Tidal Wave (26 page)

Overwhelmed with joy, he lowered his face to kiss her once more. Then with tenderness he slowly pulled the cover over her shoulders, quietly slipped off the bed, and turned out the light.

Walking to his stateroom, Nicholas knew that two lucky people had found the love of a lifetime.

Chapter Seventeen

Awesome, magical and awesome — those were the only words to describe it. The passengers on board the S.S.
Tatanya Annanovna
were spellbound as the ship sailed through the massive floating icebergs: giant, rugged pieces of terrain, nothing but snow and ice. Mountains with peaks and valleys, blindingly white under a bright sun, they loomed up from a dark-blue Atlantic Ocean. It was a freezing cold day with not a drop of wind and a crystal-clear atmosphere — not a cloud in sight. Even the sky looked white from the glare of the sun on the snow-covered icebergs.

A miracle of nature, they were a winter wonderland — so pure and proud, untouched by man. There was a godliness about the experience. It was heavenly — what one could imagine was lying behind the pearly gates. The ship’s passengers were speechless, wordless, bowled over but rooted to the rails where they stood, dazed by the mysterious, enigmatic power and beauty of the icebergs. There were not two or three but more like a floating field of twenty-five or thirty, reaching to gigantic heights — mini-Annapurnas,–Mount Everests.

During her slow passage through the open channels among the icebergs, the
Annanovna
was completely surrounded by the snowy peaks for over an hour — mountainous landscapes in a frozen world.

Captain Hamilton had been right. It was an extraordinary treat for the maiden voyage of the S.S.
Tatanya Annanovna
and its passengers. Up on the bridge with his officers and the ship’s sophisticated equipment, the captain was able to navigate through the clear channels with complete safety, clearing one or two of the icebergs with as little as ten feet
to spare. The icebergs they sailed through surpassed all man-made wonders.

Arabella, swathed in sable against the cold, stood next to Nicholas, who was dressed in his heavy gray herringbone trousers, cashmere sweater and jacket under a brown leather coat and tweed cap. Under her sable coat, Arabella was naked. She failed to advise Nicholas of this fact when he arrived to share this spectacle of nature with her. She had felt a little wicked but highly excited when she made the decision to surprise him.

The couple took this voyage through the icebergs together on Arabella’s private deck. The experience was so exhilarating it made Arabella feel high, as if she had been drugged and had landed on another planet. The constant motion as the huge vessel rocked and swayed back and forth, bobbing up and down in rhythm with the waves, excited Arabella. It seemed as though the ship abandoned itself to the force of the waves. She also felt a total sense of abandon.

The ship maneuvered between two particularly large icebergs whose craggy peaks appeared more treacherous because they plunged from such enormous heights straight down into the depths of the ocean.

The sensations of danger, the exhilaration of the ocean and the huge phalliclike icebergs surrounding her created such sensations within her that Arabella could no longer contain her excitement.

Nicholas seemed oblivious and was totally entranced by the magnificent sights before him. She took his hand, guided him to the reclining chair closest to the outside edge of the deck near the water. He was startled by her actions and by the sudden fine, icy spray that swept over them.

“Arabella, what …”

He was speechless as Arabella pushed him gently down into the chair. She stood over him, facing him, straddling the chair, and slowly opened her coat. He was transfixed. Her high level of excitement stimulated him. She looked directly into his eyes, cautioning him not to speak, as in
one fluid motion she freed his erection, lowered herself onto him, and enclosed them both in her warm, luxurious fur.

They held each other in silence, making no voluntary movements but letting their bodies move in rhythm with the sea. At moments they just held each other and floated as though on a placid lake. Then, unexpectedly, huge chunks of ice crashing into the sea would cause the ship to lurch against the waves with a violent motion.

Time seemed endless and they held each other through orgasms unlike any they ever experienced.

The last channel was hardly straight sailing but the
Annanovna
followed it faithfully, carefully, through its twists and turns. Then, suddenly, as if coming to the end of a maze, it was over. There was nothing but the great wide-open Atlantic as far as the eye could see.

The end of the iceberg voyage was no less dramatic than its beginning. Once the ship left the channel and the icebergs behind, the ocean returned to its old way of rough-and-tumble waves, the wind picked up, even the sounds came back — waves hitting the bow as it cut through the water.

