By The Sea, Book One: Tess (18 page)

"The Earl of Dunraven is a rotten sport,"
claimed Henry Smythe, a Wall Street colleague of Aaron's. "The man
dragged the New York Yacht Club through two long years of
hair-splitting negotiations over the conditions governing the race.
Outrageous, I say."

"You can't blame him for trying to get
himself dealt a fair hand by the New York Yacht Club," interrupted
Malcolm Landis, who had his own reason for sticking up for the
British yacht with its Irish captain (he had applied for membership
to the exclusive club and had been rejected).

He leaned in toward Tess. "The way it was,
the Americans held all the cards. Look how they rigged the game:
the New York Yacht Club had their choice of boats to put up for
each race; the challenger got only one. The New York Yacht Club
could build in secret; the challenger had to submit detailed plans
of its yacht a full ten months before the race. What's more, the
New York Yacht Club could and did tear up the conditions governing
the America's Cup Races whenever they chose! There are those on
both sides of the Atlantic who say that what it amounts to is this:
it's New York's ball and it's New York's bat, and if they don't
like the way the game is going, they move the bases."

"Now wait. Now wait," put in Mr. Clyde
Jarvis, a much older man who kept brushing Tess's arm not quite
accidentally. "Whatever the Club's faults, the fact is they've made
good on them. It's a reasonably fair contest now, thanks or not to
Dunraven, and a more exciting one, what with both boats sailing
over the line at the gun."

He turned to Tess with a gaze far too
intense for the subject under discussion. "Probably you didn't know
that up until two years ago, the yachts had two minutes after the
starting gun to get over the line; the crossing time was calculated
into the final result and—"

"For God's sake, Clyde, what does a young
lady care about your dry technicalities?" Landis cut in. "All he
means to say, Miss Moran, is that all hell breaks loose now, with
both yachts mowing down the spectator fleet to get over the line at
the sound of the gun."

Smythe took a gold watch from his fob pocket
and noted the hour. It was nearly time for the ten-minute warning.
"I have it on good authority," he announced, "that Dunraven
considers the Americans quite capable of cheating. If you ask me,
he shows all the symptoms of paranoia. It just isn't sporting," he
intoned.

"Not at all like the English," agreed
Jarvis. "But then, the man ain't English, even if the challenging
club behind him is." He turned to Tess again with an appraising
look. "Will you be cheering for your Irish countryman, Miss
Moran?"

Her first trap. Up until now Tess had
considered the day a success. She was dazzled by the fleet, curious
about the races, pleased to be the treated with such gallantry. She
was grateful to Aaron for having seen to it that another young
woman came aboard, even though she had become seasick instantly and
had gone below, where she remained.

"I have no wish to see the Americans lose,"
she could in all honesty reply.

"Ho!
Tepid but tactful!" cried
Jarvis. "Aaron, this protégée of yours has her own share of Irish
diplomacy."

"Do you think so?" asked Aaron innocently.
He had just joined the company after conferring with his captain.
Leaning against the rail, his arms folded across his chest, he gave
Tess a look of soul-melting intimacy as he said, "I seem to find
myself scorched more often than soothed."

Flushing, Tess said, "I ought to see how
Miss Appleton is faring. Perhaps I can make her more comfortable.
Excuse me please, gentlemen." With her eyes she curtsied to each as
she passed them, leaving each man smitten in her wake.

As for poor Miss Appleton: she was still
green, still moaning. She waved Tess away and buried her face in
her pillow; the sailor's life was not for her. Tess pulled a light
blanket up over the invalid and stepped quietly from the stateroom.
In the passageway she met Aaron.

"Any better?" he asked.

"Not until she steps on dry land again, I
think."

"Tess, this is impossible," he said in a low
voice, brushing her lips with a kiss. "I'm ready to sweep the lot
of them overboard to have you alone again."

"It was your idea to come see the Races,"
she said with a smile not entirely free of malice. "Besides,
everyone has been very kind to me."

"Oh, yes. You're a smashing success. And I
shall personally smash old Jarvis in the face if he drools on you
one more time."

"He seems harmless," she replied,
shrugging.

