Table of Contents

Cover Page

Excerpt

About the Author

Title Page

CHAPTER ONE

CHAPTER TWO

CHAPTER THREE

CHAPTER FOUR

CHAPTER FIVE

CHAPTER SIX

CHAPTER SEVEN

CHAPTER EIGHT

CHAPTER NINE

CHAPTER TEN

CHAPTER ELEVEN

CHAPTER TWELVE

Copyright

“I hate to think what you’d be like by moonlight.”

“That’s only sex,” Nell said testily.

“Nothing wrong with sex.”

How would she know? “One more thing,” she said with considerable determination. “You take the bed, I take the chesterfield.”

“Don’t want to talk about sex, Nell?”

“Do shut up, Kyle.”

“How bored all those men in Europe must be without you,” Kyle murmured.

Although born in England, SANDRA FIELD has lived most of her life in Canada; she says the silence and emptiness of the north speaks to her particularly. While she enjoys traveling, and passing on her sense of a new place, she often chooses to write about the city which is now her home. Sandra says, “I write out of my experience; I have learned that love with its joys and its pains is all—important. I hope this knowledge enriches my writing, and touches a chord in you, the reader.”

Seducing Nell

Sandra Field

www.millsandboon.co.uk

CHAPTER ONE

“OH,” NELL cried, “just look at the view! Please, Wendell…can you stop for a minute?”

“It’s only the barrens,” her companion said. “Nothin’ much to look at.” But, obligingly, he put his foot on the brake pedal and the ancient truck wheezed to a halt.

Nell opened the door, which squealed a metallic protest, and slid to the ground. Dumbstruck, she gazed around her.

I’ve come home, she thought. This is where I belong.

Although it wasn’t the first time in the past two weeks that she had had that thought, it was the first time it had struck her with such intensity. Newfoundland, island province off the east coast of Canada, had captured her imagination and her heart from the moment she had stepped off the plane in St. John’s and filled her lungs with cool, fog—swept air that smelled of the sea. The spell had woven itself around her tighter and tighter every day that had followed. And now she was totally its captive.

Somehow I’ve got to stay here. I don’t know how. But somehow.

She couldn’t go back to Holland and pick up the placid threads of a life that could have taken place on another planet, so remote did it seem, so alien to the woman she had become in just two short weeks.

Wendell cleared his throat noisily. “You ready to go, missie? I got to get to the coastal boat in Caplin Bay on time to unload this stuff.”

Nell turned around, the sunlight twined in her chestnut hair. Wendell’s age was anything from seventy up, and his clothing in a state of disrepair that more than matched his truck. But his bright blue eyes twinkled in a way that she was sure would have been quite irresistible in a younger man; and for the past three hours he had regaled her with hair—raising tales of ghosts and smugglers and shipwrecks. She said impulsively, “I’m going to stay here for a while—just let me get my gear out of the back.”

“Stay? What for?”

Because it’s so beautiful that I could die happy right now? Because I’ll do anything to delay the moment I have to get on the coastal boat in Caplin Bay and go to Mort Harbour?

She said lamely, “I want to take a few pictures—it’s so pretty.”

“Hell of a place in winter.” Wendell scratched at his whiskered chin. “Don’t feel so good about leavin’ you here, missie. This ain’t St John’s, you know. Not much traffic on this road so as you’ll get another ride.”

“I’m used to hiking. Besides, I’ve got my tent and I always carry food with me. I’ll be fine.” She flashed him a quick smile, hurried around to the back of the truck and wrestled with the lobster twine that kept the backboard in place. Then she hoisted her pack onto her back and retied the knots. Feeling the heat reflecting from the pavement, she walked to Wendell’s window and held out her hand. “Thanks so much, Wendell. I really enjoyed meeting you. Perhaps I’ll see you again when I reach Caplin Bay.”

“I hangs out there quite a bit You take care now, missie.” He shook her hand with surprising strength, winked at her and, in a clash of gears, headed down the road. The truck belched a farewell puff of black smoke. The rattle of the engine diminished in the distance. Nell moved to the gravel shoulder of the road and looked around her.

They had been climbing steadily through scrub forest until Wendell had turned the last corner. Spread all around her were the barrens—rounded outcrops of granite surrounded by low shrubs and licked by the pink foam of bog laurel. Delicate tamaracks huddled in the hollows. The afternoon sun glinted on the scattered ponds, turning them into gold coins tossed with a profligate hand over the landscape. The silence was so intense as to be almost a presence in itself.

Nell took a deep breath, filling her lungs with the clean, sweet air. She couldn’t go back to Holland. She’d smother there. Maybe, just maybe, when she got to Mort Harbour, she’d find a welcome…

A slight movement caught her eye. She turned her head. Where the rocks rose to a peak against the horizon on her left, a caribou had just stepped into the open.

She had been told it was rare to find caribou here in summer; they tended to migrate to higher ground in an effort to escape the flies. Her heart tripping with excitement, she crossed the road and carefully traversed the ditch. Caribou, she also knew, were relatively tame. With luck, she could get a closer look. Even a photograph.

The barrens had looked smooth and inviting from the road. But Nell had been in Newfoundland long enough to know that the smoothness was deceptive and the invitation a mockery; walking anywhere past ten feet from the highway could be extraordinarily difficult. Especially when laden with a heavy backpack. The first hollow she came to, she shucked off her pack and tucked it among some scrub spruce out of sight of the highway. After unzipping her smaller haversack, she loaded it with her camera, a couple of apples and her water bottle, and took off again. Her boots gripped the granite, slithered over clumps of wet grass and plunged into the dark brown peat, which sucked hungrily at her heels. She stopped to apply repellent, and saw with a jolt of pleasure that a yearling had joined the other caribou; Nell’s binoculars brought it so close she could see the tag ends of leaves hanging from its blunt muzzle.

Slowly, Nell lowered the binoculars. She was standing knee—deep in rose pink laurel blossoms. Flecks of mica in the granite sparkled and shone like tiny jewels; a sparrow was piping its small, clear song from a wizened spruce nearby. For a split second, she became a part of her surroundings, engulfed in a wave of happiness so pure it was as though she was bathed in the gold of the sun.

The moment passed, but the memory of it was hers. With a sigh of repletion, she counted a third caribou as it ambled into the open. It was a cow, like the other adult. Nell scrambled over a series of outcrops and jumped from rock to rock across a puddle. All three caribou had stopped to graze. She edged closer, keeping hidden from them as much as she could, until she reached a clump of feathery tamarack near enough to give her an excellent view. Crouching down, she made a seat for herself by a granite boulder and stretched out her legs, focusing the binoculars. Across the barrens drifted the click of caribou hooves; she was convinced she could even hear the animals’ jaws munching on the dry lichens. Their coats were glossy with health, the hair a blend of thick cream and a lustrous dark brown. Like café au lait, she mused, smiling to herself.

Time passed. Nell munched on an apple and took a couple of photos. And then, from the dark ribbon of the road, she heard the distant murmur of an engine. The vehicle that appeared was a cross between a Jeep and a van. To her intense annoyance, it slowed, pulled over and came to a halt. She saw light glint from what could only be binoculars.

She tucked herself lower, thankful that she was hidden from sight Scowling, she watched the driver get out and stretch. A man. She didn’t want to share her solitude with a man. She didn’t want to share it with anyone. Maybe once he’d had another look through his binoculars, he’d be on his way.

Instead, he shut the van door so quietly she didn’t hear the sound and headed across the road toward the caribou. Even from her faraway perch, she could see that he was limping slightly.

Go away, she thought fiercely. Get lost. Go to Caplin Bay, or Drowned Island, or St. Swithin’s. But don’t come here.

