Under the Boardwalk: A Dazzling Collection of All New Summertime Love Stories (36 page)

"That is not what I meant at all," he answered severely, though he didn't hesitate to take one of the offered biscuits. "You have not listened to a word I have spoken these ten minutes past."

"That's not true," said Miriam automatically, if not truthfully.

"No?" He waved the half-eaten biscuit with dainty elegance between his thumb and forefinger. "If you can repeat to me one fraction of what I was saying of Dr. Hynde and his theory of transmogrification, then you shall have my heartfelt apology. But I rather believe, my dear, that you cannot, and so instead must be obligated to me."

He popped the last of the biscuit into his mouth, his jaws working in neat, rapid bites of triumph. For Miriam, whose errant thoughts had been preoccupied with the memory of Jack Wilder's wickedly rakish grin, those rabbity little bites were a dreadful reminder of what she'd lost. Chilton was a respectable man, even brilliant, but with his ginger-colored brows and lashes and the face around them as pale and round as a pudding, he could not be called handsome, and never, ever rakish.

But Chilton had asked her to be his wife, something Jack had never bothered to do, and for that alone he deserved better from her. "I am sorry, Chilton," she began as inexplicable tears stung her eyes. "I know how much Dr. Hynde's theories do matter to you. But the Lion's been so busy these last days, and I've been working so hard that—"

"Do not distress yourself, my dear, I beg you." Chilton reached for her hand and gently began to pat the back of it. "As soon as you are my wife, my dearest helpmeet, then such troubles will slip from your life."

She sniffed and looked down at his smooth, tapered fingers resting upon her own red knuckles. Gentleman's hands, she thought miserably, just as this was a gentleman's seemly way of comforting a lady. So why, then, did she wish that he'd sweep her into his arms instead and hold her tight against his chest, even try to kiss her? That was exactly the sort of thing that Jack had done, and what good had come from it? Could craving such brash attention mean that she in turn wasn't fit to be Chilton's wife, that all she really deserved was a scoundrel like Jack Wilder?

"You are too good for me, Chilton," she began wretchedly. "I do not know why you—"

"I'll not hear a word more against my choice, or yourself, either," interrupted Chilton. "Once we are wed, I promise I'll grant you a better life. It is, after all, not so very much longer to wait."

Miriam managed a wistful smile. As usual, Chilton was right. Marriage would end her foolish restlessness. It was this dreadful in-between time that was making her look backwards to the past. That, and Zach's meddlesome magic seashell. "I wish our wedding were tomorrow."

"My dear, impatient little bride." Chilton smiled indulgently, his voice as rich and fulsome as clotted cream. He raised her fingers, caressing them gently with his own, and kissed the air over the back of her hand. "I wish it were, too. But until then, Miriam, we must curb our more base desires."

"But that isn't what I mean!"

"I know well enough what you mean, Miriam," said Chilton kindly. "Not that I fault you for it, not in the least. Growing up in such a barbarous land, so close to the savage wilderness and away from the better influences of society, it is not surprising to have, ah, heated and ungovernable impulses. I admit to feeling them myself where you are concerned. But we must not succumb to those passions, and instead must be guided by our sensibilities."

As the long, stiffened curls of his wig brushed over her hand, she thought grudgingly of how he seemed to be doing a much better job of passion-curbing than she. Perhaps it was because she hadn't the faintest idea of what or where her sensibility was, let alone of how to be guided by it. But in this, too, Chilton was right. She must learn to control her passions or she'd never be happy, not with him and, more importantly, not with herself, either.

But it was one thing to make such bold resolutions, and quite another to make them
real
. By the time the last of the Green Lion's tipplers had been pointed toward home and the coals in the kitchen fire were banked for the night, Miriam was so tired she could barely drag herself up the winding back stairs to her room under the eaves. There the air was close and warm, the shingles of the sloping roof overhead still holding the heat of the day though it was nearly midnight, warm enough that Miriam flopped on top of her coverlet in her thin linen shift alone, her arms and legs outstretched to catch any breath of a breeze that might drift in through the tiny casement window.

Tonight
, she told herself firmly,
I will sleep, and I will
not
dream
.

But as soon as she closed her eyes, her unconscious mind wantonly ceased to obey.

She was again sitting with Chilton, and once again he was bowing over her hand with his courtier's grace. She smiled and arched her wrist gracefully, her manners for once a match for his, and as she did, he laughed, low and deep in his chest. It wasn't Chilton's laugh, not at all, and when he lifted his face to meet her startled gaze, it wasn't Chilton's face, either, but

Jack's, his wavy dark hair falling across his forehead as it always did, his pale eyes wicked and teasing as his fingers tightened around hers to pull her from her ladylike chair and onto his lap, his thighs hard and muscled beneath her bottom as he tipped her back in his arms to kiss her and
—

She jerked awake, her breathing rushed and her heart thumping and the heat of the room pressing down on her with the same force that Jack had in the dream. Another wretched, willful, wrong-headed abomination of a
dream
, and with a groan she pressed her hands to her flushed cheeks.

