The Wicked Redhead. Beatriz Williams
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and looks back out to sea, where her children play. “For what it’s worth, Miss Kelly, my husband left the rum-running business some time ago. He wasn’t cut out for it.”
“A rumrunner, was he?”
“We own a shipping company,” she says simply, and I guess she doesn’t need to say more. After all, any fool with a seaworthy boat and a sober pilot can get his start in the rum-running trade off the coast of the eastern United States, and a lucrative trade it is, too. A fellow with the foresight or the luck to own a fleet of such craft? Why, he might clear a fortune, in short order. He ought to clear a fortune, if he’s got a lick of mortal sense. Nothing extraordinary about that.
“I see. And I suppose that shipping company brought you to Anson’s notice?”
“Anson? Do you mean Ollie?”
“I beg your pardon. Anson’s his middle name. He took what I guess you’d call a nom de guerre for a time, which is when I met him. And you know how it is with names.”
She smiles. “They have a way of sticking to people.”
“Yes. But to you he’s Oliver Marshall. Reckon I shall have to get used to that.”
We have both returned our attention to the children splashing in the surf, but when I say these words Mrs. Fitzwilliam glances back at me. “No, don’t do that. Keep him by the name you knew him first. The name you fell in love with.”
“Who says we’re in love?”
She laughs. “Nobody needs to say it, Miss Kelly. My goodness. I have eyes in my head, even at three o’clock in the morning.”
“Then you might consider an appointment with an oculist, Mrs. Fitzwilliam.”
Instead of replying, Mrs. Fitzwilliam calls out to the boy, who—together with his sister—has begun to swing Patsy between them. “Sammy! Put her down, now. She’s not used to the ocean.”
“Oh, she’ll be all right,” I say, but Sammy and his sister obediently lower Patsy back to her feet. Patsy makes an imperious squeal and tugs at their hands, yet they will not be moved by her. I start forward to settle the matter, until Mrs. Fitzwilliam takes my arm.
“No,” she says. “Let them be. Sammy’s got a way with him. He knows how to handle the younger ones.”
“Lucky for you, I guess. With another one on the way.”
“Yes.” She releases my arm and nods to my sling. “Simon tells me you took some bruising.”
“Did he, now?”
“Well, he didn’t need to. For one thing, there’s a nasty swelling right there on your left cheekbone. And Ollie told us a little of your story, while Simon was changing his bandage.”
“Oh? And just what did Ollie tell you?”
“That the two of you had been through a fight. Beaten about by a criminal of some kind.” Her voice is kind, full of sympathy and all that, but not overspilling. I don’t believe Mrs. Fitzwilliam is the overspilling sort of person, which is a trait I prize, and one you rarely find in women. Why, most females about smother you with sympathy for your troubles, and then expect you to smother them in turn, until the two of you can hardly breathe for the wetness of your mutual commiseration. Whereas I prefer the wetness of a nice dry martini, myself.
I tell her: “I guess that’s true. But we survived, I guess. I’ll do just fine, as I’m sure your husband told you.”
“No doubt.” Mrs. Fitzwilliam speaks so soft, the words be swallowed right up by that purring ocean nearby. “But the truth is, Ollie’s worried sick about you. And I don’t know what happened back there, among those bootleggers of yours. I’m not sure I want to know. God knows I’ve seen enough evil to make me grateful for my present peace. But whatever it is, whatever you’ve endured, believe me. That man would rather die than see you come to further hurt.”
I wrap one hand about my stiff elbow and stare at the round, bald spine of a rising wave. The heavy pause as it commences to overturn into the foam. Because what can I say to this woman? Can I tell her how my insides ache like murder from the battering of my stepfather, who did punish me for my betrayal of him? Can I tell her about my arm he nearly broke in two, about my belly into which he drove his meat fist? Can I tell her about the sight of my brother’s neck, broken like a rag doll, or how it feels to witness a man being struck in the jaw with a set of brass knuckles, such that you will never forget the sight, you will witness it evermore you close your eyes?
She’s but a stranger, after all, and my hurts belong only to me.
Mrs. Fitzwilliam touches my shoulder. “I have an idea. Let’s drive into town and meet them, shall we?”
TOWN IS Cocoa, a collection of mostly wooden buildings sprawled along the edge of what Mrs. Fitzwilliam calls the Indian River, and is really some kind of inlet from the ocean itself. Maybe a river feeds it, I don’t know. Anyway, you reach this squirt of a town by means of a pair of long, flat bridges directly west from the barrier strip of Cocoa Beach, leapfrogging an island they call Merritt, which I confess I have no recollection of crossing the night before.
“You were likely asleep,” Mrs. Fitzwilliam says. “I’ve never seen such an exhausted pair as the two of you last night. Not since the war, anyway.”
“The war? Did you nurse?”
“No. I drove an ambulance on the Western Front. Well, a number of ambulances. They had a tendency to break down often.”
She tosses this off gaily, like she’s describing some kind of picnic expedition. Shifts the automobile into another gear—it’s a fine blue Packard roadster, immaculate cloth seats, a real nice piece of tin—while the draft loosens her scarf from its moorings to spread out behind us like a white flag of surrender. Air smells of salt and muck and burning oil. I narrow my eyes against the afternoon sun and say, “I guess that explains the way you drive.”
“Oh? Just how do I drive?”
“Like you mean it.”
She laughs and steers us into Cocoa, pulling up outside a large brick building that proclaims itself home of the Phantom Shipping Company.
“Who’s the phantom?” I ask.
She sets the brake and leaps free of the seat with breathtaking agility for a woman with so much baby inside her.
“Me,” she says.
THE MEN have gone out for a sail, says a receptionist in a neat navy suit, and if we hurry we might just catch them. I tell Mrs. Fitzwilliam I don’t especially enjoy messing about in boats. She tells me don’t be silly and takes my arm. The Phantom Shipping Company warehouses and dock lie but a pair of blocks away, she explains, and so we stride down the broiling sidewalk so fast as we are able, one of us recently beaten up to blazes and the other one set to whelp any minute, sweating and puffing, and lucky enough the ship is still moored, though a tall, bull-shouldered man stands beside her, unwinding a rope from a bollard.
Now, while I have spent the past three days and nights in Anson’s company, while I have lain in his bed and wept in his lap, while I have woken in the dark to the sound of his breath, have dressed his wounds and whispered to him things I have never before whispered to another living person, while we have eaten together and drunk together and driven together and slept together, still my cheeks burn as I make my way up the dock, and the shape of his brown, clipped head becomes clear against the green edge of mangrove lying along the opposite bank of the river. Mrs. Fitzwilliam calls out. Anson straightens and turns, stiff as some kind of machine, lit by the high, white sun.
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