A sparrow flitted into a nearby shrub, momentarily distracting her. Rather horrified, she discovered that she was glowering at the man as though he was her mortal enemy. She wasn’t normally so antisocial. But then, nothing had been normal ever since that day, late in May, when she’d decided to clean up the attic of the house in Middelhoven where she’d grown up. In an old trunk pushed against the chimney, she had found a diary belonging to her grandmother, Anna, a shadowy figure whom she only remembered meeting once, long ago, when she was a little girl. She’d taken the diary downstairs and had sat up late that night reading it from beginning to end.

Only two months ago. It felt like a lifetime.

The man, Nell was glad to see, was struggling with the bog and the underbrush just as she herself had. Unfortunately, if he kept going in the direction he had chosen, he would end up tripping over her. In these vast stretches of wilderness, where people were so few and far between, it seemed a supreme irony that an intruder should shatter her peace and happiness. Damn him anyway, she thought vengefully.

He was closer now, near enough that she could hear the crackle of twigs from his passage and the rasp of his boots on the rocks. He was wearing jeans and a dark checked shirt, his sleeves rolled up to the elbows. His binoculars were slung carelessly over one broad shoulder. With a faint twinge of unease, she noticed his height, the strength latent in those shoulders and the grim lines of his face. No moment of perfect happiness for him. He looked like he was on his way to the funeral of his best friend.

She had to do something. She couldn’t let him fall on top of her. Not with that face. Definitely not the kind of man to find a chance meeting on the barrens amusing. She tensed, bracing her knees to stand up, wondering if she should clear her throat to warn him of her presence before she spoke.

And then he solved the dilemma for her. His foot slipped. He lurched forward, grabbing for the slender trunk of the nearest tamarack, his involuntary cry of pain raising the hairs on the back of her neck. As she instinctively twisted to help him, he began to swear, with quite astonishing virtuosity, in French.

His jaw was tight, and Nell could still see the deeply bitten lines of pain around his mouth. But her sense of humor, which had gotten her into trouble on more than one occasion, managed to ignore these symptoms. She half stood up and demurely, in French, added a couple of very crude expressions that she had learned in her younger days in Paris and that he had omitted.

The man whirled. Before she had time to even croak a protest, she found herself slammed on her back against the granite boulder, his body pinning her so hard that the rock dug into her spine. His hands bit into her shoulders, his face only inches from hers. His eyes were blazing like those of a man demented.

He’s mad, Nell thought blankly. Out of his mind. I’ve come all this way to be murdered by a psychopath.

But Nell hadn’t roamed Europe on her own without learning a thing or two; and she had never been one to lie down tamely to fate’s blows. Fueled by a mixture of sheer terror and adrenaline, she brought her knee up to his groin with lightning speed.

The man’s body wasn’t there. Her knee knifed empty air.

Before she could strike again, he had hauled her roughly to her feet, shaking her as if she were of no more account than a carpet to be beaten. With a truly impressive degree of rage, he snarled, “What the hell do you think you’re playing at, sneaking behind a tree like that?”

She should have said something conciliatory to calm him down. Rule one. Don’t fight back. Shoving against his chest with all her strength, Nell seethed, “Are you a raving maniac? How dare you attack me like that! I wasn’t sneaking—I was watching the caribou.”

“You little idiot! I could have killed you.”

He was still shaking her. She might as well have been yelling at the caribou for all the effect she was having, she thought furiously, and kicked him hard in the shins. “Let go!”

The toe of her boot connected with bone. He swore again—in English this time—his voice as rough as the granite against which he had flung her. But then, mercifully, he stopped shaking her, although his fingers remained clasped around her shoulders. In all honesty, Nell was just as glad, for she wasn’t sure she could have stood upright.

He took a deep breath and said flatly, “Hell and damnation.”

Nell stayed very still, watching as the light of sanity returned to eyes so dark a blue as to be almost black, feeling the shudder rip through his body as though his frame were her own. Her anger vanished, and with it her terror. Briefly, the man closed his eyes, swallowing hard. His shoulders sagged so that she felt the weight of his hands on her shirt. The weight and the warmth, a warmth that was oddly disturbing.

He was no madman. Of that she was sure. Although she couldn’t have said where that certainty came from.

She said with a lightness that very nearly succeeded, “It seemed a pity that you’d left out a couple of quite effective swearwords. French can be so expressive, can’t it? And I really was about to stand up and speak to you when you fell.”

His eyes flew open, all his anger rekindled. “Goddammit, do you have to remind me?”

“Goddammit, do you have to yell at me?”

“You’re yelling, too!”

“Little wonder,” she snorted.

The sun was slanting across her face, shadowing her cheekbones and her straight nose, dusting her skin with gold. He took another of those deep, shuddering breaths; his eyes were roaming her face as if he had never seen a woman before, as if he was striving to commit each one of her features to memory.

Nell stood very still, shaken by the intimacy of his gaze, feeling as if every secret she had ever held was exposed to him. Then he said quietly, “When I was a kid, we used to pick bunches of blue—eyed grass to give to the teacher. Have you ever seen it? The flowers are like little stars that are blue and purple at the same time. Your eyes remind me of them.”

“Oh,” said Nell, feeling her cheeks grow warm and trying very hard to repress the knowledge that he was easily the most attractive man she’d ever come across.

Although that admirably succinct North American word “hunk” would express her opinion far more accurately.

With an exclamation of self—disgust, the man dropped his hands to his sides, and the mood was shattered. “You saw the caribou from the road, too. That’s why you were hidden.”

She had forgotten about the caribou. Glancing toward the bluff, she whispered, “They’ve gone.” Across her face flitted regret and the memory of that moment of shining happiness.

He said heavily, “I scared them when I fell.”

Her nostrils flared. “I expect you scared them when you jumped me. A starving wolf’s got nothing on you.”

“There aren’t any wolves in Newfoundland.”

“A bear, then,” she said pettishly.

“Bears don’t starve in the summertime.”

There was a gleam of humor deep in his dark eyes. “Hunk” also began to seem a very wishy—washy concept. Devastating? Gorgeous? Sexy? Any or all of the above? Nell said, “It might be nice if you could bring yourself to apologize. I don’t usually expect total strangers to wrap me around a chunk of granite and then shake me out like an old rug.”

“Yeah…”

As he hesitated, Nell saw that any approach to humor had fled from his features. It was interesting that “handsome” wasn’t one of the words she had come up with, she mused. His face was too rough—hewn, too individual for mere handsomeness. Too used, she added thoughtfully. Hard used. Ill—used. And for rather a long time, unless she was mistaken.

He said in a staccato voice, “I—hurt my leg a couple of months ago. I’ve done very little hiking since then. It drives me nuts when I fall down like a two—year—old.”

“Real men don’t trip over rocks?”

“Real men can at least stand on their own two feet!”

Lines of frustration had scored his face from cheek to chin. His mouth was clamped shut. He had a beautiful mouth. Nell said hastily, “Keep going—apologies at some point are supposed to include that ordinary little phrase, ‘I’m sorry.’“

“That’s why I was angry,” he snapped. “I’ve just explained it. What more do you want—a diagram?”

“That may indeed have been why you were so angry,” she snapped right back. “But it doesn’t explain why I’m going to have bruises all over my back tomorrow morning.”

“Are you French?”

“I’m from Holland. Don’t change the subject.”

“You speak English extremely well,” he said suspiciously.

“Hooray for me. Are you with the CIA? Is that why you jumped me? Or do you fancy yourself as the next James Bond?”

“No wolves in Newfoundland and no CIA, either. What the hell would they want with this chunk of rock?”

“So you’re a policeman.”

“I am not. You’re the most persistent and inquisitive female I’ve ever met.”

“Only because you’re avoiding the issue,” Nell returned pleasantly. “Out of interest, do you go around attacking everyone you meet? Or do you just pick on women who are smaller than you?” It was difficult to see exactly how tall he was because of the uneven ground, but he definitely topped her five feet eight by several inches.

