She laughs and shakes her head. “You know, actually, Nicholas,” she says, turning to me, “if you and I hadn’t gotten off to such a rocky start, I think I would have found you very handsome.”
“He looks just like his grandfather,” my grandmother says with a proud smile.
“But now?” I ask, forgetting we have an audience.
She shrugs. “It doesn’t matter.”
Bullshit.
I’ve never wanted to draw the truth out of someone more. I want to touch her chin and turn her head toward me and look into her eyes for signs of denial.
It does matter.
Salmon tartare is served as the first course, and my grandmother tries to steer the conversation toward upcoming restoration work at Rosethorn. She doesn’t succeed.
“Nicholas broke a lot of hearts when we were growing up,” Rhett tells Maren, continuing the game they’re playing at my expense. “He’s a tough nut to crack, but that didn’t stop girls from trying. In fact, they only tried harder.”
“That doesn’t surprise me at all,” Maren says, as if she has me completely pegged. “I’m sure he loved it. Did he take them out on his sailboat? Woo them on the open seas?”
“Only a few girls were that lucky.”
“Lucky?” Maren teases.
I toss my napkin onto the table and screech my chair back to stand. “Maren, could I speak with you out in the hall?”
I’m already yanking her chair back, so she doesn’t really have a choice in the matter.
I almost expect my grandmother to speak up in protest, but she must recognize something in my expression because she stays perfectly silent as I step out into the narrow side hall, opposite the grand entry on the other side of the dining room. It’s dimly lit compared to the rest of the house, a small passage we rarely use.
Maren follows a beat after me with her head held high, fury reigning in her eyes.
My heart races in my chest and the overwhelming urge to reprimand her and leave her there in the hall feeling like a petulant child fades once she and I stand eye to eye.
“Am I in trouble?” she asks, cocking one delicate brow.
I step closer and lower my voice, aware that we haven’t gone that far from the dining room.
“That’s enough.”
“Oh c’mon, even your friend is—”
“You’re encouraging him.”
“I’m teasing. I think it should be allowed, don’t you? Dinner would be so boring without it.”
“You’ve made your point. You wanted to punish me and you have.”
She laughs and steps closer to me to ensure I’ll hear her whispered words. “I highly doubt that. You, the great Nicholas Hunt, champion of your house—you’re inherently unpunishable. You wear so much armor I doubt I could say a single thing that would hit your heart.”
She’s wrong. Each mocking word she’s said tonight has fallen onto my heart like a drop of burning oil.
My silence doesn’t sit well with her. She sighs and lets her hands fall to her sides in defeat. “Oh fine. I won’t say another word. How about that? I won’t even open my mouth unless you tell me to. Surely I can’t do any harm just by being in the room—”
I take her then, wrapping my hands around her trim waist and hauling her flush against me. I have no idea what I’m doing. Maybe, initially, I wanted to knock some sense into her, force her into the realization that her silence would solve nothing. She could hide under the table and I’d still be too aware of her in that room. Now, though, her green eyes are closer than they’ve ever been, and I give in to the wild urge to bend my head toward hers.
Her hand shoots up, not striking my cheek but good and ready to do so.
“Don’t you dare,” she hisses, letting her hand fall to my chest so she can wrap her fingers around the lapel of my coat.
Our hearts beat together wildly as our lips stay within reach. She’s rigid in my hands, a piece of glass ready to break, and then another second passes and she softens at the exact moment that my sanity snaps back into place.
I let go of her and step back swiftly, rubbing a hand across my forehead.
No amount of apologies would suffice, so I don’t bother.
Instead, I give her the space to push past me and reenter the dining room.
I go through the side hall, down into the kitchen, and out into the chilly night air.
I started off hating Maren on principle, and though there are many reasons to forgive her past transgressions and grant her the benefit of the doubt, beneath it all lies the obstinate determination to go on hating her. I can hardly consider the scenario in which I might have made life harder for a person who’s already dealt with more than her fair share of hardships. It leaves me with a burning ache in my chest, an insurmountable amount of shame.
17
Maren
In the morning, I take my coffee out into the back yard, wrapping my sweater tighter around my shoulders to block the ocean breeze as I approach the edge of the property. It’s a perilous drop from where I stand down to the rocky shores below, but an ornate wrought iron fence holds me back. Still, I don’t lean on it too much. Years of exposure to the elements has given it a patina, and I worry there might be some structural damage as well.
I sip my coffee and glance down below. There’s a break in the drop, midway down, a flat walkway that cuts through the jagged rocks, parallel to Bellevue Avenue. It’s Newport’s famed Cliff Walk, and though I’ve never traversed it myself, I’ve seen quite a few tourists accomplish the feat. On a Saturday morning, with weather as beautiful as it is today, I’m not surprised to see it’s already busy with casual hikers.
They look up and wave to me, and I wave back. I wonder what they think of me standing up here, if they mistake me for one of the Cromwells. I can’t imagine.
I hear approaching footsteps in the damp grass behind me, and I glance back to see Nicholas walking toward me from the house. My stomach squeezes tight and I feel immediate unease. He never returned to dinner last night and a part of me worried he’d gone back to New York, but this morning, when I peered out my bathroom window, his car was still parked outside, causing a dangerous feeling of hope to blossom in my chest. It’s still there even as I try to quash it.
I turn back to stare out at the ocean, and each passing second while I wait for him to reach me is a short millennium.
He stops beside me, and I can no longer hear the roar of the ocean over my own heartbeat.
He’s the first to speak.
“When I was a child, there was no fence here.”
“I can’t imagine.”
Even just thinking about it makes me take a small step back, more in line with him.
“It wasn’t as dangerous as you might think. There were never any injuries. People were smart enough to stay back. The fence is only there now because of the Cliff Walk. My grandfather didn’t want tourists to mistake Rosethorn for public property.”
“Why was the Cliff Walk first built? Why would you all have agreed to let them take a portion of your property?”
“It wasn’t ours to give. It’s the law. No one has ownership of the ocean.”
It’s a beautiful sentiment. I tell him so and he nods, staring out at the sea as the breeze ruffles the dark strands of his hair. He looks so beautifully severe this morning, so much like his portrait. His sharp profile begs to be touched and I almost open my mouth to apologize about last night, but then he speaks and the words die on my tongue.