Under the Boardwalk: A Dazzling Collection of All New Summertime Love Stories (39 page)

"Oh, Miriam," exclaimed her mother in awe, leaning over Miriam's shoulder to touch one finger to the fabric. "There must be fourteen, fifteen ells here, more than enough for a full gown! Whoever would give you such a generous gift?"

"I vow that my guess is confirmed," declared Chilton. "Only my esteemed friend Dr. Paxton would send so elegant a gift. This is the finest Canton
senchaw
, my dear, the very best silk in the world, the likes of which come to Britain only in the holds of an East India Company ship."

Miriam drew back from the silk as if she'd been burned. The silk might have begun its trip to Britain in the hold of an East India Company ship, but it certainly hadn't finished its journey there.
Blast
Jack Wilder for making her such a gift! If he'd rung the ferry bell last night he couldn't have made any more of a commotion than he would with this silk.

"Look, Miriam," said Henry, digging through the discarded muslin. "You got a new shell, too."

"Ah, a
Caputa taurina
," said Chilton importantly as he plucked the shell from Henry's fingers and held it up to the light from the window. "A pretty bauble for a lady, more proof of Paxton's excellent taste. It must have come in the same ship as the silk, for the genus Cere-bridae is found only in Indian waters. You do know, Miriam, that the natural sciences are something of a whimsical study with me."

Henry, however, was not impressed. "My sister has heaps of seashells," he said, looking longingly at the shell Chilton had taken away, "and I'd wager she knows lots more about them than you."

"Prideful little rogue," said Chilton with a disdainful snort. "A good whipping would cure you of such impudence towards your betters."

Swiftly Mrs. Rowe pulled Henry to one side for his own protection.

"Surely Miriam has showed you her collection, Mr. Chuff," she said, striving to smooth over Henry's misguided opinions. "In her box she has shells from well-nigh everywhere. Your friend could not have imagined a better gift for her."

Chilton's friend might not, thought Miriam, but Jack certainly would. He knew all about her collection, for he'd helped her find the first shells when they'd all been no older then Henry, digging about in the sand with bits of driftwood.

Including the sand of Carmondy Island, and at once her heart began racing all over again.

And as she looked at the large black shell poised there in Chilton's fingers, she knew, too, that Jack had chosen it to make her think of more things she shouldn't. This was no demure Maiden's Blush, round and pearly white. Though equally beautiful and rare, this was the most embarrassingly
male
seashell she'd ever seen, long and blunt and tipped with coral red. It was a good thing that Chilton had come up with the fancy Latin name for it; God only knew what kind of shameless, common term Jack would have offered.

Double,
triple
blast him!

"Indeed, I did not know you collected seashells," said Chilton with approval, blissfully unaware of Miriam's thoughts. "A most genteel pastime. I was once so fortunate as to view the Duchess of Barrington's famous grotto. Her Grace and her daughters—lovely, elegant girls—had embedded hundreds of seashells into designs in the plaster arches of their summerhouse."

Miriam frowned, appalled by such a suggestion.

"Stick them down into plaster? So I couldn't touch or turn them? I would never do that."

"But you must consider it, my dear!" said Chilton, his eyes bright with enthusiasm for the project "To bend nature, to tame it to serve art and man is such an admirable goal! You could begin on a small scale, a wall in our garden, with this shell from Dr. Paxton as the centerpiece, and—"

"No," she said irritably, taking Jack's shell from him. "I do not believe I will."

She wished Chilton wouldn't try to
direct
her quite so much; it made her feel very much like those poor seashells trapped forever in plaster. Besides, she'd no intention of keeping this particular shell at all, let alone sticking it into plaster as a constant reminder of the giver. Mama, have you seen Zach yet this morning?"

"I believe I saw him down by the dock a short while ago," said her mother, clearly perplexed. "But Miriam, Mr. Chuff is here expecting his breakfast."

"Then he shall have it, the same as any other guest, but it cannot come from me." She bobbed a quick afterthought of a curtsy to Chilton, who was looking equally perplexed. "I am sorry, Chilton, but I must speak to my brother directly."