He ran his fingers through his hair, thick, wavy hair, worn a little too long and as dark as peat. As dark as the caribou fur, Nell realized with an inward shiver and hurriedly continued her survey. His nose was slightly crooked, he could have done with a shave, and there were frown lines in his forehead that shouldn’t have been there. No wonder she hadn’t considered him merely handsome, Nell thought, and waited for his reply.

As if the words were being pulled from him one by one, he said, “For the past few years, I’ve been in some rough places. The kind of places where you act first and ask questions afterward. You startled me. I didn’t even take time to think.” His smile was more of a grimace.

“So I immobilized you instead.”

“You sure did.”

His eyes narrowed. “You even speak like a Canadian. Are you sure you’re Dutch?”

“I first learned English from a Canadian couple who lived in the village where I grew up,” she said shortly. “I’m still waiting.”

“What for?”

“How about this? Petronella Cornelia Vandermeer, I’m extremely sorry that I terrified you witless and I apologize for acquainting you so intimately with a granite boulder. That’d do for a start.”

He held out his hand. “Kyle Robert Marshall.”

His handshake was firm, his palm warm, and she could lose herself in those midnight blue eyes. She said, tugging at her hand, “I’m called Nell.”

As though the contact had freed something in him, Kyle added, “I’m really sorry, Nell. I must have scared you.”

She stopped tugging, letting her palm rest in his. “The word ‘psychopath’ did cross my mind.”

Although his laugh was rueful, it made him look years younger. “You reacted pretty fast yourself.”

“Just as well you moved.”

He grinned. “Just as well, indeed. I’d have been singing soprano for the rest of my life.”

His voice was a rich baritone. Nell pulled her hand free and said with careful restraint, “A mosquito has just landed under your left ear.”

He brushed it away. “I left my repellent in the van.”

“I’ve got some.” Nell bent to her haversack, passed him the little plastic bottle and found herself watching his every move as he smoothed the liquid over his throat and arms. In the course of her work, she’d met a lot of men from countries all over Europe. Sophisticated Frenchmen, sexy Italians, devastating Norwegians, hunky Hungarians. But never one to pull her to him as instinctively as this man pulled her.

As he passed her back the bottle, Kyle said, “Where’s your car? I didn’t see it on the road—one reason why you took me by surprise.”

“I don’t have one. I was hitching a ride.”

He frowned. “On your own?”

She looked around. “No one else here. Besides, didn’t you tell me there aren’t any wolves in Newfoundland?”

“Newfoundland is not peopled entirely by saints.”

“You sound like my father,” Nell flung back, then instantly wished she’d kept her mouth shut.

“Don’t tell me how to live my life—is that the message?” As she nodded, he added softly, “Trouble is, I’m used to giving orders. And used to being obeyed. So I’ll drive you wherever you’re going, Petronella Cornelia. As a rather more concrete way of apologizing.”

“And what if I say St. John’s?” The capital city was an eight—hour drive from the barrens.

“You were headed south if you got out when you first saw the barrens. The options are therefore limited. Caplin Bay, St Swithin’s, Salmon River, Drowned Island…that’s about it.”

She liked matching wits with him, Nell realized breathlessly. “Where are you going?”

“Caplin Bay.”

She bit her lip. Wendell had been going to Caplin Bay and now Kyle was. Maybe it was time she went there, too. After all, she didn’t have to take the coastal boat for Mort Harbour right away. She could camp in Caplin Bay for a couple of days. Try to plan some kind of strategy.

With a sense of taking a momentous step, she said, “I’m going to Caplin Bay, too.”

“Good,” Kyle said briskly. “Let’s go.”

But as he half turned away from her, putting his weight on his left knee, it buckled under him. His features convulsed; his harsh intake of breath echoed in Nell’s ears. She grabbed for him, bracing herself against the nearest rock, aware for the second time of the lean length of his body. As though he resented her help, he pushed himself upright and shook free of her.

“Say it,” Nell said. “You’ll feel better.”

“You don’t let up, do you?” he said nastily.

“Would you rather I had hysterics? Or fluttered around you doing the helpless—female act?” Nell wrung her hands, batted her lashes—which were thick and dark and one of her better points—and simpered, “Oh, Kyle, where does it hurt?”

He gave a reluctant laugh. “Okay, okay. Unfortunately, I’ve used up my entire stock of French. And my mother’d be horrified if she ever found out I’d sworn at you in English.”

“German can be very expressive. I’ll teach you, if you like. Sounds to me like you could use a few more good cusswords.”

Gingerly, Kyle placed both feet on a patch of smooth granite and straightened to his full height. “For once, we’re in complete agreement.”

“We have all the way to Caplin Bay,” Nell said. He was over six foot, broad shouldered and narrow of hip. Dark hair, dark brows, dark eyes, and a dark past, too, unless she was very much mistaken. If she was smart, she’d head for St. John’s and not Caplin Bay. Then, uncannily, he responded with a similar train of thought.

“You know what? I can’t say I’ve ever met a woman quite like you.”

“My mother always said I was mouthy.”

Something must have shown in her face. He said gently, “Is she no longer living?”

“She died four months ago.”

“I’m sorry.”

He had invested the phrase with genuine feeling. She wouldn’t cry. Not here. Not now. Not in front of a stranger. “Let’s go,” she muttered.

“Perhaps you could use a few of those cusswords yourself.” As she glanced up, her eyes liquid with unshed tears, Kyle took an awkward step toward her, brushing her lids with his fingers, then smoothing her hair back from her face. “You have beautiful hair,” he said thickly. “Where it catches the sun, it shines like copper.”

Quite suddenly, the level of emotion was too much for Nell. She tilted her chin and said, “It’s awful hair—dead straight and too fine. That’s why I keep it bundled up.”

He said evenly, “It’s beautiful hair, Nell.”

As he tucked a strand into her braid, his fingers brushing her neck, she couldn’t hide her involuntary shiver of response. Terrified for the second time in their all—toobrief acquaintance, she said meanly, “Guess what? The wolfs just made a reappearance in Newfoundland.”

He flinched, and with bitter regret she knew she had cheapened his gesture beyond repair. He said in a hard voice, “Let’s get the hell out of here. You go first.”

And don’t offer to help…He hadn’t said that, but he hadn’t needed to. The look on his face had said it for him.

Nell adjusted her haversack over her shoulder and clambered out of the hollow where the tamaracks were waving their feather—green branches in the breeze. Not even looking around to see if Kyle was following her, passionately wishing her words unsaid, she headed for the little stream that she’d crossed on the way up.

CHAPTER TWO

AS NELL tramped along, she could hear Kyle following her across the barrens. Why should she be surprised that she had reacted to him with such terror? Hadn’t her mother spent years instilling a fear of men in her?

Not men, Nell. Sex.

With the result that Nell, who was twenty—six years old, who loved a good party and who had dated men all the way from France to Italy, was still a virgin.

Scowling, she clumped her way through the laurel and Labrador tea, blind to their beauty. Her virginity, so oldfashioned, so anachronistic, was a close—held secret. Probably still would be when she was eighty, she brooded irritably, swatting at a mosquito on her wrist

“Nell—look at the eagle!”

Startled, she turned around. Kyle was several feet behind her, pointing into the sky. She looked up and saw a great dark wingspan outlined against the blue as the eagle rode the thermals, its tail and head as white as the scattered clouds. She found the bird in her binoculars, almost certain she could see the hooked golden bill, and a few minutes later heard Kyle join her. She let the binoculars drop and looked right at him. “I’m sorry, Kyle,” she said. “I shouldn’t have made that crack about wolves.”

