Passions in the North Country (Siren Publishing Classic) (8 page)

“Mr. North,” Miriam said, “Mr. Taylor called from the bank. He says he’d like to arrange a meeting in the not too distant future.”

Devon’s expression instantly changed and he looked not only stern, but gravely concerned.

“Jenny is going to stay and help out for awhile,” Miriam suddenly said with unbreakable conviction. “We can certainly use her help. But right now we have only four rooms open for occupancy and room twelve is one of them. Would it be possible for her to stay in the Captain’s House?”

Jenny was thrilled at the prospect of living in the same room where she had seen the beautiful and exotic spirit.

“I don’t know,” he hedged. “I can’t pay her anything.”

“She said she’s all right with a free room,” Miriam insisted with the look of determination.

Devon rubbed his hands. “All right,” he surrendered, as if it was almost painful. “She can have Maria’s room. We’ll see how it works out.”

“It will work out just fine,” Miriam assured her. She turned to Jenny. “Go get your things and I’ll take you up to Maria’s room.”

“All right,” Jenny said excitedly, pleased on many fronts. Devon had not been unbendable and though he did not seem enthusiastic, he was at least resigned to the idea. This also gave her a steady place to live without having to drain her account, and the room was about as private as could be. It would become her sanctuary. “I’ll be right back, Miriam.” She snubbed her nose at Devon as she walked past him. He smirked, shook his head, and went back to work.

Jenny quickly gathered her things and returned to find Miriam waiting for her by the step. To her surprise and pleasure, Devon and Danny were standing by a ladder and conversing in a friendly way. She met up with Miriam, exchanged comments on the beautiful day, then proceeded toward the Captain’s House.

It was set on the back of the property and largely obscured by high pines, flowering crab trees and vines, including a grapevine wrapped around a white trellis, and a blooming clematis interspersed with thick rose bushes. The entire area had a delicious, almost intoxicating aroma, and there was also an air of mystery about the place. There were no established pathways, only a thin trail Devon had made of late by walking back and forth to renovate the Captain’s House.

“Why did he spend time back here,” Jenny asked, “when there’s so much work to do on the hotel?”

“He was thinking about living in the Captain’s House. Down at the river house he’s paying rent. Here he could live for free.” Miriam took keys out of her pocket and unlocked the old green door. “There was also a safety issue here.” She pushed the door open to a long, narrow room with nothing in it except two more doors. “But Devon replaced all the wiring and he fixed the plumbing. It’s habitable now.”

Jenny stepped into the room with Miriam, a look of wide-eyed wonder on her face. “What a strange set-up.”

In front of them were the two doors, wide apart. On the right door, hanging about three-quarters up, was an oak sign that stated,
Maria’s Room.
On the left door, at the same height, was an identical oak sign that stated,
The Captain’s Room
. Jenny was intrigued.

“No one has lived here for many, many years,” Miriam said. “It was written into the constitution of the Riverview Hotel that these rooms could never be rented. Since you’re living here for free, there is no rent, therefore no violation of the constitution.”

Jenny inwardly laughed at the seriousness with which Miriam related the details.

“They lived side by side for years,” Miriam said, “and they were madly in love, but they never became lovers.”

“Really?” Jenny asked, genuinely intrigued.

“Really,” Miriam assured her. “The Captain was a handsome fellow who ached for the beautiful Maria, and she loved him with all her heart, but she was a nun.”

“A nun?” Jenny exclaimed in wide-eyed wonder.

Miriam nodded. “A Roman Catholic nun. Young and beautiful, but a nun. She had been sent here to develop a school in Newbridge, the first school ever. She needed a room. Since the Riverview Hotel was the only place to stay in town at the time, she ended up here. But she needed a long
term placement. The Captain suggested she take a room in this house, as he was always out at sea and would never intrude upon her space. Maria loved the grounds and the location, and since the school was only a ten-minute walk from here, she took the room you are about to see.” Miriam unlocked the right door, the one to Maria’s room, and swung it open to an enclosed staircase. “No one has lived or even stayed here since Maria died, but the Captain was injured on a whale hunting expedition and ended up retiring. He moved back to the Captain’s House, but by that time Maria loved the room and did not want to leave. So she didn’t, even after he moved in.”

