Ruth Morren - Lilac Spring

She’d said I love you in her frank, childlike way. She loved the boy who’d come to Haven’s End fourteen years earlier. But it was a naive, girlish emotion that would soon pass once she’d been back a while and realized Silas van der Zee was the same uneducated man she’d left two years ago, who’d never been beyond this coast, who never could come anywhere near the kind of gentlemen she’d met in her travels. Soon she’d outgrow her childish fancy and turn admiring woman’s eyes on someone like Warren Townsend.

But what about Silas himself? Don’t you love me? Why did the question make him squirm like a pale grub dug out of the dark, damp earth and exposed to the unfamiliar light and air?

What did he know of love? Did he even know how to love?

He loved boats. He could hold on to that one fact. He loved the feel of smooth wood emerging from the sanding, knowing it was something tangible, something he could force and shape and tame. He loved the look of a rift-sawn timber with its straight grain, knowing its superior strength, its unlikeliness to cup or warp in the water. He loved the smell of cedar and oak and pine that permeated the boat shop even up to his room, the only home he’d known for the past fourteen years.

He loved the challenge of taking straight, strong, unbending logs and cutting and shaping them into a buoyant craft. He loved the triumph of seeing that craft ply through the waters, daring that depthless expanse of waves, defying nature itself when it brought even the wind to do its bidding through that mathematical precision of setting sails at a certain angle to move forward.

He loved the challenge, the speed, the feel of that maiden, the sailing vessel.

But loving a woman—a real, flesh-and-blood woman? Silas sat up, his elbows on his knees, his chin on his fists, too uncomfortable with the question to lie still. Again he felt unable to respond, as if he were untaught or immature in this aspect of the organ called the heart. It seemed to him it had stopped developing when he was twelve and had left home.

He still remembered waving goodbye as his boat pulled away from the harbor. Little Emma, come to see him off, holding his mother’s hand. His mother, still looking lost, as she had since she’d received the news that his father wasn’t coming back from his fishing expedition. And his older sister with her harsh, Nordic looks prematurely middle-aged although she was only in her twenties, since she’d had to take over the running of the household.

Silas had been one of the last of the siblings to leave home. Almost all the others, older, had already found employment elsewhere.

So Silas had arrived at Winslow’s Shipyard and his heart had given itself over to boats. He’d lived among men and boats ever since. The only women he’d had contact with had been Cherish’s mother, a kindly, beautiful woman, and the plainer, more acerbic Mrs. Sullivan. With both, their conversation had been limited to Wash your hands, Silas. Wash your face. Don’t forget to scrub behind your ears. Clean your plate, Silas. Get your elbows off the table.

And then there had been Winslow’s cherished daughter, radiant and outgoing and sensitive to his every mood.

He didn’t know how to cope with these strange new feelings she was stirring in him. He felt stunted like a gnarled apple tree, beaten down by the salt-laden winter winds, standing squat and twisted beside the tall, majestic firs surrounding it.

Cherish talked about that high-flown sentiment called “love.” Was Silas’s heart even capable of housing such a noble-sounding emotion?

Tonight was the night she would find herself once again in Silas’s arms.

He might not realize what a wonder true love was, but Cherish Winslow was going to show him. She’d make herself irresistible to him.

After taking a sponge bath, careful not to touch her curls, Cherish donned clean underclothes, stockings, corset, coiled wire bustle and petticoats. Then she turned to her wardrobe.

Her dress already hung on the door, pressed that morning. Every ruffle stood up, every pleat lay perfectly flat. She lovingly took the pale blue dress off its hanger. An original Worth creation. Cousin Penelope had presented her to Mr. Worth himself in Paris, and he’d designed the gown for her, allowing her to see it modeled on one of the young French mannequins.

She buttoned the tiny row of buttons up her front and smoothed down the formfitting bodice. The upper skirt was formed en tablier, like a puffed-up apron draped across the front in loose folds and gathered in the rear to fall gracefully from the bustle. The underskirt was a shade of deeper blue and trimmed in a wide pleated hem.

With a glance of satisfaction in her full-length mirror, Cherish turned her attention to the details of hair and face. She rummaged in her jewelry box and brought out a black velvet choker with its amethyst pendant.

After placing it around her neck, she brushed her hair carefully, curling each ringlet around her fingers. Now she brought them up high on her head and fastened them with a tortoise clasp, and arranged the cascade of curls down her back and around her shoulders. Her amethyst earrings dangled from her ears. She frowned at her reflection, wishing she could use rouge the way the ladies in France did, but Aunt Phoebe would be liable to make a public spectacle of her, sending her upstairs to scrub it off her face. Instead she contented herself with putting a little rice powder on her face and pinching her cheeks to bring out the color. Finally she dabbed a little eau de toilette on her temples and behind her ears.

She stood and gave herself a final inspection in the glass. It was not a ball gown by any means; she knew enough not to wear anything too fancy for Haven’s End. What would Silas think? That was the only thing that really concerned her.

Sending a prayer heavenward, asking the Lord to bless her endeavors, she straightened the articles in her room, then left to see whether her first guests had arrived.

The corridor was crowded with young people. Cherish could feel Annalise’s hand clutch her arm in resistance, but she ignored it and blithely sallied forth into the crowd, greeting her friends and presenting Annalise to everyone she spoke to.

Her eyes scanned the hallway for Silas, but she didn’t see him. Disappointed, she entered the parlor with Annalise. Warren, taller than most of the people present, walked over to them immediately.

“There you are.” He turned his gaze from Cherish to his sister, and she could see the question in his eyes.

“Yes, here we are. I promised Annalise to stay with her until she is better acquainted with my friends.” She didn’t explain to him how reluctant his sister had been to come into the parlor at all. “Would you be so kind as to get us each a glass of punch?”

“Certainly.”

After that, Cherish was swamped with friends stopping to chat with her. The music started up in the opposite parlor and she wished she could loosen Annalise’s hold on her and seek out Silas. She had seen him come in. He had given them a brief greeting and left again, and she hadn’t seen him since. He was probably out on the veranda chatting with the menfolk.

Finally, feeling she was being released from an ordeal, Cherish left Annalise sitting with Aunt Phoebe and one of her friends and headed for the doorway. There Warren accosted her.

“Where’s Annalise?” he asked her.

Biting back a retort, she answered sweetly, “See, there? I left her with Aunt Phoebe and Mrs. Drummond.”

“I wanted to thank you for being so patient with her. She’s—” he hesitated, looking down at the cup in his hand “—very shy.”

Cherish felt her impatience evaporate, and her heart warmed to the man who showed such concern for his sister.