“A perfectly valid science. And I wouldn't knock voodoo, either. I've seen some pretty impressive results. Now breathe slow and easy. Just sit here.” He slid open a window behind her and let in a blast of air. “I've got to get back to the helm.”
She leaned back against the wall and let the fresh air slap her cheeks. On the other side of the bridge, the children huddled, hoping that Moby Dick lurked under each snowy whitecap. She watched the cliffs, but as they swayed to and fro, she closed her eyes in self-defense.
She sighed once, then began to formulate a complicated trigonometry problem in her mind. Oddly enough, by the time she'd worked it through to the solution, her stomach felt steady.
Probably because I've got my eyes closed, she thought. But she could hardly keep them closed for three hours, not when she was in charge of a trio of active children.
Experimentally, she opened one. The boat continued to rock, but her system remained steady. She opened the other. There was a moment of panic when the children weren't at the window. She jolted upright, illness forgotten, then saw them circled around Nathaniel at the helm.
A fine job she was doing, she thought in disgust, sitting there in a dizzy heap while Nathaniel piloted the ship and entertained three kids. She braced herself for the next slap of nausea as she took a step.
It didn't come.
Frowning, she took another step, and another. She felt a little weak, true, but no longer limp and clammy. Daring the ultimate test, she looked out the window at the rolling sea.
There was a tug, but a mild one. In fact, she realized, it was almost a pleasant sensation, like riding on a smooth-gaited horse. In amazement, she studied the terry-cloth bands on her wrists.
Nathaniel glanced over his shoulder. Her color was back, he noted. That pale peach was much more flattering than green. “Better?”
“Yes.” She smiled, trying to dispel the embarrassment as easily as his magic bands had the seasickness. “Thank you.”
He waited while she bundled the children, then herself, into jackets. On the Atlantic, summer vanished. “First time I shipped out, we hit a little squall. I spent the worst two hours of my life hanging over the rail. Come on. Take the wheel.”
“The wheel? I couldn't.” “Sure you could.”
“Do it, Mom. It's fun. It's really fun.”
Propelled forward by three children, Megan found herself at the helm, her back pressed lightly into Nathaniel's chest, her hands covered by his.
Every nerve in her body began to throb. Nathaniel's body was hard as iron, and his hands were sure and firm. She could smell the sea, through the open windows and on him. No matter how much she tried to concentrate on the water flowing endlessly around them, he was there, just there. His chin brushing the top of her head, his heartbeat throbbing light and steady against her back.
“Nothing like being in control to settle the system,” he commented, and she made some sound of agreement.
But this was nothing like being in control.
She began to imagine what it might be like to have those hard, clever hands somewhere other than on the backs of hers. If she turned so that they were face-to-face, and she tilted her head up at just the right angle...
Baffled by the way her mind was working, she set it to calculating algebra. “Quarter speed,” Nathaniel ordered, steering a few degrees to port.
The change of rhythm had Megan off balance. She was trying to regain it when Nathaniel turned her around. And now she was facing him, her head tilted up. The easy grin on his face made her wonder if he knew just where her mind had wandered.
“See the blips on the screen there, Kevin?” But he was watching her, all but hypnotizing her with those unblinking slate-colored eyes. Sorcerer's eyes, she thought dimly. “Do you know what they mean?” And his lips curvedcloser to hers than they should be. “There be whales there.”
“Where? Where are they, Nate?” Kevin rushed to the window, goggleeyed.
“Keep watching. We'll stop. Look off the port bow,” he told Megan. “I think you'll get your money's worth.”
Still dazed, she staggered away. The boat rocked more enthusiastically when stopped—or was it her system that was so thoroughly rocked? As Nathaniel spoke into the P.A. system, taking over the mate's lecture on whales, she slipped the camera and binoculars out of her shoulder bag.
“Look!” Kevin squealed, jumping like a spring as he pointed. “Mom, look!”
Everything cleared from her mind but wonder. She saw the massive body emerge from the choppy water. Rising, up and up, sleek and grand and otherworldly. She could hear the shouts and cheers from the people on the deck below, and her own strangled gasp.
It was surely some sort of magic, she thought, that something so huge, so magnificent, could lurk under the whitecapped sea. Her fingers rose to her lips, pressed there in awe as the sound of the whale displacing wafer crashed like thunder.
Water flew, sparkling like drops of diamond. Her camera stayed lowered, useless. She could only stare, an ache in her throat, tears in her eyes.
“His mate's coming up.”
Nathaniel's voice broke through her frozen wonder. Hurriedly she lifted the camera, snapping quickly as sea parted for whale.
They geysered from their spouts, causing the children to applaud madly. Megan was laughing as she hauled Jenny up for a better view and the three of them took impatient turns with the binoculars.
She pressed herself to the window as eagerly as the children while the boat cruised, following the glossy humps as they speared through the sea. Then the whales sounded, diving deep with a flap of their enormous tails. Below, people laughed and shouted as they were drenched with water.
Twice more the Mariner sought out and found pods, giving her passengers the show of a lifetime. Long after they turned and headed for home, Megan stayed at the window, hoping for one more glimpse.
“Beautiful, aren't they?”
She looked back at Nathaniel, eyes glowing. “Incredible. I had no idea. Photographs and movies don't quite do it.”
“Nothing quite like seeing and doing for yourself.” He cocked a brow. “Still steady?”
With a laugh, she glanced down at her wrists. “Another minor miracle. I would never have put stock in anything like this.”
“ 'There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio.' “
A black-suited pirate quoting Hamlet. “So it seems,” she murmured. “There's The Towers.” She smiled. “Off the port side.”
“You're learning, sugar.” He gave orders briskly and eased the Mariner into the calm waters of the bay.
“How long have you been sailing?”
“All my life. But I ran off and joined the merchant marine when I was eighteen.”
“Ran off?” She smiled again. “Looking for adventure.”
“For freedom.” He turned away then, to ease the boat into its slip as smoothly as a foot slides into an old, comfortable shoe.
She wondered why a boy of eighteen would have to search for freedom. And she thought of herself at that age, a child with a child. She'd cast her freedom away. Now, more than nine years later, she could hardly regret it. Not when the price of her freedom had been a son.
“Can we go down and get a drink?” Kevin rugged on his mother's hand. “We're all thirsty.”
“Sure. I'll take you.”
“We can go by ourselves,” Alex said earnestly. He knew they were much too big to need an overseer. “I got money and everything. We just want to sit downstairs and watch everybody get off.”
“All right, then, but stay inside.” She watched them rush off. “They start spreading their wings so soon.”
“Your boy's going to be flying back to you for a long time yet.”
“I hope so.” She cut herself off before she voiced the rest: He's all I have. “This has been a terrific day for him. For me, too. Thanks.”