By The Sea, Book Two: Amanda (20 page)

"Let me see if I understand you" she asked
innocently. "You'd like to marry me, but you think it would be
unfair because I have too much money, so you're withdrawing the
offer?"

"Something like that," he agreed. Put that
way, it did sound more original than logical.

"Then cheer up. I've been disinherited," she
said with a bright smile, watching him carefully for his
reaction.

"Your father would never do that! You must
be joking!"

"Nosiree. I'm almost as poor as Job's
turkey."

He stared at her, waiting for the punch
line. None came. And then he let out a Wild-West whoop of sheer
joy. There would be no title, no money; just him, just her. They
balanced beautifully. Suddenly all other dilemmas became solvable.
He piled the food around the ice, threw his hunting jacket over the
whole shebang, wrapped one arm around his startled, laughing
sweetheart, and practically sprinted her back to the upstairs
bedroom of Fain's Folly.

Geoff was no virgin, but it seemed to
him—then and for the rest of his life—that the morning with Amanda
in the Adirondacks was his first. Never had he felt skin so silky,
so soft; never had a woman's sigh of pleasure sent his own body
rippling in response. And this, too, was new: he was enjoying
giving her pleasure almost as much as he was enjoying accepting it.
Geoff had known lust, and he had known passion; but never before
had he known joy.

When he caressed Amanda's breasts and she
whimpered, it made him grin with happiness. And when he slid his
hand along the shaft of sunlight that lay across her body, leading
ever lower, and Amanda laughingly cried, "Don't you dare don't you
dare don't you dare!" and tried to wriggle away from his touch—he
laughed out loud. Forest nymph: he would pursue her, and he would
find her, and he would make her his own, there in the sunlight of
her bed.

Because she was the one. He slid his arm
around her waist and pulled her toward him, without haste. The game
was over. She knew it, and so did he. Her eyes were shining with
love for him as she whispered, "I've wanted you forever."

"All my life," he agreed, in the strange
shorthand of lovers. He brought his mouth down on hers in a kiss of
surpassing sweetness, a kiss almost of melancholy that he had
wasted so much time in his search. "My life," he said softly,
tracing the wet line of a tear that had been rolling down her
cheek. "I love you."

She nodded haltingly in reply, not trusting
her voice. Geoff came into her then, an easy, sweet slide into the
promise of ecstasy. Amanda sighed, then lifted herself up to him.
When she gasped—either from pleasure or from pain, he could not
tell—he stopped.

He should not have.

Immediately a vivid image leaped up inside
his head, of his tattered and bloodied canvas cot inside the
officers' tent on the front line. With a groan he began to withdraw
from her, from the flashback, whispering, "Oh, God ... not
now."

No! Not now
. He braced himself and
with a fierce, emotional effort pushed himself forward again,
sweeping aside once and for all the image of the cot, embracing
instead the feel of the feather tick underneath his legs; of
Amanda's warm body beneath his. "Oh, yes ... now," he whispered as
he plunged to another rhythm altogether, the rhythm of coming home
at last. He wanted to keep coming, keep coming homeward for the
pure joy of it. But ecstasy sneaked up on him; knocked him over;
and ran away.

With a kind of shuddering laugh he collapsed
on her breast, humble and abject. "Darling Amanda ... forgive me
... too fast ...." He lifted his head to look into her eyes, but
they were closed. Her face wore a look of serenity that he'd never
seen there, a look of blissful peace.

He touched his lips to her forehead. "Then
it was ... all right ... for you as well?"

A dreamy, languid smile gathered on her
face. "It was all right, all right."

"You were so quiet," he said, his breath
still a little ragged.

"I guess I'm not a screamer," she whispered,
looking at him at last, her cheeks flushing. "Did you really miss
the sound effects?" she asked with near perfect seriousness. "I
could let loose next time if it's important to you."

He pretended to consider. "Could you give me
an example of what I might expect?" he asked politely.

"Sure. How about this?" She took a deep
breath and moaned, "Oh more, oh more, oh, oh, more, MORE MORE—"

He covered her mouth with his hand. "On
second thought, a picture is worth a thousand words," he said with
a tender smile.