She hurried from the tavern before he could try to stop her, her petticoat sweeping over the path to the dock. She seemed to be hurrying away from one person to another a great deal lately; it was not a pretty habit to fall into, and one more thing to blame upon her brother and Jack. With an impatient sigh to match her temper, she shielded her eyes against the sun with the back other hand and scanned the shore for Zach.

She spotted him at once, fiddling with the mast of a small boat pulled up on the beach.

"Good day, muffin," he called as she came toward him. He stood upright, his shirt clinging damply to his back and arms as he wiped his sleeve across his brow. "Faith, it's hot already, and the sun's barely risen in the sky. More like Jamaica than Westham."

But Miriam was in no humor for chat about the weather. "Where's Jack?"

He regarded her with a cautiously blank expression. "Jack who?"

"Jack-a-dandy, Jack-a-napes, Jack pudding, Jack sprat." She sighed with exasperation. "Don't play games with me, Zach. You know perfectly well I mean Jack Wilder."

"Jack Wilder?" he said, not doing a particularly good job of pretending to be ignorant. "Why should Jack be here in Westham?"

With frustration she kicked at the side of the boat. "You tell me, Zach. Or are the two of you so busy plotting the next way you mean to humiliate me that you haven't time to bother with the truth?"

He frowned. "Jack didn't want me to tell you," he said. "He wanted to surprise you instead."

"Well, he did that much and more last night, didn't he? Maiden's Blush, my foot. And that was only the beginning, wasn't it?" She held out the suggestive shell for her brother to see. "Look at this foolishness, as if you two haven't been chortling over it already. How can you wonder that I prefer Chilton! You and Jack are no better than Henry and his little pack of knavish boys, chalking rude pictures on the privy door. And as for that silk—"

"Didn't you like it, Miriam?" he asked disingenuously. "I thought the color would favor you most royally. You must grant that Jack knows your taste."

She narrowed her eyes, her fingers closing over the shell. "Where is he?"

Zach hesitated, clearly torn between loyalty to his friend and the wrath of his sister. "He's taken a room over Hickey's," he finally confessed. "But, Miriam, you can't go chasing after him there."

"I most certainly can," she retorted as she turned on her heel in the sand and charged up the dune toward the lane.

She had never been to Hickey's herself, for not only was the alehouse the kind of place that respectable women avoided on principle, but it was also the Green Lion's only spirit-serving rival in Westham, albeit a rival of the lowest possible nature. Her father would thrash her on both counts if he learned she'd gone there. But she couldn't let Jack continue to plague her like this. She had to make him stop it now, and if she had to beard him in his den at Hickey's, then so be it.

And Zach had been right about the heat. The ale shop stood at the opposite end of town, past the fishermen's racks for drying codfish, and by the time Miriam had reached the sandy path that led to it, her petticoats were edged with dust, her shift was sticking damply to her body beneath her stays, and a tickling trickle of moisture was pooling in the hollow between her breasts. In her haste, she hadn't paused for a straw hat to put over her cap, and she could feel the sun baking and blistering the skin on her nose and cheeks. At least this way Jack would find her thoroughly resistible, she thought grimly, and climbed the last few feet to the small alehouse.

From the outside, Hickey's didn't look much like the harbor of all deviltry that its reputation promised: a drab shingled building without so much as a signboard, a cheerless yard of packed sandy soil beneath a single tall oak, and five battered outdoor benches, one of which was occupied by a farmer still snoring away last night's drink. Beyond the far side of the building Miriam could hear the distant murmur of men's voices and laughter, and though she was a bit leery of what she might find, she resolutely marched around the comer.

The group of men beside the stone well stopped talking as soon as she appeared, their heads turning to her in unison. The stout man in the stained leather apron was Mr. Hickey, and to his right was his single employee, a one-armed old sailor named Amos. The others, Miriam guessed, were simply midday customers, eager for tales from Westham's own home-grown pirate himself. From the open-mouthed awe on their faces, they clearly adored Jack, admired him, and probably envied him, too, though it was equally clear from the way they hung back that they were a bit afraid of him as well.