Absently, he rubbed his left thigh. “It was a cheap shot”

“Mmm…nothing like sighting an eagle for making one’s shortcomings obvious.”

He grinned at her. “Let’s agree on something. I’m not a psychopath and you’re not a bitch.”

She hauled out her water bottle. “I’ll drink to that” She took a big gulp and passed him the bottle. As he tipped back his head and drank, she let her eyes wander from his throat muscles down his chest to his taut belly, then the length of his legs in their faded, close—fitting jeans. Beware, said her mother’s voice. He’s as beautiful as the eagle, Nell thought And quite possibly as wild. “How’s the knee?” she asked in a carefully neutral tone.

“It’s been better.” He passed back the bottle. “Thanks, Nell.”

“I could lend an arm, you know.”

“I can manage.”

The grimness was back in his face. She didn’t know what it meant and already she hated it “Are there many eagles around here?” she asked.

“They’re making a comeback, yeah.”

“It’s the first one I’ve seen—thanks for pointing it out”

She picked out what looked like the easiest way back to the road and started out again, going more slowly this time. Ten minutes later, she dug her toes into the gravel of the ditch and was back on the tarmac.

She turned and held out her hand; after the briefest of pauses, Kyle took it, and she hauled him up the slope. He was rubbing his thigh again, tiny beads of sweat at his hairline. She said brightly, “Sunsets must be spectacular here.”

“You don’t have to be so damned tactful,” he grated. “Where’s your gear?”

She had been so intent on Kyle’s footsteps behind her that her backpack had not once crossed her mind. Blushing, Nell muttered, “I forgot about it—I’ll be right back.”—

A few minutes later, they were on their way. True to her promise, Nell taught Kyle a number of rather choice words in both German and Dutch, told him about her work as a translator and about some of the contracts she’d been getting with large multinational corporations. It wasn’t until they were winding down the hill toward the small cluster of houses that was Caplin Bay that she realized she had talked a great deal about herself and knew nothing more about Kyle other than that he was a very fast learner of foreign swearwords and a very good listener.

Quickly, she looked around. The village curved around the bay, where a sturdy wharf jutted into the sea; to her great relief there was no sign of the coastal boat. The headland at the far end of the bay was edged with a gray stretch of beach. She’d camp somewhere down there. “Could you drop me at the grocery store?” she asked.

“Aren’t you staying at the bed—and—breakfast?”

“No. I’ll camp.”

“Nell, it’s Saturday night—do you think that’s wise?”

Wiser than staying in the same place as you. “I’m traveling on a shoestring,” she said patiently. “I can’t afford to stay at bed—and—breakfasts.”

“At least let me buy you a hamburger at the takeout. Which is the nearest thing to a restaurant in Caplin Bay.”

“It’s nearly six. I have to get groceries and I need to get settled in.”

“You sure are stubborn. How long are you staying here?”

She wasn’t going to tell him about Mort Harbour. “Oh, a day or so,” she said vaguely.

His eyes narrowed. “You don’t want to see me again—that’s what you’re trying to say, isn’t it?”

If she was to borrow one of his favorite words and tell the absolute truth at the same time, she would say that he scared the hell out of her. “I don’t know why you’re so angry,” she said. “We met by chance, I don’t know the first thing about you, and now we’re going our separate ways. No big deal.”

And whom are you trying to convince, Nell? she mocked silently. Kyle or yourself?

He pulled up in front of the grocery store, his tires skidding in the gravel. Banging the ball of his hand against the wheel, he said, “Is that what you want? That we never see each other again?”

What she wanted was to be transported miraculously into her unknown grandfather’s living room in Mort Harbour. Into his living room and into his heart, she thought painfully. That was her priority; after all, hadn’t she traveled thousands of miles and used up all her savings just to come face—to—face with Conrad Gillis? So the time wasn’t right for any other emotional complications. And if there was one thing she was sure of, it was that Kyle Marshall could very easily become a major complication.

If he hasn’t already, a little voice whispered in her brain.

“That’s what I want,” she said steadily.

He undid his seat belt and twisted so he could look right at her. His expression was unreadable. “You’re right, of course,” he said. “Absolutely right. I’m too old to be blathering on about eyes like flowers and hair like spun copper—and you’re much too sensible and levelheaded to read anything into a chance meeting on the barrens. Besides, you must be used to more sophisticated men than me. You did mention multinational corporations, didn’t you? I’m sure if you can swear in five languages, you’ve done other things in five languages, too.” He gave her a smile that was nothing but a movement of his lips. “Goodbye, Nell. The next time I need a good swearword, I’ll think of you.”

Before she could guess his intention, he leaned over, gripped her by the shoulders and kissed her hard on the mouth.

His face had swooped down on hers, and there was no tenderness in the pressure of his lips. He’s like the eagle, Nell thought dizzily. A predator…and then she stopped thinking altogether. Because while Kyle might have begun the kiss from some male need to assert his will, he didn’t stay in that place for long. One of his hands buried itself in the soft mass of her hair; the other cupped her cheek, smoothing the line of her jaw. From a long way away, she heard him mutter something against her mouth. Then his lips were stroking hers, back and forth, again and again, with an exquisite gentleness that made nonsense of all her mother’s strictures.

She felt as flushed as the laurel, as free as the eagle. She felt as she’d never before felt with a man: as though she was most truly herself. With a moan of sheer pleasure, Nell wrapped her arms around Kyle’s ribs and kissed him back. His hand left her cheek to pull her closer to his body, and he deepened his kiss with a fierceness she more than matched.

A piercing whistle split the air.

Wrenched from a place that was as new to her as the barrens and more beautiful by far, Nell opened her eyes. Kyle pulled his mouth free. They both looked around.

They had gathered an audience. A teenage boy produced another earsplitting whistle, his female companions giggled, and from the window of his disreputable old truck, now parked beside them, Wendell was grinning at them. As she gaped at him, he gave her a thumbs—up signal. If she hadn’t even heard Wendell’s truck pull up, Nell considered ruefully, she was really in a bad way. Then she began to giggle helplessly herself as Kyle me—thodically went through every single word she had taught him on the drive to Caplin Bay.

She laughed until she was in tears; she laughed until her ribs hurt; and she laughed all the harder as Kyle’s affronted stare gave way first to a wry grin, then to a deep belly laugh of his own. “You do realize,” she gasped, “that I now have to walk into that store and buy hamburger and dish detergent? Even the girls at the cash register were staring at us.”

“Good,” said Kyle.

“You’ve ruined my reputation in Caplin Bay and all you can say is good?”

“Yep. I haven’t had so much fun in a dog’s age.”

Neither, if truth were told, had she. She said severely, “Unlock the back hatch, Kyle. I’ve got to get my gear out”

“Want to change your mind?” he said. “Supper at the takeout and a night at the bed—and—breakfast? Best offer you’ll get all day.”

The reckless gleam in his eyes was beguiling, and even to contemplate a night at the bed—and—breakfast with Kyle set Nell’s heart racing. She said, “Are you kidding? After that kiss? When I’m so sensible and levelheaded?”

“You didn’t like my calling you that?”

“I hated it,” she said pithily. “Coming to Newfoundland is the most irresponsible and crazy thing I’ve done in my entire life. Push that button thing that unlocks the hatch, Kyle.”

“Is the old guy in the truck another of your conquests?”

“He drove me to the barrens and I don’t have any conquests. Goodbye, Kyle.”

“He and I will have to exchange notes,” Kyle said, pushing the knob by the dash that released the hatch. “I bet he knows a swearword or two. Goodbye, Petronella Cornelia Vandermeer.”

Somehow she hadn’t expected him to let her go without more of a struggle. Without another of those devastating kisses? Is that what you wanted, Nell Vandermeer? Feeling thoroughly out of sorts, she scrambled to the ground, gave herself the satisfaction of slamming the door as loudly as she could and got her pack out of the van. Easing it onto her back, she marched straight through the group of teenagers, daring them to say anything.

