Rory had never met any female as large as
Mrs. Cobbett. Tall with burly arms, she looked almost big enough to
heft Zeke over her shoulder, and there had been a point when Rory
feared she meant to do so. Although on the verge of collapse when
the two fishermen had deposited them on Mrs. Cobbett's doorstep,
Zeke had not taken kindly to the woman's ministrations, her gruff
demand that Zeke strip out of his wet things.
But even the two dour fishermen had stood in
awe of this woman, one calling her "Anchor" Annie, the other
calling her "Ma." When she had bade them go about their business
and tend to gathering up their nets, they had both snapped to do
her bidding. Zeke hadn't had much choice either.
The last Rory had seen of him, Annie had
driven him through a door opposite into a chamber the woman, with
fierce pride, had termed her guest room. Annie and Zeke could still
be battling it out in there for all Rory knew. As for herself, she
was too exhausted to do other than was she was told, bask by the
fire, trying to get the chill of the sea out of her bones.
When the door opened and Annie returned
alone, Rory glanced up anxiously. The woman's hair was a steely
gray that matched the steel in her eyes. Her face had more crags
than a rocky stretch of shore, her skin as brown and weather-beaten
as driftwood. But despite the formidableness of her appearance,
there was a bluff kindliness in her manner that Rory found
reassuring.
"Zeke?" Rory asked, rising from her stool.
"Is he—"
"I redid the bandages on your man's wound,"
she said.
Had the woman recognized it as a gunshot
wound? Rory hated telling lies, but she could hardly tell Annie the
truth, that Zeke had been winged fleeing the law on a charge of
murder. At the very least, the woman would fling them both out of
her snug cottage with its circle of light and warmth. Rory
shuddered at the prospect.
"Well, he-he-." Rory stammered, trying to
come up with some plausible explanation of Zeke's injury.
"Oh, shush, m'dear," Annie interrupted. "I'm
familiar enough with menfolk and their scrapping ways. You don't
need to get all flustered trying to explain to me. Fact is, I
oughta be apologizing to you for the behavior of my boy Joe. I
understand he was a little slow coming to your rescue."
"Yes," Rory said. "It was rather odd
considering we were in danger of drowning."
"The problem is my Joe never saw one of those
balloon things before. He took it to be some kind of sea monster.
Joe's a good fisherman, but he ain't exactly the brightest one of
my boys.
“Now you stay by the fire and keep warm."
Annie placed one large hand on Rory's shoulder, easing her back
down. "Your man is doing fine. A little cantankerous, but I got
some of my elixir down him. He's tucked up and sleeping like a
baby."
Rory could only gape at her. Upon entering
the cottage, although dead on his feet, Zeke had been determined to
make his way back to New York tonight. He had been demanding a
telephone, the distance to the nearest town.
"However did you persuade him to do
that?”Rory asked.
Annie chuckled, a deep sound that shook her
ample bosom. "Lord A'mighty, honey, I've had three husbands and
five sons. A woman don't go through that many men without learning
something about how to manage them."
If she hadn't been so weary, Rory would have
asked the woman to part with her secrets. But Annie bustled about
brewing Rory a cup of tea. Rory accepted the steaming hot mug with
real gratitude. Annie poured herself a drink into a tin cup. Rory
didn't see what it was, but she would have wagered it wasn't
tea.
Annie plunked herself down onto one of the
rocking chairs. As Rory sipped her tea, she was aware of Annie
studying her, curious but after a friendly fashion.
"Now I saw one of them there balloons once at
a circus. You people with the circus?
“No, I’m an aero-.” Rory started to protest,
then broke off with a tired sigh. What was the sense of getting
into all that? With the Seamus sunk to the bottom of the ocean, she
didn't feel much like an aeronaut at the moment.
"Yes, we're with the circus," Rory concluded
glumly.
"I thought so. A cousin of mine a few days
ago traveled all the way to upstate New York just to watch some
couple get married up in a balloon. Was that you two?"
"Yes, that was us," Rory agreed before she
even thought, then was appalled by her lie. But she sensed that
Annie would be mighty disapproving if she realized Zeke and Rory
were junketing about together unwed.
