Under the Boardwalk: A Dazzling Collection of All New Summertime Love Stories (34 page)

Now it was Miriam's turn not to answer. How could she, really, with Jack Wilder's name hanging in the air between them? Quickly she turned back toward the window, hiding the emotion that she'd thought she'd long ago buried. But even that was a mistake, for through the half-open window the beach and the rocks and the waves glittered in the morning sun, reminding her all the more of Jack, and of all the other bright summer mornings they'd shared together on that same beach.

"Jack made you laugh, muffin," said Zach softly, giving words to the thoughts she was determined not to speak herself. "God knows he had his faults, but I'd always thought he'd made you happy, too."

Lightly Miriam brushed her fingertips over the windowpane, as if to wave away the past that couldn't be changed. Jack
had
made her happy, deliriously, blissfully happy; she couldn't deny that. But she hadn't been able to do the same for him, or fight the demons that had driven him even then. He'd broken her heart when he sailed away without so much as a farewell kiss, and she'd never forget that, either.

"That was a long time ago, Zach," she said firmly. She wished he'd stayed angry; anger had been easier to answer. "I'm well past the age of running barefoot in the sand after you two, playing the hapless maiden princess for you bold pirate kings to capture."

Her brother smiled, his blue eyes softening with recollections of his own. Jack Wilder had been his friend, too, and as children the three of them had been inseparable. Jack, Zach, and Miriam: the whole town had always spoken of them together in a single breath.

"And how old are you now, Mistress Rowe?" he teased gently. "A grizzled nineteen, isn't it?"

"Twenty last month." She leaned forward to poke a finger into his shoulder. "I'm a grown woman, Zach, and growing older every day, which you'd see for yourself if you bothered to come home more than once a year."

"I would have," he retorted, "if I'd known you'd been up to this sort of mischief."

"You still don't understand, do you?" With a sigh she dropped into the tall-backed Windsor chair before the empty grate, folding her hands over her apron and crossing her feet in an unconscious mimicry of her mother. "I don't want to spend the rest of my life as the innkeeper's spinster daughter, making beds and bowing and scraping and clearing up after other folk. With Mr. Chuff, I'll be more. He respects me, Zach, enough to make me his lady-wife, and take me with him to live in a pretty house in Cambridge, near the college where he's been called to teach. He needs a wife who can make his home a hospitable place for his friends and other gentlemen, and he needs a clever woman who's from this colony to help him learn our ways. And I'll never again have to wipe a table after some spewing sot of a sailor."

"All you'll be doing is trading one sort of spewing sot for another," said Zach with disgust. "You're too clever yourself for such a fool's bargain, Miriam."

"And what lasting marriage isn't a bargain of some kind?" She smiled wryly. "The only time people marry for love alone is in ballads, where there's never bread to buy or children to clothe."

"I thought that once, too," said Zach with uncharacteristic seriousness, "but not now."

She looked at him curiously, her head cocked to one side. Her brother had a long history of charming women in every port he visited, but he never stayed with any one long enough for a genuine attachment to blossom. At least he hadn't before this. "You say that as if you've fallen in love yourself."

"Nay, not I. But among my friends I've witnessed enough of love, real love, not to scoff at it." With a sigh Zach crouched down before her chair, taking her hands in his own so she had to meet his gaze. Since she'd seen him last he'd grown older, too, his responsibilities and the hard life of a sailor stealing away the last of his boyishness, and the changes made her think wistfully of how fast, how forever, their reckless childhood had flown past.

"All I want is for you to be happy, muffin," he said, his hands rough around hers, "and I can't fathom how a merry little creature like you could content herself with a dry stick like Chuff, with or without love."

"I can," she said stubbornly. "I
will
."

Unconvinced, Zach waited for her to continue, and her heart sank beneath the weight of all she couldn't say. But how she longed to tell her brother the truth, how she'd accepted Chilton precisely because he was dull and well-bred and respectable and reliable, all the things that Jack Wilder hadn't been and never would be, even if he somewhere still lived. Given what he'd chosen to do, the odds weren't strong that he did. But though she'd never be able to love Chilton the same way she a loved Jack, in return she'd never be hurt by him, either.

"Oh, Zach, it's so different for women!" she cried softly. "You grew restless here in Westham, and so you—and Jack, too—ran off to sea, to chase whatever fortune you pleased. But I must sit and wait for mine to come to me, and now at last it has. No matter what you say, I'm no fool, Zach. Fate brought Chilton here to me, and I'll never meet another man as fine, not in Westham."

"Then come to Boston with me instead," said Zach impulsively. "Or to Appledore, where my father's people are. Think of the first-rate husband you'd be able to catch for yourself there!"

"Oh, aye, as if husbands dangle from the trees like ripe fruit for the picking." She smiled, touched by the blind impossibility of his offer. Perhaps Zach had not grown up so very much after all, if he still could believe that love was all anyone needed. She knew to her own sorrow it wasn't, or else she'd still be with Jack Wilder. "The wedding is set for a fortnight hence, Zach. I hope you'll still be here to help us celebrate."

