Under the Boardwalk: A Dazzling Collection of All New Summertime Love Stories (41 page)

"Tell me true, Chilton," said Miriam as, later that afternoon, she stared down into the little boat tied at the end of the dock. "Are you quite sure you wish to do this?"

Chilton drew himself straight enough to strain the buttons on his dun-colored waistcoat. "How can you doubt my intentions now, Miriam?"

"I didn't mean it that way," she answered quickly. "I've never doubted your intentions towards me. It's just that—Chilton, do you know
how
to row a boat?"

"Oh, it's a simple enough process," he said dismis-sively, as if boat-rowing were a mystery too great for her to comprehend. "One merely draws the oars in unison back through the water in a rhythmic arc, thereby propelling the vessel forward. It could not be simpler.

Still Miriam stood with her hands at her waist, dubiously glancing from the boat, bobbing gently at the end of its rope with a lantern in the bow, to Chilton, and back again. This wasn't any ordinary little row upriver the boat was on loan from her father, the straw hamper with a cold supper was from her mother, and even Henry had made a contribution, a small basket of wild raspberries that he'd gathered himself. It all was carefully calculated to give her and Chilton an unforgettably romantic summer evening together, and Miriam's only regret was suspecting the idea had been Mama's instead of Chilton's.

"After all, Miriam, how difficult could it be?" continued Chilton with an airy wave of his hand. "Considering how one sees even the lowest-bom creatures on the Thames maneuver about in their boats with ease? Concentration and application, my dearest, those are the twin secrets to mastering everything in this life."

Miriam cocked a single skeptical brow beneath the wide brim of her straw hat. She did not want to hurt Chilton's feelings, but she'd no wish to be floundering about on the river all night, either.

"I can take the oars for the first bit," she suggested. "Not because I doubt your abilities, of course, but merely because I know our river so well."

"No, no, I shall not hear of it!" he said impatiently. "Zach told me exactly what to do, and certainly the word of a salty old sea dog like your brother must carry some weight, even with you."

"The boat was Zach's idea?" she said suspiciously. She could imagine her brother barely stifling his guffaws as he suggested to poor trusting Chilton that he take the boat. She'd have to check herself to make sure the grips on the oars hadn't been greased or the oarlocks loosened before they began.

"Yes, it was," declared Chilton as he tentatively waved one stockinged leg out behind him to begin backing down the ladder to the boat, "and most helpful your brother was, too. However else would I know where to take you? Now commence your voyage, my dear Cleopatra. Your pleasure barge awaits upon the Nile!"

"Sit
down
, Chilton!" cried Miriam urgently. "You can't stand upright like that in a boat!"

But as the boat rocked perilously from side to side beneath Chilton's unbalanced weight, all he did was flop forward to grab at the sides, leaving his bottom in the air and his coattails flapping like some very inelegant tripod.

"Down, Chilton!" ordered Miriam as she hurried down the ladder herself, her skirts bunched hastily over the crook of her arm. "Sit down
now
!"

And sit he did, finally losing his balance so that he toppled headfirst into the bottom of the boat.

"Chilton!" Miriam reached for his hand just as he popped back up, shoved his wig back from his eyes, and fumbled his way upright before plopping down on the bench behind him. "Chilton, are you unharmed?"

"Perfectly," he sputtered, still clinging tightly to her hand. "Though I do believe your father is in need of a new boat, this one being in such dangerous disrepair."

"It will do for tonight," said Miriam lightly, letting him save face however he could. As she settled herself on the forward bench facing him, she scanned the dock and river and beach, fully expecting to find Zach enjoying his joke. But her brother was fortunately nowhere in sight, and though she would speak to Zach later—speak to him
sharply
—now she must concentrate on soothing Chilton's ruffled manly pride while keeping their boat afloat.

She looked down at his uncallused hand linked with hers. By the time they reached the willows at Tockwotten, where they'd planned to have their supper, those neat scholar's hands of his were going to be in more "dangerous disrepair" than her father's boat ever would be. But how strange that his hand roused no other feelings in her, all Jack had had to do was glance her way and she'd gone soft and warm as butter in the sun.

Not that it mattered now. Now she must be good and useful to Chilton, as she'd promised her mother.

"You can take the oars now," she prompted, slipping her hand free to twist around and untie the boat, shoving it away from the dock. "One in each hand, you know."

"I
do
know, Miriam," snapped Chilton with misplaced indignation. "I am not a fool."

Not exactly a fool, decided Miriam as her temper began to simmer. Not a fool; but when he grabbed the oars and began to flail them about in the air like lopsided wings, he was certainly executing an excellent impression of one.

"Like this," she said as patiently as she could, leaning forward to lay her hands firmly over his and guide the oars back into the water. "Towards me, then back. Smoothly now, Chilton, or well never get anywhere."

He stopped and glared at her, beads of sweat trickling down his forehead from beneath his wig. "You are not to instruct me, Miriam. That is not your role. Such forwardness is disagreeable in a woman, and not to be tolerated."

