Maggy's Child (18 page)

“Are you sure you know what you’re doing?” he asked.

“Just sit tight. We’ll float out to the center in a minute, and then I can start the engine. Haven’t you ever been in a boat before?” She tossed this back over her shoulder.

“No.” His simple answer had the effect both of silencing Maggy and reminding her where she and Nick had come from. If she had not married Lyle, she probably would never have ridden in a boat, either. Boats were not plentiful in Louisville’s west end.

Maggy secured the line to the hook Herd had set into the hull for just that purpose, then moved to where the engine was mounted on the stern.
The Lady Dancer
was an old boat made of solid wood; it had once been used as a ship-to-shore vehicle for a previous Forrest-family yacht. When that yacht was sold,
The Lady Dancer
had been deemed useless, and Herd had been allowed to take it over as his own personal vessel. He had stripped the interior, outfitting it as a fishing boat with two simple plank seats, one across the stern and one nearer the bow. Steering was done by means of a rudder from the rear. To start the engine, it was necessary to pull on a rope attached to the motor, just as one would start a small lawn mower.

Maggy pulled on that rope now, once, twice, and the engine roared to life.

“Sit down,” she called to Nick, who had started up as
though he would come to her assistance when the motor did not start on the first try. He sat rather abruptly on the bow seat facing her as
The Lady Dancer
took off, sliding slickly through the waters of Willow Creek toward the river. After the initial burst of noise that always accompanied its ignition, the engine subsided to a dull sputter.

“Are you sure we ought to take this thing out on the river? It’s a cold night for a swim.” Nick’s slightly raised voice sounded dubious as his eyes slid over
The Lady Dancer’
s ancient fittings.

“She’s perfectly river-worthy. Trust me.”

“You keep saying that. I wonder why it doesn’t reassure me.”

“Because you can’t stand not being the man in charge.”

Nick grinned. “You know me so well.”

“I know.”

There were logs floating near the mouth of the creek, and more logs and other jetsam wedged into the mud shoal that made negotiating the transition from creek to river a little tricky. Maggy had gotten hung up on those shoals more than once when she had first started taking
The Lady Dancer
out alone. But after twice having to jump overboard and wade in muddy water up to her neck to push the craft free, she had learned to stay just slightly to the right of the center of the channel. That was where the water was deepest.

“Grab a flashlight out of that tackle box by your left hand, turn it on, and set it in the bracket in the bow, would you?”

Nick looked at her suspiciously. “Why?”

“We don’t have lights. Without lights no one can see us. It’s not a good idea to be invisible on the river at night, what with the barges and everything. I don’t know about you, but I’d hate to get run over by a barge.”

“Christ,” Nick said, but he did as she asked while Maggy hid a smile.

The beam of the flashlight was not strong enough to help with navigation, but that was not its purpose. Even on the darkest nights the river reflected enough light to make it easy to see where one was going. Herd had rigged up a way to use a flashlight as a headlight strictly as a safety device, just in case he or someone else should ever want to take
The Lady Dancer
out after dark. Not that he ever did. No one did, to her knowledge, except herself.

They chugged out of the mouth of the creek and into the wide, black expanse of the Ohio River without a hitch.

The water was choppy, due to the brisk wind that was always stronger over the water, but not as choppy as it had been other times when she had made the crossing. No white-tipped waves menaced the boat, and the wind was not strong enough to keep her from setting and keeping to a northeastern course, which, given the drag from the current, would bring them to landfall precisely where Maggy wished to be.

In the distance, the yellow lights of a barge moved steadily in their direction. Maggy could just make out the barge’s huge black bulk riding low in the water perhaps four or five miles away. Between the barge and
The Lady Dancer
rose Six-Mile Island, a small, crescent-shaped island closer to the Indiana than the Kentucky side of the river where pleasure boats sometimes docked on hot summer days for picnics and swimming. Boasting three muddy beaches with overhanging grapevines for swinging and jumping, lots of circular rock bonfire pits, and acres of tangled woods, the island was one of two dotting the river. Its larger twin, Twelve-Mile Island, was, just as its name implied, some six miles closer to Cincinnati. During the summer, power boats would race figure eights around the islands, slowing down in the narrow channel between Indiana and Six-Mile before roaring out into the open river again at full throttle for another lap. Six-Mile Island wasn’t a popular destination among the moneyed
crowd the Forrests ran with. But for young families with access to a boat but little cash, it was the cooling-off spot of choice. No boats were docked there tonight, at least not on the Kentucky side, which wasn’t surprising, given the nippiness of the air. Sleeping out on one’s boat was definitely a summer activity.

“If you want to check, I think Herd keeps a change of clothes in the port compartment. In case you really don’t want to go visiting with a hole in your pants.”

“Who’s Herd?” Nick looked where she pointed, spotted the wooden cabinet, edged off his seat and headed toward it in a crouch, clearly not comfortable with moving about on the bouncing boat.

“The gardener.”

He gave a short whistle through his teeth. “Ritzy.”

“Isn’t it?” Maggy watched while he opened the compartment, rummaged around, and extracted a pair of jeans and a beat-up-looking army jacket.

“Think they’ll fit?” Maggy asked as he held them up for inspection.

“Close enough. Think your gardener will mind if I borrow them?”

“No.”

“Too bad if he does, right? One complaint, and off with his head?”

“No.” Maggy had to laugh. “The Forrests consider Herd and Louella—Louella is Herd’s wife, and the housekeeper—family. They wouldn’t dream of letting them go, and even if they did I don’t think Herd or Louella would leave. They’d just continue to work around the place like they’ve always done, waiting for somebody to come to his senses and realize Windermere couldn’t be run without them.”

“You speak of the Forrests like you’re not one of them.” Seated again on the forward bench facing her, Nick kicked off his tasseled loafers.

