The black swan (45 page)

"Poor Aunt Mad and poor Claudine," said Dulcie as she sat down. "I wish there was somethin' I could do for them."

Oliver's eyes twinkled. "Take them a few kippers? They're delicious."

Dulcie laughed. "Uncle, you're a terrible, terrible man —and I love you madly just the same."

Oliver harrumphed, and looked in some other direction. After a bit he said, "My dear, do you suppose your father would come North to live? There's good tillable land in New York and New Jersey."

"What made you think of that. Uncle Oliver?"

"Merely an avuncular desire to see my favorite niece more often."

"Thank you for the compliment, and what else do you have worked out?"

"Now, really, Dulcie, am I that transparent?" he asked indignantly. "As you deduced, I've thought about this quite a lot. You're mature enough to look at this rationally, Dulcie, or I'd never dream of discussin' it with you. Once the North invades Southern lands, you can see where that will put large landholders like your father. He'd be clever to sell immediately at the best price he can get and invest in Northern land or business."

"I understand what you say. Uncle, but there's nothing I can do. It's Daddy you should talk to."

"I have. And I will again. But I wanted you to hear my side, from me. I don't want to lose you—in any way." He looked at her fondly. "I believe I could use a touch more salt, please, Dulcie."

Dulcie stood on deck, wrapped in her riding habit and oilskins. There was no one about except some of the sailors. "Wind's mighty chancy today. Miss," said one. "Better go back below. Or else keep hold of a line."

"Thank you, I will." She made her way to the rail. It was

terrifying, it was elemental, it was supremely invigorating to be out on the ocean in the midst of such a storm. The clouds were a solid char-gray sheet overhead, the rain a wall around the ship. Smoke and soot from the stacks blew around her as she moved forward, holding the rail tightly. The ship heaved and shuddered, rocking from side to side, but its bow stayed pointed toward New York. Dulcie watched the foaming water, hypnotized by its endless motion.

"Pardon me. Miss, did you lose your horse?**

Dulcie swung around in surprise, and wanted to run. It was Captain Tremain, his white teeth bared in ao exuberant smile. "I beg your pardon?"

He gestured toward her riding outfit. His gaiety was irresistible, and she smiled back at him. "It was so stufify downstairs—^I mean, below—and I wanted some air. I'd have been foolish to ruin a gown for that."

"You're getting drenched, you know."

"I like storms. Captain Tremain," she said defiantly.

He ran his eyes over her face for a long moment before he said, **Yes, I believe you do." His lips curved up in a little smile, and he looked away, toward the rolling, breaking waves. The rain curtained them, set them apart from time and place and propriety.

Adam turned to look softly at the girl beside him. "I bought Fellie's boys in New Orleans for a ruinous price and gave them their freedom papers on the spot." He smiled. "They're with their family in New York now. My partner hired both as clerks in one of his businesses. They're proud people, that family. The boys are buying their freedom, paying us back a little at a time."

Dulcie hugged herself, doing a little two-step dance. "Oh, I'm so happy!"

Adam's eyes were warm on her. "So am I, Miss Moran."

"How can I ever thank you enough. Captain Tremain? You simply can't know how much it means to me, to find out at last!"

"No?" He grinned'at her.

"You don't know the entire story. Captain." She told him then what had happened after she left Fellie in his care. "I haven't seen my father for over a year. All his letters went astray until we got to Paris, and I didn't know if he'd forgiven me." With his sympathetic eyes on her.

she felt tears coming. She turned her back so he wouldn't see her mouth tremble.

After a moment he said casually, "I've been to Paris." With a little grin meant only for himself, he went on, "I probably saw a different side of the city, but the things I remember best are the chimney pots on the Left Bank and the chestnuts beside the Seine and the itinerant violinists—I've never heard so many bad violins played so badly."

Dulcie, in control of herself now, giggled, partly with embarrassment. "And the windmills, hundreds of them, catching the winds above Montmartre."

"The carriage drivers, every one of them a wild man.'*

"And Calais, Captain? Were you ever there?"

"Yes, but I was sick with fever. So now you'll go home to Savannah?"

"Actually to Mossrose. And you? Where is your home?"

"My mother lives south of Wilmington, in a little resort town. My home is—several places, usually onboard a ship."

She made the question casual. "Are you married, Captain?"

