snuck back into her parents’ well-appointed home after a long night and knew from the housekeeper’s averted gaze that she had survived her own wildness again. Anyway, it seemed unlikely that a little predawn walkabout could unsettle the swiftly-moving love story of Vida Hazzard and Fitzhugh Farrar.
The match was as good as decided.
But once she remembered Fitz, she remembered something else.
“Sal?”
“Yes?”
She didn’t look back at him, she just kept walking—haughtily, like a girl who expected to be told the truth. “Where did you say you were going? When we started off talking about the weather.”
“It doesn’t matter now.”
“It does to me.”
“To get help. In the boat.”
“You were going to—leave us? Today?” Fitzhugh had showed her the boat—but it had seemed that that was a ways in the future.
“Fitzhugh thought it best to go now. There may still be Farrar boats out looking for us.”
“Oh . . .” A darkness welled inside her. Of course she knew that it was perfectly logical—if she was going to spend the winter by a fireplace in Manhattan with Fitzhugh, then someone was going to have to go for help soon. It was so frightening, the idea of Fitz or anybody going back out to sea. But really Fitz, who she had only just begun to know. She glanced up at the sky helplessly. It was then that she lost her footing. One foot skidded, the other twisted miserably. She fell, rolled, found herself half hanging from the cliff. “Oh!” she exclaimed, as she clung to the rocky edge with stinging hands.
“I have you,” Sal said, grabbing her by the arms. “I have you.”
He said so, and only then did she believe him. The rest of her was dangling over the rocks, the water below, but he had her arms firmly. Weirdly, he was smiling.
“Why are you smiling?” she demanded.
“Your face—it’s different when you’re afraid.”
“I almost fell to my death!” she exclaimed. Her heart skipped. “I still could,” she whispered, sensing the open air beneath her feet.
“No. We’re almost to the beach now. It’s only a ten-foot drop. At worst you’d break your ankle.”
“I’d rather not,” she said, and with a strong pull he brought her up. She kicked at the edge, pushed with her feet, and felt the solid earth beneath her. Beside Sal again, she thought to tell him he should not be so cavalier about her ankles. She had almost found the words. Then she noticed how her fall had knocked the earth way—it was loose, precarious, dirt and rocks scattering beneath them, beginning to give way. She scrambled back without thinking. Meanwhile Sal went on crouching above that unreliable earth. Before she could say anything, it began to crumble and give way. His face was perfectly calm, not even really surprised, as he fell.
One moment he was right next to her, the next he was going down.
It was true what he had said—it was only a ten-foot drop. But when he hit the rock below he cried out in shock and pain.
“Are you all right?” she called to him.
“Yes.” But he didn’t sound all right.
“I’m coming down to help you,” she called.
“No.” He shook his head and met her eye. “Fitzhugh wouldn’t like it. Go back, before they know we’re out here together.”
She was afraid that the cliff would give under her as well. Sal’s dark eyes met hers, and she saw he was serious. He hadn’t seemed to care about propriety before, and she was struck by the oddness of him caring now. He was in pain—she’d heard it in his voice—but his face suggested he was afraid of something else.
In any case, he was right. With a strange reluctance in her heart she made her way back to the camp, where the others were just now waking up.
Eighteen
Without learning of the kiss in any explicit way, the people of Farrar Island (as the men were calling it), knew something had occurred between Vida and Fitz. They knew that despite their tragic circumstances they were witness to what was sure to become one of the great love stories of their time. And because they, like all people, are fed love stories from their earliest consciousness, they understood that matters could not proceed smoothly from this moment. They, like Vida, wondered what the setback would be, how the lovers might be separated so that all could work out happily in the end.
The morning after Fitzhugh romanced Vida in front of everybody, all the survivors wondered how those setbacks, that happy ending,