Lilac Spring Page 12

  Never had anything tempted him to stray from his single-minded efforts until now.

  He couldn’t—mustn’t—let an insane, wild, impossible longing for his employer’s daughter cause him to shift his focus from his goal. Silas relocked his box and replaced it in its hiding place, his precise movements in jarring contrast to his disorderly thoughts.

  Saturday proved warm and sunny. Cherish knew things would be quiet down in the boat shop, as the men had gone back down to work on the yard. Although she normally didn’t work in the shop on Saturdays, she had asked Silas to spend a few hours there in the afternoon to work on the Whitehall.

  He was already there when she arrived. He was fitting a plank onto the hull. Cherish looked with satisfaction at the Whitehall. It was coming along nicely, planked almost halfway.

  “Hi, there,” she said, advancing toward the hull. “Need a hand?”

  He glanced at her briefly before returning to the job. “You can hold that end down.”

  She complied, content to watch as he concentrated on fitting the plank against the one on top of it and determine if its angle fit snugly enough against it. Judging that it didn’t, he straightened.

  “Okay, you can let go. I’m going to bevel this one a bit more,” he said, indicating the angle with his fingertips.

  Cherish got to work on the opposite side of the hull with a plank of her own. They worked together steadily. She would look across at Silas from time to time, hoping to catch him looking at her again as he had during the dance, but her efforts were in vain.

  “Any plans to go over to Hatsfield anytime soon?” he surprised her by asking.

  “No. Why, do you?”

  He glanced at her then. “No.”

  They had worked some more when he asked, “No plans for the weekend?”

  “None at all,” she replied, clamping down one end of her plank.

  “That’s not like you.”

  “Why shouldn’t I spend a quiet weekend at home?”

  He shrugged. “No reason. It’s just you’ve had something going every weekend since arriving home. Last week Annalise came here. I thought you might be going there this weekend.”

  “No. I didn’t receive an invitation.”

  “If you had, would you have gone?”

  She looked up, wondering why he was being so persistent. “I don’t know. I kind of like how this weekend has turned out. We’ve gotten to do more work on the Whitehall, for one thing. Haven’t you liked that?”

  He shrugged. “Sure.”

  She suppressed her irritation. He could be annoyingly casual at times. So casual one hadn’t the least idea what he really thought.

  He bent over a plank, directly across the keel from her. A thick wave of golden hair fell over his forehead. On impulse Cherish reached over and pushed it upward with her fingertips.

  He flinched, dropping the pencil he held. “Please don’t do that, Cherish,” he said in a quiet, firm voice.

  She drew her hand back as if it had been slapped. Was this the boy she’d grown up with, who’d been her best friend, the person she most admired, the one who was patient, kind and teasing? Her eyes welled up with tears.

  She wouldn’t let him see that he’d hurt her. As he bent to pick up the pencil, she backed away from the boat hull. She’d taken only two steps backward when Silas looked up and noticed her tear-filled eyes. Quickly she turned.

  “I’m sorry, Cherish. I didn’t mean to talk to you that way.”

  She kept walking, needing to get out of the room.

  “Please, Cherish.” The first note of entreaty she’d heard all week sounded in his voice. “Don’t go. I didn’t mean to upset you.”

  She’d reached the door and held the doorknob. “You didn’t upset me,” she said in her most controlled voice. She would turn the knob and walk out.

  Instead, she said, “You know, the other night at the grange dance you behaved almost like your old self. I was just standing there looking at everyone dancing and having a good time, and I realized they’d all grown up and gotten on with their lives while I’d been away. Most young men and women were paired off. I was beginning to feel a little like a freak. Despite all of Papa’s good intentions, he might have given me a little too much education, and now I don’t fit in anymore. I sometimes think he’s given me so much polish, I cause a glare.” She gave a bitter chuckle.

  “When you walked over and asked me to dance, you were like a hero coming to my rescue.” She sighed and continued addressing the doorknob. “I don’t know, Silas, since I’ve been home I’ve felt as if I can’t do anything right around you anymore.