"No, ma'am," he said, with a finality that made her blink. "Except maybe to the sea."

She caught his eye, and he was teasing her. She retorted, "That must explain why you spend so much time starin' at it." After a short silence, with the rain still slashing at them, she said, "So now we are both goin' home to the war. Which side shall you take?"

"I'm a Southerner, Miss Moran."

"Captain Tremain, is it true that the South is poorly armed? And that the North will invade us soon?"

Adam laughed a little. "For a beautiful girl, you ask some ugly questions. Are you a spy?"

"A spy! Oh, you're makin' fun of me! I'm serious. I want to know!"

"Undoubtedly you do, but you'll have to ask someone else, for I don't wish to discuss it. Tell me, did you tour the British Isles? Was it as wet as we are now?"

Dulcie glared at him belligerently, longing to crush him for his flippancy. Then she caught the sparkle deep in his eyes, and they laughed.

"Miss Moran, there's a nice dry lounge below, and stewards to bring us hot coffee. Don't you think we must be simpleminded to stand here in a raging storm for over an hour?"

She met his half-rueful, half-derisive smile with one of her own. "What other reason could there be, Captain?" Her gaze roved over his finely chiseled features. It was there even though he didn't know it, that first look of tender awareness, that recognition of like spirits. Her eyes clung to his, yearning, passionate, submissive.

By evening the storm had passed. The sea was calm, but an air of excitement pervaded the Tunbridge. A traveling troupe would present its specialty in five act^, a full four-hour performance of that stunning hit Uncle Tom's Cabin.

"Aunt Mad, Toby Dobbs asked if I'd be able to go with him. May I?"

"Do you want to, dear? I know he's from a wealthy family, but, gracious, he has such hard-looking eyes. Not respectful at all."

"You let me promenade with him."

"But that was in a group, dear, and quite different.*'

It was no use arguing with Aunt Mad; besides, Dulcie didn't care to spend four hours in Toby's company. It was just that she would look like a wallflower sitting with her aunt and uncle, and Adam hadn't asked to escort her as she had hoped he would.

The 'tween-decks lounge was stuffy with cigar smoke and perfume, blown about languidly by the many fans with which the ladies were prettily cooling themselves. Onstage the mulatto fugitive George Harris was declaiming: "There isn't, on earth, a living soul to care if I die! I shall be kicked out and buried like a dog."

With a melancholy quiver in his voice, Mr. Wilson said, "Take HEART, George! Trust in the LORD!"

George pressed his fingertips to his forehead. "IS THERE A GOD TO TRUST IN? There's a God for you Christians, but is there any for US?"

Dulcie's head was aching with the smoke and scent and shouting. "I've got such a vile headache. Aunt Mad. Would you mind if I just went to bed?" She made her way out, down the aisle, as Aunt Mad watched. The moment Mad turned her back, a man sitting two rows behind her made his exit.

Dulcie started toward her cabin, changed her mind, and went up the after companionway, moving quietly on deck to stand in the darkness by the rail. She saw no one else.

She took a few deep breaths of the cool salt-smelling night air and began to feel better.

Suddenly arms flew out of nowhere to grab her. She screamed in fright.

Adam, needing a distraction from his tedious idleness, had gone early to the lounge, taking a seat in the last row. He had already seen one of the dozens of versions of Uncle Tom's Cabin. Tonight, however, he was too warm, restless, impatient with the slowness of the Tunbridge, impatient with the turbulence of his own mind to watch the play. For the first time in his adult life he was alone and found himself lonely. Such realizations were treacherous shoals.

He turned his attention to the stage, where Eliza Harris was speaking to her husband. The girl Eliza was a gross version of UUah, a caricature that Adam didn't care to see more of. He rose and departed, mounting the forward companionway.

Half an hour before, all had been clear. Now banks of clouds were obscuring the stars, and the wind was rising. By tomorrow they'd be into rain again. He moved to the rail where they had stood—was it only this morning? He sighed, reproving himself for dwelling on a slender auburn-haired girl with rain in her hair and on her lashes, a girl with a giving heart and no one yet to give it to. A girl who held convictions so strong that she dared her father's wrath. A girl who met the sea unafraid, who liked the gale, who had a womanly virtuousness that fought in her with a boldness creditable to any man.

A girl any man, if he were not blind or otherwise committed, would . . .

