Ellen pulled Mathilda over the transom and into the rowboat, hugging her tight against her chest. Her sister’s cheeks had gone nearly blue, and Ellen sat on the thwart facing the stern, cocooning the shaking girl with her whole body.
It was only once the rescue was complete that Ellen suddenly felt the full terror of what could have happened. Her heart hammered against her ribs, blood rushed in her ears.
Some part of her that had long been sleepwalking through the past six months now felt intensely awake.
The fierce protectiveness that surged through her was raw. Primal. Mathilda was hers to protect, and she’d nearly failed. The girl hadn’t felt this small and fragile even as an infant.
Then again, as a baby, she’d never tried to sail a bloody boat all by herself.
The sodden weight of Ellen’s clothing dragged at her movements. Salt water dripped from her coat sleeves as she pushed her sister to arm’s length, studying her for injuries. “Are you hurt?”
Mathilda looked back at her, wide-eyed, as if she didn’t have the words to describe what had just happened to her. She bit her lip, but didn’t cry. Finally, she shook her head.
Ellen was partially relieved, but while her sister had many admirable qualities, silence wasn’t one of them. There was some kind of injury, just not to her body.
“That was so—” she fought for the right word. Stupid! Reckless! Dangerous!
“So brave of you,” Perk said from the bow.
Mathilda peered around Ellen’s shoulder at the stranger, then glanced up at her sister with questioning eyes. “I wasn’t scared,” she said. Then, despite her chin shaking with cold, the hint of a smile crept across her face. “A little scared.”
“Come here. Let’s warm you up,” Ellen said, twisting around on the seat to face Perk at the bow and heaving Mathilda up and over the thwart to the safer center of the boat. She’s okay, she kept telling herself, but it took her ages to unbutton her coat because she couldn’t get her fingers to stop shaking.
Perk turned the rowboat toward the shore again, expertly pulling with his right hand while pushing with his left. Then the powerful sweep of his oars propelled them forward, clean and neat, until the line to the dory grew taut and tempered their momentum. Despite the chop, Ellen noticed, Perk set just the right distance between the two boats. As expert a rower now as he’d always been, though he’d grown far more powerful.
The other dory tugged unhappily against its new leash, and the wind-whipped waves continued to lash at them. She realized he’d still have to row fast to reach the shore before one of the boats swamped.
Ellen pulled Mathilda into her lap, rubbed each of her starfish hands between her palms, and then enveloped her sister inside her coat. “I was worried sick, little one,” she said. “When I realized where you’d gone—” As she rubbed warmth back into her sister’s limbs, she found that even half-grown, the girl still fit perfectly in her arms.
“Pastor Bartlett was shouting at you so loud.” Mathilda said.
Perk threw Ellen a questioning glance, but she waved it off. Too much to explain under the best circumstances, and she wouldn’t have wanted to anyway.
“So I tried to go see the monkey instead, but the boat wouldn’t behave.”
Tears of relief surprised Ellen, spilling over her cheeks. Of course not, she wanted to say. Don’t you try that ever again! But what would that create? Another Euphemia?
“Everything new feels hard at first,” she finally said, rubbing heat back into Mathilda’s legs, through her skirts. “It helps to have someone teach you how to sail properly.”
“Did Papa teach you?” Her teeth chattered.
Ellen almost choked on memories of the careful lessons she’d received. How to use the tiny hairs on her cheeks to feel the direction of the wind. How to capture its invisible and stunning power in the trim of a sail—pulled tight on a beat, loose on a reach—finding the perfect orientation by letting the sail out until the forward edge luffed, then pulling back until it stopped. How to tack with gusto and jibe with caution. Her hand on the tiller. His hand over hers.
But it wasn’t Captain Papa’s hand.
“No, little one,” she said, only able to speak of the before times if she didn’t look at Perk. “It was actually this man who taught me to sail. Back when we weren’t much older than you. His name is Perkins—that is—I believe it’s now Captain Creesy.”
Out of the corner of her eye, she glimpsed Perk briefly take his right hand off the oar to tip his cap. “Nice to meet you, Miss Mathilda. I can see the resemblance to your sister.”