She hadn't dreamed of Jack in years, and certainly not like this. Why should his memory suddenly come back to haunt her, now that she was promised to another? Her passions were racing away like a team of runaway horses, all right, and she was determined to rein them in. Grimly she squeezed her eyes shut and rolled onto her side, sliding her hand beneath her pillow to bunch it beneath her cheek. As she did she felt the little lump of Zach's seashell, placed there as she'd promised.

"Maiden's Wish, ha," she grumbled as she pulled it out from hiding. "More like Maiden's Torment."

She was not by nature superstitious, but enough was enough. She shrugged a calico short-gown over her shift, not bothering to lace the front closed, and with the shell held tightly in her hand she padded barefoot down the stairs and out the kitchen door.

At the yard's fence, she paused, relishing the peace around her. In a village like Westham, no one else would be awake at this hour, let alone abroad, and the little cluster of houses and shops stood shuttered and silent beneath the stars and the dull gleam of the quarter moon. From the marshes on the far bank of the river she could hear the rhythmic chatter of crickets played against the gentle
shush
of the waves coming in across the sand with the tide. It was cooler here, too, than it had been in the house, and as she turned her face toward the water she already felt calmer and more at peace. This had all been Zach's fault, putting doubts and ideas into her head, and she meant to deal with it now, before it caused her any more trouble.

Purposefully she headed around to the front of the tavern, her bare feet choosing the dry wild grasses along the side instead of the sharp crushed shells of the carefully raked path. She passed beneath the hanging signboard of the emerald-green and gilt lion, and between the now-empty posts for tying horses. It was only a short walk to the tavern's own dock; long ago her grandfather had had the shrewd foresight to realize that travelers on the new road north from Boston would want a dry, comfortable spot to wait for a boat to ferry them across the river to continue their journey, or, coming from the south, a decent bed and a warm supper before the tide shifted in the boatman's favor.

The worn planks of the dock were smooth beneath Miriam's feet, and at the very end, next to the ferry bell, she stopped, hooking her toes over the edge in the daredevil way that she and Zach—and Jack, too—had always done as children. She herself hadn't done it for years now, but somehow, there in the moonlight, it seemed oddly appropriate. After all, in a way, wasn't she still daring the two boys who had ruled her life?

She opened her hand, holding the little shell up to the moonlight. "There, Zachariah Fairbourne," she muttered resolutely as she drew her arm back to heave the shell into the dark water below. "
This
is what I think of your heathenish wishing shell, and
this
is what I think of your wretched true love for—"

"You're too late."

She spun around so quickly she nearly tottered off the edge of the dock, her arms flapping like an inelegant duck as she struggled to keep her balance. But the man didn't move to help her, his long shadow in the moonlight the only thing to reach out toward her.

"It's after midnight, Mirry, the third morning," said Jack Wilder softly. "Now come, and greet your own true love."

Jack had imagined this moment times beyond counting and in a thousand different ways, but none of them could come close to having Miriam here, really here, before him. She'd so clearly tumbled straight from her bed that it made him ache just to look at her: her plain linen shift sliding off one shoulder beneath the unlaced short-gown, the tantalizing roundness of her breasts and hips so clear beneath the soft fabric, her hair slipping out from its braid into tiny, teasing tendrils around her slender throat, her startled eyes still heavy-lidded with sleep. She had changed, true, but not the way Zach had said. She'd changed subtly, ripened from the girl he'd left behind to the woman he'd come home to, a woman that he wanted very much to claim for his own forever.

And, unfortunately, a woman who right now seemed madder than the devil's blazes with him.

"You are not my own true love, Jack Wilder," she said as she belatedly clutched the front of the short gown together. "You aren't
my
anything!"

'Aye, I am." He said it as the fact it was, and smiled slowly, his gaze drawn to how ineffectually, and how appealingly, that clutched calico was covering her breasts. She'd grown more plump, her body more openly lush. He approved. "You look good, Mirry. Better than good."

"Then stop looking this instant." She glared at him furiously as she tugged harder at the calico. "What are you doing here, anyway? Why did you come back? Why did you have to come back
now
?"

Impatiently she tossed her bedraggled braid back between her shoulder blades, and his smile widened. She still cared, else she wouldn't let her temper get the better of her this way, her dark eyes flashing and her round, dimpled chin raised with out-and-out belligerence. And he hadn't forgotten all the interesting trouble that temper of hers could lead her into.

"From what Zach's told me," he said evenly, "it's high time I did come back. Forgetting me, throwing yourself away on some puffed-up periwig—that's not well done, Mirry."

She gasped, her small mouth a perfect, charming O of indignation. "I should have known from the first that you two would contrive to do this to me, just like you always did! Zach and you—
oh,you
!"