The Halifax Connection (47 page)

He glanced toward the foyer door, where Isabel’s party had vanished. Perhaps he too could guess what she would be telling her kin. Each time he and Sylvie had been together before, they had met people who knew him, but the meetings had been brief, the people mostly ordinary. None of them knew who she was; they had no connection with the Den. No doubt they noticed that she was of a lower rank than her companion, but they did not seem to care much.

“Well,” Erryn said lightly, “we’re grist for the gossip mill now. I’ll give her twenty-four hours and everyone in Nova Scotia will know of us except the fish, and they’ll be hearing rumours.” He poured tea for them and handed her a cup. “And in case you’re wondering, my heart, if I care poppycock about it, I don’t. I thought it would happen a lot sooner, frankly. Ah, look, the paté!”

The paté was, as he had promised, wonderfully good. After the first few generous mouthfuls, he picked up his tea and leaned back a little in his chair.

“There was a great commotion around Miss Isabel the summer before last. One of the artillery officers was courting her—a real sharp fellow, the sort who’d pick up a pistol after it misfired, peer down the barrel, and pull the trigger again to see why it wasn’t working. But he was dashingly handsome. He didn’t have so much as a crook in his finger that wasn’t perfect. Miss Isabel liked him. There was talk it might be serious, until he raced their buggy down Barrington so fast he lost control of the horses and put her through a haberdashery window.”

“Dear heavens! Horses, buggy, and all?”

“No. Just buggy and all. The horses ended in a heap on the boardwalk.”

“Was she hurt?”

“She broke her arm. She was lucky. If they’d hit a wall instead of a window, she might have been killed. Needless to say, Mr. Jamie was a trifle roused. Told the young fool he wasn’t to come within a mile of his daughter ever again. I don’t know how
he
felt about it, but Isabel didn’t seem to take it badly. She’s always had more suitors than she knew what to do with.”

“And were you one of them?”

Sylvie asked the question lightly, playfully, but she did ask, remembering how Isabel had approached them, as if Erryn Shaw was, at the very least, an old friend.

To her surprise, he laughed. “Me? Hardly. She likes her lads wealthy and well made. I fail on both counts. Do you know what
she said about me once, to a friend who wasn’t as discreet as she should have been and passed it on? The friend had said to her, more or less, ‘Isn’t Mr. Shaw from the theatre so very talented and clever?’ And Miss Isabel said, ‘Well, perhaps, but he’s such a long, stringy thing, they must’ve hung him out to dry before he was set.’”

“Why, that were a bleeding mean thing to say.”

“I suppose so. On the other hand, it does get me out of the dock. I can look in the mirror every morning and think: I’m not to blame for any of this. The blighters hung me to dry before I was set.”

He spoke lightly, with a ghost of a grin, and she could not help but smile a bit herself. Yet she understood that under his amusement lay a considerable measure of regret.

People never said much about beauty in relation to men. Their gifts in life were practical things: property, authority, competence. If they had those, it was not supposed to matter how they looked. But perhaps for some of them it did, especially those who were sensitive and artistic. Erryn
was
bony as a rake; his limbs were too long for the rest of him and his head was too large. His face was carved all uneven, and bony as well, with a hooked nose that must have been broken more than once. She did not care. She had liked him from the first, back at the Irish Stone, liked his delicacy of manner, his grace of movement, even his fine clothes. All the while her mind was being cautious, backing away, her instincts were reading him with approval. Nice, they would have said if they had had the use of words. Very, very nice.

But for others, perhaps, it was different.

The waiter brought the rest of their food. Everything was delicious. They nibbled it to the last bite, and lingered over their wine. As always, he encouraged her to talk about her own life and about affairs at the Den. He seemed pleased that she had found a friend in Aggie Breault. He was always willing to hear about the guests as well; he had a lively taste for gossip, especially if it was funny or bizarre. So an hour passed, or more. Finally he reached across the table and took her hands.

“Well, my heart, was there something special you fancied doing today, or seeing … given that we can barely see across the street?”

She could not have said what it was about his voice that troubled her, but she knew he wanted her answer to be no—no, there was nowhere she wanted to go. And then he could take her back to the Den and go off about his own affairs.

And next week, perhaps, he would not come at all.

It was all she could do to smile, to keep her voice entirely even. “No, Erryn. There were nothing I had in mind.”

“Then would you consider coming home with me? I have the house all to myself. The landlord’s off to Yarmouth to spend a couple of weeks with his boys. We could make a big fire and play music and talk to our hearts’ content. It’ll be quite safe, I promise you. In this fog I could take the Royal Artillery home and no one would be the wiser. I know it’s … it seems … improper … and if you want to whack me on the head now, I have only myself to blame. But I wouldn’t ask except that I want to be with you more than anything else in the world.”

She had not expected anything like this. Her astonishment must have shown as distress, for he looked at his hands and then at her again, more troubled than before.

“I only meant … oh, be hanged to it, Sylvie, if it were summer, we could go off in the woods and sit under a tree … I only wanted some time with you, just the two of us … I’m sorry, I meant nothing more, I’m sorry—”

“Erryn.” She freed her hands and used them to capture his. “You said once the world weren’t laid out neat and clear, with everybody following the rules. Well, you’re right, it ain’t. I’ll go home with you if you like. And I ain’t cross at you for asking, either.”