"Or I could howl—"

"No."

"I love you, Geoff," she said, her voice
suddenly dropping low. "I love you. I love you. I love you. I even
love to say I love you."

The tone of her voice took his breath away.
Weak with enchantment, he kissed her and held her more closely and
said, "Marry me, Amanda. Right away."

"Yes, but—I have another confession to
make," she said, and she looked suddenly uneasy. "I may not stay
disinherited forever. My father seems, I don't know, kinder lately,
or else I never saw it before. What if he and I reconcile
completely?"

"We'll cross that bridge when we come to
it," he said with gentle irony, burying his face in the curve of
her neck.

But Amanda persisted. "He tried to comfort
me, in his fashion, after Perry was hurt. But I wouldn't let him. I
don't know why. I guess I still resented his ambition. He never
seemed to have time for me before, and you already know that I
blamed him for Uncle Mac's death," she added sheepishly. Then she
stopped herself. "Why am I telling you all of this
now?"
she
wailed.

"So that you can put it behind you, love,"
he murmured, and he pulled up the blanket over them both,
determined this time not to rush her into making love again until
she had finished facing down her own demons, just as he had
done.

"It's just that whatever we did—any of us,
even Mother—Dad would always say, 'Not good enough. Try harder.'
Well, for instance, Mother took up needlepoint, and she loved it.
She decided to make a kind of sampler: 'Home, sweet sweet home.' It
showed a cottage and a picket fence, and a little squirrel that she
couldn't get right, so she pulled it out and did it over and over.
'It looks too square,' she'd say. Or, 'The tail's too thin.' But
she couldn't win: every evening Dad would come in and say, 'How
much did you get done today?' He was turning her sofa into a
sweatshop, treating her sampler like piecework. When she finally
got the squirrel right he only said, 'You took long enough.' The
next day she put it down and never picked it up again. It's a
trivial thing, I know, but that's how he wore you down, on the
little stuff. My mother is very stubborn, deep inside. Now she
doesn't do very much at all; she just hides in her fantasy world
all day. I resented Dad for that. A lot."

"Did you ever tell him?" Geoff asked
quietly.

"No; how could I? He'd never understand.
That's what I liked to think, at least. Now I'm not so sure."

Her grimace dissolved into a sad and pensive
look. "You see, after the bombing, when my uncle barred me from
seeing Perry in the hospital? I think even Dad was shocked by that.
He came to see me in my studio … but I was distraught. He said all
the right things, and I said all the wrong ones. He went away
angry, and I think very sad. I don't think he's even told my mother
that he went. For the past couple of days I've been thinking ...
that he must have felt exactly the way I did when his brother shut
me out from the hospital: helpless, frustrated, horribly
misunderstood. Stupid, isn't it? So much love around us ... and yet
we spurn it, for no good reason. We just don't listen," she said,
sighing heavily.

After a long pause she whispered, "Poor,
poor little Perry ... he couldn't even have heard—"

"Shh. That bridge, too, will be crossed,"
Geoff said quietly, stroking her hair, soothing her, dropping soft
little kisses on her brow. He knew that Amanda still had to let go
completely over her cherished nephew; she'd held it all in for many
days, and he could see that the moment of release was near. The
tears would hurt, they would sting; but they would wash her soul
clean of guilt that did not belong there. Amanda Fain had run away
to the mountains so that she could listen in peace to the sound of
her heart. By the time she came down from them she would be far
more wise, far more loving. And Geoff, filled with wonder and a
wild desire, would be right there, at her side.

The ride back to Connecticut might just as
well have been on a magic carpet. Geoff never afterward could
recall actually sitting behind the wheel and driving the car. His
foot must have been on the gas most of the time and the brake some
of the time. He must have hung his arm out the window every once in
a while, signaling either a right or left turn. He was pretty sure
he drove on the right side of the road—although again, he had no
real memory of it.

What he remembered in the years after that
fateful interlude in the Adirondack mountains was the sheer joy of
non-stop talking and listening to Amanda. Speech simply tumbled out
of them, with each of them interrupting the other and finishing
sentences for the other; with both of them laughing at all they had
in common—and all that they didn't; and most of all, with both of
them marveling that they could come up with so many words and
sentences in a row without any of them being hostile.

