He turned from the poster and started for the dock. His thoughts had devolved into bees, his skull the hive, and sticky honey coated everything. It couldn’t be coincidence! Her family had refused to speak to him. Not then, not in the letters he’d written to them in the ensuing years. He’d never understood it, but now he could. Now he could.
Hulda wasn’t with him. He turned back. “Hulda? Please, I need—”
She shook her head. “You see, Myra invited me to dinner. At the Oyster House.”
Jittery and cold and lost, Merritt glanced down the road. Tried to form a coherent sentence. “The Oyster House?”
She nodded. “Yes. BIKER business. Many of us are meeting . . . to discuss Nova Scotia.”
His blood pumped fast, eager to get him moving. He had time. He could mask his agitation well enough to see her taken care of. And once he was better, once the mystery was resolved, then he could talk to Hulda. Then he could tell her what he wanted to tell her. “Let me take you there.”
“It’s only three blocks.”
“Hulda—”
“I actually see Miss Steverus now.” She waved to someone in the distance. “Please, Mr. Fernsby.” She smiled tightly. “You’re in a hurry. Don’t let me hold you up.”
Merritt’s gut clenched. His gaze shifted once more to the Oyster House. His brain nailed itself to that poster. “You’re sure? It’s no trouble.”
“Please. I would prefer it.”
The statement was like a dart burrowing into his chest, like he was drunk on laudanum and could only half feel it. Prefer it?
The concert poster seemed to pulse over her shoulder.
“But going home—”
“I’ll take a hired boat and have Myra see to me. I’m not incapable just because I’m a woman.”
He hesitated.
“Please.” She cleared her throat. “Or I’ll be late.”
Merritt sighed through his teeth. Why was he so cold? Or . . . maybe the cold wasn’t the reason he was shaking. Think. “Do you have the communion stone?” Its companion weighed down his pocket. He slipped his hand in and grasped it, if only to have something solid to clutch.
She patted her bag.
“Use it as soon as your dinner is done.” God help him, he was already losing it. “When you’re on the boat. On the island, and when you’re back at the house.”
She looked like she wanted to fight, but the cold was getting to her, too, judging by the reddening around her eyes. She nodded.
A headache was forming behind his forehead, amplifying his erratic pulse. “Thank you, Hulda.”
But she was already heading down the street, the ends of her shawl catching on the breeze.
Chapter 28
October 13, 1846, Boston, Massachusetts and Blaugdone Island, Rhode Island
One of the hardest things Hulda had ever done was to sew up the guise of self-sufficient old maid and keep a straight face through her conversation with Merritt. Ignoring his obsession with that poster on the front of Quincy Market. Walking briskly to the docks, passing stranger after stranger. Acting as if her insides hadn’t been scooped out. And she did a bloody good job of it, too.
Until she got to the boat.
Once she activated the kinetic spell and propelled the boat into the bay, once she got far enough from the voices and city lights, her guise shattered completely.
Idiot, idiot, idiot. She held back the tears as best she could but still had to remove her glasses to wipe her eyes. How. Had. She. Not. Learned? How many times did this have to happen before she learned?
She fumbled through her bag for a handkerchief, then hurriedly steered the boat where it needed to go, guided by the lighthouses on nearby islands. She’d thought—she had actually, stupidly thought—that he cared for her. That he wanted her around for his own gratification. That he even returned her feelings . . . ha! And had she really been fool enough to think he’d asked for a private word because he meant to confess something of the sort to her? Pah! Likely he’d wanted the menu changed, or he’d changed his mind about the steward, or he’d decided to take a more active role in the running of his property. Stupid, stupid, stupid.
Strife and truth. She’d foreseen this, hadn’t she? But the premonition was more closely tied to her fate than she’d imagined. And the truth is that you’re nothing to him.
Her chest felt like it was cracking in two, like old, dry scabs were pulling apart fiber by fiber.
Because she had watched him drop everything to pursue another woman. An old love. A person he had intended to marry once. An accomplished musician, no less.