  “I give up, Silas. If you’re too blind, too unfeeling to notice that I—I care about you…” Here she faltered, but plowed on resolutely. “Well, I’ll have you know, Silas van der Zee, I don’t need your affections.”

  As the seconds dragged by and he said nothing, she began to feel stupid. Abruptly she turned the doorknob.

  In the still second before she pulled the door open, he began to speak. “You say I’m unfeeling.” A low laugh reached her ears. “Is it unfeeling to say how much I’ve wanted to kiss you since that day my lips accidentally touched yours? That I’ve been thinking of little else but that since?”

  Cherish turned slowly, mesmerized by his quiet confession, her hand still on the doorknob behind her. Silas stood the way she’d left him, on the far side of the upended hull, the compass and pencil in his hand.

  “You say I haven’t noticed you’ve become a woman. Oh, Cherish, how can I help but notice it? Every time you pass near me and I smell the lilacs in your hair, I’ve got to hold myself from reaching for you—

  “Every time your arm brushes against mine it sends a current through me.

  “Every time you innocently put your hand in mine like in the olden days, I want to hold you to me.”

  Cherish released the breath she hadn’t realized she’d been holding. “Oh, Silas, I never dreamed…” She took a step toward him. When she was halfway across the room, he shook his head and said only one word. “Cherish.” It came out sounding like an anguished plea.

  The tone encouraged her to keep walking. She skirted the hull that separated them. They stood only inches from each other. His Adam’s apple moved as he swallowed, but before he could say anything, she took the pencil and compass from his unresisting hands and dropped them onto the floor behind her. The dull clank of metal on wood was the only sound in the room.

  “Show me,” she whispered softly.

  It seemed to take an eternity, but slowly his face neared hers, his eyes closing, until finally his lips made contact once again with hers. She leaned into his lips, placing her hands against his chest to steady herself on her tiptoes. His heartbeat thudded under her palm. She grabbed his shirt, afraid of losing her balance.

  His lips pressed against hers as his hands cupped her shoulders. Their bodies touched nowhere else. At that moment Cherish was fused with him in time forever. This was what she’d waited for, dreamed of, prayed for—all her preparation and obedience over the years coming to fruition in that single contact of hands and lips.

  In the next instant she discovered that whatever had held Silas in control, whatever had made her suspect him of being unfeeling, had snapped. He kissed her as she’d never dreamed of being kissed. Kissed her as she’d never heard of being kissed by her flirtatious friends. His was no gentlemanly peck on the cheek, or soft brushing of lips as the first one had been. This was more intimate than anything she’d ever imagined. After her initial shock, Cherish yielded to him, determined to destroy every barrier that existed between them.

  As soon as his lips touched hers, Silas knew he should stop. He should have withdrawn after a gentle and chaste kiss. But he couldn’t. One touch of her, one whiff of the sweet scent of her, one look into the wide-eyed innocence of those smoky-blue eyes, and he could no longer contain himself. Like a piece of dry wood hitting the fire, his feelings ignited and Silas felt himself being consumed in a conflagr
ation that he couldn’t understand, that hadn’t been of his own making, and that he certainly didn’t know how he’d come out of alive—but none of it mattered in those moments as his mouth sought hers.

  She was springtime—newness of life, hope, warmth and light all rolled into one earth-shattering sensation.

  She whispered his name, as her small hands flattened themselves against his cheeks. He opened his eyes. She was like a blind person reading someone’s face as she touched his cheeks and jaw and temples, grazing his skin with her fingertips.

  When her fingers reached his eyelids, he closed them again, whispering against her ear, “Tell me about all the suitors you’ve left scattered across the Continent…the princes and counts… there must have been dozens.”

  “What suitors?” she responded dreamily. “They’re all forgotten.”

  Silas chuckled, hardly daring to believe in the reality of the two of them. Was this truly Cherish standing here in his arms? His lips found hers once more.

