Season of Storm (22 page)

"Rolly?" asked Johnny dryly, as they moved down the companionway and turned on the soft lights that made this boat home to her.

Laughter bubbled over again, and she shook her head. "That wasn't Rolly. That was my father's brain dreaming that one up!" She nodded, agreeing with herself. "It's Daddy all over. He does not, repeat not, give in to ransom demands. He loves me, you see, but not enough to admit it publicly. Or would you call that
liking
? I wonder what he'd have done if they'd asked for money?" She felt oddly near tears for a moment.
 

"He'd have paid it," said Johnny softly. "Can't you s—"

"Sure
he would," she said, unconvinced. "The old coward. Hiding behind his 'condition' and making poor Rolly do the dirty work."
 

"You think he's not really worse?"

She smiled and shook her head. "Of course he's not worse. My father isn't the sort to—anyway, it's obvious what he's doing—it's a ploy! Isn't it obvious?"

"Not glaringly."

"Can I phone the hospital?"

"What?"

"I'd pretend to be someone else—his secretary. Or Valerie. I just want a report on how he's really doing."

"If you're right about his subterfuge, you won't get a report. They'll repeat what they told reporters."

"I could say I was—"

"No."

Smith gave him a quizzical smile. "Is this my kidnapper talking or my husband?"

"Your kidnapper. I still haven't figured a way out of this."

"Yes, you have. We'll go back and say we were on our honeymoon and Daddy forgot because of his heart attack."

"Very shrewd," he said. "Very cunning. And what will we say when Daddy starts squawking that it isn't true?"

"He won't. I'll tell him not to."

Johnny laughed. "Either you haven't been telling the truth about your powers over the man, or else you're underestimating him badly."

"It's not a question of power," she said. "Daddy doesn't like to look a fool. If I say I've been on my honeymoon and he keeps on saying I was kidnapped, you know what they'll start saying?"

"No."

"Well, Daddy will. They'll start saying he opposed the marriage, and I had to run away with you to make it stick. And all the wives will nod and say he's a closet racist—not that he'll care a hoot about that: he'll say he doesn't discriminate, he hates everybody—but he won't like being talked about. Imagine if they started saying he'd had his heart attack because I'd married against his wishes! How
weak
he'd look!"
 

There was an edge to her voice, and Johnny smiled at her gravely.

"For a woman who loves her father you're sounding pretty bitchy," he remarked.

True enough. "Well, he's a bastard," she said calmly, although it was the first time she had ever expressed such a thought even to herself. "And he's been an absolute bastard to me for years. Ever since Maman died he's made me feel I was a burden. For years I felt guilty, as though it was my fault Maman died."

She looked up at him. "I still feel it, a little, even though it's ridiculous. My mother died in the Six Day War. She went home for her brother's funeral—just in time to get killed herself. Daddy didn't want her to go. I remember that. But somehow I got the feeling it was all my fault, and I've been trying to make it up to my father ever since, trying to make him love me. But no more. If he doesn't love me for what I am, I'll do without."

She looked into Johnny's eyes, feeling the bond that was always between them as though she were attached to him with vibrating wire, so that everything they did hummed with a deeper significance.

"I've changed," she whispered, looking into the eyes of the man whose love she needed more than oxygen, and inside her a voice whispered,
you've changed your father for Johnny Winterhawk.
 

She shivered suddenly without knowing why, and turned to him and willed his kiss to drown her memories.

***

They sailed back to moor in the little cove and poured the warm red wine that the Mehans had given them and drank looking deep into each other's eyes.

"Wife," he said again.

And she smiled and said, "Husband."

Then he took her into the little room that would always remind her of their passion and undressed her with a slow exactitude that was like worship.

"Johnny, do you believe in God?" she asked softly.

"When I look at you, I do," he said.

He laid aside the silky cream jacket and dress and put his dark hands at her waist to sit her on the bed. He discovered his blue hankie tucked into her stocking top and bent and kissed the skin under it.

She gasped as though his touch scalded her, and his fingers began to tremble, and his touch lost its precision as he stripped off her stockings and her lacy underwear.

Then his mouth was on hers, his hand on her breast, and the darkness reeled around her as his body pressed her down and down...

She awoke, to the distant drumming of rain on the hull, filled with inexplicable dread, as though from an unremembered dream. And when she turned her head on her pillow the dark sleeping face beside her was the face of a stranger.

Suddenly and completely her heart erupted with panic. Who was he, this man she had married? She knew nothing whatever about him. Nothing, except the fact that he had kidnapped her and now was her husband.

I must have been mad,
she thought, a desperate, cold fear taking hold of her and hanging on.
I must have been temporarily insane.
 

She tried to calm the panic before it choked her, before fear suffocated her.
It'll be all right when he opens his eyes,
she thought desperately.
This is Johnny, Johnny whom I love. He won't look like such a stranger when he opens his eyes.
 

But somewhere inside a voice that spoke too late told her that before she had been mad, and now she was sane, that nothing would be all right for a long time to come.

She was torn between willing him to open his eyes and calm her terror and wanting to jump up and escape before he could wake. Before she could decide to move he stirred.

She froze, watching him, terror clutching her from every angle.

He did not grunt or moan or roll over. Merely he was asleep, and then he was awake, his eyes open, gazing full into hers.

