New York_ The Novel - Edward Rutherfurd [255]
She laughed. “I was just thinking of lizards when you came.”
“There you are then,” he said. “Great minds think alike. Or perhaps lizards do.”
She lay back. She was all alone, lying beside a man, but nobody could see.
So when he turned and gently kissed her, she didn’t resist. She let him do it. And when he said, “You are so beautiful, Mary,” she felt as if she was.
And soon he began to kiss her in a way she had never been kissed before, exploring her lips and her tongue, and she knew that this must be the beginning of what she should not do. But she let him all the same and soon she was responding, and she felt her heart beating faster and faster. “What if someone should see?” she gasped.
“There’s no one within miles,” he said. Then his kisses grew more passionate, and his hands began to rove, and she became so excited that although she knew she mustn’t, she didn’t want him to stop. And why not? she thought. For if not now, perhaps it would be never.
She could feel him, hard against her. He was beginning to loosen her dress. His breath was coming in little gasps.
Then Gretchen’s voice. Gretchen’s voice from the beach. Gretchen’s voice coming nearer.
“Mary?”
Theodore cursed, and pulled away from her. For a second she lay there, feeling abandoned. Then, with a sudden surge of panic, she scrambled behind Theodore, seized her sketch pad, found her hat and crammed it on her head. So that a moment or two later, as Gretchen came over the sand dune, she saw Mary, perhaps a little untidy, but quietly sketching, and her brother, sitting a few yards away, staring at her as she came toward them, with the stony gaze of a serpent that is ready to strike.
“Hello, Gretchen,” said Mary calmly. “Why don’t you take Theodore for a walk while I finish my sketch?”
It was late in the afternoon before they got back to the inn. Nobody had talked much. But as they entered one of the guests in the hall told them there’d been trouble on Manhattan that morning. News had come with the afternoon ferry.
“What happened?” asked Theodore.
“The Draft Office up at Forty-seventh was attacked. Set on fire, I believe.”
After supper, the landlord said that there had been some more trouble in the afternoon. He’d heard it from the hotel along the street. There had been several fires.
“The telegraph isn’t working,” he reported, “so we haven’t any details. It’s probably nothing much.”
The day had been hot and humid. Out here, with the sea breeze wafting in from the Atlantic, the humidity had been of no consequence, but over in the streets of New York, it must have been unpleasant. And even out on the porch after supper, it began to feel rather oppressive.
After a short while, Gretchen went inside for a few minutes.
“I’m going for a walk to look at the sea,” Theodore announced, taking out a cigar.
“I’ll come too,” said Mary.
It was quiet on the beach.
“I’m sorry Gretchen came,” said Mary.
Theodore nodded. “Yes.”
“Are you staying a few more days?”
“I’d like to,” he said. “Though I have work at the studio.”
“Oh,” said Mary.
They stared out over the water. Banks of clouds were gathering now, promising rain, and relief.
“We’ll see what tomorrow brings,” said Theodore.
That night, Gretchen and Mary went to bed as usual. Gretchen didn’t say anything about Theodore. Just after dark Mary thought she was going to cry. She was glad that, moments before, the rain had begun to fall outside the window, masking all sounds.
It was the middle of the night when she awoke, and realized that Gretchen wasn’t there. She waited a while. Not a sound. Then she got out of bed and went to the window. The rain had stopped, and the stars were visible again. Looking out, she saw nothing at first. Then she made out a pale shape, moving about on the little patch of grass. It was Gretchen, in her nightdress, pacing up and down in front of a bank of reeds.
Mary did not want to call to her in case it woke the household. She stole quietly out of the room, down the stairs and outside.
“What are you doing?” Mary whispered. “You’ll get soaked.”
“I can’t sleep,