Hester(63)

“I’m not sad now.”

I look up and hold his gaze. It’s just as it was that first day on the dock. But he’s close enough to touch me now.

His first kiss is gentle. The kiss of a sea breeze.





TWENTY





Until Nat undresses me and runs a hand down my waist and tucks into me, I’ve never felt the dark rush of blood in my head that comes like music. I’ve never been bound and twined with a person so that I don’t know where I end or where he begins, never seen waterfalls of color on my skin when someone touched me.

Now it’s here.

I lead him into the cottage and lean over the table to blow out the candle. Nat steps behind me and puts his hands on my waist. I’m afraid, but I’m not afraid.

He takes the pins out of my hair one by one, gently tugs the tendrils down around my neck and shoulders.

“Are you sure?” He’s mannered, almost shy.

“Yes.”

He pulls down my bodice.

I close my eyes.

He lifts me onto the bed.

I’m a married Christian woman and, yes, I’m afraid of the brew he stirs in me. But sin, God, and the Devil aren’t nearly as real as the throttle of his breath in my ear, his taste of salt, and the white-hot coil that goes through me like thread in the eye of a needle.

I’m a witch and he’s a sorcerer. Or perhaps he’s the sorcerer and I’m the cauldron. I wrap my arms around him and touch the place where his shoulder is scratched and raw. He cries out and my eyes fly open.

I want to know him down to the soul.



* * *



AFTER, I’M NOT prepared for him to see me flushed and raw. I pull on my petticoat and fill a bowl with vinegar and water, then walk into the dark yard and wash him away. I’m still collecting myself when he comes outside and puts a hand to my waist. His thick hair is combed into waves, and he is dressed. He is himself, put back together with the help of my needle and thread. But I am changed.

“The jacket is good as new,” he says after a while. “As if it was never torn.”

“Will you come again?” I ask.

In the silence I hear crickets and pond toads. Somewhere, a dog howls.

“If you want me.” He brushes the hair from my face and kisses my cheek as a brother would kiss a sister. Chaste.

Then he’s gone.

I am still standing in the yard at dawn when the children come for water. They move quietly, their words hushed, their faces soft with sleep.

“Good morning, Miss Isobel,” Ivy greets me with a shy smile. She puts warm, fresh bread in my hands, then runs up the rise behind Abraham and disappears into the thicket.

Sunlight sprinkles through the trees.

I rip off a piece of bread, then another and another, cramming it into my mouth as if I’m starved. The colors Nat raked across my skin have taken on a life all their own—swirls in the sea with Poseidon churning mischief and lust. Venus born on a shell. The leopard and his mate wrapped around one another in a ring of wild roses.

I’m wide awake now and I sketch first, then practice with thread. When I’m ready, I put a new pattern on a pair of gloves for the Philadelphia ladies. All day I sit in the sun and stitch. If I were to regret what I’ve done with Nat it would be now. But I’m not sorry. Look what’s come of it: the colors, the beauty, the living things that pour out of me in needle and thread.



* * *



I WORK AT the dress shop on Wednesday with sterling attention so that Abigail notices nothing. On the way home I stop at Chaise & Harness and buy a dozen small white pearl beads and thirty tiny turquoise beads, each the size of an eyelash.

In my yard I find a package in brown paper leaned up against my cottage door and no one in sight but the cat. She comes toward me, then mewls and turns away as if she can sense that I am changed.

I tear open the package to find a new book with a blue leather cover and gold-tipped pages: The Fair Maid of Perth by Walter Scott. Printed in Scotland, it says inside.

Perhaps my own father touched these pages, laid these letters into words. My throat aches as I run my hands over the book and begin to read.

Soon I discover that the fair maid of the title is Catherine Glover; her father is a glove maker in Scotland in the year 1400. I scan the pages: Catherine is embroidering a fine pair of hawking gloves. A suitor appears, then another, and another.

I told Nat that women want to read love stories to know if a man is good, if love is true, who and what can be trusted. Now he’s put a love story in my hands. And the heroine is a glove maker.



* * *



IT HAS BEEN three nights since I took him to my bed. Three nights that I have waited and he has not come.

In Salem the church bells toll nine o’clock curfew and all good men and women lock their doors. Every night since my husband sailed away, I’ve closed my shutters against the moon and the wolves at the sound of the night bells.

But when the bells ring nine this evening, I don’t close my shutters. I leave the candle in the window and sit with the book open in my lap. Scott’s story skips along, but I can’t follow the twists and turns of the plot.

At the sound of his step, I open the door before he can rap upon it. His cheeks are red from the walk or from some strong emotion, and the color makes his eyes more luminous. I thank him for the book in a jittery rush as he hangs his jacket over a chair. In one motion he crosses the room, puts a hand to the back of my head, and runs it the length of my hair. His finger catches on a tangle and I feel a bright orange burst of pain. I cry out, and desire flashes in his face.