Wendell was lounging against the doorway to the grocery store. “Didn’t take you long to find yourself another drive,” he cackled.

“He’s not half as cute as you,” she responded amiably, and pushed open the door.

She bought a minimum of groceries, and when she went back outside there was no sign of either Wendell or Kyle. She trudged along the road toward the headland and, with the ease of practice, found a campsite among the trees just up from the beach, then made her supper over her little one—burner stove. The sun had already sunk behind the point. The sea was lacquered in apricot and gold; seagulls drifted lazily homeward. The little cluster of houses looked very peaceful.

Nell herself didn’t feel at all peaceful. Her vision was sharp enough to have picked out the blue sign in front of a bungalow on the hillside: the bed—and—breakfast where Kyle was staying. She didn’t want to think about Kyle. She didn’t want to think about Mort Harbour, either. All she wanted to do was go to sleep and wake up in the morning to a whole new day.

There should have been nothing especially difficult about that plan. But although Nell curled up in her sleeping bag inside her tiny yellow tent as soon as it was dark, it took her a long time to fall asleep.

* * *

Wendell’s truck was roaring right in her ear. Roaring as loudly as if the accelerator were stuck.

With a gasp of dismay, Nell sat bolt upright, her head skimming the slanted roof of the tent. The roaring was real, not part of a dream. All too real. So were the yelling and the snatches of song, the beams of light piercing the walls of the tent then vanishing, the flicker of flames through the thin yellow fabric.

She rubbed her eyes, crawled out of her sleeping bag and unzippered the tent flap. A full—scale party was in progress on the beach. The roaring and the beams of light came from three all—terrain vehicles that were spewing out sand as they tore up and down the beach. The singers were grouped around a campfire. With a sinking of her heart, she saw that the party was entirely male. Ten of them, counting the ATV drivers. Ten men and several cases of beer.

Her tent was visible from the beach. Even though it was—she checked her watch—nearly three o’clock in the morning, the party showed no signs of abating. She didn’t need her mother’s voice to tell her that the combination of beer, drunken males and loud machines was not a particularly trustworthy one.

Praying that they wouldn’t notice the outline of her body through the tent, Nell hauled on a sweatshirt and jeans, laced her boots and gathered up her haversack and jacket Then, at the last moment, she bundled her sleeping bag under her arm. She’d go farther along the headland and find a dry place under the trees where she’d feel safer.

As she crawled out of the tent, one of the headlights caught her full in the face, blinding her. A chorus of voices began yelling at her, drowning the soft swish of the waves. “Hey, baby, come and join us…Lotsa beer…C’mon, sweetheart, we’ll show you a good time.”

No thanks, Nell thought, and headed up the hillside into the trees, stumbling over roots and rocks because she didn’t have her night vision. As she looked back over her shoulder, she saw with a quiver of fear that one of the men was staggering up the beach toward her tent, brandishing his beer bottle at her.

Nell hurried deeper into the woods. Although the men sounded like happy drunks rather than mean ones, she had no desire to put their good nature to the test. Not at three o’clock in the morning. She shoved her way through the thickly interwoven spruce trees, remembering that she’d seen a pathway along the ridge, glancing back nervously to see if she was being followed.

With a suddenness that drove the breath from her body, she collided full tilt with a man who had just stepped out from behind a gnarled pine tree. She tried to scream, felt a hand clamp over her mouth and began, futilely, to struggle. She should have headed for the road, she realized wildly, not the woods, and did her level best to claw his face with her nails.

“Nell, stop! It’s—” She struck out again, wriggling with the desperation of terror, trying to get a purchase with her boots so that she could lunge free. “Quit it—it’s Kyle!” the man gasped.

Her ribs were cinched by her captor’s arm, forcing her to stillness. The timbre of his voice struck a chord in Nell’s memory, freeing her from the knife—edge of panic. His voice wasn’t the only thing that was familiar. At a more primitive level, so was the clean, masculine scent of his body. She jerked her head up and looked straight into deep—set eyes as black as the night. “Kyle?” she whispered.

“Yeah…it’s okay, Nell. You’re safe.”

“I—I thought you were one of them.”

A note in his voice she hadn’t heard before, he rapped, “Did they hurt you?”

“No—no, they just scared me. I’m all right”

She was shaking in reaction, like aspen leaves in the lightest of breezes, her fingers clutching at his shirt as though she’d never let go. Kyle took her in the circle of his arms, drawing her close, his hands rhythmically stroking her back. “I didn’t mean to scare you,” he murmured. “But I didn’t want you screaming your head off so that the whole bunch of them came charging through the woods to the rescue.”

“What are you doing here anyway?”

“I couldn’t sleep. That’s when I saw the lights on the beach. Figured I’d take a look and make sure you were okay.”

With a little sigh, Nell collapsed against his chest. She muttered, “We’ve got to stop bumping into each other like this.”

“You’re right…you pack a punch, lady.”

She slid her arms around him. The curve of his rib cage, the flat belly, the hardness of his breastbone, she remembered them all. “It was nice of you to think about me.”

“Especially after you said you didn’t want to see me again.”

“So I did. Why couldn’t you sleep?”

“Never you mind.”

His cheek was resting on her hair, a state of affairs that she liked very much. She murmured, “You smell nice.”

“So do you,” Kyle said.

Against her face she could feel the roughness of his body hair at the neckline of his shirt; it seemed the most natural thing in the world to nuzzle at it with her lips. Warmth began to spread through her body, her shivering changing its tone so gradually she was scarcely aware of what was happening.

“Don’t do that!” he choked.

Her head reared back. “What’s wrong?”

Easing his hips away from hers, he said grimly, “Do I have to spell it out for you?”

“You mean you…” Nell flushed scarlet, stepped backward, tripped over a tree root and sat down hard on the puffy folds of her sleeping bag. It failed to pad the root. “Ouch!” she said.

Kyle reached down and hauled her to her feet. “What in hell are you doing junketing through the woods with a sleeping bag?”

“I was going to find a dry spot and go back to sleep,” Nell replied with as much dignity as she could muster. “You swear too much.”

“There’s something about you that brings out the worst in me. One aspect of which is swearing. I don’t suppose it’s a two—person sleeping bag?”

“It is not.”

“Too bad. Because I’m not leaving you out in the woods alone while those party animals do their best to tear up the beach. You’ve got two choices. We’ll go to the bungalow where I’m staying—you can have my bed and I’ll bunk down in the living room on the chesterfield. Or else the two of us’ll stay out here for the rest of the night”

It was cold in the woods, and her bottom was still smarting where it had connected with the root “Let’s go to the bed—and—breakfast,” she said meekly. “As long as we won’t disturb the owners.”

“My God—no arguments?”

“Would they do any good?”

“No. Here, take my hand.”

He led the way to the path on the ridge, and within minutes they were walking along the paved road, Kyle favoring his left leg. The beach party was still going full blast “I hope they don’t touch my tent,” Nell said.

“If they do, they’ll have me to reckon with.”

She had never before allowed a man to protect her.

She rather liked it. “How’s your knee?” she asked.

“Fine.”

Nell was light—headed with tiredness, the waning moon was casting a silver sheen on the ocean, and Kyle was still holding her hand even though he didn’t really need to. She said vigorously, “I was scared back there in the woods, right?”

“So you should have been. You notice I haven’t said I told you so?”

“That’s very noble of you. I was scared, I let you see I was scared and I was happy to be rescued. So I don’t think it would hurt you one bit, Kyle Marshall, to tell me that your knee’s sore—sore as hell, as you no doubt would say—and that perhaps we should walk a little slower.”