  “Cherish! What in thunder!” Tom Winslow’s roar threw them apart.

  Before Silas could draw back any farther, Winslow crossed the space between them. The next thing Silas knew, Cherish’s father grabbed him by the shirt collar and hauled him away from his daughter.

  Winslow’s fist flew into his jaw and Silas’s head snapped back.

  “Papa!” Cherish shouted as she grabbed his arm with both her hands. “No, Papa!”

  Her father’s fist came at him again, this time smashing against the corner of his mouth, jamming his lips against his teeth.

  “Silas, do something!” screamed Cherish behind her father. “Papa, stop it!”

  Finally Winslow flung Silas from him, sending him flying across the floor to land several feet away.

  Cherish sobbed, not letting go of her father’s arm.

  “Get away from me,” he shouted, shaking her off.

  Silas stood, ready to protect Cherish, but Winslow’s attention went back to him.

  “Papa, you don’t understand! What’s gotten into you?” Tears streamed down her face as her hands went out to her father.

  “Don’t push me, child. Get on home, while I deal with this—this—” Not finding a word sufficiently strong to express his disgust, he gave Silas a look full of loathing. “Go home, Cherish.”

  Cherish stood her ground.

  “Go, Cherish,” Silas said gently, wiping the blood he felt against the side of his mouth.

  Her father turned to him. “You shut up!”

  Silas fell silent with a final nod to Cherish. She turned once more to her father and back to Silas. Seeing no further encouragement from either, she finally backed slowly out of the room.

  When the two men were alone, Silas faced Winslow, knowing deep inside that it was over.

  “I could kill you! I would run you out of Haven’s End if I could. But I can only get you off my property. I want you out of here. Now!” He brought his fists up in impotent rage. “Don’t ever cross my path again.”

  Suddenly he turned his hate-filled eyes away from Silas and brought his hands up to his face, his voice incredulous, seeking understanding. “I trusted you! I trusted you with my Cherish…my sweet baby…” His voice broke, and Silas felt his own heart twist at the man’s anguish.

  Winslow turned back to face him, his arm sweeping across the boat shop. “I trusted you with everything. Everything! Do you understand? And how do you reward me? Stab me in the back! Steal my only child! My innocent girl!” The thought rekindled his anger and he turned murderous eyes once again on Silas.

  “I told you to get out! Get out! Get out!” Like a man possessed, he advanced toward Silas and lunged at him. Silas didn’t wait further. He knew he would get nowhere with Cherish’s father, so he turned toward the door.

  He’d known it would be like this.

  He walked out the door without looking back at the place that had been his home for the past fourteen years of his life.

  Silas walked blindly down to the shipyard, knowing only one place to go—his boat. The only thing that belonged to him.

  “Hey, Silas, thought you were up to the boathouse,” Ezra called to him from the schooner hull. “Are you all right? What happened to you?”

  Silas averted his face. Suddenly he felt ashamed. He didn’t want anyone to know he’d just been thrown out on his rump like a stray dog.

  He hurried past the men to his skiff. “Just going out for a sail.”

  Ezra glanced at the sky. “Sky looks a mite growly. I wouldn’t take her out too far.”

  Silas confirmed the man’s assessment. The clouds had thickened while he’d been inside. “No, I won’t go far.” Where indeed could he go, with no money, no gear? Too late to think about that now. He certainly wouldn’t attempt to go up to his room now. His room, what a delusion, he thought as he pulled the boat seaward and pushed it into the tide.

  He rowed out to his yawl and climbed aboard. Once he was clear of the port and out on the ocean, his mind was free to react to the scene in the boat shop.

  What had possessed him? Why couldn’t he have controlled himself? He’d known Cherish for fourteen years. Why this feeling that overwhelmed him at her mere presence? He’d been fighting it for weeks now. How had it developed? When had he first noticed every womanly curve of her? Every feminine wile?

  For she had been flirting with him, he could be certain of that.

