Fortune's rocks_ a novel - Anita Shreve [71]
“Well, then, I will tell you I will destroy them, but actually I will not,” he says.
And she cannot help but smile.
Haskell does not take them along the coast road, as he suggested to Olympia’s father he would, but rather veers immediately onto the Ely road. The tide is low, and the marshes are gullied out for as far as Olympia can see. The mud makes miniature cliffs and canyons within the larger labyrinth. When the two of them are out of sight of the house, Haskell draws abruptly to the side of the road.
“I have something for you,” he says.
He takes a tiny velvet box out of his pocket and opens it. She is not prepared for the locket, an exquisite gold oval with her initials delicately engraved on its surface.
“I cannot,” she says.
“Yes, Olympia, you can. I want you to.”
The gold shines warmly in the sunlight.
“There is so little I can give you,” he says. “Please accept this. Let me have the pleasure of knowing that you wear it.”
He turns her shoulders so that he can fasten the clasp behind her neck.
“I shall never take it off,” she says, turning back.
“I know that you cannot allow others to see it,” he says. “But you can wear it like this.” He slips the pendant beneath the collar of her dress. She can feel the gold falling between her breasts. He rubs the back of his finger against the cloth where the locket has fallen. And perhaps it is that intimate gesture, that one gesture out of a hundred gestures, that makes the tears come into her eyes.
“I meant to make you happy,” he says, pulling her toward him. “Oh, Olympia, this is all wrong for you.”
She draws away from him and dries her eyes. She sniffs once. “The question of whether or not what we do is wrong for me is irrelevant,” she says, unwilling to repudiate what they have so recently won. “Of course it is wrong for me. More so for you. It is wrong altogether. But I thought we had agreed not to squander our joy by chastising ourselves.”
Her hat falls backward and tumbles into the grass. He laces his fingers through the bun of her hair and draws her head back so that her throat is exposed. She is twisted, contorted on the wooden seat, and her skirt is already rucked up to her knees. Their embrace is awkward, and he cannot reach her from the side. He jumps down from the wooden seat, takes her hand, and leads her into the marshes.
Together, they sink to their knees, the tall grass bending beneath them, and he pulls her farther down so that they are lying together on their sides, facing each other. He struggles out of his jacket and slips out of his braces. He unfastens the front of her dress while she pulls his shirt from his trousers. The cloth billows out like a parachute. She slips her hand up the length of his chest, and it seems the boldest touch of her life.
Nearby, she can hear the low whomp and flutter of a bird’s wing beating against the water. Something sharp digs into her side. The sun is so blinding, she has to shift his face over hers to shield her eyes. She wants to say the word beloved aloud. She hesitates, then does so — once, then twice, then three times — the word emerging in gasps, as if she were being pummeled. Olympia, Haskell whispers into the side of her hair.
He takes her earlobe into his mouth and presses the heel of his hand against her through the cloth of her dress. There is a quickening through her body. With an instinct she has not known she possesses, her hips rise to meet his hand. How is it that the body knows? She stretches her legs and pushes herself urgently against him. The new sensations within her are keen and knife-edged. Her shoulders slide down against the grass, and she arches her back. Haskell holds her tightly, his face buried in her neck.
They lie together in the marshes. The wet seeps through the grass.
“I could not have imagined this,” she says.
She wants to speak further of this thing that has shaken her body as if it were a rag doll, this thing that has left her with a curious thread of lingering desire. She wants Haskell