He stopped dead in the middle of the road. “Maybe you came to Newfoundland because all the eligible men in Europe got together and bought your airline ticket.”

“How’s your knee, Kyle?”

“I bet they even chased you onto the plane.”

“Answer the question!”

“Hurts like hell,” he said cheerfully. “But if we walk any slower, I’ll be tempted to kiss you again. You were dynamite in the daytime. I hate to think what you’d be like by moonlight.”

“That’s only sex,” Nell said testily.

“Nothing wrong with sex.”

How would she know? “One more thing,” she said with considerable determination. “You take the bed, I take the chesterfield.”

“Don’t want to talk about sex, Nell?”

“Do shut up, Kyle!”

“I’ll take the chesterfield. When the owners wake up in the morning I think it would be better if they find me in the living room rather than a woman they’ve never seen before.”

“Breakfast,” she said wryly, “could be a most interesting meal…mmm, smell the roses.”

Kyle had unlatched the gate in a neat white picket fence that was overhung with a tangle of old—fashioned roses. He ushered her in the front door of the bungalow, where she bent and took off her hiking boots. The interior of the house was newly painted, sparklingly clean and decorated with starched lace doilies on every available surface; night—lights were plugged into sockets in the kitchen and hallway. Feeling a little guilty that she would be taking advantage of Kyle’s sore knee, Nell tiptoed into the living room while he was still awkwardly untying his boots; she lay down flat on the chesterfield with her sleeping bag in a mound on her feet, gripping her haversack to her chest.

Kyle padded into the room. In a hoarse whisper, he ordered, “Nell, get up.”

She had no idea a whisper could sound so adamant “It’s very bad for you to have your own way all the time.”

He advanced on her. “Just because my knee is sore doesn’t mean I’m totally incapacitated.”

In the dim light, her eyes were dancing. “You’ll have to remove me bodily. During which process I shall contrive to drop my water bottle on the floor as noisily as possible. You’d hate for the owners to discover you carrying me into your bedroom at four o’clock in the morning.”

“How bored all those men in Europe must be without you,” Kyle murmured. “You win. Sweet dreams and pleasant awakenings.” He limped into the first room off the hall and closed the door softly behind him. He had made no attempt to kiss her good—night

After pulling a rude face at the blank white—painted panels, Nell deposited her haversack on the carpet, arranged the cushions to suit her and snuggled into her sleeping bag. Within moments, she was asleep.

In her dreams, Kyle was waving a bouquet of bog laurel at her from his seat in Wendell’s truck, and the eagle had stolen her water bottle. Nell buried her face in the stream to get a drink. But the stream was warm and rough and smelled rather peculiar—Her eyes flew open.

Her nose was being thoroughly licked by a very large dog with mournful brown eyes. “Jasses!” Nell exclaimed, and burrowed her face into her elbow. Whereupon the dog licked her ear.

“What does that mean?” Kyle asked with genuine interest

Nell sat up, scrubbing her nose with her sleeve. “It means yuk, ugh, disgusting and gross.”

“Good morning to you, too,” Kyle said.

She scowled at him. “Pleasant awakenings—so that’s what you meant.”

“His name is Sherlock.” The dog was sitting back on its heels. It was a bloodhound, lugubrious of face and drooping of jowl. “He’s quite old, very deaf, and loves all the guests—Oh, good morning, Gladys. This is Nell. Remember I mentioned last night that she was camped by the beach? Well, the party got a little rowdy. So I brought her here.”

“Them young fellas, they only go there once a month or so, but when they take over that beach they make more noise than the gulls on the first day of lobster season. How do you do, dear? I bet you’re hungry. How about some nice pancakes and bacon?”

Gladys was fiftyish, with tight gray curls and matronly hips. “I hope we didn’t disturb you,” Nell said.

“Arthur and me, we’ll sleep through the Second Coming.” Gladys chuckled heartily at her own joke.

“You make yourself right at home, dear. I’ll go put the coffee on.”

Kyle’s hair was damp from the shower and he was clean shaven. Feeling very much at a disadvantage, Nell got to her feet Her hair was tumbling to her shoulders and her clothes were crumpled from having slept in them. She said warily, “Where’s the bathroom?”

“End of the hall.” He thrust his hands deep in his pockets. “Those caribou have a lot to answer for.”

“Just what do you mean by that?”

“Without them, we wouldn’t have met.”

Although the look on his face was inscrutable, his gist seemed entirely clear to Nell. He’d rather not have met her. Which, when she was suffering from an almost uncontrollable urge to kiss him good—morning, was a lousy way to begin the day. Nell said, “I have one unbreakable rule—no arguments before I have my first cup of coffee. Excuse me, please.”

She picked up her haversack, edged past him and hurried down the hall toward the bathroom.

CHAPTER THREE

A SHOWER did wonders for Nell. Her haversack always contained her toilet articles. She’d borrowed Gladys’s hair dryer and had just finished brushing out her long hair when Kyle tapped on the door. “Pancakes are ready.”

She could braid it later. Nell opened the door. “Lead me to them,” she said.

But Kyle’s big body was blocking the hallway, and there was something in his face that stopped her in her tracks. He reached out one hand, letting his fingers slide the length of her hair, gathering a handful of it and lifting it to his cheek. As though he was paying homage to her, Nell felt, and knew, absurdly, that she wanted to cry.

He said huskily, “You’re so beautiful. So alive. I…”

But as she waited, breathless, his mouth suddenly tightened. A flash of pain, so short-lived that she might have imagined it, banished the tenderness that had suffused his features, and with shocking violence he dropped her hair, wiping his palm down his jeans as though her touch had contaminated him. Turning on his heel, he grated, “Come on. Gladys is waiting for us.”

Numbly, Nell followed him through the living room and into the kitchen, which smelled deliciously of hot coffee and bacon. She carried on a conversation with Gladys that apparently made sense, she avoided looking at Kyle and she drained her coffee mug in record time. During this process, anger slowly began to spread through her, like the heat of the coffee. How dare Kyle treat her as though she were a mechanical doll, something to be turned on and off with the flick of a switch!

But as she munched on apple pancakes drenched in syrup, she remembered the way pain had ripped away his gentleness and stole a glance at him through her lashes. If her past had its demons, so, too, did his; not for the first time she wondered how he had hurt his knee.

“Last night, Kyle said you were all the way from Holland, dear,” Gladys said, passing her the butter. “Now what brought you to Caplin Bay? You can’t even find it on some of the maps.”

In the shower, Nell had had time to think. She didn’t want to camp in Caplin Bay again tonight, even though she was sure the partygoers were all nursing horrendous hangovers and would go nowhere near the beach. Furthermore, her money was limited, and she’d spent the better part of two weeks putting off the meeting that was the real reason for her trip. She said with a modicum of truth, “Ever since I arrived in Newfoundland I’ve been hearing about the outports—the settlements that you can only reach by boat. I’d like to stay in one for a while. So today I plan to take the coastal boat to Mort Harbour.”

Although she had rehearsed this sentence while she was rinsing her hair, somehow it didn’t sound as convincing as she would have liked. However, Gladys apparently noticed nothing amiss. “Well now, that’s nice, dear. You and Kyle can go together.”

Nell’s jaw dropped. “You’re going to Mort Harbour, Kyle?”

“That’s the plan,” he said evenly.

“Why are you going?”

“To visit friends of a good friend of mine.”

His reason sounded no more convincing than her own. Although she couldn’t very well say that. “What time does the boat go?” she asked weakly.

“Four o’clock,” Gladys said. “Want I should call Mary and make reservations for you, dear?”

Nell already knew that Mary Beattie owned the only guest house in Mort Harbour and she’d already decided she must stay there for a few days because it was the obvious way to get to know the people who lived in the outport. “All right,” she said. “I’ll start out there anyway. Thanks, Gladys.”

