“We’ll plan for Ireland another time,” Ed said. “I was thinking something a bit closer for today.” He took the tiller back in his hand and angled the boat toward the shore.
“Oh?” I leaned back, stretching my legs long as the gentle sunshine poured down on us.
After a few minutes, we were bobbing in gentle waves just a few feet out from a beach of pale sand and wild green shoreline. “Lunch,” Ed said, hopping below deck and reappearing a moment later with a large wicker food hamper.
“Here?” I surveyed our surroundings.
“A picnic.” He leapt down and I laughed as his bare feet and calves splashed into the shallow water beside the beach. He ran the lunch hamper to shore in several long-legged strides before returning to the boat and dropping its small, heavy anchor. “May I be of assistance, Mademoiselle?” he asked, extending his hands toward me. I nodded and then he hoisted me in his arms, making me feel light as he held me high above the water and waded to the nearby beach.
There, a few paces back from where the small waves curled ashore, he laid out a checkered blanket and pulled a generous spread from his hamper: hard-boiled eggs, cold chicken, apples and cheese, olives, bread, and a jar of fruit preserves. “Hope you’re hungry,” he said.
“Quite the feast you’ve prepared here, Ed,” I remarked.
“Just wait,” he said, raising a hand and then reaching back into the hamper for one final item. I knew the box immediately, and I could not help but laugh. “Grape-Nuts.” I nodded my approval.
“I told you I have exquisite taste,” he said. “A few more boxes of this stuff and we would have been well provisioned to make it all the way to Ireland.”
“I hope you got a good price. If not, I might be able to speak to someone.”
“Marjorie, for you, I wasn’t worried about the price.”
I felt my cheeks flush with heat, and I dropped my eyes, my gaze making it as far as his lips before they lingered there. I wondered, again, about those lips—how it might feel to kiss their soft fullness. Goodness, but my dress felt hot in the summer sunshine. Had it really been the most suitable choice for boating and a picnic?
“But there is one more thing.” Ed reached into the hamper and I could not help but glower as I saw the box of Kellogg’s Corn Flakes. “This is for the fish,” he said. He opened the cereal box and then showered the nearby water with a sprinkling of the tasteless Kellogg product. “That’s all it’s good for,” he declared. “I’d never expect a human to touch the stuff.”
I laughed, heartily approving. “Those could have come in handy if you needed to attract fish during our Atlantic crossing to Ireland,” I noted.
“Exactly,” he agreed. “But who needs Ireland, anyway? It’s the company. As long as I have you, Marjorie Merriweather Post, I’m happy.”
I allowed myself to smile at this, but I did try to conceal my blush by taking a bite of an apple and looking out over the water. The Sound was blue and calm, mirroring the clear cerulean of sky overhead. Summer was rolling too quickly through its final days, and if I were being entirely honest, I wouldn’t have minded in the least if Ed Close had decided to spirit me someplace far away, just as he’d teased.
* * *
I had only a few days before it was time to return to Washington and to school, and I grew increasingly agitated by the fact that I did not know what would happen between Ed and me when we both left Greenwich. Would Ed write to me? Was I simply a summer dalliance? A fun diversion before autumn and reality set back in? I was only sixteen, and Ed was five years my senior, on the cusp of becoming a Manhattan lawyer while I was still sharing a girls’ dormitory in a finishing school hundreds of miles away. Ed was from Greenwich and the Four Hundred, while my money was new and came from cereal. Was I just a spree, a summer flirtation, an easy enough attachment to break off since I’d soon be leaving and so would he?
But then my mind would wander back to our moments together. The terrace of the Old Elm, dancing together in the warm summer darkness. His taking my hand on the lawn of The Boulders, his earnest gray-blue eyes holding mine. The beach and his picnic, his bright smile as he told me that I was all the company he needed. It couldn’t all have been nothing to him, could it? True, he had not kissed me. Nor had he made any sort of romantic declaration. But surely he knew how I felt? Wasn’t he, a gentleman in every sense of the word, thoughtful enough to spare my heart if he did not feel any genuine attachment?