  Perhaps she wasn’t scared of her father. She probably underestimated his disapproval toward Silas as a suitor. She was so used to having her way with Winslow that it wouldn’t occur to her that he might not condone her pursuit of Silas.

  But Silas could claim no such excuse. He’d known. If Winslow hadn’t considered him to replace his nephew Henry in the shipyard, why would he ever give Silas a blessing with his only daughter? Knowing this, Silas had insisted on playing with fire. He should have put a stop to it much earlier. He’d tried, he argued with himself, remembering his “talk” with Cherish. She’d reacted like a spoiled child.

  Well, isn’t that what she was? And he was a fool. A stupid fool who should have known better. He certainly didn’t deserve any better than what he’d gotten.

  If he’d wanted female companionship, there were certainly comely enough girls in the village. Why did it have to be the one who was off-limits that drew him?

  His boat skimmed across the leaden gray water, the spray hitting him in the face, the wind whipping his hair back. He drove the boat harder, needing the action, the elements as a release to the anger, the frustration, the utter despair that rose from inside him.

  Oh, God! Why now? Why this? I didn’t ask for this! Why did she have to come home now and suddenly develop some imagined fancy for me?

  When he’d spent his energies, if not his anger, he pulled up his centerboard and beached his boat in a sheltered cove. The clouds, which had threatened, began to send down the first drops as he secured the boat up above the high-water mark. He realized he would probably be spending the night with it as his only shelter, a tarpaulin as his cover.

  He could have bedded down with Ezra or William, but something had held him back from asking. A sense of humiliation engulfed him. He didn’t want his emotions examined by one and all. He had a horror of having his most private feelings the talk of the town.

  Did you hear about that Silas van der Zee? Kissing Winslow’s daughter! Can you imagine? The apple of his eye. Who did he think he was, anyway? The town matrons would cluck their tongues and shake their heads. Shows what happens when you open your house to some stranger. What do you get for your effort and sacrifice? A slap in the face! Oh, for shame, Silas! The accusing eyes would stare at him in the street, from the church pews, across the store counter.

  Silas, his stomach growling from hunger, his body shivering through his thin shirt, huddled in the cuddy of his boat, wrapped himself in the tarpaulin and bedded down for the night under the steady patter of cold rain.

  Chapter Eleven

  Cherish spent the r
est of the afternoon alternately crying and marveling in wonder at Silas’s kiss. She touched her lips afresh, unable to believe what she had experienced.

  She cried at the injustice of her father’s reaction, sickened by his treatment of Silas. How she longed to run to Silas, nurse his bruised jaw, but she knew her father wouldn’t let her within sight of him. She had to give her father time to cool down. Then she could talk to him reasonably and tell him of her love for Silas. She could explain that it wasn’t an overnight infatuation, but a devotion spanning years.

  She’d felt each blow to Silas as if it had been directed against her own body. She cried into the pillow once again, wanting to hold Silas and tend to him.

  Dear Lord, You know our hearts. I pray for Your mercy. Please soften Papa’s heart. Make him see reason. Oh, please take care of Silas until I can go to him.

  She continued praying, but found it hard to concentrate as she began to relive Silas’s kisses. Was this the quiet, reserved, gently teasing Silas she knew? Was this her Silas? The man who’d held her close, as if he would crush her? The same man who’d given her a lecture about flirting just days ago?

  She hugged the pillow to herself, rolling across her bed, wanting nothing more than to be in his arms again.

  The only thing that marred her discovery of this new Silas was her memory of his reaction to her father. She had to stifle her sense of disappointment at Silas, who’d done nothing to defend himself against her father, but had just stood there passively receiving her father’s blows.

  Was this the same man who’d displayed such emotion just moments before?

  How could the two men be one and the same?

  Cherish got up from her bed when she heard the front door open, knowing her father was home. She washed her face with cold water and brushed her hair. With a final smoothing down of her gown and apron, she made her way downstairs.