"The very rich are never very harmless," he
grumbled.

"I don't see why you—?"

And then she did. "Do you mean, you're
afraid he'll outbid you for me?" she asked Aaron dryly.

He cradled the back of her head in his hands
and gave her a long, searching look. "Maybe I am," he admitted.
"You don't realize—you're so inexperienced. So young, Tess."

"That's right. And I draw the line when a
man needs a cane to get around," she answered curtly, offended by
his candor.

She pulled away from him and returned on
deck in time to see both hundred-ton yachts jockeying for position
at the starting line. A gun had gone off, obviously, because the
cheering was thunderous. But from the start it seemed, even to
Tess, not a close contest. The
Valkyrie III
was majestic but
outmatched. The first race of the ninth defense would in no way
rival the last great race of the eighth defense.

"Well, Miss Moran, it looks as if the Cup
will not be hauled away to the British Isles this go-around," said
Malcolm Landis sympathetically. He actually sounded
disappointed.

Tess suspected that he did not want America
to lose so much as he wanted the New York Yacht Club to. "I think
no matter how the race is resolved, everyone will have a good
show," she said. "The yachts are thrilling to watch, are they
not?"

They were. At nearly a hundred and thirty
feet long, each carrying over twelve thousand square feet of sail
and a practically unlimited number of crew, the two huge yachts
were bound—just by having shown up at the line and engaged in
combat—to impress most ordinary mortals.

Still, it was no contest. When the Irish
nobleman's
Valkyrie III
finally crossed the finish line
nearly nine minutes after the Americans'
Defender,
it was
Aaron who ominously remarked, "Look out now; Dunraven likes to lose
less than any man I have seen."

****

The cruise back to port was the usual march
of triumph. Once again America was on her way: one down, two to go.
She'd show England what was what. America had better boats, better
sails, better technology. Naturally. She was a young country, an
ambitious country, pitted against an old and complacent one. If the
group aboard the
Enchanta
seemed annoyingly confident, who
could blame them? England still viewed yacht racing as a nice old
gentleman's sport.

The brash, upstart Americans knew
better.

There wasn't room to swing a cat in
Gravesend Bay, so a lunch-hook was dropped, and after a cold
buffet, more America's Cup talk, and a final toast to the Races, to
Tess and to the unfortunate Miss Appleton (who was still nowhere to
be seen), the party broke up, to regroup on the day of the next
race. The guests, including a still-woozy Miss Appleton, were run
ashore in the launch, and Tess and Aaron, feeling very much like
worn-out hosts, were left to put up their feet over a pot of tea
and a bottle of brandy in Aaron's cabin while the
Enchanta
poked tiredly around the Bay, looking for space to bed down
securely for the night.

"You were quite wonderful, Tess," Aaron said
as he tamped tobacco in his Meerschaum.

Tess, in stocking feet and with eyes closed,
was waiting for the tea to revive her. "I was not."

"Good Lord, Tess. Every man aboard fell in
love with you today. Why do you say you were not?"

"Because I had too good a time! I found
everything and everyone fascinating. I loved the Races, got caught
up in the excitement—I didn't even have the decency to become
seasick! In short, I behaved horribly unlike a lady," she said with
a sigh.

"You're a disgrace to your sex," he agreed
amiably.

"I mean it, Aaron. How must it have looked
to the other yachts? Do you think I didn't notice the women aboard
them? They appeared so fashionably bored, with now and then a
condescending smile if they weren't too weary to manage it. I never
saw any one of them venture anywhere near the sun—and look at me,
burned to cinders!" She pressed her fingers to her hot pink cheeks.
"I wanted you to be so proud of me, Aaron."

"Tess, you were toasted by two millionaires,
a scion of one of New York's oldest families, and a tongue-tied
artist who hardly got a word out all day, so enamored was he.
Preston did manage to say, incidentally, how delighted he would be
to paint you, but I discouraged him. He's not that good."

Tess replied: "The 'scion' you refer to has
been disowned by his family; you told me so yourself."

Aaron sighed. "You hear only the parts you
want to hear, my darling."