Within minutes, Gladys was putting down the phone. “You’re all set Good thing we phoned. She only has two rooms and Kyle had reserved the other one.”

Nell’s eyes flew to his. “Aren’t you staying with your friends?”

“No,” he said.

Quit prying was what he was really saying. “You were right about those caribou,” Nell announced.

“You told me you couldn’t afford bed—andbreakfasts.”

Because Nell was essentially a truthful woman, she tended to trip herself up when she did lie. “My financial state is really none of your business,” she said loftily, and speared another pancake.

“We’re never told what the princess says to St George after he rescues her, are we?” Kyle said unpleasantly, and got up from the table. “Thank you, Gladys. I’ll be back later to get my stuff.”

He had disappeared by the time Nell finished eating. She went to the beach and collected her gear, then did a wash and hung it on Gladys’s line. The wind billowed through it, ballooning her T—shirts as though they all contained women in the last stages of pregnancy. Like her grandmother all those years ago, Nell reflected, and went for a brisk hike along the shore. It took only the first five minutes for her to conclude she couldn’t possibly plan a strategy for meeting her grandfather; she simply had to wait on events. The rest of the walk she spent trying not to think about anything but the whitecaps on the water and the gulls wheeling and dipping on the wind. Worrying about her grandfather was a totally nonproductive pursuit And, apparently, she would have met Kyle sooner or later anyway; Mort Harbour was definitely too small for a man like Kyle Marshall to remain anonymous.

Was the good friend he had mentioned a woman?

With vicious strength, she fired a rock into the tumbling waves. His past couldn’t have been devoid of women. Women in the plural. Not one of whom was any of her business. If she’d been smart, she’d have come straight from St. John’s to Mort Harbour, rather than allowing herself to be seduced by the beauties of the national park at Terra Nova. Then she wouldn’t have met him.

She tramped another two miles along the rocky beach, ate a banana and a muffin for lunch, then hiked back to Gladys’s. Her clothes were dry. She repacked her gear under Sherlock’s reproachful brown eyes, left money for Gladys and headed for the wharf. Kyle was already there. She nodded at him distantly and marched up the gangplank to board the boat, a move that felt every bit as momentous as entering the huge jet in Amsterdam that had brought her across the Atlantic.

The coastal boat, stout and sturdy, rather like an overgrown tug, had a passenger lounge, a snack bar and a big shed for freight anchored on the deck. It was clearly a working boat; yet there was an air of sociability about it that Nell found very appealing. She propped her pack by the shed, watching as boxes of groceries and supplies were casually handed down from the dock and stacked in the shed with no system that she could discern. At about quarter past four, the gangplank was drawn up, the mooring lines were thrown on board and the captain blasted a signal as they pulled away from the dock. The strip of water widened.

Nell moved to the stern, staring mesmerized at the wake. She was on the last lap of a journey that had started the day she had read her grandmother’s diary in the attic of the old brick house that belonged to Nell’s mother and father, the house where Nell had grown up. The diary, musty smelling, the ink faded, had described at great length all the members of Anna’s family, her friends, the fears of war, the hunger and travails of the occupation. But then had come the liberation, and the diary had changed. There were no more close—written pages dense with adjective and adverb. Instead, the entries were terse, with big gaps between them.

A Canadian regiment had been billeted for a weekend in the village of Kleinmeer where Anna lived. Anna had met one of the soldiers and instantly fallen in love with him. His name was Conrad Gillis, and he was from a little place called Mort Harbour in Newfoundland. Delirious with the joy of liberation and the pangs of love, Anna had taken Conrad to the old barn on her uncle’s farm. There they’d made love several times. Anna’s actual words had been cryptic: “We have been together in the barn. The sun caught the dust in the air and danced with it. I didn’t tell him I love him.” Then Conrad’s regiment had to leave and Anna discovered she was pregnant. “My moeder and my vader say I may keep the child and live with them. I am lucky. My friend, Anneke, is being forced to give up her baby…I have made inquiries. Conrad is married. So there will be no marriage for me. I have brought disgrace upon my family in the eyes of the village. The only thing I am glad of is that I didn’t tell him I love him…Today my daughter, Gertruda, was born.” And there the entries had ended.

Gertruda was Nell’s mother.

The spaces between these short sentences had seemed to reverberate with all that had not been said. The village was small. Gertruda would have grown up knowing she was different, that somehow her very presence had brought shame upon the family. No wonder she had moved away from Kleinmeer as soon as she was old enough. No wonder she had embraced a rigorous respectability and the strictest of rules and had married a man twenty—seven years her senior in whom there was no spark of passion. No wonder she had warned Nell against the perils of sex.

The tragedy was that Gertruda had been dead two months before Nell had found the diary; so Nell could never tell her mother that now she understood her behavior. Understood and forgave. For Nell had suffered from the stultifying atmosphere of the old brick house: the lack of laughter, fun and play; the harsh rules that had set her apart from the other children; the sense of secrecy, of things kept from her that, nevertheless, affected her every move.

As far as she could remember, she had only met Anna once, and that was when she, Nell, had been very young, perhaps three or four. She had known she had a grandmother; she had also known, with a child’s perceptiveness, that this grandmother was not to be discussed.

And now she was on her way to meet Anna’s lover, Conrad Gillis. He, she could only assume, could have no idea that he had fathered a child in a foreign land or that he had a Dutch granddaughter. Her attempts to write a letter that would break this news to him before she arrived on his doorstep had all ended in the wastebasket—crumpled balls of paper that failed miserably to communicate what surely could only be said face—to—face.

So here she was on Fortune II on her way to Mort Harbour. She had made inquiries to ascertain that Conrad was still alive and living in the same place. And that was the extent of her knowledge. Except that she was scared to death.

From behind her, Kyle said, “You look as though you’re trying to solve all the world’s problems.”

They had moved beyond the shelter of Caplin Bay into more open water; the boat was heaving on the swell. Balancing against the rail, Nell turned to face him. “Just my own,” she said lightly. “How long will it take us to get there?”

“At least two hours—it’s on the far shore of the peninsula. And what are your problems, Petronella Cornelia?”

“Whether or not I’ll get seasick,” she said dulcetly.

“Right,” he replied wryly. “The wind’s sou’west—it’ll get rougher yet.”

He was standing astride, his hair a dark tangle, his jacket flattened to his chest “I bet you don’t get seasick,” Nell said.

“My dad was a fisherman—I was brought up around boats.”

Unable to contain a strong curiosity to know more about Kyle, Nell asked, “Here in Newfoundland?”

“A little outport on the northern peninsula. In those days, the coastal boat came twice a year, and there were no roads.” He grimaced. “It’s all too easy to romanticize the outports, especially in these days of urban blight But even though the fishing was good, my family was always dirt poor. Worked day and night and never got ahead.”

Although his clothes were casual, they weren’t cheap; she had instantly recognized the label on his rain jacket “You don’t look poor now,” Nell ventured.

“I got out—as soon as I could. And I stayed away.” He scowled at her. “Why am I telling you all this? I never talk about myself.”

“Are you married?” Appalled by her wayward tongue, Nell added in a rush, “Scrap that question. It’s nothing to me whether you’re married or not”

The bow of Fortune II rose to meet the swell, and spray lashed her cheek, plastering her hair to her head. “We’d better move forward before we get soaked,” Kyle said. He grabbed her arm, and together they lurched to the shelter of the bridge. Bracing himself with an arm above her head, he said, unsmiling, “No, I’m not married. Came close once, but it didn’t work out. Is there a man in Europe waiting for you to come home?”

She shook her head. The wind was snapping the flag at the stern and flinging rough—edged curtains of spray against the shed, and perhaps it was this that made her blurt, “I don’t want to go back to Holland. I want to stay here.”