It was a miracle, pure and simple.

By the time they drove up to the grand and
stately manor that Jim Fain wore proudly as a badge of his success
in life, Amanda had pretty much forgotten that she had resented it
as thoroughly as the man who'd had it built.

Because that was the old Amanda. The new one
tripped lightly up the stone stairs to her anxious waiting parents,
hugged her mother, poked her brother, and said to her father,
"Geoff's my fiancé now, so be nice to him."

"Oh, well, that—what?"

"We're getting married in a month. First in
England and then again here."

"Mandy!" cried her mother, bursting
instantly into tears. "Oh, honey, that is such wonderful news. You
and Geoff? You and Geoff? I can't believe it!"

"Neither can I, Mrs. Fain; I'm a lucky man,"
Geoff said between bear hugs from her.

David just shook his head and said, "Never
saw it coming," but there was a hint of a smile on his face. Maybe
he was just glad that Amanda was going to torture someone else for
a change. He shook Geoff's hand and said, "Seriously, man, welcome
to the family." He turned almost shyly away and wandered off.

While Amanda and her mother went inside
arm-in-arm, discussing young Perry's improved condition and
possible wedding dates, Jim Fain buttonholed Geoff just outside the
grand entry hall. The hanging outdoor fixture high above their
heads cast a benign and golden light over them, but even so, Geoff
could see that the past weeks had been hard on Jim Fain. He looked
older now, more weary now, as if he'd discovered that life's
possibilities were not in fact endless.

"Needless to say, Geoff, you can come back
to the shipyard."

"Nowhere else I'd rather be, sir."

"On trial, mind. But I think you've got the
right stuff. We'll see." He pulled out two cigars from his inside
jacket pocket and offered one to Geoff, then lit his own. "Let's
walk; I need a minute to chew on this news."

They sauntered in the dark around the side
of the house and to a manicured lawn that drifted down to the
Sound. A dock jutted out, its lights probably annoying the
neighbors. A sleek commuter yacht, all gleaming varnish and
polished brass, lay tied up alongside. The night was still, the
water smooth. All in all, Geoff preferred the water scene before
him to the one of sprawling English countryside back home,
especially with the new, grotesque manor being built within view of
his ancestral digs.

"This is nice," he said with quiet
admiration.

"I like it here," Jim Fain allowed. "The
missus, well, she prefers the City. She don't drive, y'see.
Eventually we'll move there—when we're old—but for now, Westport is
nicely positioned between my brokerage offices and the shipyard.
Now. Let's talk business."

Geoff thought Fain was going to discuss
wages, but instead he said, "Mandy has managed to get herself
estranged from some of the family, I'm sure you know, and I did
count myself among 'em. Dave and his shenanigans are one thing, but
this Bolshie business—well, you see how it ended up. She may be
sorry now, but did she listen to me then? You saw how well. Maybe
you'll have more luck with her. I'm counting on you to be a calming
influence."

He took a long drag on his cigar and blew it
toward the Sound. "God. Artists. Where she got that temperament, I
cannot tell you. It's as if we dragged her out from under some
cabbage leaf."

Geoff felt bound to defend the woman he
loved. "She's done a lot of growing up since the tragedy; she's not
the Amanda I left behind me for England."

"And that's another thing. England. I don't
want you hauling her off to the motherland, nor any future
grandchildren along with her. I want you here, right in these
United States of America, and within spitting distance of the
shipyard. Promise me that."

"That's my intention, sir."

"Ha. Well. I guess I can't ask for more than
that. And another thing: money. Amanda may or may not have it from
me. We'll see. Any grandchildren will of course be provided for.
But if you're counting on an inheritance—"

"Nothing could be further from my mind."

"Good. Let's see what you're both made of.
As I say: on trial."

"Got it."

"Good." Apparently relieved, Fain blew a
perfectly round smoke ring on the next exhale, framing the scene
before him. His brows drew down as he mulled over the situation.
And then he laughed out loud, a good-natured guffah that carried
down to the water and into the night. "Well, well. If this don't
beat all. You and our Amanda. By God."