somehow or other absorbed all the legends of the ladies and gentlemen and their carriage rides around Central Park and their fancy dress in the ballroom of Mrs. Astor and the way they watched each other from across the opera. As she stood, in the middle of a great river, on a ferry surrounded by other ferries, alongside the unattainable bachelor who had seemed the male version of her equally unattainable self, a curious feeling sprang spontaneously from the region of her breastbone, and it was so unnatural that it took her a moment to identify it: she was nervous.
“Do you think they’ll like me?”
Fitzhugh was leaning against the rail, staring off at the city, and he laughed and glanced at her. “Who?”
“I don’t know . . . New York, I guess. Your friends.”
“What would make you worry about a thing like that?”
“I’m not worried, exactly. It’s only that . . .” Vida’s gloved hand floated involuntarily to the back of her neck, where Nora had done as good a job as she could with pins to make it look as though her shorn hair was swept up in some fashionable arrangement. “Well, you don’t think it makes me less chic, to have my hair so short?”
Fitz’s grin darted to one side. “Oh, Vida,” he said, his voice changing, lowering—it was no longer the sure voice of the Farrar scion but something more private. “Is this because I’ve been a gentleman with you?”
His eyes went over her shoulder, determining who was around. But the other passengers were staring at the city growing larger before them, oblivious to the famous couple in their midst.
“When I was on that raft, in the storm, when the sea was all around me and we seemed certain to drown, I kept thinking of you, thinking of your lips, and I thought that if I could only steer her true, I’d survive and I’d be able to kiss you again.” His gaze held hers, and his hand moved to her corseted waist as though to show her how much he’d thought about her body.
Her heart did a pirouette, thinking that he was about to kiss her again, here, in front of everyone.
Holding her waist he leaned in, let his lips hover at her ear. She was breathless, waiting, wondering what he would do. Then he placed a chaste kiss just slightly off the mark of her mouth, and returned to the position he’d been in before—elbows leaned casually against the rail—as though nothing had happened.
“I’ve been thinking about that a long time,” he said, staring out at the river but smiling in a way that she felt was just for her.
Her heart was pounding, although she found herself curiously unable to reply in kind. Not truthfully. Which was odd—she had been the master of a lightly bent truth in the service of getting what she wanted. And getting a boy to kiss her so that he would want to go on kissing her, and thus have to make all the promises that might otherwise be withheld, had ever been her game. But the game did not thrill her as before, and without the game, the moment had lost some frisson. Say something, she admonished herself, but before she had a chance, Fitzhugh concluded their conversation.
“Don’t worry—they are sure to be impressed by you.”
Vida nodded and returned her gaze to the big city growing larger by the second—she was reminded of that long-ago day at the Embarcadero, of the sheer cliff of the Princess, of the jittery rush that was the beginning of a voyage, when a girl has a mission and something to prove. She wasn’t sure what she wanted now.
Or, she wanted too much.
But something was different on this journey—she was different.
They knew she was coming, of course—she was betrothed to one of their own. But because of the ordeal of the survivors of the Princess, she had become rather legendary herself, and she was looking forward to showing them how impressive she was, too. She gripped the rail, and imagined the adventure that lay beyond those piers.
Tried to, anyway.
But that phrase of Fitzhugh’s—“I’ve been thinking about that a long time”—echoed in her thoughts. Her heart clenched. She thought of kisses she had had, and kisses that never were. She wondered for the millionth time what would have happened on that beach the day they were rescued if she hadn’t stepped away. If she and Sal had arrived there a little earlier, a little later.