Alice At Heart (19 page)

“I know.”

“It’s lain out there for over thirty years. What’s left of it is in fragments.”

“Then I’ll bring up the pieces.”

“If there’d been any evidence of your parents’ bodies, it would have been found right after the accident. You know I searched.”

“Not the way I intend to search.”

“Just what do you hope to prove?”

“I want to know why my father took us out there in a storm. I want to know why my mother let him.”

“Those are impossible questions to answer.”

“Maybe not. The Bonavendier sisters know what happened. I’m sure they do.”

“No Bonavendier will help a Randolph prove they lured your parents into a storm.”

“We’ve always blamed the Bonavendiers. I want to know if they really provoked the accident. I expect they want to prove it, too. If they’re innocent.”

“Goddammit. Goddammit.” C.A. climbed down onto the barge’s deck with the grace of an aging sportsman. A big man used to being alone, he confronted Griffin with no decorum at all. A fist rose and shook beneath Griffin’s chin. C.A. spread his fingers, jabbed the air, bulged at the collar and the eye socket.

Griffin had never seen him lose control that way before.

“There’s nothing to prove! Stay away from the Bonavendiers,” C.A. yelled. He took a deep breath, shut his eyes, lowered his hand, then looked at Griffin again. “They get whatever they want, and by the time they’re finished with you, you won’t give a damn for yourself.”

“They’re not magicians. They’re not witches.” Griffin watched his expression carefully, managing a slight, probing smile. “Are they, C.A.?”

“I don’t know
what
they are, but I know you shouldn’t get within a mile of them. They’ve brought our family nothing but trouble.”

Griffin stepped toward him, gauging every nuance of reaction, looking for hidden clues. “How was my mother treated by our family? Was she unhappy? Did my father protect her?”

C.A. groaned. “He tried. He did try. It was hard, Griffin. Your mother had wild ideas. She was . . . different.”

“My father loved her. My memories . . . I feel it. They loved each other.”

“Hell, yes, he adored her. He
lived
for her. But she might as well have been a Bonavendier. She was impossible for your father to resist. That’s why I’m begging you to drop this plan. Stay away from the wreck of the
Calm Meridian
. Stay away from Sainte’s Point. Stay away from those women.”

Griffin put a hand on the older man’s shoulder and squeezed. “When I was a kid, I heard some things, C.A. Overheard the adults talking. About you . . . and Mara Bonavendier.”

C.A. stiffened. “They said you were involved with her. They said she rejected you. They said that’s what changed you. They said you were never the same after that.”

“Stay out of my past. Worry about yourself. You’ll end up alone and bitter, too. Because if this . . . Alice . . .this new one—” he jerked his head toward Sainte’s Point”—gets her claws into your soul, trust me, you’ll wish you’d died with your parents.”

He strode away.

17

The fantastic abilities of Water People are rooted in the physical laws of nature, not fairytales. I say that quite seriously.

—Lilith

“Griffin is coming here today to make an attempt at winning your loyalty and estranging you from us,” Lilith said to me at breakfast this morning. “Can’t you feel it?”

I stared at her. “Estrange me from you? Because he’s a Randolph and Randolphs never approve of Bonavendiers? Is that it?”

“I’ll let him tell you.”

I assumed it was a petty mystery, of some importance to them but not me. “I’ve kept to myself all my life. I don’t know much about men. I’m not ready to see him in person again.”

A Tanglewood appeared in the enclave’s doorway, wide-eyed and excited. “Griffin Randolph is at the docks, madam. He’s here to see the Alice.”

I froze. Lilith stood and touched my shoulder. “You’re ready. Go and listen to him, my dear. See what he wants. And make him listen to you in return.” Her eyes were a little sad. “You’ll come back with some questions for me and we’ll talk.”

I didn’t like the sound of that.

Every pair of eyes on this island
is secretly looking at me
, Griffin thought. He smiled—a defense reaction, a showing of colors—as he stood warily on the dock in the cove of Sainte’s Point. The
Sea Princess
—the same ketch that had belonged to his parents and that Griffin had sailed as a boy—was tethered to a piling behind him. Griffin had taken it out of storage and refurbished it. The marble sculpture of the boy and the dolphin was safe in a display case below deck.