“You aren’t?”

“No.”

“Not even a little bit?”

“No. Not if you keep your promise and play some music for me.”

The fog deepened as the sun went down, making the streets through which they passed grow ever more mysterious and strange, and the house seem like an island on the far side of the world. It was a small wooden house, snug and utterly still. Erryn lit a single kerosene lamp. In no time at all he had a splendid fire burning in the hearth, and a glass of dark wine for each of them.

Sylvie had never lain with a man. She had pleasured one once, under duress, crouched on her knees like a dog, but she had never lain with anyone. She did not know what it would be like. She was not even certain she would do it, this time.

Only it was so easy. There was a bear rug in front of the fire, with a thick quilt laid over to make it soft as a bed. There was firelight dancing all over them, elfin and wild. There was her own loneliness, and hours of time, a feast of time in a world as secret as a cave. It was so easy to sit and laugh with him, to reach over and brush a bit of nothing from his hair, and then, because she purely could not help it, to play the back of her hand across his face and kiss him. He was smooth and graceful in everything he did; caressing her with scarcely any restraint, even to play his hands across her breasts, and once, for just a moment, his mouth; yet doing it with such sweetness that it did not seem an act of boldness at all, but a gift. Once, for a long time, he did not touch her at all. He took his flute from the cabinet and played love songs, one after another, “Greensleeves” and “Shenandoah” and “Mary Morrison” and finally the one she liked best of all, the song of Eriskay:

He sat, easy as a gypsy, one elbow braced against his raised thigh, his eyes half closed, his fingers light and quick as butterflies on the slender instrument. The music, though simple, was utterly enchanting. It was like kissing him, hearing him play, as though the songs were fingers running across her skin, touching her as his had never dared, not yet, making her wet and soft and so hungry that she wanted nothing in the world except to stroke him, every lean, wild, scarecrow bit of him, forever and forever.

This is what they mean when they talk about lust, about the sins of the flesh.

He stopped playing, wiped the flute lightly on his sleeve, and laid it aside.

“That was beautiful,” she whispered.

“The pied piper of Halifax”—he bowed as deeply and elegantly as a man could do, sitting on the floor—“at your service, Miss Bowen. Mice, rats, bugs, ghosts and ghoulies, barking dogs, rude neighbours, bill collectors, unwelcome suitors, just call me”—he made an airy, flamboyant gesture in the general direction of the waterfront—“and I’ll whistle them into the sea.”

“I believe you could do it, too.”

He smiled and held out his hand. And that was the end of her; she went to him as one half dead of cold might reach for fire.

He laid her back against the quilt, brushed her hair away from her forehead, stroked her face, even the scars. He said she was lovely, oh so lovely, and of course it was not true, but he spoke as though he meant it, at least for now. They reached as one for a kiss, and there was no end of them then, kisses to burn up all the fogs of the North Atlantic, and his hands on her, as wanton and sweet as his flute. For a small time reality intruded, the many reasons why it was probably a bad mistake—a sin, of course, but mostly a mistake—but it was so good, so impossibly beautiful, that she could not bear to end it, not yet, maybe in a moment or two, but not yet. After a time her clothing was all a disorder about her, opened and slid one way or the other, or
slipped off altogether, and ending it was no longer a remote possibility.

Afterwards there was only wonder. When it began to fade and she realized what she had done—not the sin of it, or the so-called shame, none of those things the preachers and the proper people talked about, only the surrender—she felt utterly defenceless. He could shred her to pieces with a word now. With a look.

But he did not. He lay beside her and wrapped her in his arms, drawing the quilt close around and shifting his limbs so they could nestle like kittens. Now and then he stroked her hair or her back; mostly he just held her, his long arms sheltering and fiercely possessive. She clung to him, wanting nothing in the world except to be held. Only much later, weeks later, did she consider the possibility that he might have felt as vulnerable as she did.

He fed the fire a couple of times and poured them a second glass of wine; otherwise he never left her side. As the hours passed, she discovered a number of things about love and love-making she had not expected—for one, that in the course of a long winter evening it was possible to do it more than once, and that the first time was not the best time. The second was better, and the best, for all she knew, was still ahead of her, for the thing seemed full of barely imagined possibilities.

Once, in the languor between pleasures, she half sat, half lay beside him and traced the lines of his face with her fingers, then the curve of his shoulder and the taut sweep of his rib cage and his belly, to the mound of his genitals and on down his thighs, right to his feet, to all ten of his very ticklish toes. She thought how Isabel Orton had dismissed him, calling him a long, stringy thing. For the first time, she felt sorry for Isabel Orton. Because he was glorious to look at, like a wild and splendid young animal. And maybe a woman had to be poor to see it, to understand how precious it
was. Maybe she had to remember the faces and bodies of a mill town, the wrecked faces, the smiles without teeth, the hands ruined by machinery, the endless coughing, the sores that would not heal. To be past the age of thirty and undamaged, vibrant with sheer animal health and potency … that was to be beautiful.