The woman was scowling anyway. "Married in a
balloon- I'm not sure I exactly hold with that. Don't sound as
legal and binding as being wed in a church."
"People get married on ships, don't
they?"
"That's so." Annie She tossed down the rest
of her drink. "Well, I don't mean to sit here jawing at you all
night. Poor little thing. You've had a bad time of it, but you'll
feel perkier after a good sleep. Then, in the morning, I'll get my
boy to hitch up the buggy and drive you into Sea Isle."
Sea Isle? Rory started at the mention of a
town far down the south Jersey coast. She and Zeke had drifted much
farther than she had imagined. They would have a long, dreary trip
back to New York ahead of them. But she was better off not worrying
about that now, or about the difficulties that would await them on
their return.
Annie hustled off to her own bedchamber and
returned with a voluminous nightgown, which she helped Rory to don.
Rory felt swallowed up in it, like a child parading about in her
mother's things, but she was grateful for any clothing that was
warm and dry.
"Off to bed with you now," Annie said,
jerking her head toward the door behind which Zeke had disappeared.
"Your man's likely out so cold, he'll never hear when you creep
between the sheets."
Rory fought down a blush at the thought of
slipping into bed with "her" man. She barely concealed her
expression of dismay as she realized the full consequences of the
lie she had told Annie. But wasn't that just the way of it every
time she told a fib? She always ended up in some kind of
bramble.
What was she going to do? It would be far too
humiliating to confess now. Annie was already marching about,
blowing out the oil lamps. Rory had little choice but to inch
toward the door, bidding Annie a nervous good night.
Her fingers trembled as she turned the knob
and slipped inside. Closing the door, she leaned up against it,
allowing her eyes to adjust to the chamber's darkened interior.
Like the cottage's sitting room, it was
small, the chief object of furniture being a heavy wooden bedstead.
Moonlight streamed through the open shutters, and Rory could make
out Zeke's muscular form draped beneath the covers, his dark head
resting on a downy pillow.
"Zeke?" Rory whispered.
But she got no reply. It appeared Annie was
right—Zeke was lost in a deep slumber. The wind howled outside the
cottage, rattling the panes. There was something unbearably lonely
about being the only one left awake. Rory hovered by the bed,
shivering, wrapping her arms about herself. It was cold now that
she was away from the fire, the boards of the floor chill beneath
her bare feet.
Her gaze traveled wistfully to Zeke, so snug
beneath the softness of a patchwork quilt, drawn halfway up across
the bared expanse of his chest. She took a hesitant step
closer.
It wouldn't really be like going to bed with
a man, she argued, not if both of them were asleep. Yet she knew
what the nuns back at St. Catherine's would have told her. Far
better to curl up on the floor, suffer one night of discomfort
rather than put her virtue at risk.
But Rory wasn't sure she'd ever had much
virtue, and it was difficult for conscience to win out with
gooseflesh prickling her arms and her feeling half-ready to drop
from fatigue.
"The devil with it," she mumbled. Tugging
back the covers, she scrambled beneath them, trying to keep to the
edge of the bed, putting as much distance between herself and Zeke
as possible.
The bed was as soft and warm as she had
imagined, but having allowed herself to become chilled again, it
was difficult to stop shivering. She couldn't help staring at Zeke,
lying flat on his back, one arm flung over his head. A silvery
stream of moonlight outlined his profile, the muscular contours of
his chest. Knowing the heat that radiated from that powerful body,
Rory was tempted to snuggle a little closer.
She resisted, cuddling the quilt beneath her
chin, trying to lie still, not wanting to disturb Zeke. Even in
repose the rock-hard line of Zeke's jaw conveyed a certain
belligerence, as though daring anyone to challenge him or to hurt
him.
She wondered if he really meant what he had
said earlier that day, about thinking it best if he never saw her
again after they returned to New York. He had talked of being bad
for her, causing her harm, but perhaps he was as much afraid of
making himself too vulnerable. She would bet that Zeke Morrison had
let many women come close to his body, but none near his heart, and
Rory was fast realizing that was exactly where she wanted to
be.