“No other woman has been in this room since Maria?” Jenny questioned, clearly recalling the naked woman in the window.

“None.”

“What did Maria look like, Miriam?”

“I don’t know. I thought it was written somewhere that she had long black hair, but I’m not even sure of that.”

They walked up the steps where they came to a third door. Miriam opened it to a beautiful and quaint room of unexpected size. There was a twin bed, a newly installed bathroom, with shower, a mahogany writing desk with three or four books on one side and an old-fashioned feather in an ink well, next to some writing paper. There was a recliner chair, a coffee table, a large closet, two dressers, and two large, ornamental windows with pretty pink-and-white curtains. A huge mirror, framed by ivory painted with Japanese pagodas, faced the bed and reflected almost the entire room.

“I love it,” Jenny said, walking to the window where she had seen the woman looking down at her. She studied her surroundings from the heightened vantage point. Only then did she notice a door in the middle of the wall. “Where does that lead, Miriam?”

“The Captain’s room,” said the elderly lady.

Jenny made a funny face. “The Captain’s room? You mean the Captain and Maria could enter each other’s rooms directly through that door?”

“That’s right.”

Jenny laughed awkwardly. “There’s this huge separation at the bottom of the steps, as if those two doors lead off to different worlds. Yet if they unlocked this door, they could just walk through?”

“Close, but not quite.”

“What do you mean?”

“The door was never locked.”

Jenny was flabbergasted.

“It couldn’t be locked. And for years that’s all that separated the handsome and lusty Captain from the beautiful and sensual Maria. An unlocked door and two people in love who had never physically touched each other.” She raised an eyebrow. “For years and years they lived like that.”

“Talk about sexual tension.”

“She taught in the school and he built up the Riverview Hotel into the best hotel on the South Shore. People came from all over the world, but when the day was over and they retired to their rooms, they would be only a short distance apart, separated by a thin wall. Funny thing is, people said they lived almost like man and wife when they were together. She would help out around the restaurant, he would give talks at the school about the seafarer’s life, they would go for long walks on White Sands Beach. Some said they would even sit on opposite sides of that door and talk every night before going to bed.”

“What a strange relationship,” Jenny said. “By the sounds of it, they were definitely in love.”

“Never consummated,” Miriam said. “Unfulfilled passions.”

Jenny laughed at Miriam’s terminology, thinking she must read romances, too. “Or maybe the door was opened without anyone knowing about it.”

“Don’t be scandalous, dear,” Miriam said with a mischievous twinkle in her eye.

Jenny’s eyes also flashed. “What do you think, Miriam? You’re a young woman in love with a handsome captain, who just happens to be in love with you. There’s only a door separating you. It doesn’t even have a lock. What do you think?”

“There was more than a door, dear.”

Jenny waited for an explanation.

“Her vows stood between them. No matter how much she wanted to, she could not. And no matter how much he wanted to, he could not.”

“Methinks there is a lot of history here,” Jenny said thoughtfully. “What happened inside these walls I can only imagine. It must have been a fascinating dynamic.”

“So, you like the room?” Miriam said, growing upbeat.

“Love it,” Jenny replied. “I feel right at home.”

“Good. I’ll leave you here to put your things away. Come down when you’re ready, okay?”

“Okay.”

Miriam gave Jenny the keys, left the room, and walked out of the Captain’s House. Seconds after putting away her things, Jenny hurried to the door that separated Maria’s room from the Captain’s room. She tentatively opened it, stepped across the threshold, and gave the quarters an inspection. The Captain’s room was identical in size and also had two windows, but above his huge bed was a set of deer antlers and an antique musket resting on the rack. There was a huge bed with a plain white spread and pillows in yellow cases. On his desk was a picture of a ship and a lamp in the shape of a ship’s wheel. Next to the door, oddly enough, was an old pair of rubber boots. Jenny could not help wondering if they were boots that had been worn by the Captain and left untouched all those years, or if Devon had been working on a rainy day and had merely left them there.

