How Dark the Night (18 page)

During the awkward pause that ensued while Jamie tried to formulate a reply, Joseph put in chivalrously: “Go with my gratitude, cousin. I am delighted to have this lovely young lady's company to myself until her fiancé returns.”

“Thank you, Joseph,” Frances said, without taking her eyes off Jamie. “That was gallant of you. How very grateful I am to be in the presence of a gentleman.”

“Joseph is certainly that,” Jamie agreed cheerfully, adding: “If duty and circumstance allow me to attend your wedding, Frances, of course I will be there. It will be my great pleasure to see you married.” He leaned forward to give her a quick buss on the cheek. As he did, she turned her head toward him and brushed her lips against his.

Blushing even more furiously now, Jamie bowed to her and turned away toward the group that included Diana's childhood friend. He held back until he deemed the moment right. Then, clearing his throat, he approached her from behind.

“Excuse me . . . Melinda?”

She turned and smiled brilliantly at the boy whose presence had once reduced her to shy giggles. She saw a man now, with her own brown eyes and tall height, his thick chestnut hair, coursing right to left across his forehead and falling below his ear, framing clean-shaven, finely chiseled facial features that marked his Anglo-Saxon descent.

“Yes, of course . . . James?”

He grinned. “How are you, Mindy? It's been a while and you have . . .” His voice faltered as his gaze swept appreciatively over her. “. . .
blossomed
since I last saw you.”

“I'm glad you think so,” she said evenly. “And I could say the same thing about you. How dashing you look in that sea officer's uniform! Not that I am the only one to notice. All the ladies in church had their eyes on you. Really, it was quite scandalous. So . . . how am I to address you? ‘Lieutenant?' ‘Commander?' ‘Friend?' How?”

His response, “‘Your Grace' will do nicely,” made her laugh. “Very well then, Your Grace! It
was
a lovely wedding, wasn't it?” she continued. “Didn't Diana sparkle! She looked so beautiful standing at the altar, so much like your mother. Thank heaven she and Peter will be living in Hingham, at least for the foreseeable future. I don't know what I would do were she to move away. I think I would have to follow her.”

“I should hate for that to happen,” Jamie said quickly. “But you two have been friends for a long time. We Cutlers consider you a member of our family.”

“Now
that
is a compliment I shall forever treasure.”

She waited while a family acquaintance stopped to welcome Jamie home. Jamie thanked him and, as he watched him depart, noticed through a window that a burst of rain had sent the merry-makers outside scurrying for home or shelter.

“Nice man, Mr. Guild,” Jamie commented.

“Nice, yes, but he can act rather oddly at times. How Mrs. Guild puts up with all of his shenanigans is really quite beyond me. She's such a gracious and lovely lady.”

“Oh? What sort of shenanigans?”

Mindy laughed. “I daresay you have a lot of catching up to do when it comes to Hingham gossip, Lieutenant. I suggest we defer that topic to another occasion. For the moment, let me say that we are
all
so happy that you were able to make it home for the wedding—and such a grand entrance, too. You practically sailed in on the incoming tide as the ceremony began. Now that you're here, how long will you stay?”

“For a while, at least,” Jamie said. “My orders are to rejoin my ship when she returns to Boston.”

“When will that be?”

“She's to be relieved as flagship in March or April, so figure another six or seven weeks after that.
Constitution
may be a stout ship and the ‘pride of New England,' but she is not a fast ship. It should take her that long to sail home from the Mediterranean, assuming seasonal headwinds.”

“Well, then, it appears that Hingham will have the honor and glory of your presence for several months, at least.”

“I doubt ‘honor and glory' are the right words. But frankly, Miss Conner, I am more interested in your perspectives than in Hingham's. Might I humbly request the pleasure of your company on a ride with me to Nantasket Beach? It's something I used to do quite often with Mother and Diana, and I have sorely missed it. We can invite Will and Adele to join us, to keep everything proper, and I can catch up on Hingham gossip. I'm sure they will have a lot to contribute to
that
subject. Edna would be delighted to pack a picnic, and she packs a good one. So, what do you say? Would you care to do that? Specifically, would you care to do that some day next week?”

She tilted her head to one side and eyed him coyly. “I had heard that Navy men don't like to waste time.”

“Truly, we don't,” he replied. “But if you think that I am being too forward, Mindy, please tell me and I shall apologize. I've been long at sea in the company of unruly sailors. Under those conditions even a proper and well-intentioned young sea officer may forget the social niceties of requesting the companionship of a young lady of position.
Am
I being too forward with you?”

“Yes, you unbridled sweet-talker. You are being forward to the extreme.”

“Then I apologize.”

“Your apology is accepted,” she said. “What time shall I expect you on Monday morning?”

T
HEIR ROUTE
on Tuesday morning led them from the stables in Indian Hollow near Thomas' Pond, across Great Pasture, and onto Hull Street, an extension of East Street. When they crossed over the Weir Estuary at Mill Lane Bridge, they entered the village of Hull, a township incorporated in 1644 that comprised essentially a series of islands connected by sandbars jutting northward three miles into Massachusetts Bay. The long, thin, hooked peninsula ended at Pemberton Point, a mere five sea miles from Boston Harbor. It was from this spot that Brig. Gen. Benjamin Lincoln, who was to serve as General Washington's second in command at Yorktown in 1781 and who today, at age seventy-three, was Hingham's most famous resident, had surveyed the British evacuation of Boston in 1776.

To Jamie's disappointment, the squalls that had pummeled the area over the weekend had forced postponement of the picnic to Tuesday. The wind had shifted clockwise from the northeast to the northwest by Monday evening, a fair-weather cycle summoning in cool, dry Canadian air that felt chilly as they started out but warmed as the sun rose higher. The four young people rode at a constant walk, in deference to Adele's condition. When they came out on Nantasket Beach—a mile-long stretch of smooth, whitish-gray sand anchored on each end by craggy bluffs—they dismounted and walked together near the water's edge, their horses straggling behind.