For there in their midst, happy to oblige in his breeches and nothing else, stood Jack. Last night in the moonlight she hadn't noticed how darkly tanned he'd become, his gray eyes and white teeth all the more startling by contrast. Startling, too, was the long, pale scar that slashed across his chest, the mark of some long-ago sword or knife that could have claimed his life. He'd been washing from the bucket beside the well, and glittering droplets from his wet hair trickled down his bare skin, highlighting the scar even more. His chest was broader than she remembered, his arms and shoulders more muscular from the hard work of a deep-water sailor, and the thicket of dark hair that centered it tapered down toward the buttons on his soft, low-slung breeches—so low-slung that she caught herself wondering how exactly he was keeping them there on his hips.

"Miss Rowe!" exclaimed Hickey with an anxious nod. "This is an, ah, honor."

"Good day, sir," she answered brusquely, "but it is Mr. Wilder here that I have come to see."

As soon as she'd spoken she felt herself blushing, her cheeks turning fiery beneath her sunburn. "Come to see," indeed: what devil had made her say
that
?

Jack grinned and flung back his long, dark hair with all the unself-conscious exuberance of a wet dog.

"Friends, friends," he said with a half bow that encompassed them all. "You will excuse me while I, ah,
see
Miss Rowe?"

Wishing countless tortures upon Jack's head, Miriam somehow managed a properly stony face as the men shuffled past her toward the little tavern, all of them chuckling slyly and jabbing one another in the ribs. Not one could meet her eye, and a good thing it was, too.

Not one, that is, except for Jack.

When they were alone together, his grin widened. "So, have you come to thank me for the gifts, Mirry?"

"I most certainly have not," she said swiftly, wishing he would cover himself and stop distracting her wits in such a way. "You should not have sent them, Jack. It's— it's not proper for me to accept anything more from you."

"And why not?" he asked easily, his gaze wandering over her with the same wanton familiarity he'd demonstrated before, so open and appraising that she found herself fighting the desire to cover her already well-covered self with her hands. "Unless you didn't like the silk?"

"Of course I
liked
the silk. What woman would not? Though I don't wish to know how a scoundrel like you could come by something that costly."

His wink wasn't about to tell her. "What matters is that you like it. So why shouldn't you accept such a small token from me? After all that we shared together, pet, certainly we—"

"That's exactly why not," she said, her flush deepening even further as she considered how much of their conversation was drifting through the tavern's open windows. "Mr. Chuff is a most respectable gentleman, and as his promised wife I can't take such gifts from any other man. Including you.
Especially
you."

"It's not as if I'm still wooing you. I've taken your refusal outright, you see, and given up. I'm not what you want or need, and if I care beans about you—which I do, beans beyond counting—I must admit it" He flung his arms out to each side and bowed from the waist in a gesture of full surrender. "I've lost you to the better man."

"But I…" She broke off, at a loss, not sure what to say next She hadn't expected him to give in so readily, nor would she have predicted the unflattering wound it was causing to her pride.
Her pride
: yes, that was it, and not her heart She nodded as if she understood, and tried to smile. "That is… very gracious of you, Jack."

"Damned right" He sleeked back his wet hair, his grin fading. "I know when to cut my losses, Mirry. It's the way it's always been with me. Remember, one more time, that gold my father was supposed to have tucked away on Carmondy Island. Seems like I spent my whole boyhood—with your help—hunting for that treasure, all on account of what my uncle let slip when the rum had him. Then one day I up and realized that that gold never would be mine, and most likely had never existed in the first place, and I quit looking for it. Just like that, it was over."

Miriam swallowed hard. Of course she remembered those endless, exciting treasure hunts on Carmondy; she never forgot anything where Jack was involved. Yet as she stared at the long scar on his chest, she thought of how much else about him she still didn't know, and now, it seemed, never would.

"And so that is how you now feel about me?" she asked in a tiny voice. "like treasure that didn't exist?"

"Exactly." His expression remained so cheerfully, blandly pleasant that she wondered if she'd imagined the heat that had simmered between them that first night on the dock. "I guess you weren't ever any more mine than that treasure was. You said so yourself."

"That is true," she admitted. "But I didn't mean to sound so… so unfeeling."

"You didn't, Mirry, not for a moment," he said firmly as he plucked his shirt from the edge of the well and pulled it over his head. "What's done is done, and done for good, too."