Lilac Spring (26 page)

Cherish would then spend half her time in the kitchen. When she did finally sit down in the parlor with them, it was usually to bend over some stitching and not contribute to the
conversation at all. After a while she would rise and disappear into another room.

The second time she did this, Silas decided to go in search of her. He bid Mr. Winslow and Mrs. Sullivan good-night and headed toward the kitchen to exit by the back way. Sure enough, Cherish sat at the kitchen table reading by a kerosene lamp.

He came and stood across from her. “What are you reading?”

“Oh, just a book.” She shut it, but didn’t offer to show it to him.

“Do you mind if I sit down a moment?”

“No, of course not.” But her tone conveyed only perfunctory politeness.

“Your father seems a very different man since his return,” he began, not really knowing how to proceed.

She placed her chin in her hand and looked out the window. “Does he? I suppose he does to you, since you’ve only just seen him. To me, it seems a more gradual change—ever since his collapse, really.”

“Does the specialist really give him so little hope?”

She nodded and began picking at a thread in the tablecloth.

“I’m sorry, Cherish.” How he longed to take her in his arms and comfort her, but she didn’t seem to want anything from him. He remembered when she was a little girl and would run to him for solace.

“We’ve grown closer to each other in the past month, but in a different way. I was always Papa’s little girl, but now I feel he sees me as a person in my own right.”

Cherish stared out at the waning light. She turned as she finished speaking and was caught by the intent way Silas was looking at her.

Don’t look at me that way! You’ll destroy all the equilibrium I’ve managed to build up in the weeks I’ve been away.

She dragged her gaze away.

Before she could compose herself, he spoke, his voice as calm as always, which told her he was the same. Nothing had changed with him.

Not what I will, but Thy will be done,
she reminded herself.

“You know there’s a grange dance tomorrow night. Are you planning on going?”

He’d caught her off guard. “No.”

“Why not? I thought you enjoyed those dances.”

“I enjoy sitting at home just as well.”

“I’m sure your father doesn’t want you sitting here every evening. He’d want you to get out and be around young people.”

She smiled sadly. “You sound like an elderly aunt.”

He rubbed the back of his neck. “Well, that wasn’t my intention. I just mean you should—”

She cut him off before he could pursue the topic. “Tell me more about the project with Captain Phelps.”

He eyed her warily a few seconds, then proceeded to tell her how the captain had approached him. She didn’t really listen to his words, but let them wash over her like a balm. She preferred to drink in his features as she made the appropriate movements to indicate she was listening.

His greenish-gray eyes looked somber, although he was speaking about something he loved. He was blessed with that smooth, deep golden skin that some blond people of northern European extraction had. His dark golden hair was bleached lighter at the ends. He still pushed back the shock that insisted on falling forward.

Soon he would leave for good. In the month she’d been away she’d come to accept that. She was prepared for whatever life the Lord had for her without Silas.

She smiled in encouragement at what he was saying, and was rewarded by seeing the light touch his eyes as he described the way he envisioned the yacht.

When he rose to leave, she congratulated herself on her casual way of bidding him good-night, not even giving him her hand. Soon she bent back over her book. Who knew that the words merely stared back at her, their meaning as impenetrable as a rock wall?

Silas didn’t know what more to do. Cherish was unreachable, more so than when it seemed she was on the brink of marrying Warren Townsend.

He finally confided his doubts to Mrs. McDuffie.

She smiled at him as she wiped the dishes dry. “Have you told her what you’re telling me?”

“How can I? She doesn’t seem to want to be around me.”

“This doesn’t sound like the Cherish I know.” She laid the plate on a stack and took up another. “Sometimes a woman needs to be courted. You have her father’s approval. Why don’t you take advantage of that?”

He thought over her advice, wondering how to go about courting a young woman who, by her own admission, had been courted by the best in Europe. She’d certainly had her choice of the best in Hatsfield, and they had not impressed her.

What could one semiemployed boatbuilder, whom she’d known practically all her life, do to impress her?

