Pieces of Dreams (9 page)

The extra men had been more than welcome, since Aunt Dora never skimped on food. The only problem, or so the older woman claimed with mock seriousness, was that the few poor souls remaining in town were left with no one to keep the peace or pray for them—supposing of course that anybody found the energy to get up to mischief. But that was unlikely, Aunt Dora pointed out, since they had the worst mischief-maker with them.

She was referring to Conrad, though he appeared unlikely to cause trouble of any kind. He was stretched full length on the edge of the quilt near Melly. His eyes were closed, his gold-tipped lashes meshed, his head turned slightly toward her so his cheek rested on the hem of her skirt. He looked for all the world as if he were fast asleep.

Caleb, on the other hand, was talking quietly with the preacher. Melly wondered if the discussion had to do with the wedding ceremony. The impulse to join them nudged her, but she couldn't quite make herself move. Besides, she didn't want to wake Conrad.

A faint, far-off booming, different from the rocking of the old raft, caught at her attention. Glancing toward the southwest, she asked of no one in particular, “Was that thunder?”

“Too far away to do any good, even if it was,” her aunt allowed with a sigh.

Caleb glanced over at her and smiled a little, as if in agreement. As his gaze fell on the long form of his brother, however, a muscle tightened in his jaw. A moment later, he turned back to listen to something Reverend Milken was saying.

Sarah appeared to notice the by-play from where she sat idly braiding a long silvery-blonde tress that had fallen forward onto her breast. Her gaze lingered on Caleb and her face softened in a way that startled Melly for an instant. Then the fleeting impression was gone as her cousin glanced at her and shook her head with a look of comical sympathy.

The tall, blonde girl flung the strand of hair she was toying with back over her shoulder as she asked, “Did you get the binding sewn on the quilt?”

“Yesterday afternoon,” Melly answered. Covering the edges with bias binding made from strips of blue material was the final step. “I brought it, of course, since the picnic is in its honor.”

Aunt Dora waved in the general direction of the pile of cushions behind Melly. “It’s in the pillowcase there, I think.”

Moving cautiously so as not to disturb the man sleeping so near, Melly reached for the stuffed pillowcase, then pulled the quilt from it and spread its silken folds. “Didn't it turn out well? I'm so proud of it.”

“Lovely,” Biddy said. There was real feeling in her voice, and it was echoed by the others in turn, each in their own way.

“It’s the most beautiful thing I've ever laid eyes on, is what it is,” Aunt Dora said in downright tribute. “And I've seen a plenty, believe you me.”

Melly flushed at the praise. Still, the quilt really was glorious as it lay with its soft fabrics gleaming in the muted light falling through the tree canopy overhead and its fine stitching tracking over it in regular and precise patterns.

The motifs of the bridesmaids' squares made lovely corner accents: The rich aquamarine-blue of the sea waves beneath the clipper ship in full sail that Lydia had stitched. The shades of pink and rose which her cousin Sarah had used to embroider a rose wreath to indicate the bouquet of late summer blooms she would make for Melly to carry up the aisle. The sweet simplicity of the daisy in white and green that Esther had cross-stitched on her square along with the Shakespearean phrase, “
Love comforteth like sunshine after rain
.” The swirls of silver-gray embroidery in running chain stitch of Biddy's eloquent and moving Biblical fragment,
'Whither thou goest
...'

Each of her friends had adorned her square according to her own taste and personality, therefore each square was a vivid and unique reminder of the person who had sewn and initialed it. Melly would have cherished the quilt for that reason alone, but the exquisite workmanship and fortuitous blending of colors and fabrics made it a treasure to be cared for and handed down through the years.

“I'll need to be careful of it,” she said with a misty smile. “But I will be, always. And I'll never, ever part with it, not for anything.”

Caleb, glancing over at her, shook his head on a low laugh. “I give it five years. After that, the babies will be using it for a napping pallet and spitting up on it right and left.”

“Caleb Wells! What a thing to say!” The rebuke came from Biddy.

