The Passions of Emma (52 page)
Happiness suffused her face in a flash of light, and he knew it was because he’d called her “Emma darlin’.” He hadn’t meant to, but he wasn’t sorry he had.
He wedged his knee into the wheel spokes to steady it, hooked his thumbs in his pockets, and put on the Irish for her. “There was an Irish hero by the name of Cú Chulainn. The lad suffered a terrrrible defeat at the hands of a tribe of warrior women who rode
naked into battle. He took one look at the bare-breasted lot of them, turned on his heels, and ran for the life of him.”
naked into battle. He took one look at the bare-breasted lot of them, turned on his heels, and ran for the life of him.”
Her mouth curved into a slow smile. “Are you telling me you want to run away from me, Mr. McKenna?”
What he wanted . . .
After he and Bria had first made love they had talked about their future, not just their tomorrow or the next day, but their whole lives. They had vowed to spend their lives together as man and wife, even before they had done so in church before God.
But with Emma it could only be the moment. A moment that had no past and would have no future, that could have no ambition or hope beyond itself. Sweet and wild and fleeting—the moment simply was.
What he wanted . . .
He thought of her, of the feel of her breasts in his hands, the curve of her belly rubbing over him, and her thighs soft and round against his face. He thought of the taste of her and the smell of her, and what he wanted was to have her again.
“What I was telling you,” he said, “is what I ought to be doing. Not what I am doing, surely, since I’ve already taken myself down to Pardon Hardy’s and purchased some French letters.”
The little crease she got between her eyebrows when she was worried or confused appeared. “I don’t understand you sometimes. What does France have to do with anything?”
He laughed. “French letters, lass, are a thing that keeps a man from planting a babe in a woman. They don’t always work, though. It’s a dangerous business we’re about, Emma Tremayne.”
Her chin came up again; she was getting good at it. “I’m not afraid,” she said, but he heard the tremor in her voice. She was coming to know about costs and consequences, was his Emma.
“I am,” he said. “I am very afraid.”
She stared at him carefully, trying to see if he meant it. When she understood that he did, her gaze fell away, and he saw her swallow hard.
He leaned over and scooped a big, fat sardine out of the bucket at his feet. “Take this and bait a hook with it,” he said. He tossed the slimy thing into her lap and grinned at her when she jumped and uttered a little squeak. “If you’re going to spend the day with me, Miss Tremayne, you’ll be doing it fishing.”
She was game for trying, he had to give her that. But she was more trouble than she was worth, because he kept having to tell her what to do and then show her how to do it, and he kept wanting to touch her.
The bay was a flat, glassy blue now, speckled with distant sails. They fished for cod among the small islands that lay scattered between Poppasquash Point and the larger Prudence Island. When they passed a place where the surf beat wildly and the currents eddied dangerously around a pile of jagged rocks, she told him this was where her brother had drowned in a storm six years ago.
“Our father went out looking for him in his own sloop, when the wind was still blowing fiercely. He was so long in coming back, Papa was, and I thought . . .” She shivered, as if that long time of waiting lived within her still. “All that he brought back with him of Willie was his yacht-club cap. He showed me later where he’d found it, floating among those rocks, along with pieces of kindling, which was all that was left of Willie’s boat.”
“And didn’t that make you afraid of sailing?”
“It made me afraid,” she said. “But of other things.”
When the sun was high and golden in the sky, and the water took on the polish of steel plate, he put the dory in irons and brought out his dinner of corned beef sandwiches to share with her.
“Most days, this is a sweet little bay, the Narragansett,” he said. “Not like the wild surf of Gortadoo.”
She was sitting by him, close enough to touch, although they weren’t touching. The slouch hat that she’d borrowed concealed a good part of her face from him. But it did something to her neck, making it look impossibly long, and he kept thinking how he
wanted to run his lips along the long, white arch of her neck, from her breastbone to that place behind her ear.
wanted to run his lips along the long, white arch of her neck, from her breastbone to that place behind her ear.
“Tell me of your Ireland,” she said.
He opened his mouth to answer her, and his voice cracked roughly. “My Ireland? Is there the more than one?”
“Bria told me of hers. Now, I want to know of yours.”
He was silent a minute, then said, “My Ireland . . . Well, she’s a fairy thorn standing in naked loneliness on a hill of black rocks. She’s walking across a boggy field and looking up to see a plume of smoke rising from the yellow thatch of your
shibeen.
She’s fuchsia hedges dripping scarlet over a famine wall in summer, and turf piles drying in the sun.”
shibeen.
She’s fuchsia hedges dripping scarlet over a famine wall in summer, and turf piles drying in the sun.”
She turned her head to look at him, and he was surprised to see tears welling in her eyes. “You make her sound so very beautiful.”
“Is that not how Bria spoke of her?”
“No. Although she loved her still, there was more pain in Bria’s memories.”
“There was, surely,” he said, acknowledging the truth she spoke, and accepting the hurt of it.
It was a bittersweet comfort to him that they could speak so freely of Bria. But then their love for Bria was the one real thing they shared beyond their bodies. In a way that he was coming to see only now, in the last weeks of his wife’s life they had formed a triangle—he and Emma and Bria. Bria had been the base of it, holding them together. But now she had gone away and left them leaning against each other.
For the moment.
