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“Maybeyou’rethe one who isn’t ready,” she says, and he laughs.
“I’ve been ready since the day I first laid eyes on you. And every day since, too. That day at the pond, I swam out to you knowing full well I might get nothing out of it except a punch in the jaw. But I was ready to fight for you. I still am.”
“Is that so,” she whispers, and he leans in to kiss her again, but she turns her face away. Not to rebuff him, but to gaze out into the dark, toward the reach with its black and quiet water, now covered over with ice. In her mind, an idea is beginning to form. Something wild and dangerous and exciting. She sifts through her memories—of the island out there in the bay that she so often sailed past on excursions in the summer, of the cabin she once glimpsed there, set back from the rocky shore, barely visible between the trees. And of something her father once said, about how an enterprising merchant could carry his wares around the coves by boat in the summer... and in the winter, when the ice lies twelve inches thick in those stagnant pools, by sled.
She pulls back and gazes up at his face, the curve of his forehead, the heavy brows with deep eyes underneath. “There’s a place we could go,” she says, “if you’re not too afraid.”
But he is afraid. She’ll remember this later, the way he hesitated, and wonder if it was only fear of the ice that held him back or something more. If despite his pretty promises, he was never really so certain—of himself, of her, of what lay ahead of them beyond that frigid night. But in this moment, she simply feels thrilled by the idea that she might be the braver of them, leading the way and daring him to follow.
She steps onto the ice.
“Miriam,” he calls softly, but she raises up her lantern and beckons him with her other hand to come. She can already see the island, dark and solid against the moonlit sky, and the ice beneath her feet is as firm as granite. When she shivers, it’s with excitement rather than fear.
She takes another step, and another.
And after a moment, that endless pause, he follows.
They trudge together, not speaking, the snow crunching lightly beneath their feet. He stays a few steps behind her until her feet touch rock, and then steps up beside her. They are on the shore of the island, where a tumble of rocks gives way to a short stretch of beach, then a thick stand of evergreens.
“Where—” Theo begins to say, and Miriam holds her lantern up again. The light jumps against the rocks, the trunks of the trees, and between two of these, a glimpse of weathered wood.
“There.”
Years ago, during the long and idle summers of her childhood, Papa would take the family out and around this island in a little sailboat. He never mentioned the cabin, and Miriam never asked about it, even though she often noticed it as they passed. It was just part of the landscape, as unremarkable as a rock or a buoy or the neighbor’s house across the cove. But now its existence feels to her like destiny. Whatever purpose the cabin once served to the person who built it, now it seems like it stayed standing all these years just for tonight, just for her. For them. Four walls and a roof to shelter the lovers from the cold, from the world, from judgmental and prying eyes. The door creaks on ancient hinges when it opens, and the lantern light spills over bare floor, a tiny woodstove in one corner, a wooden platform that might be a bench or a cot, depending. There’s a tin cup with the ancient remains of someone’s coffee perched on top of the stove, and a bearskin tacked up on the wall just inside the door, dusty but intact.
“Well, it’s hardly luxurious, but I think it will do,” Miriam says, or begins to. Her last words are lost under Theodore Caravasios’s lips. After this, there are only two pauses: one as Theo pulls down the dusty bearskin and spreads it over the floor, and then one more, sometime later, as he places a rough hand on each of her smooth, bare hips and asks her if she’s certain.
Her yes comes with no hesitation, no fear.
Later she’ll think about that, too.
Afterward, they lie together in a tangle, slick with sweat despite the cold. Theo is resting on his stomach with his face turned toward her and his eyes closed, and she looks for a long time at the broad landscape of his body. The rough hands, the ropy muscles, skin so sun-kissed that even in the dead of winter his arms and shoulders are still a deep tan. She’s contemplating the stubbled curve of his jaw when he opens his eyes and asks her to marry him.
“You know I’m out of my mind to even ask you,” he says before she can take a breath to answer. “And you’d be a madwoman to say yes. I have nothing to give you, Miriam. Nothing to offer.”
“Are you talking about money?” she says, and he frowns. She pushes her thumb into his furrowed brow, smoothing out the angry lines, laughing softly. “What would I want with money? I have money. Or my father does, more than he knows what to do with, more than I could ever need.”
He frowns harder. “All the more reason he’ll never give his consent. A man who knows the value of money knows better than anyone not to give his daughter away to a man who doesn’t have any.”
“Give me away!” She snorts. “I’m not a case of whiskey, Theo. Papa will listen to me. He’ll see how good you are. And he’ll see that I love you. How could he say no when I love you?”
For a long time, neither of them speaks.
Finally Theo stops frowning. “When will you tell them?”
Miriam bites her lip. “At Christmas, I think. He’ll be in good spirits then.”
“What will you say?”
She laughs, burying her face against his shoulder. “I’ve no idea. I suppose I’ll have to start practicing my speech. At least I have a few days.”
But she doesn’t.
It’s still dark, the moon now barefaced in the night sky, when she once again crosses the reach and races back down the pine path. It’s cold, bitterly cold, but she hardly feels it. Her skin is warm with the memory of his body, her neck rubbed raw by the stubble on his cheeks, her lips bruised where he kissed her once more, fiercely, before they parted ways. She trips through the snowy garden like a drunken dancer, so careless in her joy that she realizes too late that she has forgotten to dim the lantern. She hurries to shutter it, thinking that it’s all right, that they’re all still asleep, that surely no one has seen her. She does not see the man standing in the shadows beside the door. She does not notice him fall into step behind her as she steals back inside—but when she turns to pull the door closed behind her, he’s there. Looming, leering, his face inches from hers.
“Well, well,” Smith says, and she lets out a small shriek as he catches her by the arm, plucks the lantern from her hand, and pushes her roughly inside. There’s a grin on his face all the while, one that makes Miriam’s stomach turn. She’s terrified, and he’s enjoying it.
“Let me go,” she hisses, and Smith chuckles.