He’d neatened his thick black hair, shaved and scrubbed and cologned himself. The scar on his face had begun to fade a little, and he tried not to think about the others on his body. He wanted to erase Ali’s memory of the foundling invalid she’d pulled from the water and seen stumbling along the dock when she left the figurine.

He was a Randolph. He
controlled
the water. He would get answers.

Yet the exertion of sailing across BellemeadeBay had soaked his good clothes in sweat and seawater, so he smelled musky, a man of the sea, as usual. His body ached, and his muscles were shaky from exhaustion. He swayed, regaining his land legs. A gust of wind pulled at his hair suddenly, ruffling it wildly across his forehead, destroying the carefully brushed style. The skin of his big hands was chapped and leathery from working the ropes, and the trip had scraped his palms. He caught himself licking the blood from them as Alice stepped from the mansion’s veranda.

She saw him with blood on his lips and halted abruptly.

Blackbeard
. He felt what she thought.

Lover
. He felt that, too, and responded warmly, against all will and common sense.

Alice took a deep breath then walked, her head up and shoulders back, down the terraced path from the mansion, stealing his breath with every step. She had changed a lot in the weeks since they’d met, as had he. Now his timid rescuer looked like a midsummer night’s wet dream hued in the romantic sexuality of nineteenth century masterworks—the water sirens, the nymphs, the Nereid’s. All the legends about Bonavendiers seemed true at that moment. She flowed inside a softly fitted dress with a long, full skirt, waltzing down the stone path with barefooted aplomb, so that the dress’s pale silk swirled, outlining her breasts and hips, the vee of her thighs, the athletic swing of her walk. Her hair danced in sync, hypnotizing him. It had grown from a boyish scruff into luxurious, tousled waves, spilling around her face and brushing the tops of her shoulders.

C.A. was right. Get back in the boat. Get the hell out of here. Stay away. Stop looking at her. Stop wanting her. Stop feeling her around you every night, and going to her in your mind. You’re in over your head already.

Too late.

She reached the dock and halted a few safe yards away from him. She was a tall woman but still a good six inches shorter than he, and his size seemed to worry her. She frowned up at him. Pink splotches bloomed on the pale, perfect skin of her cheeks. A fine tremor animated her hands, and she raised them to her hair awkwardly, pushing the auburn waves behind her ears as if trying to minimize the glorious effect.

“Beautiful,” he said.

She blushed harder. “I have very
healthy
hair. I think the salt air has encouraged it to grow at an unusual rate.”

“That’s just one of many things I intend to understand.”

She cleared her throat and clasped her hands in front of her as if she were ten years old, practicing for her first formal dance. “Could we hold a polite conversation and not contemplate our mysteries?”

“I doubt it.”

“I’ll try, at least. Griffin, you’re looking much healthier.” Her voice became dulcet, her eyes earnest, her mouth pursing slightly in a smile, the richest soft red. “And I’m glad to see you again.”

The quiet sensuality in her, the kindness, the honest caress of his name on her tongue made him drunk. He could do no better than a gruff laugh. “So I’m not Blackbeard?”

Silence. She stared up at him woefully. Decorum was hopeless. If he wanted to understand his own mysteries as well as hers, he would have to lure her to him as bluntly as her family had lured his for two centuries. A kind of revenge. The light grew somber between them. “Come with me, Ali,” he said gently, “and I’ll show you where your mother met your father.”

Bittersweet excitement filled her eyes, and he knew he had her.

Or that she had him.

Of all wonders,
I had never been on a boat before. As Griffin skimmed the fast ketch along the bay’s wooded shoreline, I gave in helplessly to a new passion. Sailing. I sat on the bow with my bare legs curled over the side, the skirt of my dress jammed unceremoniously between my thighs, my face turned into the tangy, moist wind. Behind me and slightly below the deck, Griffin stood in the cockpit as grandly as a pirate captain, his hands touching the
Sea Princess’s
handsome wooden wheel here and there, coaxing, cajoling, seducing the boat, the wind, the water, me. I wouldn’t look back at him, though I wanted to. I could barely breathe when I gazed into his eyes. I don’t doubt Griffin always invokes a certain raw thrill in people, always enjoining them to challenge the rhythm of the ocean with him, to admit that yes, by God, a man can make waves and women dance for him.