She opened her mouth on a soundless gasp, and then an unbelievable, indescribable look passed over his face, shocking her to rigid silence; and his voice when he spoke was deep with horror.

"My God," said Johnny Winterhawk. "My God, what have I done?" And the brightest dream of her life shattered into sawdust.

Twenty-one

They stared at each other for a long, appalled moment, each taking stock of the mute dismay and shock in the other's eyes. "My God," he said again.

Then he angled himself up and around to a sitting position on the bed beside her, and she knew that suddenly, after all that had passed between them, he felt awkward being naked in front of her, as if she were a complete stranger. Immediately she was ashamed of the delicate, sweet-sexy negligee she was wearing, that she had put on for him, teasing, wanton, during the long hours that they had not slept. She drew the sheet over herself, not watching as Johnny pulled open a drawer and stuck his long legs into an old pair of Levi's.

She was in a state of shock, as though someone else had been inhabiting her body, and she had awakened to find herself in an unrecognizable world.

She said, "I...are we crazy? Did we go crazy?"

"Looks like it," said Johnny Winterhawk, fastening his jeans. He sounded coolly matter-of-fact, as though nothing of the past few days touched him.

"But...but how? Jo...I..." she stammered. It no longer seemed right to call him by his first name. "How could it happen?"

"People go crazy every day, don't they?" He shrugged. "Call it temporary insanity." He threw up his head and laughed in angry self-mockery, turned and walked out into the saloon.

Temporary insanity.
Was that what it was, that feeling that she had found her soulmate, that with Johnny she was safe forever? Smith dressed shakily, her hands stopping and starting as her mind raced over the facts, as though unable to work on automatic pilot while so much of her brain's energy was needed for thinking. How could such deep, such soul-deep love be insanity?
 

But what else could you call it? He had kidnapped her, he was her enemy. Wasn't he?

Finally she forced her mind blank, focussing on the simple actions, button after button, as though she had never performed them before....

There was a tall, dark stranger in the galley when she came out, making coffee in two mugs. His name was Johnny Winterhawk, and she knew nothing about him.

"We're a pretty extreme case," she said, with a faint attempt at humour.

"And then some," said Johnny. He carried the coffee to the table in the saloon, and Smith looked around and wondered how she had ever felt at home in this boat, or imagined it held peace for her. It was her prison, wasn't it? It had never been anything else.

"We aren't the first and we won't be the last to marry strangers, but probably most of those others at least had the excuse of alcohol."

"God," she breathed.
That's right, we're married,
she thought. Perhaps that was what had snapped them out of it. She felt as though her submerged self, which had several times in the past few days tried to come to her rescue and been pushed back, had panicked after last night and become strong enough to overcome all her insane illusions.
 

Married.
That chilled the blood, that really did.
 

She asked, "Can we get it annulled?"

He was sitting on the settee opposite, the table separating them. They had sat like this before, late at night, talking, but now there was no closeness—no artificial, insanity-produced closeness—to bridge the distance and make her feel cozily cocooned with him. Now the air was cold and clear and she felt as though she were at a board meeting.

"I don't know," said Winterhawk, gingerly sipping the scalding coffee. "That may depend on whether we're willing to lie about consummation."

She pressed back her panic at the memory his words called up.
Consummation.
That was the word for it, all right. They had been consumed by it and by each other. Yet she could look at him now and feel nothing but a dry cold fear. She might have convinced herself it was all a dream, except for the languor of her muscles and a lingering sensitivity in her thighs.
 

"Would that be perjury?" she wondered aloud, and Winterhawk shrugged.

"How would anyone prove it?"

"We'd always have a hold over each other," she said. "We'd never be free."

"A lot freer than being married," he said, and there was so much self-loathing in his voice she was startled into pain.

"There's something more, isn't there?" she said. "More than just..." she waved her hand, "...a crazy mistake." She looked away, and he set down his cup and stood up.

"Marrying a white woman," he said jerkily, "has just about put paid to any hope I had of..." He faded off, staring out the port at the soft grey rain.

Of being accepted by your people,
she finished for him mentally.
Of being one of them again.
 

She said, "Are your people so opposed to mixed marriage?" and realized she did not know how her own father would feel about it.

"I have already embraced too much of the white man's world. I renounced my Indian status when I was eighteen, and that is irrevocable. My wife cannot become an Indian. My children can never be Indian unless I marry a status Indian—and even that would require a change in the law."

His voice was hoarse with anguish. She gazed at his back, the muscles taut with the effort of controlling his emotions. Suddenly, irrelevantly, she was thinking,
I'm glad we're not really in love. I'm glad I don't have to fight against that. That will always be the most important thing in your life, and I'd hate that. If I loved you I wouldn't want to take second place to anything. I'd want you to love me without doubts or reservations—the way you did when we thought we were made for each other.
 

***

She jumped ship an hour later, when he went to the marina for gas and supplies. She waited till Johnny was out of sight, then slipped through the hatch. She left her wedding ring on the table and her dress with its tiny golden horseshoe on the chair where Johnny had thrown it. She could not bear to touch it. She took two plastic shopping bags and her handbag, and went into the tiny marina store.

Johnny saw her there when he went in to pay for the gas. He looked at her the way he had looked at her once before, as though he had dug his own grave. Then he smiled faintly.

"So long," he said, and she felt herself stiffen inside to ward off any regret she might feel. She raised a hand and a smile.