He heard her scream. Instantly he was alert, moving noiselessly toward the sound. Then Toby Dobbs's hearty laugh rang out, and Adam stopped. To him, Dobbs was a boor, given to coarse jests and male crudities that spoke ill of one of New England's oldest families. He'd seen them strolling together, Dulcie talking vivaciously and flirting with him while Dobbs looked at her possessively.

He stood listening. Words were swept away. Only the tones remained. Hers, lashing out at him in a fury. His, conciliatory, then pleading. Hers, forgiving. His, triumphant, frolicsome. In moments now, they'd be kissing and making up. Adam threw his fresh-lit cigar into the water. He'd go below and read. If a girl of Dulcie Moran's dis-

tinctive qualities could endure an oaf like Dobbs, she deserved anything that happened.

"Really, Toby, you nearly frightened me to death!**

"I've already said I'm sorry. Why don't we just drop the subject?"

"Certainly," said Dulcie frigidly. "I have a headache, Toby. If you'll excuse me, I'll go lie down."

"Don't go yet," he pleaded. "Please stay awhile. Talk to me, so I'll know I'm forgiven."

"Toby, you're an incurable rogue."

"Will you stay in New York? Perhaps we could do the town.'*

Dulcie clapped her hands. "Oh, how excitin'! That sounds like such fun! Except I must take the jfirst passage I can book to Savannah."

"We'll go to the theater, dine at Delmonico's, see the lights of Broadway after dark." His arm stole around her waist; Dulcie moved away. "I'd like to keep you in New York as long as I can." He looked earnestly into her eyes.

She looked down, but Toby Dobbs was not to be circumvented. He turned Dulcie to face him, holding her too tightly. "There's no need to be coy. I saw you leave the lounge, saw you look right at me. I knew you'd be up here where it's nice and dark, waitin' for me."

"I couldn't see a thing in the lounge. I left because I have a headache."

He laughed indulgently. "Now you've saved your pride, but you're still here with me, just where you wanted to be." He bent to kiss her, and Dulcie pulled back, turning her head away from him.

'Toby, stop it!" she hissed. He held her tighter, his mouth coming closer to hers. As he kissed her, Dulcie began to struggle.

Toby muttered, "I'll teach you to tease me, you little bitch." He forced her against the rail, holding her with one arm while his free hand groped at her neckline. Then his fingers were hurting her breast, his mouth bruising hers, while Dulcie fought, trying to push him away from her.

As Adam stepped into the companionway, her voice was no longer light-hearted or teasing. At a glance he knew the girl wasn't being coy.

His hands reached out, grabbing Toby Dobbs by his

coat collar and the seat of his trousers, sending him sprawling down the deck. With a quick glance that told him Dulcie wasn't going to faint, he strode over to Dobbs, picked him up, and sent him sprawling again. He stood over him, feet apart, arms crossed so he wouldn't forget himself and lay hands on the boy once more. In a deadly quiet voice he commanded, "Mister Dobbs, go to your cabin."

He turned to Dulcie. She stood where Dobbs had pinned her, wide-eyed, her hands protectively over her breasts, trying not to cry.

Forgetting the slightness of their acquaintance, forgetting the impropriety of addressing her so, he said, "Dulcie, are you all right?"

"Oh, A-Adam!" She hurled herself against the rock that was Captain Tremain. He held her warmly, securely, while she cried in deep, terrible sobs. All the tears she had held back throughout Europe, the tears of homesickness, of nobody to love, the tears of meeting only to part, all, all flowed onto Adam's comforting shoulder.

Her voice, punctuated by sobs, came incoherently. "I didn't lead him on, I didn't! He wanted me to go to the Tom Show, Aunt Mad said no. I got such an awful headache. He followed me." She raised her head to look at him. "You think I'm a perfect little fool, don't you!" She cried some more while he patted her back with his fingertips, thinking how small and fragile she seemed, how needful of his protection.

He murmured, "No, no, I don't think that at all, Dulcie, don't cry for that—"

"He's been a gentleman 'til now. I never dreamed he'd —I didn't even know he was near me!"

Courteously Adam tried to loose his hold, but she did not move away from him. "Did he hurt you?"

"No, no ... I mean, yes, he hurt my mouth—and my b—^" She had almost said the word, and the shameful thought brought on a fresh flood. "He had his hands on me.