Right after dinner, the wind picked up. With a glance, Captain Gregg stoked the glowing embers in the hearth into a roaring blaze. "'Tis a gale, we'll have soon, Madame," he advised a tad too formally, still playing to my mother. Daniel cast a sideways glance in her direction. She turned the page in her book then winked at me out of the corner of her eye. I stifled a smile. Martha peered out of the parlor's bay windows. "Captain Gregg, a gale to you is a blizzard to us. That's some nasty weather moving in. Candy and Jonathan please run and get the candles." By this time, the howling wind with its stinging mixture of sleet and snow was so loud we could barely hear her. Somewhere outside, a shutter thumped ominously against the house. "It's a nor'easter, isn't it Captain Gregg?" Jonathan inquired excitedly.
No sooner were the words out of "the lad's" mouth than we all perked up, as if by speaking the dreaded word, Jonathan had mustered all hands to deck.
Mom dispatched Candy to the guestroom, for her shawl. Jonathan the opportunist begged Martha for "hot, hot chocolate." I curled my feet up on the sofa and gratefully sipped whiskey-laced coffee. The coal-fired furnace struggled valiantly in the basement, but New England Power & Light soon gave up without a fight. The lights flickered off, came back on, and then died with a finality that sent me scurrying to the sea chests for the feather beds and down comforters. The kids scampered behind, whining the fireplace in their room wasn't hot enough to keep them warm. The Captain, to my chagrin, companionably agreed with them.
And so it was that four, instead of two of us, ended up in front of the fireplace in the master cabin. Mother deemed the children's room warm enough anyway, and curled up in Candy's bed for the night. Martha opted to pull out the cot and sleep in front of the parlor fireplace. The kids settled happily into down-filled sleeping bags on the leather sofas nearest the hearth in my room, their sleepy pink faces flickering in the light of the Captain's fire.
I kissed them good night. It wasn't long before Jonathan began to snore and Candy emitted the trademark yawn which always signals her descent into deep sleep.
"This was your idea," I reminded the Captain softly, as we tucked the blankets securely around the kids. "Now I get to be cold because you, my dear, will have to take your ethereal warmth right up to the wheelhouse. We can't sleep together with them here." We sat on the bed anyway, and his arm wound quickly around my waist. Daniel tried to slip his hand up my sweater until he remembered about Playtex bras. Undeterred, he reached for the waistband of my stretch pants. I closed my eyes and sighed, desirously, for a brief second. His fingers stretched lower, past the inconvenience of my underwear and almost into the dark wetness below.
"Captain." I exhaled softly with regret. I pulled him to his feet and we moved resignedly back to the hearth. I held my hands to the fire, trying to distract myself. The children were obviously sound asleep, but still… The Captain's arms quickly encircled my shivering body from behind. He nuzzled his face into my neck and the sensation of his lips and tongue at the base of my throat made it very hard for me to stand straight. I sagged against him slightly, and felt his arousal against my back. Daniel stopped. He buried his face in my hair. His arms tightened around my waist.
"There can be no turning back now, Carolyn." For a crazy moment, I thought he was talking about, well, a most inappropriate tryst in the soon-to-be nuptial bed. The wind continued unabated, battering the French windows with such force I reconsidered Candy's opinion about the drafts in her room. Daniel's arms tightened around me. The fire crackled loudly before one of the burning logs crashed onto the embers below. I turned to face him. Daniel smiled sadly. My eyes widened. "Why would you even say such a thing, Captain?" I whispered. A stifled cough, then the sound of a small body turning all-too-self-consciously over in a sleeping bag. Had to be Jonathan. Awakened by the log.
Daniel kissed me soundly on the mouth, his hands running up and down my back. "Madame, I think I'll turn in now." I stared at him. "What did you mean there's no turning back now? I'm not dragging you to the altar!" I pleaded silently. But his mind closed to mine. "Well, my beautiful bride-to-be, I suppose I'll have to head up to the Widow's Walk to cool off!"
"I bid you good night, then." He nodded in the direction of the couches, where two tow-headed children lay, suspiciously immobile. "Shall I awaken Jonathan and Candy at seven in the morning, then, to assist me in shoveling snow?"
Jonathan gasped. Candy groaned. Daniel winked, and left me without so much as even another kiss. Instantly, the room grew colder. What had he meant? I fumed. I'll follow him in a minute, I thought to myself. I lay down, waited patiently for the children's breaths to even out – and fell asleep myself. It was a very dark 2 a.m. when I awakened. The room was warm again. Daniel takes such good care of us. I smiled appreciatively at the ceiling.
Then I saw him. Seated at the foot of the bed, watching me. Self-consciously, I sat up and brushed my tousled hair out of my eyes. And reached for him. "Madame," he seemed so serious as he took my hand and kissed its palm. Aroused, I leant toward him, then --
A familiar stab of insecurity as I pulled my hand from his, remembering our earlier conversation. I propped myself up on the pillows and pulled the comforter up over my shoulders.