It was enough to make one wonder: Was it a fantasy, this little mysterious voyage among the icebergs? This voyage within a voyage?

Arabella slowly stood and moved away from Nicholas. She took his hands and pulled him up out of the chair. They walked to the starboard side of the deck, leaned over the rail, and watched the icebergs recede. When they were no more than white dots on the horizon, Nicholas put his arm around her and they walked back into Arabella’s drawing room. They both had tears mixed with salt water crystallizing in their eyes. Arabella shivered. Her hands were pink with cold. She put them to her mouth and blew on them, hoping the warm air from her body would thaw them out quickly. Then she pulled her coat tight around her body.

Nicholas pulled off his cap and dropped it on a chair, then he quickly shed his brown leather coat that was stiff with cold. He pulled off his fur-lined gloves and went over to Arabella and began rubbing her hands. He removed the
coat and quickly wrapped her in the cashmere robe he picked up from the chair. They both remained silent.

Then he kissed the tip of her nose and said, “Christ, Arabella, you’re frozen!”

“Well, so are you!” replied Arabella. “Your ears are bright red!”

He put his hands to his ears. “You’re right, I can hardly feel them, they’re so numb.”

Just then Xu appeared from the pantry with a silver tray carrying two hot toddies. Arabella walked to the sofa and sat down. Holding the hot silver cup with both hands, she drank the warming liquid.

“Oh, that’s better!” she said. Looking around the room, she focused on the vast array of fresh flowers. She turned to Nicholas and said, “My, but you spoil me! How did you do it? When I woke up this morning and came into this room the last thing I expected was this,” she said, waving one arm as if to encompass the whole room.

Nicholas began to laugh. He said, “Divine, isn’t it? It’s a good thing we dock the day after tomorrow. I’ve hardly left a flower in the shop!”

Arabella rose from the sofa and went to him where he sat in the big, deep easy chair. She gently folded herself onto his lap and when he had put his arm around her, she snuggled next to him. They remained that way while drinking their hot toddies. They did not speak, simply sat drinking and looking at the room Nicholas had turned into a Garden of Eden.

There were azaleas in every color, dozens of pots of them in varying sizes; tulips and hyacinths; lily of the valley and lilac; iris and jasmine; carnations and honeysuckle and more white long-stemmed roses than Arabella had seen in her life. Baskets and vases, plants in pots of every size had been placed with great thought and care while she had been sleeping.

Warmed by the hot toddy, Arabella said lazily, “What contrast — sailing through a field of icebergs and then walking into a spring garden.”

Nicholas replied, with a twinkle in his eye, “I will never forget that part of the voyage. I don’t think I’ve ever understood nature, the power or the beauty of it, but I certainly do now!”

She looked over to him and said, in an impish sort of voice, “Are you going to feed me? I’m famished.”

“Sure, I’m going to feed you. Come on,” he said, reluctantly getting up from the chair.

“Oh,” she said, with a slightly mischievous look in her eyes. “I think I’d better dress for the occasion. Don’t wait. You go on and order us a sumptuous lunch. Surprise me. I’ll be there as quickly as I can.”

He watched her run through the rooms to dress. He shook his head, smiling, and happily went to do as he had been told.

The Gorky Grill was empty. It was a very pleasant room to have lunch in — small, no more than ten tables, all white walls and carpet with comfortable dining chairs covered in yellow velvet and small square tables covered in sparkling white linen. It boasted the only dinner service in the world designed by Miró.

There was one single large crystal chandelier in the middle of the room and recessed pinpoint lights illuminated each painting. The walls were covered in oil paintings, gouaches, watercolors, and drawings — all by Gorky. It was the finest collection in the world. The slashes of vibrant color, emotion, drama of the abstract paintings were exciting and made even richer and more wonderful because they were mounted in heavy, richly carved eighteenth-century frames.

Nicholas apologized to the waiter for being so late and, as usual, the straightforward and strong Nicholas Frayne charm worked wonders. The chef was happy to stay and cook anything for him he liked. He was presented with an enormous menu to choose from.

First he ordered a bottle of the best Roederer Cristal. The waiter was dispatched immediately to put it on ice and bring
the cooler to the table. Nicholas and Arabella were to be the only diners in the room that made him think of Italy, sunshine, the Mediterranean, a small cove near Portofino. One day he would take Arabella there.

