Windswept (17 page)

Comments from the crowd were often more interesting than the items being sold. When several bolts of identical brocade were sold to the dressmaker, one woman commented that every little girl in Key West would be wearing dresses with gold roses, and every one would be water-stained! When an elderly woman from the island bought a huge cast iron fire bell, her neighbor commented that now she’d have to endure this new method of bringing an errant husband home to supper.

Nearly everyone bought something. Sidonia bought a set of crystal decanters, “with chips so small no one would notice.” Mrs. Whiting bought a sterling silver platter, “with four hallmarks,” she was only too eager to point out. And Nora purchased a bundle of playbills that had traveled all the way from New York City. The pages were a little wrinkled, but the words were legible, and she hoped her students might soon be able to read details of theatrical productions.

And Jacob Proctor was certain to walk away from it all a much wealthier man.

“Having a good time, Nora?”

It was uncanny. His name had just popped into her head, and now his voice vibrated soft and low in her ear. She clutched the stack of playbills to her chest and spun around. “Oh, hello, Captain,” she said, grateful her voice didn’t betray her emotions. It was the first she’d seen him since he’d been talking with Dillard Hyde and Fanny at the docks. “It’s been an educational experience to be sure.”

The corner of his mouth quirked up in a cockeyed grin. “Tell me something, Nora. Does everything you do have to come packaged as ‘an educational experience’? Don’t you ever do anything for the sheer fun of it?”

A fine question coming from the often brooding captain! “Certainly I do, Jacob,” she answered. “I went to a hanging, didn’t I?”

He laughed, and the sound sent little tingles as far south as her toes. Taking her elbow, he leaned close. A strand of his sun bleached hair brushed her cheek. “That’s right, you did, though I might have offered other examples that, as I recall, were far more enjoyable.”

He was the most confounding man. His lips touched her hair. His breath tickled her neck. He was so near and hinting at moments that were among the most memorable of Nora’s life. Stolen minutes of passion that she would recall forever, partly because he’d heartlessly tried to snuff them out in an instant with a cross word or cool rebuff. Why did he taunt her with those images now?

She stepped back. “I have no idea what you’re talking about, Jacob,” she said. “Besides, you asked me about the auction.”

“I did?”

“Yes. You asked what I thought of it.”

“I did?”

Maybe he didn’t. She couldn’t remember. “Why don’t you tell me what you thought of it. Was it successful? Would you do it again? Does it make the race to the wrecks and the retrieval of salvage worth all the danger?”

She wasn’t sure if the intense look in his eyes was his way of analyzing her questions or her face. His gaze moved from her eyes to her lips and back again.

“Yes. Yes. Yes,” he said. “What are you doing, Nora? Writing a book?”

She would never admit that she thought his answers worthy of a journal entry. “Of course not. I’m just curious, that’s all.”

Then he did the oddest thing. He led her away from the mob toward the warehouse. Once inside he took her to a quiet, dark alcove under the stairs. The noise of the crowd and the chant of the auctioneer were only a low drone of unintelligible sounds. The large room was almost vacant now. There were no more stacks of crates or barrels…nothing to stop a breeze from whispering under the ceiling beams and fanning Nora’s face. A strand of black hair fluttered against her cheek. Jacob caught it between his thumb and finger and tucked it behind her ear. He reached for her playbills and set them on the floor.

“What are you doing?” she asked. “Why did you bring me in here?”

“Walk with me tonight, Nora,” he said. “Have dinner with me. We’ll watch the moon rise together.”

No, Nora, don’t be taken in by yet another mysterious side to this man who has more facets than a prism. This is Jacob Proctor, and he is probably inviting you just so he can change his mind a moment from now and withdraw his invitation.

He took her hands and held them to his chest. “I want to be with you tonight. I’m going away on Monday, Nora…”

Ignore that little stab to your heart. Of course he’s going away. He’s a ship captain after all. He deals in selling and trading.
“But you’ll be back, won’t you?”

