“You know exactly what I mean. You’re too tempting for a man.”
“You’re not simply any man,” she teased.
“No, I’m the one who loves you more than anyone or anything on earth.”
Rose sobered. This was no game, and he was not an idle flirtation.
“I know. And I, you. Please hold me a few moments longer,” she said, wishing the fear of separation weren’t clouding the joy of being near him.
“Shall I ask Liam to keep an eye on you while I’m away?”
Liam was Finn’s closest friend at the yard, a quick-witted Irishman who helped whittle the scaled wooden models of the ships before they were built.
“I thought he would be going with you,” she said.
“As did I.” Finn twisted a lock of her hair around his finger and studied it. “He told me this afternoon he’d been pulled from the roster. I thought it only a fluke, but then he asked if I wanted to be pulled, too. When I asked him how he could arrange that, he said he was only joking and putting on airs.”
She felt him shrug.
“Anyway,” he continued, “I have to be on that ship. Someone’s got to make sure she stays afloat.” Then by the captured skein of her dark hair, he tugged her face closer, and she forgot about the small surge of fear she’d felt at his casual words of staying afloat.
“I don’t need Liam to check up on me,” Rose told him as his talented lips nibbled along the column of her neck. She had enough watchful eyes among her mother and older siblings.
“Besides, it’s only for a month. You haven’t told him about me, have you?”
Finn’s mouth stopped its pleasurable journey.
“No,” he said, sounding irked. “You asked me not to, and I didn’t.”
She relaxed, immediately sorry she’d touched on the sore point between them once again.
“Please,” she begged. “Continue. Except on my lips this time.
Then she let his mouth claim hers, and five more minutes slipped into an hour.
***
One month became two and then three. And then a year. A year became two, and now, it had been over three years since Finn had kissed her lips. Rose had long since stopped haunting the Eastie waterfront for any news of the sunken vessel, weary of taking the ferry back and forth, of crossing over the very waters that somewhere blanketed her husband’s body.
Perhaps some of her friends had thought her a little strange with her fascination over the loss of theGarrard, one of the prototypes of the new steel-clad cargo ships. Her family appreciated the more grown-up, less wild Rose, but then, in the face of her uncharacteristic solemnity, they began to worry.
Finn had said the ship’s center of gravity was too high, with its five masts towering over the deck that rode low in the water, aided by a steam engine deep in the bowels of the vessel. Finn had railed against his superiors who’d built a ship that had a freeboard set too low. Waves would wash over the weather deck, he’d predicted.
Nevertheless, he’d done his job and headed out with other’s from the ship yard to test her for its wealthy owner.
The day the BostonPostannounced the capsizing on the front page, Rose had been out riding with Claire. She’d come in to see her mother drinking tea and scrutinizing the paper.
“Such a shame,” Evelyn Malloy said. “Have a cup of tea, dear, you must be parched. All that running around that you and your friend do.”
“What’s a shame, Mama?” Rose asked, taking a cup and pouring tea from the pot steeping on the sideboard. She chose two lavender wafers, as well. They were among her favorites from their cook’s specialties.
“A ship went down off the coast.” Her mother had rattled the newspaper loudly as she straightened it and checked the details. “Somewhere slightly west and south of Yarmouth.”
Wordlessly, Rose had set her cup down and sat beside her mother. She had known even before she read it. Still, she slid the paper closer and looked at the headline. Then she scanned the first paragraph and saw the ship’s name.
She didn’t gasp, nor did she cry out. She let out the breath she was holding and managed to drag in another. She took a sip of tea with a trembling hand and tried to see past the tears that filled her eyes.
“Rose?” her mother said. “Are you crying?”