He remembered when she’d first come home—her enthusiasm, her joyfulness whenever they were together. He remembered her pride in her cooking ability. He thought about the day she’d insisted he accompany her on a picnic.

A picnic. The image of that day alone with her in the meadow took hold.

He asked Mrs. McDuffie’s advice.

“That’s a wonderful idea. The days have been so warm—you must enjoy the good summer weather while it lasts. I can prepare a picnic basket for you.”

“I appreciate that, but…I’d like to do this myself.”

She nodded in understanding. “I’ll show you where everything is.”

Convincing Cherish to accompany him was another story.

“A picnic?” She looked as if he’d suggested taking cod-liver oil. “Oh, that’s sweet of you, but I really must go home. Papa and Aunt Phoebe are expecting me for dinner.”

“It’s all right. I told them.”

“You told them?” Her eyes widened. Then she glanced out the window. “But the weather. Aren’t we supposed to get fog?”

“It’s a perfectly fine day.”

“I don’t know. I’m not prepared—”

“What’s to prepare for?” He was beginning to wish he’d never proposed the idea. “It’s just a picnic. Who knows when we’ll have another opportunity? You used to like picnics.”

She met his gaze a second, and he wondered if she was remembering their picnic at the beginning of the summer.

Then she looked away. The next second she’d stood and was brushing off her apron. “Oh, all right, if you insist.” Her tone was ungracious—something he’d never heard from Cherish Winslow.

They were silent on the sail over. When she noticed he was heading out to sea instead of to the next bay, she turned to him. “Where are we going?”

“I thought we’d try McKinnon Island. We can get a view of the puffins.”

She nodded and turned away again. He was content to watch her profile, the way the tendrils of hair flew away from her face.

When they landed at the island, which housed only a lighthouse, he rowed them to the small dock in the skiff. Before he had a chance to help her out, she jumped out herself.

She ran ahead of him up the pebbly path as he followed more slowly with the picnic hamper.

They climbed up a slope through tall grass to the top of the island. The lighthouse keeper walked toward them and they waved. When he neared, they chatted a few moments, then headed beyond the lighthouse to find a spot for their picnic.

They chose a sheltered spot where they could look at the sea all around them and keep an eye on the grassy slope and rocky shore before them to watch out for the puffins. Silas laid the simple food out diffidently, noticing the unevenly cut bread.

“I hope I remembered everything. Here are some pickles,” he said, removing a jar. “And lemonade. Mrs. McDuffie gave me some slices of cake for afterward.”

“Everything looks delicious,” she said, taking a sandwich from him, her fingers not touching his.

They bowed their heads and said a blessing. Afterward they ate in silence, the sound of the waves sufficient. When they’d finished eating, they watched the puffins, which had reemerged after a while, since Cherish and Silas had sat so still. He handed her a pair of binoculars and she took them wordlessly.

The puffins were like miniature penguins, with the exception of their thicker, more colorful beaks. Cherish pointed to one and they watched as he dived off a rock and emerged from the water with a fish in his beak.

Cherish handed the binoculars back to him. “Thank you.” Her eyes, for the first time since her return, glowed with something of their old enthusiasm. “Thank you for bringing me here today.”

He knew it was now or never that he had to talk to her. But it was harder than he’d expected. He looked down at the emerald grass between his knees and began to pluck it absently.

“You know, when I first arrived in Haven’s End, to be apprenticed to your father, it was the first time in my life I’d been away from home, away from everything I knew…those I loved and who loved me. I didn’t understand why I had to be sent so far away. All I knew was that Papa had died and life would never be the same again.”

He drew a deep breath, not liking to recall those days. “The nights were the worst. Your father would close up the shop. I’d hear that last turn of the key, and I’d know I was alone for the night. Then the sounds would come, the creak here, the sudden gust of wind, the ceaseless drone of the waves, closing in on me.

“I knew I had to behave like a man. I was twelve. I was no longer a baby, I knew that full well. Yet I can’t count the number of nights I cried myself to sleep.”

