Persuaded (6 page)

The name
sent a bolt of adrenaline through him. He absolutely hated the sensation. “It
would have been entertaining to watch you try, though.”

If
possible, Barbie girl’s smile grew. She was looking at him in that breathless
way that he’d come to associate with one’s being starstruck. That, or she’d
been running. Hopefully it was the latter, though the likelihood of her not
recognizing him was slim.

“I’m
Ella, by the way,” she said, twirling her hair around a finger. “Ella
Musgrove.”

“Derick,”
he answered.

“Does
Derick have a last name?” Her eyes twinkled flirtatiously.

Was
she always this happy? “Just Derick,” he answered, earning a tinkling laugh in
return.

A beat
of silence passed, and then Ella said, “I didn’t mean to interrupt your run . .
.”

“Oh,
no, I was done. Just heading back,” he answered, gesturing toward Kelynch and
stamping
to be continued
on his plans to explore the Lymelight.

“Me
too,” she agreed, falling into step beside him. “Are you staying on the beach?”

“Yeah,
a few doors down from you, actually. Kelynch.” He gave a little shake of his
head, and Ella questioned him with her eyes. “I’m still trying to wrap my brain
around the house-naming thing.”

“Yeah,
it’s different, but I guess I’m used to it. I’ve been coming here my whole
life, so it doesn’t seem weird to me.”

“You
own the house, then?” He couldn’t keep the incredulity out of his voice—Ella
didn’t look old enough to drink legally, let alone own beachfront property.

“No,”
she laughed, “it’s my parents’ house. We come every year. What about you?”

“I’m a
first timer. My sister and her husband took a house for the summer.”

When
he didn’t offer any other explanation, Ella said, “That was nice of them to
invite you.” She really did have an amazing smile—she could have easily been a
Colgate model with her straight, bright white teeth. But the rest of her
appeared to be equally flawless on first glance, so he supposed she could have
her pick of gigs.

Realizing
he was staring at her, Derick rallied. “So, how is your sister-in-law feeling?
Mary, right?”

Ella
rolled her bright eyes and made a snorting noise. “She’s been in bed since
yesterday.”

Derick
raised his eyebrows in concern.

“Oh,
trust me—she’s fine. Mary’s one of those people that call in sick over a
sneeze. You know what I mean?”

Derick
nodded but said nothing for a moment, his pent-up curiosity getting the better
of him. “The other girl with you yesterday—she’s a friend?”

“That’s
Hanna—Mary’s sister. She’s really good at getting Mary out of her sickbed, and
none of the rest of us have the stomach to coddle her the way Hanna does.”

Again,
the adrenaline. Again, the loathing. “How long is she here for?”

“For
the summer, I think. If I was a school teacher, the last thing I would do is
spend my break with the kids, but that’s Hanna for ya.”

Derick
tripped slightly, but Ella didn’t seem to notice. Hanna’s career choice didn’t
surprise him; it was the reference to the “kids” she would spend her break with
that caught his attention. “How many kids does she have?” Keeping his tone
careless was hard work.

“Oh,
they’re not
her
kids. Hanna’s not married! She’s, like, thirty or
something,” she finished in an obvious tone, as if thirty was synonymous with
death.

“Twenty-eight,”
Derick corrected under his breath.

“What
did you say?” Ella asked, leaning in for clarification.

“I’d
say she looks closer to twenty-eight . . . ish.”

Waving
a toned, brown arm, Ella said, “Anyway, Hanna’s the sweetest thing in the
entire world. It’s too bad she never had the chance to get married.”

Oh, but
she did.
Derick winced at his acrid mental tone. Looking up, he saw
that they were nearing Kelynch, and he slowed.

Ella
looked around, her eyes widening. “Is this you?” she asked, pointing at the
house. “I didn’t realize we’d passed Uppercross.”

Shoving
his hands in his pockets, Derick kicked at the sand.

“So,
do you run every morning, then?” Ella queried in a hopeful tone.

“Most
of the time,” Derick said. It was a good thing Ella Musgrove was so easy on the
eyes—it softened the edges of her curiosity.

“Maybe
I’ll run into you again! I’ll try not to scare you next time.”

“I’ll
get some pepper spray, just in case.” He finished off with a wink.

“See
you later!” Ella said, walking backward and beaming her Colgate smile before
turning and sprinting off down the beach.

Back
at Kelynch now, Derick’s thoughts were a jumble as he shed his sweat-soaked
clothes and turned on the shower. Bracing his hands on the counter, he faced
his reflection as the air filled with steam. To a bystander it might have
appeared that Derick was admiring himself in the mirror, but his thoughts were
far from himself. He was thinking about one thing and one thing alone: Hanna
Elliot.

So,
she wasn’t married. This information didn’t surprise him. Marriage required all
kinds of sacrifice and compromise, and even though he had thought Hanna was in
love with him ten years ago, she certainly hadn’t been willing to give anything
up for him.

All
these years later, he felt only a fraction of the anger that had governed his
actions back then. It was just a pinch of annoyance that shadowed the memory
now. As he saw to the menial tasks that a shower requires, his mind wandered
off, back into the past that he had sealed up and sworn never to enter. Time
had a way of skewing memories, especially memories that had been voluntarily
repressed. The recollections were like yellowing photos, compressed matter
cracking as it filled with air and released into the present . . .

Derick
sat in his car in her driveway, wondering why he wasn’t leaving. She’d said
yes. The ring was on her finger, and they were engaged. So why did he suddenly
have the feeling that none of it was real? That it was artificial? He should be
happy, floating, flying, soaring—but he felt none of that.
Do what she said,
Derick. Get a good night’s sleep and work out the rest tomorrow
, his inner
voice instructed, but his arms wouldn’t move to put the car in reverse and back
out. It was as if some invisible magnetic force had stuck his tires to the
pavement. At length, he decided the only thing that would make him feel better
was seeing her face again. Seeing the ring on her finger and holding his future
wife in his arms.

