnic lunch and carried it down to the beach.

The storm had left gifts of the sea on the shore. Exotic shells, driftwood, kelp, and coconuts littered the white sand. The Caribbean itself had recovered its shades of azure and sapphire. Only gentle swells, rolling in over the sea, were left as reminders of last night's powerful display.

Kathryn looked up at the cliffs as she and Matthew strolled slowly down the beach, their bare feet splashing in the warm, frothy surf.

"I'm amazed the cliffs are still standing. I thought the waves were going to topple them for sure."

"Aye, I can understand how you might think that.; Wind and rain have been trying to reclaim these islands for centuries."

"Matthew?" Her hand clasped his more tightly. "What happens if a storm like that catches a ship at sea?"

He sighed. "Then the lives of the ship and the men who sail her are in God's hands. It is far simpler for nature to claim a ship than an island."

Kathryn shivered. "I've always thought that men who went out in sailing ships were incredibly brave."

"A ship is always at the mercy of the sea, sweetheart. Sailors are not brave, they are merely pragmatic and make the best of things."

"I read once that sailors often didn't know how to swim. Is that true?"

He nodded. "Aye."

"But why? I mean, when I think of those little ships and the vastness of the sea..."

"Exactly. There are those who see it as futile to hope to survive a ship's sinking. Not all, of course. Some of us swim like fishes."

She looked at him and smiled. "You?"

"Aye, me."

"Did you learn when you were a boy?"

"In New England?" He laughed. "Nay, sweetheart, such frivolity was out of the question. I did my learning in a warm South Pacific cove, with the trade winds sighing through the palms."

"Taught by a golden-skinned native girl in a grass skirt?"

He chuckled, wrapped his arm around her waist, and tugged her towards him.

"Jealous?"

She was, that was the damnedest part of it, though she knew it was ridiculous to be jealous of something that had happened almost two centuries ago.

"Of course not," she said primly. "I'm just curious."

"Let me see... ah yes, I remember it well. My teacher was an incredible sight."

"Was she?" Kathryn mustered up a smile.

"Oh, indeed. Brown hair, slender, five foot nine or ten with a shiny bald head—"

She swung towards him. "What?"

Matthew grinned. "I got my swimming lesson from a mean-tempered captain, who decided the stench of his cabin boy was bad enough to offend even his nostrils."

"Ah, I see."

"A golden-skinned girl would have been much more to my liking, especially since I damn near drowned. But after I'd swallowed half the sea, I surfaced and found, to my amazement, that I could keep my head above water. What about you? Do you swim?"

She nodded. "I can't remember when I learned, it was so long ago. I just know we lived in this wonderful old house on Cape Cod I think, and..."

"What's the matter, sweetheart?"

"Nothing. Well, it's just that I always thought of that house as miserable but now, for some reason, I thought of how much I really liked it. And how my father used to put me on his shoulders on summer mornings, and carry me down to the water where we'd wade and search for shells."

"You loved your father a great deal, did you?"

"No," she said, frowning. "Why would I? He left us, my mother and me, and forgot all about us."

"I don't think so, love, not if he left you this—God almighty, what is that?"

Matthew's voice had turned sharp with fear. He knocked Kathryn to the sand and fell on top of her, protecting her with his body as two dark shadows swooped over the island and roared out across the sea. When they were nothing but black dots on the far horizon, he rose slowly to his knees.

"What in hell were those things?"

Kathryn sat up. "Airplanes," she said gently. "Ships that fly."

"Ships that fly?" he whispered. "Like what Montgolfier flew in Paris back in '83? No. They were more like the drawings by what's his name, the Italian... Leonardo da Vinci?"

She smiled. "Very much like his drawings."

Matthew shook his head, rolled onto his back, and threw his arm across his eyes.

"Your world is like a magic box," he said quietly. "The more I look, the more there is to see."

"A lot has happened since... in the past couple of centuries, I guess."

"What powers these ships of the air? Not sails, surely."

"They have engines."

"Steam engines?"

"No. No, not steam." Kathryn lay down on her stomach, her elbows propped in the sand and her chin in her hands. "I don't know much about this, Matthew. Some—the older ones—run on gasoline. Oil, I guess you'd call it. Others—the ones that just swooped over us—have jet engines. And before you ask, I haven't the foggiest idea how jet engines work."

"And what is their burthen?"

"Their what?"

"How much can they carry?"

"Well, some are really big. The one I took from New York to Grenada, for instance—"

His eyes popped open.

"You have flown in these things?" She nodded. "What is it like? Can you see the entire world from up so high?"

"It feels that way, sometimes, especially when you fly above the clouds, but—"

"Above the clouds," he said in a reverential whisper. "God, I cannot imagine such a thing."

