Madeleine was a strong enough swimmer not to mind the deep end of the bath. And Jack, of course . . . well, Jack could do anything. It didn’t surprise her at all to see him slicing through the water in his tunic and trunks in clean, hard strokes.
“You know,” she said, resting her crossed arms along the edge of the pool, kicking her feet behind her, “the first time I saw you, I looked a lot like this.”
“Like this?” He swam up beside her, picked up her soaked braid of hair, and wrapped it around his wrist. He drew his arm to his chest to pull her closer, to tilt her head and kiss her on the lips, ignoring the scandalized attention of the Germans.
“Yes. I’d just climbed out of the sea—”
“A mermaid.”
“Precisely. And I sat on the sand at Bailey’s Beach and saw you walking along. You were going to see your mother. She sat in a tent.”
He paused, then unwound her braid to join her with his arms propped atop the marble rim. “Really? When was that?”
“Long, long ago. When I was—oh, when I was a schoolgirl. But even then, I noticed you.”
He pushed a hand along his wet hair, slicking it from his forehead. “You never said.”
“I think I half-forgot. It was years ago. It’s like a dream memory to me now. Isn’t that funny? I forget the day, and why I was there. On holiday with my mother, I believe. But I remember you. I remember thinking that you were quite dashing.”
“Well.” He seemed amused.
“I think that was the moment I fell in love with you,” she said.
He sank away from the edge of the pool, treading water, studying her. The Germans were climbing out at the other end, searching for the attendants through the firelight.
“Yes,” she said, certain. “That was the moment. I looked at you, you looked at me—you won’t recall it, but you did, just for a second—and ta-dah. It was done. Love. Just like that.”
She dropped away from the marble rim as well, floating on her back with her arms out, gazing up at the night. A scattering of brighter stars shone through the smoke, sometimes there, sometimes not, forming new constellations, cryptic patterns of their own.
The water purled, shattered into ripples of fire as he came to float alongside her. Jack drew his palm along the lines of her—neck, chest, stomach—pausing at that modest roundness where their child grew, before pulling back.
“Do you know the moment I fell in love with you?”
She smiled drowsily up at the stars. “Tell me.”
“When you asked to read my book. Do you remember that? That night on the balcony, back in Bar Harbor?”
“Yes,” she said, surprised. She turned her head to look at him, water caressing her cheek. “All the way back then?”
“All the way back then,” he answered, grave. “You are the only one who’s ever asked me about reading it, you know. The only one.”
“I really enjoyed it.”
“You’re a very charming liar.”
They laughed together, hushed, and she came upright, treading as he did, feeling the liquid pushing back and forth through her open fingers, buoying her body and legs.
“What a strange mistress Fortune has turned out to be,” Madeleine said.
“Strange, and marvelous.”
“Yes,” she agreed, gliding closer. She wrapped her hands behind his neck so that they bobbed together, their fronts and legs deliciously brushing. “Marvelous.”
*
So they’d said the words after all. And the words had taken nothing away from them, their dark and precious bond. The words had only added another flavor, smoky sweet, like the night.
CHAPTER 19
My first sight of our dahabiya came under a searing, cloudless sky, with light and shadows so brittle every line of the vessel shone sharp. She’d been scrubbed and provisioned and freshly painted, forest green and bone white and ochre, a fanciful scrollwork of blue decorating her prow. She was smaller than the Noma but not by much, with twin wooden masts and an awning of apricot covering her open top deck.
As I stood at the edge of the Nile and watched the crew queue up to greet us, the overhang of the awning lifted and fell with the breeze, one tassel at a time, as if waving to us.
The name painted upon her side was Habibti. Beloved.
Your father stood beside me in the sun with his hands on his hips, taking it all in. When the captain approached, bearded and layered in robes, Jack handed me Kitty’s leash and walked with him down to the landing. I stayed back a moment to watch them, your father nodding and asking questions, nodding again whenever the captain gestured to this part of his boat or that.