On a Cold Dark Sea(20)
Charlie was the first to pull away, exhaling in a half laugh, half gasp.
“My God.”
His eyes looked unfocused and wild, and Esme could see he was shaken by what they’d done. Uncertainty weakened her—was he angry?—but such worries were quickly cast aside when he reached up and gently pulled off her hat.
“It’s soaking,” he said, tossing it next to a pile of metal buckets.
“So is your hair.”
Esme smoothed it back from his forehead, and she could tell he was forcing himself to keep still and maintain his self-possession. She placed her hands on his cheeks and waited. Slowly, almost reluctantly, he wrapped his arms around her back and leaned into her.
“Esme.” He lingered over the name, seeming to savor it. “What a marvel you are.”
“A marvelous goat.” She tilted her head and smiled to show she was teasing, and he tapped her nose with one finger.
“I should never have said that. You’re a lamb.” He brushed his lips across her forehead. “Soft and sweet.”
Esme rose to her toes so their mouths could meet. She wanted to hear him talk like this, gentle and confiding, but she also wanted to kiss him, over and over and over.
“I don’t mind,” she whispered between caresses. “That goat’s rather darling.”
“My little goat,” Charlie murmured, and laughter rippled through them like a cleansing force, washing away their hesitation. If love could bloom in a shabby shed, it must be real.
Or so Esme told herself later in the dining room, when she could barely stand to look at Charlie with the memory of his kisses so fresh. The rest of the visit was torture. They managed a few rushed conversations, in the upstairs corridors and while walking the grounds, but it was impossible to find time alone. She had to sit with him at cards, at meals, on the train back to London, laughing gaily as she fought the urge to touch him. Two days before she was due to sail home, Charlie sent a note to her hotel that he’d hired a car for the afternoon, if she could find an excuse to join him. Esme concocted a story about a picnic, knowing Hiram disapproved of meals being eaten anywhere but a table. Strangely, she felt more guilty lying to Hiram than she did kissing Charlie. What she and Charlie had done in the shed was secret, unseen. The story she told Hiram was a more direct betrayal. He trusted her so completely—or cared so little?—that he didn’t even ask where she was going or when she’d be back.
Charlie drove with youthful recklessness, pushing the car as fast as it would go, shouting people out of the way with such cheerful enthusiasm that he received laughs instead of scowls. He’d ordered a hamper of food from his hotel, and they ate on the grounds of an Elizabethan manor outside of the city. Afterward, venturing into a copse of trees, they kissed and tittered as Charlie’s hands wandered over the curves of Esme’s legs. He’d taken off his jacket, and she could feel his shoulder muscles clench when he held her. In Charlie’s embrace, she felt more at ease than she ever had in the silent house she shared with Hiram.
How could she ever go back?
In a week, she’d be in Philadelphia, and Charlie would return to Boston not long after. It was closer than London, but not nearly close enough. Esme had no relatives or friends in Boston; she had no excuse to visit. Before long, Charlie’s mother would have her way, and Charlie would be married, cut off from Esme forever. She could have cried with frustration. Why had she and Charlie only discovered each other now, when they had so little time together? It didn’t occur to her until much later that she had dared to kiss Charlie precisely because he was a relative stranger, in a foreign country. Separate from her real life, and therefore safe.
Impulsively, Esme said, “Come with us.”
Charlie looked perplexed. “To Philadelphia?”
“To New York. We’re booked on the Titanic—no one will think twice if you change your plans because you want to sail on the new ship. You’re due back in a few weeks anyway, aren’t you?”
“Are you that fond of me?” he asked. His voice had shifted from its usual joking tone.
“You fool. I’m desperately in love with you.”
Esme meant to laugh, to lighten the weight of what she’d said. Instead, she had to scrunch up her face to keep in the tears. Only Charlie’s gentle kisses could convince her to open them, and then they didn’t speak for a long time.
Esme had intended to be good. She thought she’d be satisfied with a few kisses on a deserted deck at night; she pictured a bittersweet yet decisive goodbye. But Charlie was like a sickness to which he was the only cure, infecting her until she was listless with anyone but him. The first night aboard, when Hiram said he was ready to retire at nine o’clock, Esme told him she’d made plans to play bridge in the Café Parisien. The lie slipped out so easily that she didn’t feel even a twinge of guilt. On her way out, she stopped in the adjoining maid’s room and told Sabine she’d be visiting a friend in stateroom 34, down the stairs on C deck.
“If my husband wakes up, come fetch me,” Esme said.
“Yes, madame.” If Sabine suspected what Esme was up to, she was clever enough—and loyal enough—not to let on.
And so, that first night, Esme snuck to Charlie’s stateroom, terrified she’d pass someone she knew. But she didn’t—proof, perhaps, that her escapade was meant to be. Charlie opened the door as soon as Esme knocked, and she reassured him by hiding her own nervousness. She turned off the light, and the darkness made it easier for them to move from kisses to touches to clothes strewn across the floor. Despite uncomfortable thoughts of Hiram that lurked in the background of her consciousness, Esme didn’t believe what she was doing was wrong, because her senses responded to Charlie in a way they never had to Hiram. This was the man she should have married, her body told her. The man she was meant to be with forever.