“I’m not, really. I’m an outsider, and I always will be.
Not so much because I wasn’t born into the family, but because I wasn’t born into their world. When I first married Lyle, I didn’t—oh, know the difference between a fish knife and a dinner knife, for example. That kind of thing drives them nuts.”

“You mean they have a special knife for fish? What about peanut butter? Is there a knife for that, too? Or Cheez Whiz?” Nick shed his suit coat and tugged his tie free.

“The Forrests,” Maggy said with her nose in the air, “don’t eat anything as plebeian as peanut butter, much less Cheez Whiz.”

“Dull bunch.”

“Yes,” Maggy said, grinning suddenly. “Yes, they are.”

“Too dull for you, I would have thought.” Nick unzipped his pants. The sound was surprisingly loud, rising sharply above the thud of small waves hitting the hull and the dull throb of the motor. “Was it worth it, Magdalena?”

He asked the question casually, sliding out of his pants and sitting there for a minute in his underwear, watching her as he waited for her answer. Maggy looked at him, at the large, very masculine feet in sober black socks, at the hard muscularity of his hair-roughened bare calves and thighs, at the gleaming white shirt that covered his lap and his strong arms and his wide chest, at the darkly handsome face. And she knew the answer.
No
, she wanted to scream.
No, it wasn’t worth it
.

“Was what worth it?” she asked in a cool voice, averting her eyes to the nearing Indiana shoreline as he began to pull on Herd’s jeans.

“Don’t give me that, Magdalena.” She couldn’t help sneak a peek at him as he thrust one leg into the jeans and then the other, pulling the pants up with easy efficiency. She caught just a glimpse of him in his underwear—white jockey shorts, as she had surmised from what she had seen through the hole in his pants—but it was enough to
awaken something in her that had not stirred in a long, long time.

A tiny spurt of lust? No, Lyle had cured her of that. She hadn’t had any sexual feelings for years.

Getting them back with Nick was not a smart idea.

She focused again on the Indiana shoreline as he tucked in his shirt, zipped up the jeans, and threaded his belt through the loops.

“Do they fit?” she asked in as composed a tone as she could muster.

“A little short, a little big around the waist, but they’ll do.” She heard the zip of a second zipper and looked back at him to discover that he was now fully clad, jeans, army coat and all, and was sitting down to pull on his shoes.

“So, was marrying an old guy for his millions worth it?”

Nick was not going to give up. Maggy knew him well enough to recognize the note in his voice that told her so.

“At the time I thought it was.” Her voice was remote.

“And now?” Her tone deterred him not at all. Not that she had really expected it to. After all, she knew Nick.

Now I’m trapped
, she wanted to cry. Instead, the words that came out were, “Now it’s done.”

“It can be undone.”

“No.”

“Magdalena.” Fully dressed now, Nick moved, coming to sit on the seat beside her. Only the sticklike rudder, with her hand resting atop it, separated them.

“You’re making the boat stern-heavy,” she protested.

“You asked me earlier why I came back to Louisville.”

“Could you move back to where you were?”

“Want to hear the answer?”

“No.” She made the mistake of looking at him then. His eyes were intent on her face, gleaming green as a cat’s in the moonlit night.

“Don’t lie to me, Magdalena. You never could lie to
me. I always know. You do want to hear the answer. You’re just afraid.”

She wet her lips, tossed her head, tried to look away from him and gave up. “All right, then, tell me: why did you come back?” The question was supposed to sound lighthearted. She wasn’t sure that was how it came out.

Nick’s voice was very quiet as he replied, “For you, Magdalena. I came back for you.”

“N
ick …” Maggy wet her lips with the tip of her tongue, swallowed, and with the best will in the world not to do it, dropped her eyes. Which, when she thought about it, was probably just as well. He had always possessed the uncanny ability to read her mind. And the jumble of thoughts and emotions that filled it at his words were not for him to divine.

With every atom of her being, she longed to lean her head against his broad chest and feel his arms come around her. She ached to pass her troubles on to him and let him make everything right.…

Only he couldn’t. He could not do it. Her world was past being fixed by the arrival of a knight in shining armor, even so redoubtable a knight as Nick. Every scrap of her intelligence told her that. The only dissenter was her wayward heart.

“I hope that isn’t true,” she said in as composed a fashion as she could muster, dragging her gaze back up to his at last. Her training in proper social niceties and her years of dissembling as Lyle’s wife served her well. Her attitude was a masterpiece of dismissal.

Only he refused to be dismissed.

“It is true, Maggy May. And you know it. Did you ever really doubt that one day I’d be coming back for you?” The tenderness in the words was almost her undoing.

“I hoped you wouldn’t.” In a way, her answer was
sincere, and some of that sincerity must have been apparent in her voice, because his eyes darkened.

“That hurts my feelings,” he said after a moment. His tone was light, but she knew him well enough to realize that he was deliberately making it so. “Or at least, it would if I believed it. I don’t believe it, Magdalena.”

“Believe it.” She took a deep breath, glanced around to make sure they still had a wide expanse of clear river around them, and looked back at him. He was watching her, his heavy-lidded eyes both hooded and intent, sitting very still with his hands resting on his knees. Only one who knew him as well as she did would realize that his very stillness was a mask for an incredible tension that he was having to fight to control.

“You love me, Magdalena.” The flat statement was quiet. His eyes never left her face. “You always have.”

Maggy’s eyes didn’t even flicker as she took a deep, silent breath and prepared to lie as she had never lied in her life.

“I loved you
twelve years
ago. That’s a long time, and a lot of water under the bridge.” Belying her calm words, her hand gripping the tiller shook, sending the little craft skittering to port. Correcting their course gave her the precious time she needed to finish armoring her heart.