Miriam gasped indignantly. "If it were not for my 'forwardness,' then we would sit here in this same wretched patch of water all night!"

"My dear Miriam," said Chilton severely. "There will be no place for any forwardness from you at all in our marriage. I shall be the head, as is proper, and you will be the hands, executing my wishes for the benefit of us both."

"Very well." Miriam sat back on her bench, her arms folded tightly over her chest in a posture of mutinous submission. "My hands will be meekly idle and unforward, while your head will row us up the river to Tockwotten. But I vow, Chilton, if you capsize this boat and ruin my clothes, my hands will have a precious hard time ever heeding your head again."

For once he did not deign to answer, or perhaps he was concentrating too hard on making the oars obey to worry about doing the same with Miriam as well. With the help of the incoming tide to ease them upriver, they did finally begin to make progress, but by the time they reached their destination, afternoon had faded into dusk with night near enough that Miriam lit the candle in the lantern in the bow of the boat

Tockwotten had long been a trysting spot, doubtless back before the English settlers in the last century, back to countless Massachusetts or Nipmuc braves and their sweethearts. The bend in the river slowed the water and made an easy landing place, with a sloping bank covered in meadow grass that grew to a conveniently discreet height.

But what made Tockwotten special was the willows. Clustered together on the bank, their heavy heads bent forward to trail their branches in the water, the trees created mysterious shadows that constantly changed, a nervous, whispering
shush
as the breeze played through the silvered leaves, and gnarled roots that twisted into a score of playful perches overhanging the river's dark surface. There was a seductive sense of danger to those shadows and leaves and twisting roots, too, an undercurrent that warned as much of what wasn't visible as of what was, and that had made countless young women inch closer with a delicious shiver to their young men for protection. As Chilton guided the boat beneath the sweep of the branches, even he was impressed into awed silence.

Miriam held the lantern up in her hand to let the light dance over the restless leaves and branches and dapple over the water's surface. She loved this place. She always had, and Zach rose a few points closer to forgiveness for suggesting it to Chilton.

"I say, Miriam, this is a peculiar spot for supper," said Chilton uneasily as he glanced up at the quarter moon, caught in the tangle of branches overhead. "Might as well take tea in a crypt as dine here."

"Tockwotten only feels that way," said Miriam, her voice automatically dropping to a whisper. "It's every bit as safe as an open field, but much more interesting. And we're only a mile beyond Westham, along the path on the bank."

"That's a comfort, I suppose." He peered over the edge, into the black water. "Would there be serpents in there?"

Miriam nodded solemnly. "Giant ones, a hundred feet long at least, with great gnashing teeth like swords and spiked scales like a dragon's to help them swim upriver from the ocean."

He recoiled so fast she couldn't help laughing.

"Oh, Chilton, how could there be serpents like that here?" she scoffed merrily. It was really very wicked of her to tease poor Chilton in this way, but she couldn't help it. "This is Massachusetts, not India! Besides, the water's no more than a foot or two deep beneath us, not nearly enough to harbor giant serpents."

But the shocked look remained on his face, his eyes wide as he peered into the shadows. He grabbed the lantern from the bow of the boat, holding it up like a shield against the shifting darkness.

"What is that noise, Miriam?" he whispered hoarsely. "Don't you hear it?"

She paused, listening to the familiar sounds of evening. "Crickets and blackbirds and the breeze running through the leaves. Nothing else."

"Nothing?" repeated Chilton anxiously. "Yet I would vow I heard—"

But what he'd heard or imagined didn't matter any longer, for with a bloodcurdling banshee's wail something large and heavy dropped down from the darkness inside the willow and, with a shower of leaves and breaking twigs, onto the branch directly over their heads. Miriam gasped in startled uncertainty as she peered up into the shifting shadows, but Chilton shrieked with terror, tumbling backwards into the boat so suddenly that Miriam feared he'd somehow been wounded by the unseen thing above them.

"Chilton!" she cried, lurching across the rocking boat to grab his arm. "Oh, dear God,
Chilton
!"

"Oh, I fancy he's well enough," said the voice overhead. "No more than a dollop of maidenly distress, eh, Master Chuff?"

"
Jack
!" Miriam gasped again, but this time not with fear but with outrage that, fortunately, wasn't quite speechless. She still couldn't make him out in the shifting shadows, but she hadn't any doubt that he was there. "What are you
doing
?"

"I'm merely plying my humble trade, lass," he answered, his voice barely more than a low, disconcerting growl. "And a good thing I am, too, from the sorry look of your affairs here."

"How dare you speak to a gentleman so!" sputtered Chilton as he struggled upright in the boat. Somehow, despite all his thrashing, he'd managed to keep the candle in the lantern lit, and he raised it now, a quavering, quaking beacon. "Begone, you—you foul, ill-bred specter!"

But whatever bravado Chilton had mustered evaporated the instant the lantern light found Jack, and even Miriam, who'd thought she'd known what to expect, felt her blood chill in her veins.