“Yes. But I’m not sure when. Say you’ll have dinner with me. We’ll go to Bill Barley’s. That’s public enough isn’t it?”

She pretended a worldliness she didn’t feel and shrugged off his concern. “I’m not worried about that.”

“Yes, you are, but we’ll be in full view of half the population of Key West and nearly all its visitors. You’ll be perfectly safe.”

"With you, Captain? Whyever wouldn't I be?"

He frowned slightly. And she wondered…

Even in the shadows he could see the uncertainty in her eyes. He wasn’t surprised by it. How could a man like Jacob Proctor talk of safety to a woman like Nora Seabrook? She would never be safe with him, not as long as his feelings for her were as turbulent as the tides. Even his motives for asking her to be with him churned inside him like a whirlpool with no definitive beginning or end.

Yes, he desired her but he could never have her. He should never have asked her to go with him tonight. It was a reckless thing to do, thoughtless and unfair. The actions of a man who knew the consequences and still tossed them aside to satisfy a selfish yearning.

What had he been thinking? That if he had her to himself just once he could rid his soul of her for good? Was he hoping to satisfy his longing for something he could not, and should not want? Is that why he had pulled her away from the crowd outside…to beg her if he had to? Jacob Proctor, you are guilty of crimes against this woman you haven’t even committed yet and already you are rationalizing them.

And still the words came out of his mouth again. “Let me take you out tonight, Nora.” A fool’s brain is no match for the thundering of his fool’s heart.

She smiled up at him, a strange, almost reluctant lifting of her lips. Her eyes were an aquamarine magnet for his own. “I…I can’t go to dinner with you, Jacob.”

Disappointment numbed him like a shower of ice, and yet, in a strange way, it freed him. He didn’t have to face the devil of his conscience and argue it down. He released her hands. “I understand. Your father wouldn’t approve.”

“No, he wouldn’t, but that has practically nothing to do with my answer. My parents are having a dinner party. They’ve invited Dillard Hyde and a few of the staff from the court. I must be there. You see, don’t you?”

“Yes, of course I do. It’s quite all right. Perhaps we can try for another time, when I return.”

The grin that flashed up at him now was coquettish in its charm, and definitely un-Nora-like. It was all Jacob could do not to smother it with his own lips. “I must say you’re taking this far too well for my pride,” she said.

He would have answered her but a call from the entrance stopped him.

“Nora, Nora! Are you in here?”

That infernal Hadley again! Did the man carry one of Nora’s handkerchiefs in his pocket so whenever he was on the hunt he could get a fresh dose of her scent? Jacob hardly needed to worry about his own intentions toward her when the woman had her personal attaché close by every moment of the day.

Resigned to the inevitable, Jacob walked out of the shadows of the staircase to hail the dogged Mr. Hadley. “She’s over…”

With a force he never would have thought possible from the petite Miss Seabrook, he was hauled back into the darkness. “Be quiet!” she hissed at him. “Not a word!”

She pulled him taut against her side, and he stood there like a scolded youngster - though his reaction to her nearness was in every way adult. “Now I see why you’re the teacher,” he mumbled into her ear.

“Nora? I say, one last time, are you here?”

The bloodhound’s footsteps echoed in the empty room, approached the stairs and then receded.

Nora stood perfectly still for moments after the footsteps disappeared altogether. Jacob, so close to her he could feel the rise of her breast against his ribs, allowed her to hold him a willing captive.

When she estimated it was safe, she took a step back and pivoted him around until he faced her. The light was dim, but even if they had been in a tunnel three hundred feet under the sea, he still would have seen the blue fire in her eyes. Her hands dropped to her sides and balled into fists that flexed with threatening intensity. “How dare you,” she spat out at him.

He’d seen the sweet and gentle Nora, the inquisitive, self-assured one, the curious, soft-hearted benefactor of the island children. But he’d never seen the fighter she could become without warning. And she was stunning. He didn’t know what he’d done, but seeing the flush on her cheeks and the heaving of her breasts, he wasn’t sorry he’d done it. He held his palms up to her in a defensive gesture. “May I ask what this is about?”

