The Wicked Redhead. Beatriz Williams

night we went out on the ocean. I was the one who gave you that brandy and climbed in beside you.”

      “I let you in.”

      “You were an innocent before me, Anson. Don’t think I didn’t know.”

      “Maybe so,” he says, “but I wasn’t so innocent I didn’t know what we were doing together. Wasn’t so drunk I didn’t mean what I did. I knew I was breaking my brother’s heart, and I did it anyway, because …”

      “Because why? Because you’re such a mean, selfish, awful bastard and wanted me for yourself?”

      His hand yanks down the throttle, smacking the engine back down to size, cutting our speed to a mere crawl. He turns to me, left hand gripping the wheel, and his face sort of shocks me, bruised and brutal, lit to blazes by the afternoon sun. “All right. Have it your way. You seduced me. I’m just some poor, innocent rube who fell in love with the wrong girl and stuck himself with nothing but trouble.”

      “If you want out—”

      “Want out? Out of what? Out of loving you? Out of waking up and thanking God you’re still alive, I haven’t killed you with this life of mine, this job of mine—”

      “Oh, if that’s what’s bothering you—”

      “There is only one thing that bothers me, Ginger. I might ache for my brother, I might burn for my part in what was done to him, but there’s only one thing that makes me so sick I can’t sleep, I can’t think straight, I can’t see reason, and that’s the thought I might lose you. Might not ever again kiss you or lie with you.”

      “You can’t lose a thing that doesn’t ever mean to be lost, Anson. You can’t lose a thing that belongs to you. A girl that was made for you, the same as you were made for her, like a handle for a bucket, like a pillowcase for a pillow. A hearth for a fire.”

      And I say this brave thing, and I sit back on my heels and wait, gazing at his battered face with my heart right there in my eyes, in such a way that I have never yet looked upon a man, stripped and raw, and still he doesn’t seize me in his arms. Still he doesn’t touch my skin nor kiss my mouth. His stare is that of a man condemned to death. His left hand grips that wheel as if some frightful hurricane be bearing down upon us.

      “What’s the matter?” I ask.

      “There’s another thing.”

      “So tell me.”

      “Something your stepfather said, back there in the springhouse.”

      “He said a lot of things.”

      “You know what I mean, Ginger. I didn’t say anything before. I figured we had enough to do, making it safely down here to Florida. Making sure you weren’t hurt any worse than I feared. And I know Duke said a lot of things, and most of them didn’t have any truth to them. But if there’s any chance, Ginger, any chance at all …”

      He cuts himself off and looks away, blinking back something in his eyes, and how can I blame him? A question like that. And I know why he’s asking it. Not because he actually supposes he might have started a child in me; not even so much as a week has passed since we lay together in the cold, black Southampton night, reckless as two young thieves, while this same ocean spoke outside our window, and though Anson might have lost his wits entirely during the sweet course of those hours, he is yet sensible enough to understand the limits of nature’s bounty. No, indeed. A far more complicated possibility has risen up before him, and my step-daddy is to blame for that, as for most of our troubles.

      So I forgive him for the indelicacy of his question. I feel his torment like an ache in my own breast. I take one step toward him and lift his right hand with my left hand, the one that isn’t near to broken by one of Duke’s various methods of torture.

      “Do not,” I say, “for God’s sake, do not give that man the power to haunt you still. You just forget every word Duke Kelly said in that springhouse, do you hear me? Every word. It was the devil that spoke through his mouth that terrible morning, and the devil never did speak a word of truth to mortal men.”

      He curls his fingers tight around mine and stares out across the boat’s bow. “Speak plain, Ginger. Just tell me. I know it’s a private matter, it’s your own business, but I’ll go nuts if—”

      “I’m not carrying any man’s child, Anson. Not Billy’s and not yours.”

      The faint, high scream of a steam whistle carries across the water. I take another step to stand but a breath away from his shoulder, and it seems to me that the tension in that coil of muscle is fixing to burst right through his shirt and his ill-fitting Florida jacket.

      “You’re certain?” he says.

      “As certain as a woman can possibly be.”

      He just turns his head, that’s all, turns his head and lets his forehead fall against mine, and the tension in his big shoulder sort of dissolves in our blood. And that’s when I realize I’ve been feeling it all this time, down along the road from Maryland, thinking this wound-up tautness was just his ordinary pitch, his shoulder was just built that way, and it turns out his shoulder is more like a cushion than a rock, more like a cradle than a coil of tarred rope, and it fits the curve of my head like they were made for each other.

       9

      NOW I wasn’t lying when I told Mrs. Fitzwilliam that I don’t relish this business of messing about in boats. I wasn’t bred up to it, for one thing, and for another I can’t help but think of what happened last time I took ship with Oliver Anson Marshall. You know what I mean. The rough chop of that speedboat across the water, and the rat-a-tat-a-tat of a Thompson submachine gun searching out your flesh. The whisht-thud of a bullet whisking past you in the night air to find purchase in some nearby object, and the sickness of death that clung to you like the smell of blood.

      So I try to close my eyes, but that only brings on nausea and the usual visions of broken necks and brass knuckles and blood creeping across a black-and-white floor, so I stand up instead and share the journey with my beloved. The water changes color from deep, tranquil green to an eager blue, and the shore thins out into sand. We don’t say much, just trade observations on the scenery. I wonder if he’s thinking the same things I am, if he’s thinking about all the death and hurt we have left in our wake, but that’s not a question you can ask a man like Anson in the golden light of a Florida afternoon. You ask him in bed, in the dark, when your skin lies against his skin, and he tells you the truth. Here and now, you ask him about the ships that lie ahead. Those smugglers’ warehouses floating atop the skin of the Atlantic, three miles out to sea. Why three miles? Because three miles marks the limit of United States territorial waters, that’s why. The sum total of the Coast Guard’s jurisdiction.

      “I don’t know what you think you’re going to learn,” I tell him, just exactly as if I know his business as well as he does. “Surely the Florida racket’s got nothing to do with the northern rackets.”

      “But they both have the Bureau and the Coast Guard to deal with. Any kind of news spreads fast, believe me.” He pauses. “I used to be assigned down here, remember? They sent me down to help break up one of the big family gangs. That’s how I met Fitzwilliam.”

      “Aren’t you afraid they’re going to recognize you?”

      He shrugs. “It’s a chance, I guess. I’ll just tell them I’ve left the Bureau. Out on the water with my girl, looking for a little refreshment.”

      “Oh, they’ll believe that, will they? Mister Law and Order’s gone all wet suddenly?”

      “Nothing corrupts a fellow like falling in with the wrong kind of dame.”

      “You mean some kind of wicked red-haired floozy who drinks her own weight in gin and falls into bed with any old meathead Prohibition agent who strikes her fancy?