She thought of what he would say if she tried to explain rockets, and space stations, and flights to the moon.

"There's so much I should tell you," she said, "but I can't. I'm already in over my head. I live in a high-tech world... a complex one, I mean. And I work in a complex field, but I never realized how many things I've just accepted on faith without really understanding them."

"Like me," Matthew said softly. He put his arm around her shoulder and drew her close to his side. They lay quietly, not talking, just luxuriating in the simple joy of being together.

"I feel like a man just awakened from a long sleep," he murmured after a while. "My head spins with questions."

"Well, ask them. I'll do my best to answer."

"I should like to know more about the war. My war. It ended honorably, you said."

"Absolutely."

"How long did it last? What were the decisive battles? Did the Prince of Wales remain Regent or did the English finally find the balls to rid themselves of their corrupt aristocracy? And what of Madison? Did he—"

"Stop!" Kathryn flung out her arms and groaned in mock dismay. "I give up."

Matthew grinned, rolled onto his belly, and traced the outline of her lips with the tip of his finger.

"Too many questions at once?"

"Too many questions I can't answer. I can see now that I should have paid more attention to my history textbooks."

"I find it difficult to believe you weren't a good student."

"Oh, I was." She smiled. "But not of history."

He bent his head and kissed her gently. "I wish I had had more formal schooling. At least, I learned to master my letters."

"How?"

"The mate of my first ship had a theory about idle hands and idle minds. He taught me to read and figure." He grinned. "I admit, other than the Song of Solomon, I didn't get much out of the Good Book, but I did come to enjoy reading Tacitus, years later, and a bit of Virgil and Caesar, without the mate's cane to goad me." He bent his head and kissed her, slowly and deeply, until she sighed with pleasure. "What were you like, when you were a little girl?"

Kathryn linked her hands behind his neck

"Let's see... well, I suppose I was obedient. And quiet."

"Mmm. That's certainly difficult to picture."

She laughed. "You seem to have brought out another side of me, Captain."

Matthew smiled. "And you didn't like history."

"No." She tugged his hair, pulled his face to hers and kissed his mouth. "But that was before I met a bit of history, in the flesh."

"Aye," he said. He moved over her, so that his warm, bare chest brushed against her. "Very much in the flesh, if you'd like some proof."

Kathryn's breath caught. "You're trying to change the subject."

"Nay, why would I? The subject interests me greatly. Tell me more."

Smiling, she stroked his hair back from his face. "You tell me. What do you think I was like, when I was little?"

"Well, I can't envision you locked away in a schoolroom with that pretty nose tucked inside a book."

"What do you see me doing, then?"

"Picking flowers in a meadow, perhaps. Gazing at the stars. Reading poetry. Listening to old tales." He smiled. "And dreaming about princes and princesses, and dragons and knights and damsels in distress."

Kathryn blinked. For the second time in one afternoon, forgotten memories were surfacing. It was like looking into a kaleidoscope and seeing old, familiar shapes become brand new.

"You know, you're right," she said, her voice soft with surprise. "I loved stories like that, until my father went away."

"And then?"

"And then, I decided that I'd be better off trusting math and science texts instead of..." She fell silent and turned her face away, but not quickly enough to keep Matthew from seeing the glint of tears that suddenly appeared on her lashes.

"Sweetheart?"

"It's nothing," she choked, "just that—that all of a sudden I find myself wanting to believe in princes and princesses and forever after all over again."

Gently, he turned her face to his and looked down at her. He knew that it made no sense to let her hope—but to know something with your intellect, and to believe it with your heart, were not the same. He whispered her name and gathered her into his arms. He kissed her, again and again, until her lips were soft and clinging to his and their heartbeats mingled.

"Love," he said softly, "you must know that you were right to give up believing in children's tales."

"No." She caught her hands in his hair and drew his face down to hers. "Don't say that, please."

"The time of princesses and princes, of dragons vanquished, is long gone, sweetheart. There are no 'happily ever afters,' not in your world or in mine."

Her smile was sweet and tremulous, and it shot straight as an arrow into his heart.

"My dream was a fairy tale," she said, "that you were my lover, that we were together, like this, here at Charon's Crossing."

"Aye. And we will live that dream, for a while."

"No. Not just for a while, Matthew. I lo-..."

His fingers fell across her lips. "You don't," he said roughly, and rose to his feet. He stood staring out to sea, ramrod straight, eyes dark. "It is a happy infatuation, nothing more."

Kathryn stood up and laid her hand lightly on Iris arm.

"Is that what you feel for me?" she asked. "Infatuation?"