Silence.
"Daniel?" I queried, just loud enough to be heard over the unrelenting wind. Not for the first time I felt us sailing into more than just a storm.
"You think I'm steering you towards the shoals?" he answered my thoughts. "To founder on uncertainty and regret for daring to love? To leave you as your husband once left you -- "
I blinked, and he was beside me. Intensely focused blue eyes staring inquisitively, straight into my soul. Suddenly, I knew. "You didn't really realize did you, until tonight, that four other lives center around us, depend on us, on all of this working out?" I asked, my voice faltering. "It's not too late, if this isn't what you really want. A family and responsibilities, I mean. My charming, elegant, nosey mother." I smiled, but wanly, not bravely as I had intended. "It really isn't too late to turn around, we could go back to the way things were – "
Anything, I thought, not to have to leave him, to vacate Gull Cottage. We could make passionate love by night and be friends by day – or, just be friends. I would do anything necessary, I realized, to keep him in my life. To keep the children's lives on the even keel he'd brought to their tumultuous young lives. To the stability he'd added to mine.
I don't think I've ever felt so vulnerable in my whole life. Maybe that's what love really is, risking everything to offer oneself freely. "You don't have to marry me, just be with me."
"Oh, my darling." He pulled me into his arms and kissed me, chastely at first, then so ardently I could barely tell where his lips ended and mine began. "I would do anything to keep you in my afterlife. It's just that last night, in front of the fire, with the children behind us, I felt the full force of what we're undertaking."
"This is dead reckoning," he continued, referring to what I believe is sailor talk for determining the location of a ship without reference to the sun or stars. "There is no turning back, nor would I wish it so. I did not mean to frighten you, Madame.
I stroked his chiseled features, his lovely face, with my hand. "There was no turning back for either of us – ever – since that very first day you commandeered the station wagon and returned us to Gull Cottage." My voice wavered. "You turned the lights on, and the fires, and I knew you accepted us for better or for worse. I've never really looked back, Daniel. And I wouldn't have left, really, over the clam chowder Admiral. Even after Vanessa, before you wrapped the shawl around my shoulders…blast it Daniel, I will deny saying this if you ever tell the children, but we really do need a Captain aboard our ship."
He kissed me again, and I reached for him. He pushed me gently back upon the pillows.
"I fear I cannot drop anchor in the master cabin even in these wee hours of the morning due to my command presence as Jonathan and Candy's new father."
"I thought you could make anyone sleep – soundly, sir," I suggested. "Can't you sprinkle enough sand in their minds to make them oblivious to everything for at least five more hours, oh Captain of my heart?"
Daniel kissed my eyes. "There's always the bathroom," I murmured wickedly, seeking his mouth with mine. "We could –"
"Coffee, Mrs. Muir?"
It was Martha, at my bedside no less. I smelled the coffee and heard her voice from beneath layers of sheets and comforters. Blast! It was 9:30 in the morning.
"Time to get up, dear. We've a wedding to prepare for."
"I suppose there can be no turning back now."
"Wedding jitters?" Martha asked.
"Too early for jitters," I said, sipping Martha's strong brew. "Where's the Captain?"
"He sent me to wake you up, said something about responsibility and commitment. Did you kick him out last night?"
Martha misses nothing. Ever. "Be sure and tell Mother," I suggested with a smile, closing my eyes and savoring the aroma of strong coffee in the cold sea air still seeping through the windows.
"Moral obligations indeed," I thought to myself as Martha headed back down the stairs. "He put me to sleep right along with his other two moral considerations."
"Indeed, Madame." His voice burst into my thoughts followed, several seconds later, by a physical manifestation in the Master Cabin. "But our two moral dilemmas are pulling away in the car, as we speak, headed to Portland to order a wedding cake with their grandmother and her trusty sidekick, the ever-egregious Martha."
"Why Captain – does that mean they won't be headed back to port anytime soon?"
"Blast it woman! Why can't you ever let me chart a proper course?" He shed his jacket as he approached the bed. The Captain's turtleneck and pants would doubtless magically disappear next.
"This ship has sailed, oh Captain of my heart. It's time for me to get up and attend to nuptial preparations." I threw a pillow at him, and was not surprised when he allowed it to pass straight through him.
"That's a little disconcerting, don't you think?" I laughed, and jumped out of the other side of the bed. "As if I could make love with someone you can pass a pillow through! If we're going to be married, you'll have to learn to fight with dignity and honor!"
"Like this?" He rematerialized right behind me, and scooped me off my feet.
"Daniel, this is not one of our blasted stories, put me down. No blood and swash for you this morning!"
Of course, he didn't.
But he did leave me enough time to write this journal entry, the last before my improbable wedding tomorrow.
Out of this world! I believe the flower children now say.