Ellen wasn’t sure if he meant the heart shape of her face, her adventurous spirit, or her idiotic recklessness, but she immediately felt self-conscious. Everything she could say to Mathilda got caught behind a thousand layers of meaning.
He taught me how to sail. I’ve missed him. I’m furious at him for never once writing. I utterly deserved his rejection—and a lot worse.
“Without him, I don’t know what would have happened to you today,” she finally said. “I just can’t imagine—” Her throat closed up before she could say more, and she shook with fear after the fact.
“Nothing to it,” Perk said. “Just a little Sunday row in the park.” But even he looked exhausted, straining to pull both boats as the wind picked up.
The rhythmic pull of the oars drew Ellen’s gaze to Perk’s shoulders, broader now than in her memories. Each stroke revealed the quiet strength in his movements, so different from the gangly boy she remembered. A bead of sweat traced its way slowly down his forehead.
When he glanced up and caught her eyes, she glanced away, heat rising in her cheeks despite the cold.
Mathilda squirmed in her lap, looking between them with curiosity. Ellen silently prayed she wouldn’t comment on how close they sat, how their knees nearly touched each time Perk leaned forward. The impropriety of it all would set tongues wagging, but in this moment, she couldn’t bring herself to move.
“It was the exciting kind of scared,” Mathilda said, perhaps for her own benefit.
An ice-cold wave leapt over the gunnel and buried Ellen’s lap—Mathilda included. She searched the bilge for a bailing bucket, but found none. Nearly a foot of water already sloshed back and forth between their feet.
Without Perk, Ellen would never have known that she loved to sail. Would never have begged Captain Papa to take her with him to Boston, Providence, and New York. Wouldn’t have pestered her father to teach her navigation, or discovered the magic formulas that leveraged the infinite scope of the heavens to place one tiny schooner on the vast plane of an ocean. Mathematics as invisible and as real a power as the wind itself.
“Your cheeks are all red,” Mathilda said to her.
Ellen did her best to ignore the comment. “How is it you were here?” She found the courage to ask. Perk looked confused for a moment, and she realized her question could have meant anything. Here in Marblehead. Here in the states. “On the shore, I mean. You weren’t—”
Good Lord, the wedding! How could she—? She studied each button of her soaked boots. “I didn’t see you at church.”
“I was walking,” he answered, voice tight, words as succinct as ever.
Still not ready to meet his eye, she watched the oars. One stroke. Two. An adept rower, the water eddied in tight circles around the blade before he raised it out of the water and sent it reaching behind him. Perk had an invisible power all his own.
The distance of half a lifetime descended in the silence. She held Mathilda like a pillow against her heart and braved another glance.
Perk’s shoulders tensed with each stroke, his coat glistening with spray.
“Had a difference of opinion with the old man,” Perk said, generously smoothing the awkwardness.
Ellen realized that she’d been right in church. That Perk hadn’t been a coward at all, but a man of utmost conviction and iron nerve.
She thought of how Perk’s father had always loomed over his life like a black rain cloud, flattening his spirit. His father must have engineered the match for him the same way Mama had tried for her. Somehow she’d always pictured men having so many more choices.
She weighed the weight of the words she needed to speak to him, and the opportunity, finally, for doing so.
I’m sorry for ruining your life.
I’m sorry that your father almost killed you because of me.
I’m sorry I was so weak.
Then Mathilda shifted in her lap and she decided to wait for a better moment. Maybe when they could be alone.
“Well,” she said, trying to convey an optimism she didn’t possess. “You’re a hero now. I’m sure rescuing a young girl will put you in his highest esteem—”
Was she blushing?
Perk barked a laugh. “If getting my own command didn’t sway him—”
He cut himself off.
Even now, Ellen realized, Perk chose not to brag in front of her. Of all the people who deserved it.
She reached deep to flash him her warmest smile. Not a plastered false cheer, but one that came from a deeper well of feeling. From the authentic truth.
“You deserve every bit of it, Perk.”
He wavered in his rhythmic rowing—just a hair—but enough for her to know. Under that heavy brown beard and bearlike shoulders, he was still the Perkins she knew. The strongest, most capable, most hurt little boy she’d ever known.