No one spoke much at first because no one wanted to break the spell. The panorama of sparkling blue sea and sky seemed to enclose them within a different world, a retreat from the choreography of planning, postulating, and preparing that had consumed them all in various ways in recent weeks. The tide was out, increasing the size of the sandy beach twentyfold from the area available at high tide. The only other people in sight were six clam diggers halfway up the beach attacking the hard wet sand with shovels and short-handled iron rakes to pluck out the tasty mollusks residing a few inches under their feet. Gulls wheeled and mewed overhead while others stood in silent vigilance on the beach, alert for any discarded morsel tossed in their direction.

By now, the air had warmed enough to allow Jamie to doff his coat and roll up the sleeves of his white cotton shirt. As he did, Mindy gasped.

“James, let me see your arm.”

“What?”

“Your right forearm. Let me see it.”

He held his arm out to her, and she cradled it in her left hand as she examined the long, jagged, white scar that ran from just above his wrist to almost the elbow. “Where did you get this?” she asked, still staring at the scar.

Jamie grinned. “I jilted a girl, and she came after me with a knife.”

“Be serious, Jamie,” Mindy said, never taking her eyes from the scar. With her right forefinger she traced its full length, her touch so light and tender that it caused him to shudder. She looked up at him. “You got this when you were fighting in Tripoli, didn't you?”

With her solemn brown eyes locked on his, he could not lie. He nodded.

“Ah,” she said, releasing his arm. Then, in a transparent attempt to restore their lighthearted banter, “I think I prefer the jilted girl with the knife.”

The four of them continued on down the beach, Jamie struggling to draw logic from what had just happened. That Mindy Conner—a stylish and well-bred young woman whom he had known for years, but only as his sister's friend—was so affected by his old wound moved him in a way that was new to him—and more than a little unsettling. Until this moment his naval career had been the primary focus of his life. Everything else, including dalliances with young women, however alluring, lagged far behind in importance. But Mindy's gentle touch had made him want to reconsider that. He chanced a look at her. She was walking beside Adele, staring down at the sand before her. What was she thinking? He would give a lot to know. He was conjuring up something meaningful to say to her when Will suddenly interjected, “Jamie, do you see that building up ahead?”

He was pointing toward a sturdy wooden hut near the other end of the beach up by the low-lying scrub that grew on the narrow stretch of land between the sea side and the bay side of Nantasket Peninsula. Tilted against the front of the hut was a dory secured to the structure by a complex of ropes.

“Of course I see it,” Jamie replied. “It's been there for years. It was put there by the Humane Society to help rescue shipwrecked sailors. What of it?”

“Want to race? First one past it wins.”

Jamie's lips turned up in a smile. He turned to Mindy and Adele. “By your leave, ladies?”

“By our leave, indeed,” Adele said. “You little boys go off and play. Mindy and I will head back to the bluffs and attend to the serious business of preparing our picnic.” She gave her husband a telling look. “Do me a favor,
ma chérie?
”

“Of course,” Will said, poised with his left foot in the stirrup.

“Beat the tar out of him.”

“My money's on you, Lieutenant,” Mindy said after Jamie had secured himself in the saddle. She smiled up at him and then stepped back beside Adele, who held up an arm for several seconds before slashing it downward. Lost in Mindy's smile, Jamie nearly missed the signal.

Heels dug into flanks and the two horses sprang forward, freed at last from the confines of paddock and tight reins. Side by side the horses careened up the beach, splashing in and out of tidal pools, throwing up clumps of wet sand from their pounding hooves, froth foaming at their mouths, every last sinew of muscle engaged in the madcap race. It was too close to call as they veered slightly inland in near perfect synchrony to avoid the clam diggers, who interrupted their backbreaking work to watch as the two brothers thundered past at a full gallop, their legs straight and their heels, knees, and shoulders aligned, balancing their weight with their feet in the stirrups, their upper bodies crouched low and forward, their hands gripping reins and pushing down on the horses' necks in ever increasing and urgent rhythms. Just before crossing an imaginary line running down the beach from the hut, Will's horse gave him one last savage spurt of speed and the victory.

“Congratulations, Will,” Jamie panted as they reined in their mounts in the shadow of the bluffs at the north end of the beach and came together at an easy gait. “The day is yours.”

Will was patting and rubbing his horse's neck. “The hell you say,” he countered. He nudged his horse around, as did Jamie, and together they started back toward the bluffs on the distant south end of the beach. “You should still be back there with those clammers. How did a Navy man learn to ride a horse so well?”

“Mother taught me, same as you. And also a Marine private from Kentucky that I served with in North Africa.”

“Well, that explains it,” Will commented dryly.

“Speaking of Mother, Will,” Jamie said, after they had ridden a short distance, “how does she look to you?”

Will thought before answering. “She's more tired than usual. But she seems to be holding her own. Why do you ask?”

“I'm not sure. Maybe I'm reading too much into what I see. But you have seen her often over the past three years, and I not at all. The change that I'm seeing all at once happened gradually for you. She's far thinner and frailer than she was. I'm very worried about her.”

“Perhaps you're right,” Will offered. “She
is
three years older than when you left. And considering what she has been through these past few months—her surgery, the trip to Barbados, capture by pirates, planning Diana's wedding—I'm amazed she's getting along as well as she is. You know Mother: she could have had all the help she wanted, but she insisted on doing everything herself. She'll improve now that the wedding is over and she can rest. Having Joseph and Uncle Hugh here helps as well.”

“Yes,” Jamie agreed, and let it go at that. They rode on in silence until once again they were abreast of the clam diggers.