I did not dance, but I might as well have.

We left the bay, then raced along the open ocean for a mile or so to a place where the shoreline gave way to broad, saltwater marsh. Griffin turned the boat into a narrow channel between a sea of water and green grass. He leapt onto the bow deck and expertly furled the various sails. I pivoted to watch him work, drinking in the long-legged, broad-shouldered grace with which he moved. He was recovering from his injuries well, and the scar on his face had become a ruddy decoration, curved from cheek to jaw like a crescent moon.

“We’ll use the motor from here on,” he said, looking down at me with a background of blue sky and white clouds behind him.

I nodded, gazing up at him, hypnotized, pouring out reckless waves of arousal and resistance submerged in my old childhood fear of abuse.

God help me. He heard that plaintive song before I realized I was singing it. He went very still, frowning, searching my eyes for more clues, absorbing my bleak music too quickly for me to draw back in silence. Sorrow and surprise crossed his face, ending in a gaze so hard it would have chilled me, except that I felt his anger wrapping around me like a protective cloak. He was mad
for
me, not at me.

Without touching me, he took me in his arms.
I wish I had been there when they hurt you
.

I shut my eyes, luxuriated in his vow, sank down in the depths of that extraordinary moment, then cautioned myself and rose for air, trembling. “I didn’t know how to help myself,” I said, “and I didn’t know how to call for help.”

“Is that what we’re doing, Ali? Calling each other for help?”

Ali
. He named me by his own shorthand, as if I had always been some special person, known to him but unknown to myself. I couldn’t speak. I was overwhelmed with gratitude and adoration. My emotions affected him deeply—I could see the tortured discipline in his face, hear the desperate restraint humming inside his mind. “You’d best step away,” I whispered. He nodded.

He went back to the ketch’s controls, cranked the engine, and we motored quietly onward. I clenched my hands in my lap and faced the far side of the marsh, where our small waterway disappeared into deep forest. When we reached that place, we were suddenly in a new world, shaded by oaks and maples, bald cypress and magnolias, traveling on a small, sandy river with water as dark as tea. Tall herons waded in the shallows, fishing. Around a wooded bend, the forest opened. A lovely little dock appeared at the edge of broad lawns and stately oaks. I put a hand to my heart as I saw low, simple but handsome buildings of gray coquina with old terracotta roofs. Several dozen small cabins lined winding walkways of crushed shells. A pavilion overlooked the river and a beautiful little chapel.

My heart twisted. So this was the church retreat where my mother had spent her summers working as a counselor at a children’s camp. Where she and eighty-five-year old Orion Bonavendier had met when she was seventeen, and where she, at least, had fallen in love. And where now, as Griffin slipped the sailboat into a berth beside the docks, I stared at a weathered brass plaque fixed to the dock’s pilings.
Sweetwater Haven. Dedicated by Griffin Randolph to the memory of his parents, Porter and Undiline Randolph
.

I turned and looked at Griffin, stunned.

“I own the whole place,” he said.

Griffin and I sat on a bench
before the chapel. He told me this church camp is a Randolph legacy, one of many charitable projects the family owns or controls along the Georgia coast. Undiline Randolph doted on it and spent a considerable amount of her time here, supervising the construction of the pavilion and the docks, among other projects, and charming the children with her Scottish accent and her fairy tales about the ocean. He opened a mysterious little folder he’d carried from the sailboat. “This is for you,” he said and handed me a small photograph. “It was taken the year before the
Calm Meridian
sank.”

I uttered a soft cry of surprise. Sitting on this same bench was his mother, Undiline—a tall, smiling redhead surging with sexuality even in a demure 1960s swimsuit, and Griffin—a stalwart, black-haired child, already muscular and lean in swimtrunks, grinning as he clasped her hand—and
my own mother
, laughing, beautiful, an auburn-haired young woman looking wholesome and strong in light shorts and a white blouse with the camp’s name over her right breast. Griffin held her hand, too. He was safe between his own mother—and mine.

“You
knew
my mother. You
met
my mother. Look at her. Oh, look at her,” I whispered, huddling over the photograph.