Pieces of Dreams (11 page)

Conrad pulled with teeth-clenched effort at the steering oar, but they made scant progress toward the west bank. The wind was too strong from that direction; it was holding them off. The yellow-brown river surged and frothed around them, threatening to up-end the raft. The ropes lashing the shifting, rubbing logs together creaked under the pressure. The air was thick with spray and laden with the scents of ozone and ancient effluvia stirred up from the river bottom.

As they rounded the next bend, lightning pitch-forked down the sky again, hissing as it struck in the water beside them. Melly heard Conrad's low oath. A bare moment later, he shouted, “We've got to get out of this!”

The raft changed directions. Melly swung around, narrowing her eyes to gaze ahead of them. There was an island looming ahead in the middle of the river. The dark green mass was much closer than the western shore. Conrad, she could see, was going to try to land on it.

It was then that the rain began, sweeping toward them in a thick, gray curtain. It peppered down around them as the raft grated over the sandbar that angled out in front of the island.

Conrad ignored the hissing clatter as he plunged over the side and splashed ashore with the rope tether in hand. He dragged the water-logged craft higher, grounding it on the bank and lashing it to a willow that leaned from the stand of trees along the water's edge.

Melly struggled to her feet, staggering against the blowing rain, half-blinded by bits of flying bark and leaves. Conrad swung to scoop her up in his arms. Head down, he waded ashore, then fought his way through weeds and willows, emerging beneath the sheltering canopy of maple and sweet gum trees.

The rain rattled down through the leaves over their heads, fragmenting into a fine mist. The smells of wet earth, bruised greenery and musty lichen rose around them. Conrad pushed deeper, not stopping until he reached the center of the isolated spit of woodland. There he set Melly on her feet under the spreading limbs of a great oak.

The sound of the rain beating the river surface to a froth came plainly to where they stood, yet at the same time seemed remote. The tops of the trees above them swayed and groaned, moaning with the wind, but Melly and Conrad were protected from its force. Sheltered by the great umbrella of oak branches, they were out of the worst of the storm. The thunder and lightning had subsided, making it unlikely they would be struck dead where they stood.

Conrad looked down at her. For long moments, they stood quite still, lost in the perilous intensity of the moment and the currents of emotion that shifted between them

Then wry amusement crept into the brilliant blue of Conrad's eyes and pleated the skin at the corners into tiny, endearing fans. Melly felt an answering smile curve her own mouth. They stared at each other, at their wet hair plastered to their heads, their sodden, mud-stained clothes, the raindrops spiking their lashes and dripping from the tips of their noses.

Suddenly they were laughing, holding to each other in the relieved aftermath of danger—and in the certain knowledge that, beyond all logic or sanity, they had not only survived their adventure but enjoyed it.

Then just as abruptly they were silent. The rain splattered and sang, whipping in gusts. It dripped around them, wetting the ground beyond the oak's edge, forming runnels that oozed and spread and became freshets heading toward the river. The cooling air brushed Melly's wet skin with coolness, beading it with goose bumps. Against that chill, she could feel the intense body heat of the man who held her. The need to move toward it, toward him, was so strong that she felt lightheaded with it.

She inhaled in sharp dismay and stepped away from him. He let her go. Turning from her, he braced one hand on the trunk of the oak while he raked his hair back with the other. She thought his stance relaxed—until she saw the oak bark crumble under the pressure of his white-tipped fingers.

Whirling away, Melly dropped down to crouch at the base of the tree. She rested her head on her drawn up knees and clasped them with her arms. Closing her eyes tightly, she did her best to hold the treacherous impulses inside her at bay while keeping body and conscience together.

Time became elastic, stretching and contracting until it ceased to have meaning. It might have been twenty minutes later, or two hours, when the sky began to lighten. The wind dropped. The pounding rain slackened at last, becoming a drizzle, a sprinkling. Thunder grumbled still, but it was fading away to the east. High overhead, a bird called. The trees dripped, clouds remained to dim the light and threaten another small shower or two, but the worst appeared to be over.

Conrad left the oak's shelter while the last raindrops were still pattering down. She thought he meant to check the river to see if it had settled down enough to chance the raft again. The day was waning. They would need to get going soon if they were to cross to the bank, then land and walk back to Good Hope before dark.

He returned almost immediately. There was a taut set to his shoulders and grim irony in his face as he stopped a few feet from where she sat.

“Better make yourself comfortable,” he said, his voice flat.

“What do you mean?” She tried to decipher his closed expression.

“The tree I tied up to was undercut by the river and washed away.”

“I don’t see—”

“The raft went with it.”

It was an instant before his words penetrated, before her befuddled brain made sense of the laconic syllables. Then she saw what he was saying, and an odd, fatalistic horror shifted through her.

The raft was gone.

They were stranded.

Chapter Nine

Marooned by the river like the rawest greenhorn. Conrad silently castigated himself with a few of his more choice seamen's epithets.

There was no question how he had come to make such a stupid mistake: the answer was all too clear. It was sitting across from him, on the other side of the signal fire he had kindled in this willow-circled clearing near the river's edge.

It would be some time before the others found them. They must have been caught by the storm, so would make slow going on the muddy river road back to town. Everyone would expect him and Melly to be waiting for them there; it was the logical solution. How long would it take before they realized the two of them weren't there and weren't coming?