“That's right,” Lydia said with an indignant glance. “You hush your mouth.”

“Five years,” Melly's fiancé repeated with an unrepentant grin. “Mark my words.”

Conrad roused himself from his somnolent enjoyment of the sound of Melly's voice and the pleasurable torture of breathing in her scent of roses, lavender, spice and warm womanliness and feeling the silky softness of her dimity skirt against his jaw. He didn't care for Caleb's superior tone or the suggestion that eternal motherhood would leave Melly too tired and harassed to care about fine things. More than that, he was curious.

Levering himself to one elbow, he cast an eye over the finished quilt, then gave it a closer look. The squares were pieced from the silk he had sent to Melly; he recognized the goods. Strange he had not noticed that first night, but other things had been on his mind.

A crooked smile tugged at his mouth as he said almost at random, “What you need is a special box to protect it. I have a small chest on my ship made out of carved teak that I picked up in Hong Kong to keep moisture and bugs out of my papers. I'll send it to you, if you like.”

“Oh, I couldn't take yours,” she said with a warm smile.

“Nor will you have to,” Caleb objected, cutting into their quiet exchange. “I can build Melly a box out of cedar.”

Melly sent her future husband a quick look. “That would be—very nice, someday, but for now I'd like to put the quilt out in the parlor. If you—”

“Sketch out what you want,” Caleb said evenly. “I'll see to it.”

There was a small silence during which Conrad very carefully did not look at either his brother or Melly. He had wanted her to have the chest, and couldn't see that offering it to her violated any of the rules about presenting personal items to females. Caleb apparently felt otherwise. Or maybe it was just that he didn't want Melly accepting anything from him.

Did Caleb know he had provided the silk for Melly’s wedding gown? Conrad somehow doubted it. The groom wasn’t supposed to see the thing before the wedding, after all.

Conrad hated to think of the way his brother might find out. It could easily be on his wedding night as he stepped close enough to his new wife to see the small Oriental figures in the brocade, to touch the heavy silk, to slide it from Melly's slender body… His hands closed into fists as he pictured it.

It was Aunt Dora who filled the lengthening breach in the conversation. With a lifted brow in his direction, she inquired, “And just what do you know about boxes for the fine things women like to keep anyway, my lad? I thought you'd been at sea these many years, far from the company of women?”

“Don't know a thing, Aunt Dora,” he said, giving her a bland look from under his lashes.

“Go on with you. I'll just bet there's been a woman or two traveled a few miles on that China tea clipper of yours.”

His amusement faded. “Not my ship.”

“If you say so. Still, you must've consorted with them somewhere because you didn't learn your tricks in Good Hope. Not that I'm blaming you, mind. A man's a man wherever he may be, and a bear don't pass a honey tree without trying to climb it.”

“Good Lord, Aunt Dora!” He drew back in the pretense of shock.

“Now don't go trying that innocent stuff on me, my boy, because it won't work. I expect you'd rather not take females to sea, that's all.”

“I might take a wife if I had one,” he said in tentative tones. “Some captains do; I know a lady who always sails with her husband. Once when he was laid up in his bunk, half out of his head with fever, his ship ran into a hurricane. His lady took charge, giving orders she claimed to be relaying from her husband. The ship sailed right through the storm when every man jack on board had thought she'd surely go down. The captain laughed himself hoarse when he heard, because he hadn't been able to give a sensible order for five solid days.”

“Sounds like a woman with a head on her shoulders to me,” Aunt Dora commented with a notable lack of amazement.

“A man of sense, rather, for marrying the right one in the first place.”

The older woman pursed her lips. “Still, not every female is cut out for a life afloat.”

“Or every man.”

“No, but most of the ones who take to it become sea rovers who can never settled down to one woman or be satisfied with a quiet life following a plow or tending hearth and home. I think you’re one of them, my boy. What do you say to that?”

He met the woman's wise eyes, saw the purpose there and also the anxiety that forced her to it. His gaze flickered to Melly an instant before returning to her aunt. Grimly, he said, “You may be right. Or close to it.”

