Reaching, a steersman must be careful. Don had secured the boom against an accidental jibe, but control remained tricky. He managed without effort. His body belonged where he was. His being had turned elsewhere.
Between watch cap and pea jacket, the snub-nosed face had lost its earlier cheerfulness. “Why won’t you marry me?” he pleaded. “I want to make an honest woman of you, really I do.”
“This is honest enough for me,” she laughed.
“Flora, I love you. It’s not only that you’re grand in bed, though you are, you are. It’s … your soul. You’re brave and dear and a thousand times more bright than me. It’s proud Fd be to have you bear my children.”
Humor died. She shook her head. “We’re too different.”
“Was the Queen of Sheba too different from King Solomon?”
“In this country she would be.”
“Is it the law you fret about? Listen, not every state forbids marriage between the races, and the rest have to respect it once it’s happened where it’s allowed. That’s in the Constitution.”
The same Constitution that says a man can’t take a glass of beer after a hot day’s work, she thought. “No, it’s what we’d have to live with. Hatred. Isolation from both your people and mine. I couldn’t do that to our children.”
“Not everywhere,” he argued. “Listen, you’ve heard me before, but listen. I won’t keep my trade forever. In a few more years I’ll have more money piled together than we could -spend in a hundred. Because I am really a careful, saving man, in spite of liking a good time. I’ll take you to Ireland. To France. You always wanted to see France, you’ve said, and what I saw made me want to go back, during the war though it was. We can settle down wherever we like, in some sweet country where they don’t care what the color of our skins may be, only the color of our hearts.”
“Wait till then, and we’ll talk about this.” Maybe by then I can bring myself to it, to seeing time eat him hollow. Maybe I’ll be sure by then that he won’t grow bitter when I tell him—because I can never deceive him, not in any way that matters—and will even be glad to have me there in my strength, holding his hand as he ties on his deathbed.
“No, now! We can keep it secret if you want.”
She stared across the dancing waves. “I can’t do that either, darling. Please don’t ask me to.”
He frowned. “Is it you fear being the wife of a jailbird? I swear to God they’ll never take me alive. Not that I expect they’ll catch me at all.”
She looked back at him. A lock of hair curled brown from beneath the cap and fluttered across his brow. How like a boy he seemed, a small boy full of love and earnestness. She remembered sons she had borne and buried. “What difference would it make whether a justice of the peace mumbled a few words over us, if we aren’t free to stand together in sight of everybody?”
“I want to give you my vows.”
“You have given them, dearest. I could weep for the joy of that.”
“Well, there is this too,” he said, rougher-toned. “I don’t plan on dying, but we never know, and I want to make sure I leave you provided for. Won’t you give my heart that ease?”
“I don’t need an inheritance. Thank you, thank you, but I don’t.” She grimaced. “Nor do I want more to do with lawyers and the government than I can possibly help.”
“Um. So.” He gnawed his lip for a minute. “Well, I can understand that. All right.” His smile burst forth like the sun between clouds. “Not that I’m giving up on making you Mrs. O’Bryan, mind you. I’ll wear you down, I will. Meanwhile, however, I’ll make arrangements. I don’t trust bankers much anyway, and this is a profitable time to liquidate my real estate holdings. We’ll put it in gold, and you’ll know where the hoard is.”
“Oh, Don!” The money was nothing, the wish was the whole world and half the stars. She scrambled to her knees in the cockpit and pressed herself against him.