Nicholas said to the
maître d’
, “Italian — we would love to have Italian food. Yes, a fine, gorgeous Italian meal. Is that possible?”

“But of course, sir” came the answer. “One minute, sir.”

The man returned with the chef and together the three selected a menu: mussels steamed in their own broth; pasta — a tagliatelli in a sauce of smoked salmon in cream with fresh tarragon and mint; escalope of veal in a lemon sauce; braised spinach with garlic and oil; for dessert, zabaglione; for wines, the best Italian whites and reds selected by the chef.

Nicholas looked at his watch. Arabella was still not with him. He stood up, put on his glasses, and gave himself a tour around the room looking at the paintings. That was how Arabella found him. She walked up behind him and slipped her arms around his waist.

“Hello,” she whispered. “What beautiful paintings! How very, very beautiful.”

She stepped to his side and stood with him, admiring a small Gorky, one of the artist’s earlier works.

“Who painted them?” she asked.

“Gorky,” he said. “Fantastic, aren’t they?”

“Oh, yes,” she said, “very fantastic. You see how ignorant I am? I’ve never seen or heard of Gorky.”

They walked around the room looking at the artist’s work. The headwaiter sent a waiter over to them with two glasses of champagne on a tray. They drank and ambled around the room discussing the artist and his work.

Over a slow, lazy lunch of the most sublime food and wine, they spoke of many things. Places they had been, things they had done, paintings they had seen, houses they had lived in.

Nicholas told her of his beach house in Malibu, his ranch overlooking the Pacific Ocean up in Santa Barbara, the winter lodge he had built on top of a mountain in Idaho,
reached only by skis or in the Fraynes’ own funicular, the houses he had bought and conserved in eighteenth-century Newport.

When he asked Arabella about the houses she lived in, he was quite shocked to learn they had, for most of her life, been hotels, temporary dwellings, except for the family house on the Potomac.

“But not anymore,” she said.

“Hence the real estate portfolios,” he said.

“Yes. I’m thrilled I’m about to put down roots, have a real home.”

She asked him to tell her about Newport, the Newport he knew as a boy and grew up in; Rhode Island, now the place he wanted to govern.

Over that lovely, lazy Italian lunch, surrounded by Gorky paintings, Nicholas began.

“Well, the Newport, Rhode Island, I come from is not the Newport of the great summer palaces on Belleview Avenue and Ocean Drive, although I’ve been a guest at one or the other from time to time. The splendors of Belcourt, Ochre Court, Marble House, The Elms, The Breakers, and my favorite, The Moores, are absolutely fantastic. Those old homes, those glorious, late-nineteenth-century forty-room ‘cottages’ on the water are the nearest thing we have in America to palaces. They’re outrageous and decadent, but I adore them.

“My Newport is colonial Newport. All the Fraynes, on both sides of the family, trace themselves back to 1639, when the town was settled. We were sea captains and entrepreneurs mostly, and later city elders and even a mayor. Newport was the most prosperous seaport on the Atlantic Coast and the Fraynes were always a well-respected part of the community.

“They were hard-working folk who prospered and became fairly wealthy. With their money they built sturdy but increasingly elegant homes. They took pride in their homes and gardens and still do today, and within the family everyone refers to the houses by the name of the
first member who lived there. I grew up in Captain John’s house.

“Wait till you see it, Arabella. You’ll love Newport and the wonderful old houses — vestiges of what it once was. It’s remarkable how many of the great houses were destroyed during the American Revolution, yet still the city has more buildings of colonial origin than any other city in the United States.”

“It sounds just glorious, Nicholas. And to hear you so excited about it is amazing. After all, you’ve been all over the world, exposed to lots of things, and yet I sense you’re really looking forward to living in Newport again.”

“Absolutely! I can’t wait. Captain John’s house isn’t vacant. My sister Peggy lives there with her family now, but I’ve had my eye on a great little place for years. It’s the Williams house — complete with pot-belly stove and fireplace in the kitchen, wide floorboards, and a view of the ocean. Peggy is trying to buy it for me now.”

“It sounds lovely. It all does. Newport, I mean. All that solidity and continuity must help create a secure childhood. In Washington, everything changed with every election. What do you think of when you look back on growing up in New England?”