Thank God for the oiled pouch of sulfur matches that he had stuffed into his pocket. Such preparedness was second nature rather than planned, but no less effective for that. The fire would not only show the way, but help dry their clothes and keep the mosquitoes and gnats at a reasonable distance.

Melly had taken down her hair to dry it. Watching her comb the tangles from the long, waving strands, staring at the way the soft, night-dark mass gleamed in the firelight, made his guts twist with pure, aching need. He wanted to gather it in his hands, bury his face in its warm, damp silk and breathe the essence of her into his very being.

The bonfire crackled, leaping higher in a small explosion of sparks that spiraled into the purple twilight sky. Melly looked up at the sound, then glanced over at him across the flames. Her eyes reflected their red-hot glow, while the pure planes and angles of her face were enameled in blue and gold like some exquisite, fabled mask of enchantment. He held her gaze, absorbing it, and for a single instant there was nothing between them except smoke, wavering heat waves, and the aching mystery of desire.

Her throat moved as she swallowed. She lowered her lashes and bent her head. Picking up a stick, she gouged at the mud beside her. After a moment, she asked, “Do you remember the time you and I were walking along the levee and saw the man throw a grass sack into the water?”

It was an effort to redirect his thoughts, but he nodded as he recalled the incident.

“There were kittens in the sack; we could hear them crying as it started to sink. I wanted to rescue the little things, but the water was too deep—and I was too afraid. You dove in and brought the kittens out to me. Vanilla, Aunt Dora's boarding house cat, was one of them.”

A reminiscent smile creased one lean, sun-bronzed cheek. “You always were tender-hearted.”

“And you always knew it. But do you remember that you were pretending to be Caleb that day?”

So he was. He looked away from her. “Maybe.”

“Why?”

He lifted a shoulder in a moody shrug. “You were so young, only six, maybe seven. You wanted to go with me and I—well, I wanted the company. Your aunt trusted Caleb.” He heard the old pain in his voice, but could do nothing about it.

“That was the day I learned to tell you apart,” she said softly.

His heart took on a trip-hammer beat. “How?”

“One of the kittens had drowned. You held me while I cried. From then on, all I had to do was touch you.”

“But you never said a word…so I figured—”

She shook her head. “Caleb picked me up once to put me in a wagon, and he’d helped me into a rope swing. When you held me that day, it felt…different. Later on, I could see the difference in your eyes. I didn't understand why everybody couldn't see it. I used to follow you sometimes, just to see the way your face changed when you turned and saw me.”

He couldn't have spoken if his life depended on it.

She went on after a moment, her voice tight, forced. “But you went away for so many years. It seemed you were never coming back.” She stopped, took a deep breath. “Caleb is fine man, a good friend, and he loves me in his way. To look at him is ... very nearly the same.”

Around them the insects and night frogs made their pleas for love and immortality. The wet, earthy smell of the woods, the fishy taint of the river, were strong in their lungs. The air was moist and cool after the rain, so that the acrid smoke from the fire lay on it like a drifting veil, first concealing, now revealing, their faces. Yet between them, in still and perfect clarity, was an understanding that had no need for words.

She knew why he had come from so far across the sea to be with her before she was wed. He knew why she could conquer her fear of deep water enough to endure the storm. They were two parts of a whole, in spite of her promise to Caleb or the pull inside him for far distant horizons.

Nothing would come of it. Soon they would be rescued and the pace of their days, so briefly interrupted, would resume their steady, inevitable course. It was not meant that they should be together. Time and circumstances had prevented it until this moment, and their loyalties demanded that nothing change that now.

Yet for a single, heart-stopping moment they were able to look into each other's eyes in the dancing firelight, and see in bright hot glory the things that might have been.

She lowered her lashes and tossed the small stick she held into the fire. Suddenly the stacked and glowing heart of it shifted, collapsing on itself. A burning brand tumbled from the heap, skittering, trailing coals and smoke. It spun toward Melly's skirts to lodge in the soft, crumpled folds.

Conrad moved in the same instant, lunging with a swift uncoiling of taut muscles. Stretching, reaching without conscious thought beyond the need to prevent pain and disaster, he snatched the smoking limb from the fragile cloth and flung it back into the fire. He swung back, using the palm of his hand to beat out the small flames licking at her spread hems.

Melly cried out, reaching toward him. He raked his gaze over her, her bare feet and arms, her face, in search of injury. Finding none, he demanded, “What is it? Where are you hurt?”

“Nothing. I'm not,” she said with a violent shake of her head that set the ends of her hair to dancing. “But you—your hand...”

Reaching to catch his wrist, she turned it to the light of the fire. The skin was blackened, stinging, but protected from real harm by a layer of callouses. He had endured far worse many times from rope burns.

“It's nothing,” he said, and meant it.

“Not to me.” Her voice was quiet. Bending her head, she pressed her lips to the tender center of his palm.

For endless eons of time, he could not move, had no power over the assorted bones, tendons and sinews of his body. He felt as if the entire surface of his skin was mantled in a hot flush of need. His brain was baking in his skull, on fire with the violent internal conflict between brotherly fidelity and his own aching need, between honor and fate.