His face grew redder, and she wondered if he was thinking of a disappointed father, a jilted bride, or the devastating betrayal that had come between them, but the silence grew too interminable to endure.
“Mathilda was born after you left.” Ellen chatted nervously. “She’s seven. Captain Papa died last year. There was a storm. Off the Carolinas. His schooner sank. The Californian sank.”
But of course Perk knew his schooner.
“No!” The pain in his voice felt like a mirror reflection of her heart. “Oh, El—that’s awful news. I hadn’t heard. Captain Prentiss is—that is, he was—such a great man. I’m so deeply sorry, Ellie.”
“I should have been there when it happened,” her heart said back, hijacking her tongue. Her grief suddenly re-triggered by his sadness. “Sometimes, I wish I had been.” Had she just said that out loud? “Oh, don’t mind me. I’ve just missed—well, I’ve missed everything.”
He nodded, and she realized that he was the one person alive who understood her well enough that she didn’t need to clarify.
“I was always jealous that he was your father, you know,” he admitted. “I think I’ve always wanted to be like him. To be him, really.”
After a long pause, he finally looked up at her and tilted his head toward Salem. “You ever get out there? Since. I mean since—”
“Our trip?”
She thought of the wind, tugging her hair out of its lashings as they bounced along on their epic adventure. Perk steering, her navigating the currents and shoals, pulling up next to the merchantmen. The smell of tea and spices, cargo nets strung from the yards—the remnants of such exotic places. The dream they’d hatched to one day explore the world. Together.
Impossible, of course, but beautiful.
Who was she fooling with her mindless chatter? Perk knew every corner of her heart. All the keeping up of pretenses hit her as the most exhausting thing she’d ever done.
“A few times,” she said, “But it was never the same. Our adventure was the best day of my life,” she said. “And the worst. I was so wicked, Perk. I—”
She tried to say she was sorry, but sitting in her belly for eleven years, the stone of shame had grown too big to escape through her throat.
He grimaced suddenly, and she couldn’t tell if it was from the rowing or the memory.
They fell back to the uneasy silence. As they drew closer to the sand, she wondered whether to ask him about his family. Or his ship. Or his travels. She could barely imagine the life he must have led. But she felt she had no right to any of his stories.
Instead, she snuck glances at him as she talked to Mathilda. “You know you’re in big trouble, right? You’re going to have to apologize to Mr. Thompson for stealing his dory.”
“Borrowing,” Mathilda said. She seemed to come back to her precocious self, then, and began peppering Perk with questions.
“Where’s your boat?” she asked.
“It’s in New York,” he said. “Docked on South Street.”
Mathilda wouldn’t understand what those words meant, but Ellen heard Perk’s well-earned pride. The North River docks on the west side of Manhattan were for smaller coastal and rivercraft, while South Street was reserved for only the grandest of oceangoing vessels. Even the mighty Californian had only ever docked on the North River. That meant Perk had already achieved a grander commission than Captain Papa. A Caribbean run, maybe. Possibly, even one of the Atlantic packets to Liverpool.
“Is she big?” Mathilda continued.
“Not the largest merchantman in the fleet, I’m afraid.” He chuckled. “But she’s a full-rigged ship. Three sticks and fifteen squares.”
A ship? Not a schooner or bark? Ellen was stunned. Mathilda looked up at her for an explanation and she tried not to show her surprise in case Perk read it as lack of confidence in his abilities.
“Three sticks means she carries three masts—fore, main, and mizzen. We’ve worked on your times tables. If each mast holds five square sails—three times five is?”
“Fifteen squares.”
Perk whistled generously at her correct answer, and Ellen’s heart swelled. Mathilda’s teacher was trying to force her to memorize Bible passages instead.
“I hope you’ll not think the less of me for her size, little Miss Prentiss,” Perk said. “She’s big enough to cross oceans at least.”
Ellen could sense this was a different Perk. A wiser one. There was a thoughtfulness in the way he chose his words. A sturdy confidence that had once been fleeting.
The bow thumped the sand, and Ellen felt a stab of disappointment instead of relief. Perk shipped the oars, stepping into the water gallantly to help the two ladies off.