“I am sick and tired of you pawning me off, Captain! I will not allow you to hand me to another person as if I were a piece of your precious merchandise and you’ve just found an appropriate buyer! I will decide when I leave and with whom I go, not you!”

His heart threatened to leap out of his chest. She didn’t give two figs for Hadley! But he had to get out of this sticky dilemma, or she might very well raise that white-knuckled fist after all.

“Nora, honestly," he began "I thought I was helping you cope with a difficult situation. You had just turned down my invitation to dinner, and, frankly, I thought old Hadley came along at an opportune moment.”

“Well, don’t think on my account, Captain. I’m capable of deciding for myself. And as for that dinner invitation, yes, I did decline, but I believe your proposal for this evening was two-fold, was it not?”

Two-fold? His mind raced back to grasp his exact words. Dinner? Walk with me and watch the moon rise. “Yes, I guess it was.”

“May I respond to the second part then?”

“Please.”

“I accept your invitation to walk with you this evening. You may say where.”

She wasn’t putting him off. “At the end of Southard Street,” he heard himself say. “At the narrow lane that leads to a line of palm trees. It’s not far from the jetty.”

She nodded. “Shall we say ten o’clock?”

“But your dinner party?”

She sauntered past him and stepped into the bright light. “I’m sure I will have eaten my fill by then, Captain.”

Chapter Eleven

Dinner was served at the Seabrook house at seven thirty. Sidonia had tried desperately to find a rib roast large enough to serve ten, and when one was not available anywhere on the island, she’d had to settle for a trio of capons. A poor substitute she’d moaned, but at least she’d managed to procure mushrooms, paprika and heavy cream. With these she instructed Portia to concoct a pretty fair chicken Parisienne. For some reason, maybe it was the amount of white wine in the sauce and in everyone’s glass, but none of the guests seemed to mind that the capons had not one ounce of beefy flesh on their bones.

Least bothered of all was Fanny. She’d accomplished a quick maneuvering of the place cards before dinner, a sleight of hand noticed only by Nora. It had put her next to Dillard Hyde. What an odd combination, Nora thought during dinner as her gaze passed between the reed thin Mr. Hyde and the voluptuous Fanny. And yet everything Dillard said sent her cousin into fits of laughter.

At one point, when Theo stopped chatting like a magpie in Nora’s ear, she caught her cousin’s attention and mouthed the words, “What’s going on?”

Pretending innocence, which according to family legend was a trait Fanny had lost just out of her cradle with her first scandalous word, she raised her brows slightly and batted her long lashes. It was a
whatever-do-you-mean
gesture, and Nora knew she’d have to wait till later to get any answers.

At nine thirty Nora refused her dessert and announced that she’d obviously eaten too much and felt the need to lie down. Theo jumped up at once and hovered over her chair. “Let me walk you upstairs, Nora,” he said. “Perhaps you need a strong arm to lean on. Or perhaps a walk in the garden is all you need to settle your stomach.”

“Yes, Eleanor, that will surely help you,” Sidonia agreed. “Do take her outside, Theo. I would be so grateful, and you’re such a dear to offer.”

Nora clutched her abdomen. “Oh, Mama, I’m afraid my condition has gone beyond a walk in the garden.”

Sidonia rose from her chair. “You’re not ill, my precious? Oh, dear, Thurston, I told you this would happen. I’ll come with you, Eleanor.”

“No, no, Mama,” Nora insisted with a weak smile. “Don’t leave your guests. Nor you either, Theo. Stay, please. I over indulged, that’s all. I just need rest.” She walked to the other side of the table and stopped behind Fanny’s chair. “Though perhaps I could trouble you, cousin, to bring a cup of tea to my room?”

“I’ll ask Portia to…”

A well-placed jab from the toe of Nora’s slipper to the back of Fanny’s calf cut short her alternate suggestion. “Of course,
cherie
. I’d be happy to bring your tea.”