She left the room, quietly closed the door, and then leaned her back on it. “I would have loved to be a fly on the wall in here,” she said. “I bet it got so steamy.”

Jenny locked the main door and emerged into the bright light. Devon was just outside the door, carrying two cans of paint. They looked at each other, their eyes locking, and now, in the light, in the quiet of an intense moment, she realized for the first time just how truly nice
looking he was. Devon had a look of intelligence, authority, even the air of a gentleman. But put the two of them together and you had fire and ice. They could not coexist, could not find mutual ground, could not inhabit the same universe.

“It’s not going to work,” he said, looking her right in the eye.

“What isn’t going to work?”

“You.”

She looked challengingly at him. “Me what?”

“You aren’t going to work out,” he said.

“I’m working for Miriam,” Jenny shot back, her jaw firmly set, “not you. If you want to call the police and have me thrown off the property, so be it. Until then, stay out of my way!”

She walked toward him, her head down and an intense look on her face. Devon gritted his teeth and knitted his brows. Jenny stopped right beside him without saying anything, but she knew he could smell the succulent scent of honeysuckle shampoo lingering in her hair, and the hint of perfume dabbed behind her ears, an exotic and subtle concoction brewed to drive men mad. She was in heat. She was ready. Primed. In her thoughts, only a short time ago, her natural juices had flowed so strongly that the hair at her opening was dewed with strong sex scent. She was unaware of it, though she knew she was slippery, and hot, and open. There was a steady glow in her damp, dark, musky cave. It was a pleasing numbness, but only a precursor of the powerful tremors that yearned for release. Jenny knew Devon was in rut and she was in season. Those feelings went way back, back to the beginning of time, and their allure had never subsided. On the contrary, passion raged like a bonfire unleashed in her core, and only this man, this beautiful animal, could extinguish it. She walked past him, her head down and an intense look on her face.

“Oh, Mr. North,” she said, turning to him at just the right angle for him to see most of her breast, unrestrained under the thin cotton material of her pretty blouse. “Thank you for getting Maria’s room ready for me, sir. I’m looking forward to my time there.”

“We’ll see how it works out,” he cautioned, his voice cracking.

She walked up close to him, as if needing to share a private matter. “Please wash your clothes before you come here tomorrow.”

Devon looked positively offended. “Excuse me?”

“You heard me.”

“Yes, I did. Are you telling me what to do?”

“Yes,” Jenny said. “I am.” She stared into his eyes. “Wash your clothes.”

He looked comically angry. “I don’t tell you what to wear.” Devon made a strange face, then sternly looked at her. “I’m doing hard physical labor. My clothes are going to get dirty.”

“Dirty work makes dirty clothes—that’s acceptable,” Jenny said like a mother scolding her young son, “but smelly clothes are not acceptable.”

Devon smirked.

“Your clothes stink of sweat,” she said, quickly nodding her head. Though he did indeed smell of sweat, Jenny was not turned off by it. On the contrary, she had been around men for too long who were more concerned with how they looked than their wives and girlfriends. Men who went to salons, had their hair done, their suits perfectly pressed. She rather liked the elemental man, the blue-collar man, the man’s man. But she sure as hell wasn’t going to tell him that. “How you feel about your bad hygiene is your business, but not when it starts affecting others.”

“Do people say I stink?” he asked, obviously distraught.

“I say you stink.”

His bottom lip drooped.

“That’s all that matters. It’s a matter of courtesy, Mr. North. People have enough problems without having to put up with strong odors.” She pursed her lips. “I don’t stink, do I?”

He didn’t answer.

“When I walked by you, did I stink?”

“No,” he snapped, recalling the most alluring scent he had ever smelled in his life.

“Thank you.” She glared at him. “Now please return the favor. Wash your clothes! And take a long bath.”

“All right,” he snapped, “you made your point. No need to beat a dead horse.”

“And no need to smell like one, Mr. North.” She started to walk away, but turned back for a moment. “Tomorrow is another day and one lives in hope.”

He scowled and shook his head. Jenny flipped her nose at him and walked into the hotel, meeting Miriam in the office. They went into the back room and Miriam poured them both a glass of cold lemonade, dropping a couple ice cubes in each drink.