"Someone once told me," she said, still
fretting, "that I could walk easily among society. It's not true.
To society I look and act like what I am:
une fille de
joie."

"A woman of the evening? You are my lover,
Tess—a very different thing."

"Is it?"

A little exasperated, he said, "You will be
taken for my mistress, or my daughter, Tess—you must make your
choice."

"I suppose … there is no other?"

"None that I know of," he replied with a
studied calmness, striking a match and putting it to the bowl of
his pipe. "By the way, do you think our poor Miss Appleton will
revive enough to attend the soirée aboard the
Matador?"

Tess accepted the deliberate change of
subject with grace, glad enough to retreat from so ludicrous a
topic as the possibility of Aaron's marrying a laundry maid. "I did
feel sorry for her," she admitted. "She told me before she left
today that she considered throwing herself into the sea, only she
was too ill to stand up." And then: "Is
she
someone's
mistress?"

Aaron shrugged. "Probably."

"Don't tell me whose. I don't want to know,"
Tess said, jumping up.

"Tess, what
is
the matter with
you?"

"Oh, I don't know, Aaron. I feel so ...
irritable. I suppose I am thinking of my debut today," she
explained with a wry look. She covered her face with her hands.
"I'm sure that was Mrs. Van Anton on the schooner that came
barreling past so close to us. After all," Tess said, beginning to
pace, "the season is all but over in Newport. Everyone who isn't
going to Hot Springs for the cure will be rushing back to New York
to prepare for the fall season and another round of balls and
parties—"

Aaron was watching her pace, mildly amused
by her misplaced anguish. "What do you care whether Mrs. Van
Anton—or Mrs. Astor herself, for that matter—saw you or not?"

"Well, I
do
care," she confessed. She
looked up at him. "Don't you?"

He hesitated before answering her, then
said, "Let me rephrase the question. Can you possibly think
they
care whether they saw you or not?"

"I suppose not. How silly of me," she said
with a lift of her chin. Mrs. Astor could not have managed it
better.

The sound of chain rattling through the
hawsepipe made her say, "Look: we're anchored, and it's still
early. I think you should go round to the
Matador.
I feel
guilty keeping you from your little band of friends. After all,
there is a victory to celebrate." It came out sounding like a
dare.

He thought about it a moment, then said,
"Only if you come with me."

Awful thought! Who knew who would be there?
"No—no, I should lie down with a cool damp cloth over my cheeks.
I'm sure I'll feel better by the time you return." She did not, of
course, expect him to leave.

Aaron stood up and came over to her,
brushing away a loose curl from the pink skin beneath it. "Come
with me; I'm sure Mrs. Astor has an engagement somewhere else," he
said with tender irony.

But it was not Mrs. Astor Tess feared
running into; it was finding herself among a whole bunch of
filles de joie.

And so Aaron dressed, and kissed her, and
Tess listened anxiously at an opened port as the huffing sound of
his steam launch became more faint. She lay down fully clothed, and
dozed, and awoke when the ship's bell rang eleven-thirty, and fell
in and out of sleep for the next few hours. She never heard the
launch return but was jolted awake by the sound of Aaron bumping
into something in the dark and cursing; earlier she had turned the
wick up high, and the lamp had burned out. Eight bells sounded; it
was four in the morning. Tess lay utterly still, nursing her
heartache.

When he climbed into bed beside her, she
smelled alcohol and something more intimate, something harder to
define. She waited without sleep for him to wake up, shaking out
from her memory all the summer's tales of debauchery on the big
yachts anchored off Newport's Gold Coast.

Jealousy and fearfulness: new emotions,
both.

The eighth of September was a lay day for
the dueling yachts, and so was the ninth. Nonetheless, even though
there was no racing, behind-the-scenes activity was intense. The
rumor mill turned out reports of the Earl of Dunraven's continuing
displeasure, and it was confirmed that both boats were remeasured
the day after the first race, and their load waterlines marked at
his insistence. (It was characteristic of the fever that afflicts
Cup watchers that they could find endless suspense and drama in the
simple act of loading up a given boat with its crew, gear, and
sails and then seeing how deep into the water it sank.)