“I thought so,” the older woman said, then sighed. “You always were about half pirate.”

Caleb, who sat listening, said, “More like three-quarters.”

“Humph,” Aunt Dora said, giving Melly's fiancé a brief glance. “Yes, and the other quarter of you both was two-year-old brat.”

Conrad had to laugh. At the same time, he glanced at Melly again. She was staring out over the river with her teeth set in the softness of her bottom lip. Caleb, on the other hand, showed no signs whatever of regretting his brother's future absence.

It was a short time later that Biddy finally prevailed on Melly to go for a stroll. As he saw Melly gathering herself to rise, Conrad sprang up and pulled her to her feet. Once upright, he decided he might as well amble along with the two ladies as escort. That got Caleb moving. Then the Reverend Milken elected to join them. Next thing they knew, everyone was meandering off along the levee in the hot afternoon sun as if it made perfectly good sense.

Everyone, that is, except Aunt Dora and Seymour Prine. Melly's aunt watched them with open-mouthed incredulity before lying back on a pile of cushions and closing her eyes. Before they had gone ten yards, she was snoring gently. Mr. Prine shifted his position so his body blocked a shaft of sunlight falling on her face. Then taking a small book from his pocket, he settled himself for guard duty.

The group of picnickers turned downriver, talking in fits and starts, rambling with no destination. The breeze off the water was stronger than earlier, and carried humid promise in its breath. Conrad sniffed the air and lifted his gaze to scan the heavens. There was a bank of clouds creeping above the trees from the southwest that quickened his weather senses.

As they neared the old abandoned raft that lay at the water’s edge, Sheriff Telford detached himself from the others and stepped down the slope of the levee, digging in his heels for purchase. He put his hands on his hips as he surveyed the sorry craft. Glancing at Conrad as he came to stand beside him, he nudged the water-soaked logs with a booted toe. “We ought to sink the thing before some kid takes it out and drowns himself.”

Conrad cast a practiced eye over the raft. Its logs were beginning to rot on the ends and the ropes lashing it together were black with mildew. But the majority of the center logs, where it counted, were solid. The hemp fibers of the ropes seemed strong enough and the knots were firm and tight. The rough steering oar attached at the stern appeared fairly new.

He said, “Whoever put it together knew what he was doing.”

The rest of their band was straggling down the slope. Caleb, catching their exchange, said, “The whole thing looks rotten to me. Sheriff's right, the best thing would be to chop it into kindling.”

Conrad sent his too-rational twin a frown. “Some kid must have spent hours building it.”

“Time that he should have been helping out at home, I expect,” came the unsympathetic reply. “I'd rather not be responsible if he winds up floating face down in the river.” He looked around at the other men. “Anybody bring an axe?”

The preacher looked dubious, but Telford nodded. “Might have one in the toolbox of my buggy.”

Caleb and the sheriff swung around and started back up the levee toward where the buggy was tied up along with Caleb's wagon and the rig rented by Mr. Prine.

Conrad knew he should back off. This was no longer his town or his people. He wouldn't have to live here if the boy who built the raft drowned himself one fine day. But he remembered too well the things adults did to young boys in the name of saving them from themselves—the lectures, the whippings… There had even been a raft, once, that had disappeared. He wondered, suddenly, if Caleb had helped dismantled that one, too. For his brother's own good.

The raft was tethered to a stake pushed into the ground only inches from Conrad's right foot. A basic seaman's knot held it fast. It took only an instant to catch the end and jerk it free, toss the line onto the logs and shove the raft off. As he straightened, he was caught and held by Melly's wide gaze.

She was watching him with her face a little pale and her lips parted. She looked toward Caleb, as if deciding whether she should call out to him, tell him what his brother was doing.

It might have been the reminder of the past that roused the devil in Conrad—or just the fact that his brother was so determined to override him. Maybe it was being forced to a public avowal of his need to roam that did it. Or perhaps it was the perverse determination to live up to what everybody obviously expected.