Stifling a sigh, she rolled over and lay with
her back to him. She would never get to sleep this way, so tense,
so much aware of that masculine form only a pillow's length
away.
But by degrees, exhaustion overtook her and
her eyes drifted closed. She found sleep, but not a restful one.
Tossing and turning, fragments of dreams floated through her mind,
tormenting images from events of the days gone by.
Tessa, garbed like a witch, cast some kind of
spell, turning Finn McCool into a slavering beastie. Zeke lay
sprawled on the street, his arm bleeding, torn open from the attack
of a black-winged harpie with beautiful masses of ice-blond
hair.
"It's Mrs. Van Hallsburg," Rory tried to tell
Zeke, but he only laughed at her, and all the while Tony stood by
smirking. "I told you so. I told you so."
Rory moaned, rolling over, but she escaped
one dream only to tumble directly into another nightmare equally as
tormenting. She was back in the sea again, feeling the icy chill of
its embrace, fighting the waves. But this time it wasn't the
balloon she was trying to cling to but her father. He was alive. He
was still alive if only she could save him.
She had hold of his hand, and Seamus
Kavanaugh shouted words of encouragement. "Just try a little
harder, Rory, m'darlin'. You can make it."
But as a breaker crashed over her, her
father's fingers were wrenched from her grasp. She flailed the
water and by some miracle she could swim. It was not she that was
drowning but him. She screamed her father's name as he disappeared
beneath the waves.
Rory woke up with a start. She sat bolt
upright, gasping for breath. As she rubbed her eyes, trying to
brush away the last vestiges of the nightmare, she realized she was
crying. It wasn't something she did often, but after such a day and
such a dream, Rory supposed she was entitled to her tears just this
once.
Drawing her knees up to her chest, she rested
her face against them and snuffled quietly so as not to awaken
Zeke. Such a strange dream. She had seen her Da's face so clearly.
The pain was almost as bad as if she had lost him all over
again.
Old Miss Flanagan said that when one dreamed
about a person dying, it was a sign of guilt, that one had been
neglecting him. But her Da was already dead, and Rory was certain
she had never ceased to cherish his memory.
But she was definitely guilty of neglecting
his dream. Worries crowded forward that Rory had been trying to
suppress. The loss of the Seamus was one her floundering company
could not afford. Even more than that, so much of her hopes had
been tied up in the demonstration of that balloon to the man from
the government. When that army official had shown up at her
warehouse today, he had either found the place empty or else the
police and chaos. It was unlikely Rory would ever get him to come
back again.
Not that Rory had had any choice. Zeke's life
had been in the balance, and Rory knew if she had it to do all over
again, she would do exactly the same. But that didn't make
accepting her loss any easier.
"Rory?"
Zeke's voice coming out of the shadows
startled her. She shifted, dismayed to find him struggling to a
sitting position. He knuckled his eyes, regarding both her and his
surroundings with obvious confusion.
"Where the devil are we?"
"At Mrs. Cobbett's. Don't you remember? I
didn't mean to wake you. Please, go back to sleep." She ducked her
head, embarrassed. She didn’t know how to explain what she was
doing in bed with him, and the fact that she was crying only made
it worse. She scooted to sit on the edge of the mattress, trying to
conceal her tear-streaked face.
If Zeke was astonished to awaken under such
circumstances, he gave no sign of it. Nor did he take any heed of
her request that he return to sleep. Rubbing the back of his neck,
he seemed to become more alert. Shifting closer, he tried to peer
into her face.
"Rory, are you crying?"
"No," she said and sniffed.
Perching on the bed behind her, he draped one
arm about her shoulders. "Is it still because of what happened to
the balloon?"
Rory tensed in surprise. She thought he
hadn't even noticed those few tears that had escaped her when she
saw the Seamus being sucked beneath the sea. After their lives had
been spared, it had seemed foolish and wickedly ungrateful to mourn
the loss of her balloon. She shook her head in denial, not saying
anything, knowing Zeke would never understand.
He drew her back against him. She resisted at
first, but the feel of that solid presence was so strong and
comforting. She allowed her head to droop against his shoulder. The
quilt was yet pulled up to his waistline, but the curve of his
bared chest felt firm and warm to her touch.