He
couldn’t account for it, but as he took the stairs to Hanna’s apartment, his heart
slammed violently against his bones, as if begging him to stop. Voices filtered
out through the open window, Hanna’s subdued tone and a snappy British accent
that belonged to Maude. Derick wasn’t a fan of her, but as she was the closest
thing Hanna had to a mother, he kept his opinions to himself. His finger was
poised to ring the bell, but the blood froze in his veins, paralyzing him at
the words.

“I
don’t know what to do, Maude.”

“Yes,
you do. You’re just afraid to do it.”

Silence.

“But
I’ll lose him. He won’t understand . . .”

“Because
he’s young. You both are. Truthfully I don’t see what the fuss is about. No one
should be getting married at eighteen. If your mother was alive—”

“She
would want me to be happy.”

“Not
like this, poppet. He has no job, barely any education, no family to fall back
on. Where are you going to live? His boat? I’m telling you, if you run off with
him right now, you’ll regret it for the rest of your life!”

Derick’s
blood boiled as he anticipated what Hanna would say in his defense, but as the
seconds stretched into minutes, his feeble hope expired. How could she listen
to that without responding? When she did answer, whatever warmth he had left in
him leaked away, as if he were bleeding out on the ground.

“I
know, Maude.”

He stood
on the porch, frozen with shock for what seemed like eternity. Maude said
something about tea, and the voices moved off, into the kitchen, Derick
guessed. The unseen power that had held him there evaporated, and he stumbled
down the steps and threw himself behind the wheel of his car . . .

Stepping
out of the shower, Derick wrapped a towel around his waist and squeezed a glob
of paste onto his toothbrush. He realized now that he had acted rashly at the
time, that he only caught part of the conversation, that the whole thing was
out of context. He could admit now that pulling up anchor early the next
morning and leaving nothing behind but a break-up note had been a bit hasty—as
had chucking his phone into the water as he started the first leg of the race.
He didn’t need a cell phone. He had a radio for emergencies, a compass, and
plenty of maps. The rush that came over him when he’d sent his phone to its
watery grave, detaching all lines that held him to the land—and more
importantly, to
her
—had driven him like a man possessed. The next six
months he worked tirelessly, assuring that his was the first boat to cross the
finish line.

After
he won the race, people of consequence took notice and he was offered a spot on
the U.S. America’s Cup team, which he gladly accepted. When he wasn’t training
or competing, Derick would sail to all the nooks and islands he hadn’t been
able to see during active competition.

Hanna
Elliot had been all but stamped out of his mind. Sure, he thought about her
occasionally, especially on cloudless nights when he lay on the bow of the
Laconia
looking up at the stars. He hoped she was happy, that she had grown a backbone
and begun to make her own choices instead of letting Maude run her life. As
time went on, Derick began to feel grateful that it hadn’t worked out. He
couldn’t picture Hanna, or anyone else for that matter, fitting into the
chaotic life that had taken him after that first victory. And one thing was
certain: if Derick ever settled down, it would be with someone who knew her own
mind, who went after the thing she wanted without hesitation, and without
allowing herself to be persuaded otherwise by anyone.

EIGHT

LADY
of the LAKE

To hear them
talking so much of Captain Wentworth, repeating his name so often . . . was a
new sort of trial to Anne’s nerves.

—Jane Austen,
Persuasion

The
next couple of days, Hanna mostly stayed in the house. CJ had caught a terrible
cold, and then (in the way of siblings) passed it on to his brother. It turned
out to be a most welcome and timely illness, as it provided Hanna’s excuse for
opting out the day that all of the adults of Uppercross were invited onto the
Laconia
with Derick. Charles suggested that Mary should stay with the kids, to which
his wife responded with a
See, what did I tell you?
look in Hanna’s
direction. Just yesterday, Mary had gone off about how her husband was
conveniently missing whenever anything unpleasant was going on at home. Hanna
assured the happy couple that she could handle her sick nephews, and Mary
brightened on the spot.

Ella
hardly spoke anymore without dropping Derick’s name. They went running together
every morning, and it seemed like even Charles and Mary talked of little else.
The only up side was that Ella had stopped asking Hanna to accompany her on
those early-morning jogging sessions. It was a miserable sort of victory, but a
victory all the same.

Dinner
on the beach usually ended up as some sort of bonfire, and tonight was no
exception. With the boys completely recovered from their respective illnesses,
Hanna found herself plumb out of excuses this time. She supposed she could
always fake a headache, but truthfully she was feeling a bit stir crazy and was
tired of confining herself to the house. From the looks of the relationship
developing between Derick and the rest of Uppercross, avoiding him would soon
be an impossibility unless she kept to her room. Even the boys were crazy about
him, CJ calling him “Captain Wentworth” and Walter mumbling something that
sounded much too similar to a crude word for male anatomy as he tried to
pronounce “Derick.”

Hanna
spent only a few minutes agonizing over her hair and clothing for tonight’s
barbecue. Derick already saw her at her worst the morning Mary passed out, and
Hanna doubted that he would look at her much anyway, with someone like Ella in
his line of sight.

On the
beach, Hanna decided that taking care of the boys would be the best use of her
attention. It was a good plan, but proved a bit difficult to execute. Walter
was content to sit on his aunt’s lap and eat, but CJ shadowed Derick all night.
This left Hanna with the awkward option of being caught looking in Derick’s
direction, which she was, at least twice. At length she decided that CJ was
not, after all, her responsibility, and focused her attention on Walter
instead.