Mathilda was cold but safe. Ellen was soaked but felt an inkling of herself again for the first time in months.
Perk extended his hand and when Ellen placed hers inside his, for one tiny instant, everything was alright again. Papa was alive. Perk was her best friend. The future was bright with possibilities.
Then, in the distance, she noticed a small crowd had gathered on the beach—Mrs. Dodge with her perpetually pursed lips, the pastor’s wife, and several others whose faces blurred together in her anxiety. Of course, they’d witnessed the whole affair—again. In Marblehead, nothing stayed private for long.
It was uncannily like the day they’d come in from Salem. They’d been soaked then too, and nearly swamped, but had raced across the harbor with wild grins, dizzy with the victory of survival. Until they’d found everyone lined up on the beach, glaring with reproach. Mama’d nearly fainted. Mr. Creesy’s face had been purple with rage.
But Ellen also felt a shade of the same victory, that thrill of doing something well. Of achieving a successful end.
Ellen helped Mathilda over the gunwale, acutely aware the whispers would already be starting. Poor girl. Would they now paint her with the same wild brush as they had Ellen? The girl shivered violently, her lips taking on a worrying bluish tinge.
“We need to get you home and into dry clothes,” Ellen said, pulling her sister close.
Perk shielded her from the onlookers as he secured the second dory. As the ‘faithless’ groom, he must have felt the weight of their scorn even more than Ellen, but she was grateful for his broad shoulders.
“Do you sail to London?” Mathilda asked. The transition to land had no impact on her precocious interview, and Ellen secretly hoped she’d continue the questions all afternoon. As they began the walk from the sand to the street, she put a hand on Mathilda’s shoulder to urge her to walk slower.
See what a good man looks like? Ellen wanted to tell her. Don’t ever let yourself get pawned off to a cabbage farmer.
She wondered how to get Perk alone, in some quiet spot for her apology and also see to Mathilda. Should she invite him to dinner?
If she did, would he come?
“Been to London.” Perk put his hands casually in his pockets as he walked. “Started on the packets as a cabin boy till I worked my way abaft the mast.”
The details of Thames tidal charts swirled in Ellen’s head, along with dreams she’d long tucked away. While she could recite the tables from memory, Perk had seen the real thing. Just as he’d lived all the adventures they’d once imagined together.
She marveled how once upon a time, he’d been awed by her visits to Boston and New York. She’d been the sailor, then. The traveler. The one with all the tales to tell. Now his world included England and the whole Atlantic, and she’d never been south of the eastern seaboard.
She watched him tie up the boats with practiced ease, his movements betraying years at sea. He’d grown a full head taller than her, but didn’t stoop. He moved with the quiet assurance of someone who’d earned his place in the world.
Watching him now, she could see what others had always missed—the natural authority in his bearing, the careful way he gauged wind and water. He’d been born to command, regardless of what his father believed. Even as children, she’d recognized that spark of greatness in him, had seen how the sea called to something essential in his soul. Now that raw talent had been honed by experience, tempered like steel.
She feared he’d take the first opportunity on land to escape her company, but his fortitude had clearly grown along with his spine. He kept them company along the beach.
So much time had passed. And he acted with such grace. Perhaps he’d forgiven her after all. Maybe she didn’t need to ruin things with an apology.
“But now I’m in the tea trade,” he told Mathilda.
“China!” Only after Ellen spoke did she hear the unmitigated awe in her voice. A tea captain. The accomplishment made her gasp. It was the trade with the highest of financial stakes, the one that required the most exceptional navigational skills and seafaring experience in every condition. It was the most prestigious of all commands.
Even Mathilda had gone quiet in reverence as they walked along the half-moon of Great Neck Harbor.
“How is it?” Ellen asked.
“How’s what?”
For a moment, she thought she’d spoken too much of what was in her heart. How is it to have such powerful hands? How does it feel to be free? But she’d spoken too little.
“How is it to spend your life at sea? Sailing the world?”
“Yes,” he said.
“Yes?”
