“Hallie, please, talk to me.” Her hand covered Hallie’s and gave it a reassuring squeeze. “I thought things were better between you two. Why, in the past couple of days you’ve been smiling, and yesterday you were so excited about the play. What has that idiot nephew of mine done now?”
“He slept with me.” Hallie stared at the wood again, and missed the knowing smile Maddie valiantly hid with a cough.
“Hallie, I’m well aware that the two of you have been... intimate. It goes along with being married. You know that.”
“Oh, but we haven’t been intimate,” Hallie declared, and when she saw Maddie’s startled face, she clarified. “Well, not since just after we married—you remember, when Kit moved into his study?”
“I remember, but he’s moved back in, and you both seemed to be getting along better, so I assumed you had worked things out. Today you’re acting like you did right after the wedding.”
“When he moved back in, I made him sleep in the chair,” Hallie admitted quietly.
“That’s better than he deserved,” Maddie said firmly.
“But I woke up this morning with him in the bed, and he’s been really kind, and that makes it so much harder to ignore him.”
“Why do you want to ignore him?”
“Because if I don’t, we’re going to end up—” Hallie averted her eyes.
“You’re married, Hallie, it’s all right for you two to... end up, as you put it.”
“But I love him,” Hallie wailed. “And he d-doesn’t love me, and he never will. He l-loved his first wife and then she hurt him and l-left him and died and he can’t love me, a-and I f-feel horrible!” Hallie swiped at the stupid tears running from her eyes.
“Good Lord! Did that mule-headed man tell you all this?”
“I heard him talking to Lee, in the study, just before the wedding.”
“Ah, the wedding fiasco. Now I understand,” Maddie murmured.
“Oh Maddie, I’m so miserable.”
“I can see that.” Maddie rubbed her hands over her eyes as if she were struggling with a decision. She took a deep breath. “I guess I’d better tell you the whole thing, as I know it.”
Hallie sniffed. “Is it a different story?”
“No,” Maddie replied. “But I think if I tell you the whole story, then maybe you’ll be able to understand him.”
She started with Kit’s childhood, telling Hallie of the competition that existed between the four brothers, and how Kit, being the youngest, fought so hard to keep up with his older brothers.
“Oh, they are a handsome lot, those boys, but somehow Kit has always had a special place in my heart. Maybe I was removed enough to see how hard he struggled to be like the older two. I think that was what sent him out on the whalers when he was only sixteen. The older two took their places—Ben, the eldest, ran the Howland fleet of whalers, and Tom handled the Meecham shipbuilding after his grandfather stepped down—but Kit found his own niche on the whale ships. He was determined to know every facet of whaling, and he loved the sea. You could see his face light up whenever he was near the wharves. His father saw it, too, so when Kit had a chance to go on his first voyage, the only one who tried to stop him was my sister. Kit finally convinced her himself, and it turned out to be the best thing for him. He’d come home from a voyage, and it wasn’t long before he’d get unsettled and off he’d go again. He loved the sea, so much so, he earned his master’s papers before his twenty-second birthday.”
That surprised Hallie, since twenty-two was an extremely young age to have earned the captaincy of a whaler. Usually, the crew needed someone older, stronger, and more experienced to earn their confidence and respect.
Maddie smiled. “Oh, if you could have seen him when he came home, he was a sight, so proud and self-assured. I couldn’t have been prouder if he’d been my own son. And his father, well, he about bust his buttons.”
Hallie saw Maddie’s eyes cloud with regret.
“It wasn’t too long after Kit’d earned his papers that his relationship with Josephine Taber changed. It went from childhood friendship to something... much stronger. The Tabers and the Howlands were almost like family. Jo and her brothers grew up with Tom, Ben, and Kit. Jo and Kit were forever shadowing the older ones. I think that’s why she and Kit were close. They were always left behind by the others. Jo used to come up with some wonderfully original ways to get even with the older boys, and she and Kit got into more scrapes.
“Whenever there was trouble, Jo was around. She was a wild little thing. Her father used to laugh about her antics. He’d say she did the first thing that flew into her head. I always thought she was overly reckless, but then I think her parents did, too, because they were quite relieved when she and Kit married.”
It was difficult for Hallie, listening to her husband’s past, especially the parts about Jo. But Hallie needed to know about this, as hard as it was, because while she listened, she could feel some obscure void within her being filled.
“I’m not going to sugarcoat this, Hallie,” Maddie told her. “Those first two years, they were inseparable, and very much in love.”
It did hurt—the thought of Kit’s loving marriage—but Hallie appreciated Maddie’s honesty, because she had to know, everything.
“I never could figure out what went wrong, none of us could.” Maddie’s face reflected the bewilderment of her words. “Jo had always gone with Kit on his voyages, and then, just before they were to leave on another one, she got a terrible case of influenza, and the doctor wouldn’t let her go. She didn’t like it much, but with the doctor, Kit, his parents and hers, all in agreement, well, she couldn’t fight them all. He was gone sixteen months, and I thought she was going to wither up and die without him. She was withdrawn, and quiet, and completely unlike her usual spunky self. We all wrote it off to loneliness and just plain lovesickness, but then Kit came home and all hell broke loose.” Maddie paused, shaking her head at the memory.