He glanced across at her, his arm propped against his knees. She hadn’t made a sound, but sat watching him, listening. He gave a lopsided grin. “You were the only friendly face in those first days, the only one who seemed to sense how homesick I was. You remember what you gave me that first day?”

“I remember,” she answered softly. “Annie. She was my favorite doll. I must have really felt sorry for you that day to give up Annie.”

He eyed her. “I still have her.”

She looked at him in amazement.

“Do you know how many nights I fell asleep crying over that rag doll? Quite a few, as your childish mind supposed.”

“I’m glad you had Annie.”

“She got pretty sodden that first month, though I wouldn’t have admitted that to anyone, least of all to such a self-assured five-year-old.”

She smiled. “I was pretty cocky back then, wasn’t I? I’m sorry you were so lonely.”

He looked seaward. “I learned to concentrate on the reason I’d come here—to learn to build boats, and maybe some day even to design them. I knew I was being given a rare opportunity for a boy whose life would probably have followed his father’s as a fisherman if he had lived.” He sighed. “So I learned to put aside self-pity and loneliness and concentrate on what I loved best.

“Somewhere along the way I forgot how to love anyone or anything else.”

Cherish’s heart sank. It was as she had feared. She scarcely heard his next words as the numbness threatened to envelop her.

“It took a beautiful young woman of the same fearlessness and single-mindedness of that five-year-old to show me what I had missed.”

Her eyes turned to him in wonder.
Could it be?

“Cherish…” His voice faltered. “I wish you could understand how deeply I care about you.”

She finished for him, her tone flat, “It’s just not
love.
”

“It
is
love. It’s the kind of love that rips a man apart with longing. You don’t know how hard this summer has been for me ever since you came home, so much a lady. I never dreamed you cared the least bit for me, much less aspired to win you—my feelings were buried too deep. I would never have discovered them on my own. But as you came to make me see how
much I did care, I realized I hadn’t even known they were there.”

He gave a dry laugh. “I guess maybe that’s why I never looked at another woman after losing Emma. I think I’ve always been in love with you.”

His hands tore at the grass. “I never wanted to hurt you. I never wanted to separate you from your father—I never wanted you to go through what I’d been through.

“It’s why I didn’t let myself even dream of having you.”

“Oh, Silas, why didn’t you tell me? You made me think you didn’t care.”

“I didn’t want you to have to go against your father’s wishes if all you felt was a girlish fancy.”

“Silas! Do you think that’s all I felt?”

He answered slowly, as if groping for the explanation. “I didn’t want you to defy your father just to get something you couldn’t have, and once you got it, decide it wasn’t worth having. You know, I haven’t the education you’ve had, been to the places you’ve been to…”

Tears smarted her eyes. There was nothing to say against that. If he thought so little of her.

“Don’t cry, Cherish. I don’t ever want to hurt you. I’m sorry if it causes you pain to hear this, but I wanted to explain what I’ve been going through.

“It wasn’t until you went away this past month that I realized—” he swallowed, looking straight ahead at the ocean, his hair falling over his forehead “—I realized how bleak life would be without you…how much I’d been fooling myself to think I could give you up.”

“Oh, Silas,” she whispered.

“And when you did come back—after I pleaded with God to at least let me have your friendship—you’ve been so distant. I didn’t think life could get any worse.” He sighed deeply. “I guess what I brought you out here today to say is that I love you with all my heart, and I’ll take any little part of yours that you’re able to spare me—”

She laid a hand gently on his forearm. He looked down at her hand, but otherwise remained motionless.

“Silas, do you think you’ll ever come to believe that my heart is yours—that it’s been yours for the last fourteen years? The only reason I didn’t show you this before was because I was being the dutiful daughter. I was learning patience. I was waiting, dreaming, for the day I could come to you as a woman and offer it to you.”

He turned to her as she spoke, his eyes taking on hope as she revealed her heart to him. He reached his hand upward to cup her cheek. “Forgive me, Cherish, for doubting that love. I never will again.”

She smiled.

Slowly he leaned closer, his fingers touching her temple lightly, his eyes gazing at her in wonder. “You are so beautiful,” he breathed. His fingers stroked her cheek.