“Yes. It’s all those things you imagine, El. Challenging and infuriating. Beautiful and vast. Full of terror and wonder. It’s dynamic—always in motion, always in tension, always in transition. Well, you know. You’ve had a good taste of it.”
“Hardly. My longest passage was four days. What was yours?”
Perk grimaced suddenly. “Too long.”
Ellen couldn’t understand the dark shift in his tone, but he seemed to recover himself and continued in a more pleasant manner.
“But yes, it is all those marvelous things and a lot more difficult ones as well. Relentless work, and cold, and damp for months on end. Violence ignited by the smallest slights when too many men are locked up in too small a space for too long. Never enough food or sleep.”
He flashed her the wry grin that had always melted her heart. “It’s the best life in the world.” Then took three more steps before adding, “You’d adore it.”
The old dreams flashed in front of her, dangerous as lightning. Sailing past the horizon. Seeing the Orient. The Pacific Islands. Exploring like Captain Cook.
“I’m up this way,” Perk pointed with his thumb when they reached the fork between Darling and Front streets. “Will you be all right getting home from here?”
A polite goodbye, then. No dinner. No more time to be together. To talk. To explain.
“You’ve really done it,” Ellen said, half stalling. “Everything we ever dreamed of.”
Speaking the truth untwisted her insides as powerfully as strong drink. Then she heard her words and winced. “I mean you. That you dreamed of. I’m so proud of you, Perk.”
Now he looked embarrassed.
“I’m sure you’re the best captain in the fleet.” Ellen spoke nervously now to cover her mistake, but her certainty was genuine.
“Wish I could agree,” he said. “But I can’t lie, Ellen.”
Lie. The word stung like a slap. Had he meant for it to?
“I’m giving it everything I’ve got,” he continued. “But I’m not doing so well.”
Maybe he’d meant nothing by it.
“Just remember your currents, and you’ll do fine,” she said, remembering his incorrect angle to reach Mathilda. Ellen wrapped her sister in her coat again to buy a few more precious moments.
“I suppose I get too caught up in speed and lose sight of strategy,” Perk said.
Self-awareness was a new quality. He’d matured, then.
“Oh, but you’ve always been a master of speed,” she said. “It’s your greatest strength. Don’t sell yourself short. Trimming sail to get every quarter knot out, working the lifts and headers, steering straight as an arrow at the helm.”
Mathilda wrestled to get out from under the coat. She was freezing. Ellen had to get her home.
“Would that speed was enough,” Perk said. “Truth be told, I’ve been at the back of the fleet three seasons running. At this rate, there may not be a fourth.”
He grew quiet, his face drawn, and for a moment, Ellen worried she’d overstepped the line again. But then he looked up. “Hey. Maybe you could teach me a navigation trick or two before I leave tomorrow morning.”
“Tomorrow?” The word escaped before she could trap it behind her teeth. The shock of it stole her breath, her composure, everything she’d carefully constructed since seeing him again. Too soon. They’d barely begun to bridge the vast ocean of years between them.
He nodded but didn’t explain. “I can’t stay longer.”
Tomorrow he’d vanish again, leaving her with nothing but memories and regret.
Can’t stay.
Won’t stay.
Won’t stay for you.
A gust of wind cut through Ellen’s damp clothes, sending a violent shiver through her that had nothing to do with the cold. Her fingers had gone numb, her skin prickled with gooseflesh, but she barely felt it. The physical discomfort paled against the ache of watching him prepare to leave again.
Even as she forced her feet to walk away, she couldn’t take a breath. She kept waiting and waiting to suck in air that wouldn’t come and wouldn’t come. Until finally, it came in one great rush that almost knocked her over.
She turned and called back. “It’d take a lot longer than an afternoon to teach you proper navigation. You’ll just to have to take me with you.”
It was only when Perk shot her a look of terror that she realized what she’d said.
There was only one way a woman could travel with a man. He’d just squirmed out of one wedding. Did he think another would-be bride was throwing herself at him?
She nearly threw up her breakfast.
Perk swallowed, turning away from her before he spoke.
“Take care of yourself, Ellen,” he said.
You’ve just read the first five chapters—and Ellen’s voyage is only beginning.
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