"A fortnight hence, you say." He released her hands and stood, and sadly Miriam realized that he hadn't agreed. He dug deep into the pocket of his coat, frowning a bit as he fumbled blindly through the contents before he drew out a small bundle, wrapped in a scrap of linen.

"Here, muffin," he said, holding it out to her. "I remembered. This is for your collection. That is, if you're not so very old and sensible that you have put aside your shells as a vain and idle occupation."

She shook her head as she carefully began unwrapping the bundle. For as long as she could remember she'd collected seashells, beginning with the dark blue mussels and fan-shaped scallops that washed up on their beach, to the more exotic conches and whelks and pearly oysters from faraway oceans that Zach and seafaring friends of her father's would bring home for her. She had a special latched wooden box for the shells, lined with the softest sheep's wool, that she kept beneath her bed for safekeeping, so that, whenever she wished, she could take them out when she should have been asleep and spread them across her coverlet. They were her gems, her jewels, her private cache of beauty and dreams in a world that was too often gray with winter cold, endless work, and fireplaces that smoked. Eagerly she unfurled the last strip of linen, and a small white shell tipped into the palm of her hand.

"Oh, it's beautiful, Zach!" she breathed, touching it lightly with her fingertip as she turned it toward the sunlight. The shell gleamed against her skin, as luminescent as the moon, a whorled, flat spiral crowned by tiny knobs and daubed randomly with bright pink spots that almost looked like tiny hearts.

"It's called a Maiden's Wish," said Zach, his head crowded next to hers as together they studied the shell, "or so the old woman who sold it to me in St.-Pierre told me. When I said I meant it for my unwed sister, she swore that you must keep it close—in your pocket by day, and under your pillow by night—for three days and three nights. Then, on the next morning, the first man you clap eyes upon will be your true love."

She glanced up at him, her brows drawn together in a skeptical frown. "You don't believe that, do you?"

He shrugged. "I might, and I might not. What matters is
if you
do."

"Very well, then. I do." She grinned, remapping the shell and carefully tucking it into the embroidered pocket that hung at her waist. "And I shall be sure—
very
sure—that Mr. Chuff is the first man I see on Wednesday morn."

"Mind you, three days and three nights, no more, no less." Zach grinned in return, and winked for good measure. "And there before you will stand the luckiest man in Westham."

"You're too late, my friend," said Zach as he dropped onto the wooden bench, kicking his boots disconsolately out before him in the dust. "The rumors we'd heard weren't rumors at all, but the truth. Miriam told me herself. She's going to marry that flap-eared schoolmaster in a fortnight, and nothing's going to change her mind."

"Nothing, that is, but me." Jack Wilder leaned back against the oak tree's trunk, holding his tankard of ale steady on his knee. "I've come too far for Mirry to lose her now."

He beckoned for the barkeep in the doorway to bring Zach a tankard of his own, and the man hurried to obey. Though the night was too warm to sit indoors, the owner of Hickey's ale shop was happy enough to cater to his customers in the yard outside, here beneath the oak tree with a fine view of the harbor. Hickey must be beside himself with joy, thought Jack cynically as he held up the coin for Zach's ale, with a customer—even one with a cutthroat's reputation—who was willing to pay in hard money with the king's likeness. Coins like that usually ended up in the till of Westham's other, more respectable tavern, the Green Lion. But the Green Lion belonged to Miriam's father, and Jack wasn't ready for that meeting just yet.

But Miriam herself—Lord, he couldn't wait to see her again.

"Tell me everything about her," he demanded as Zach took a long swallow of ale. "How she looks, what she said—I want to know it all."

Zach hesitated, wiping his mouth with the back of his hand. "She's changed, Jack. She's turned more serious, more sober, and telling me over and over about how she wasn't a girl any longer until it seemed like an echo."

"She's right," said Jack. "Her twentieth birthday was three weeks past."

Zach groaned. "Oh,
aye,you
go ahead and remind me, too, for I'd clean forgotten. How the devil did you remember, anyway?"

Jack remembered because he'd never forgotten. It had been on Miriam's sixteenth birthday, four summers ago, that he'd coaxed her out alone to walk on the beach. She'd been woman enough for him then, even if her brother had been blind to the difference. Of course she'd laughed and skipped ahead on the sand, and tried to pretend that this was no different from all the other times, when Zach had been there, too. But it had been different, as different as sunshine is from the moonlight that turned her hair to spun silver, and when, in the shadows of her father's dock, he'd drawn her gently into his arms and kissed her and told her she was the only woman in the world for him, they'd both felt the magic of that moonlight in the promises they made and the passion they shared.

And then he'd returned home to find the circle of vultures that had been his pirate father's oldest friends, his crewmates, waiting to carry him off to claim a legacy he hadn't wanted. Too late he'd realized their rum was as poisoned as their lives, and when he'd awakened he was on their ship, far from home and gone without making any kind of decent good-bye to Miriam. Instead he'd begun the journey that had carried him to the far side of hell, and only now, four years later, brought him back to where he'd begun.