“When I was a lad in Gortadoo,” he said into the soft silence that had come between them, “we’d go diving into the waves as they broke on the sandy beach, and afterward we’d climb onto the rocks and watch the sunset. There’s a legend, you see, that out beyond the western sun lays a land called Tír na nÓg, a place of eternal youth. But no Irishman has ever gone to look for it. We
Irish, we like to dream about leaving Ireland, but we don’t really like to do it. And when we must leave her, we are lost.”
Irish, we like to dream about leaving Ireland, but we don’t really like to do it. And when we must leave her, we are lost.”
She had turned a little so that she was facing him, and she reached up now and touched his face with her fingers. Traced the shape of his nose and cheekbones and the ridge of his brow, and the scar on his cheek made when a shroud had whipped loose from the mast during a squall and cut him.
And then she touched his mouth.
“Lost is what I would feel,” she said, and her own mouth trembled, “if I had to leave you.”
He wanted to put his mouth against hers and leave it there forever. “You will have to leave me someday, Emma. You do know that?”
She nodded, her eyes wide and wet, acknowledging the truth he spoke and accepting the hurt of it.
Somehow they had drawn so close their lips were almost touching, and so he kissed her.
They kissed in a place of salt-scoured air and high sun and dark blue water. He heard his heart pounding in his ears; it seemed to have run amok, his heart, run aground, gone astray. His heart was lost.
He pulled his mouth from hers. “Let’s go below,” he said.
He took her hand and led her where he wanted to go, or perhaps she led him. This time the love they made had an edge to it, of desperation and greed. Their naked bodies made soft, wet noises, while the boom creaked and the hull groaned. His thrusts went into a rhythm with the lifting and falling of the bow in the water.
My heart is lost, he thought. I am lost.
And then, like all moments, it came to an end.
He set her ashore on the back side of Poppasquash Point, and she watched him sail away from her. She looked around as if she’d
never seen it all before, never seen the white birches flashing silver in the sun, or the bay spilling seafoam and seaweed onto the shingled beach. She had never felt a breeze like this, so soft and hushed, or heard a thrush singing quite so sweetly. Nothing in her world, she thought, would ever be the same.
never seen it all before, never seen the white birches flashing silver in the sun, or the bay spilling seafoam and seaweed onto the shingled beach. She had never felt a breeze like this, so soft and hushed, or heard a thrush singing quite so sweetly. Nothing in her world, she thought, would ever be the same.
She went into the house and up to her bedroom, and she took off her clothes. She took them all off until she was as naked as she had been with him, and she thought, He touches me there and there and there, in all my woman’s secret places. He touches me.
“Each time,” she said. “It happens to me each time.”
He was lying on his back, his arms flung above his head, his chest heaving. They were lying naked in the meadow, among the goldenrod. But the flowers shivered, as if chilled by the breeze, and the sun had the brassy glow of autumn to it.
He turned his head to look at her, slowly. His whole body felt leaden, as if he’d been beaten with something thick and heavy. “What happens?” he said.
“You happen.”
He rolled up onto his side, and she turned in to him. He cupped her breast with his hand and scraped his thumb over her nipple. He watched the heat from his touch move upward, like a blush, over her collarbone and into her throat, and he thought he could almost see the words come out of her, come flying out of her throat, rising fast, like a flock of gulls taking off from the shore.
“I love you, Shay.”
He saw her wait, aching, breathless for him to say the words back to her.
He kissed her on the mouth, and he wanted to say, Being with you was not how I’d imagined it would be. I can’t be with you without wanting you, and I can’t have you without wanting you again.
He kissed her on the throat and he wanted to say, I never had any intention of loving you, yet here I am, loving you.
He kissed her on the throat and he wanted to say, I never had any intention of loving you, yet here I am, loving you.
“Emma,” he said instead.
She pulled away from him and sat up, crossing her legs Indian-fashion, like a child. She seemed small and vulnerable, sitting that way. Her skin was dusted golden all over by the sun. She had twigs and leaves and goldenrod petals in her hair.
“When Mr. Alcott comes home,” she said, “I must tell him I can’t marry him after all.”
“Ah,
Dhia
, no. Don’t be doing that.”
Dhia
, no. Don’t be doing that.”
She shook her head back and forth, once. She spoke as if her throat hurt, and her heart was in her eyes. “You can’t expect to show me a miracle and then think I’ll settle for a life without it.”
He took her hand and put it between his legs. “
This
is all I’ve ever shown you, and there’s nothing miraculous about it.”
This
is all I’ve ever shown you, and there’s nothing miraculous about it.”
Her fingers closed around him, squeezing a little roughly, and he had to close his eyes to fight off a shudder. “No, you are wrong,” she said. “It is the one, true miracle.”
He sat up so that they were knee to knee. He gripped her face with his hands. Her mouth was wet and open, her eyes like a wind-scoured sky. How had he gotten to this place? How had she?
“Emma darlin’ . . . This thing between us, it’s a passion of the moment. It can’t last. Especially when the one of us would be having to give up all she has and the life she was meant to live to try and make it last. Don’t be doing something you’ll be weeping sorry tears for later.”
She wrapped her fingers around his wrist. She held his hand in place so that she could turn her head and brush her lips across his knuckles. “You told me once my life would be what I made of it.”
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