“In Newfoundland? Forget it, Nell. The economy’s the pits.”

Her need had nothing to do with the economy; somehow she had expected Kyle to understand that. Obscurely disappointed, she watched the spume streak backward from the caps of the waves.

“Holland’s your home,” he added reasonably. “That’s where you belong.”

“No, I don’t! I don’t care if I ever go back.” She suddenly couldn’t bear the closeness of his big body. Ducking beneath his arm, she lunged for the railing that was on the lee side of the boat and stared out over the wind—whipped water, knowing that her eyes were stinging with tears. Then she saw his hands grip the rail on either side of her so that she was encircled by him. Twisting around, she choked, “And don’t you dare laugh at me!”

“I hate to see you cry,” he said in an odd voice. “You’re running away from a man, aren’t you, Nell?”

“I don’t let men close enough to me that I have to run away. It’s this place…there’s something about it. I feel as though I’ve come home, as though I’ve found what—ever ever I was searching for without even knowing I needed it.”

The boat plunged into a trough. Nell staggered, banging her nose against the zipper on Kyle’s jacket He drew her closer, steadying her. “Why don’t you let men close to you?”

“Why haven’t you ever married?” she countered.

“We both have secrets. That’s what you’re really saying.”

“Doesn’t everyone?” she asked with a touch of bitterness. She had grown up in a household of secrets. Secrets that made her the woman she was.

“I sure have,” Kyle said, and for a moment his irises turned the same color as the black and depthless ocean. Then, in an abrupt change of mood, he grinned down at her. “I’ve got an idea—why don’t we go up on the bridge? We can look at the charts and see where we’re going.”

When he smiled at her like that, her very bones seemed to melt in her body. I’d probably jump off the bridge if he asked me to, she thought foolishly. “Okay,” she said.

“Newfoundland’s a hell of a place to live, Nell,” he said with sudden violence. “Nine months of winter and three months of moose flies.”

She had the impression he was talking more to himself than to her. “Where do you live?” she said.

“At the moment, precisely nowhere. Come on, we’re going to the bridge. First thing you know, I’ll be spilling out my entire life story to those big blue eyes of yours.”

She said impetuously, “I wish you would.”

“I’ll tell you this much—I’m in no position right now to meet a woman, Nell.” He let go of the railing. “Now head for the ladder.”

“You’re giving orders again.”

“You’re damn right I am. Move it.”

“Only because I want to,” she said haughtily, and began climbing the narrow stairs, clutching the wet railings as hard as she could.

The view was worth the climb. Fortune II was skirting the coastline, with its long range of rugged, tree—clad cliffs against which waterfalls spread their lacy white palms. Ragged, gray—edged clouds raced through the sky, daubing the hills with light and shadow. The captain pointed out deserted graveyards and abandoned settlements of indescribable loneliness, and in a manner that reminded Nell of Wendell, told her about the harrowing winters of the early settlers from Cornwall and Devon. Kyle drew her attention to nesting terns and the huge white gannets swooping close to the waves. And Nell fell in love even more deeply with a landscape as different from her homeland as it could be.

It’s my grandfather’s blood in me, she suddenly knew in a flash of insight. That’s why I love this place. Of course it is. Why didn’t I think of that before?

Somehow this realization seemed to conquer the fear that had been gnawing at her ever since she’d embarked on the coastal boat. But when, two hours later, she caught her first glimpse of the tiny outport of Mort Harbour through a gap in the cliffs, all her fears rushed back in full force. She glanced around to see where Kyle was, hoping he wasn’t watching her.

He, too, was gazing at the little patch of houses whose presence seemed only to magnify the terrible fragility of human striving and the vastness of sea and land. The emotions on his face were as raw as the slash in the cliffs. Dread, Nell reflected, and a terrible reluctance, as if he’d rather be anywhere else than here. Emotions that were so akin to her own that she had to suppress the urge to rush over to him and offer him comfort.

He didn’t look like a man who was simply visiting friends.

Secrets. He had as many as she.

She turned away, not wanting him to know she had seen feelings that were intensely private. The boat was entering the harbor, which was ringed by gaunt hills; like a womb it enclosed a long, low island in its calm inner waters. As they approached the government wharf, Nell saw little fish sheds on stilts at the cliff base, small square houses huddled together for solace, and brightly painted Cape Islanders rocking gently in the wake of the coastal boat’s passing. What if her grandfather was away? Or ill? What if he wouldn’t see her?

Her knuckles white with strain, she gripped the railing so tightly that her nails made tiny moons in the paint, and if she could have miraculously transported herself back to Middelhoven and her parents’ old brick house with its tall windows and its yews in the front garden, she might well have done so. Then a hand dropped onto her sleeve, a man’s hand with long, lean fingers and a dusting of dark hair over the taut bones. Kyle’s hand. She wished him a thousand miles away.

“Nell, what’s wrong?” he asked urgently.

She tried to pull her arm away. “Nothing.”

“Don’t give me that—something’s up. You’re not just a tourist checking out the quaint little Newfoundland outports. I know you’re not.”

“Stop it, Kyle!”

“You can trust me, you know,” he said.

She couldn’t tell anyone why she was here, not until she had spoken to Conrad. That much, at least, she owed her unknown grandfather. “Please—just leave me alone. You’re imagining things.”

“You’re a terrible liar.”

“Whereas you don’t seem able to understand when you’re not wanted,” she declared, and saw an answering anger harden his features.

“That’s the second time you’ve told me to get lost Guess I’m kind of a slow learner,” he snarled. “Why don’t we just agree to have nothing to do with each other from now on? That, it seems to me, would be simpler all round.”

“I couldn’t agree more,” Nell retorted. Which was a lie if ever there was one. Until she’d met Kyle, she’d always considered herself a truthful person.

From directly above their heads, the boat’s horn blasted its signal of arrival. Kyle flinched, his fingers digging into her arm as the shock ran through his body.

His reaction seemed all out of proportion to Nell. She asked uncertainly, “Are you okay?”

The engines had gone into reverse. Under cover of the noise, Kyle grated, “You want it both ways, don’t you? The sweet, womanly concern and the barefaced lies. I don’t need either one, do you hear me?”

Because she couldn’t possibly have told the truth about the purpose of her visit, Nell had done the opposite and lied. In the process, she’d lost something irretrievably precious: Kyle’s trust What more did she have to lose? “You’re not just visiting friends—I saw your face.”

“What I’m doing is my own goddamned business and not yours. From now on, stay out of my life, will you?”

“I don’t care what you’re doing!” she cried, adding one more lie to the total. “Just leave me alone!”

Unfortunately, the captain cut the engines on her last four words. Heads turned, and there was a titter of laughter from the other passengers.

“I will never again go anywhere near a caribou,” Nell seethed, turned on her heel and seized her pack out of the shed. As the gangplank was lowered, she hung back, watching them unload the freight, steadfastly refusing to even look for Kyle. Not until the crowd had thinned on the wharf did she ask directions for Mary Beattie’s house.

Long wooden boardwalks had been built across the rocks, linking the houses, the fish shacks and the general store. Nell tramped along, wondering where Conrad lived. She was only a few hundred feet from the square blue house that was Mary Beattie’s when she saw Kyle emerge from the side door and start climbing the grassy slope behind the house. He had not, she was almost sure, seen her. At least she was spared making artificial conversation with him in front of her unknown landlady.

The blue house had bright pink trim, orange daylilies swarming around the side door, and scarlet geraniums lining a path outlined with white—painted rocks. Before she was even in the door, Nell felt her mouth lift in a smile; nothing could be further from the house where she had grown up. Mary Beattie was also a delight: young, pregnant and friendly. The only catch was that the two guest rooms shared a bathroom and were cut off from the kitchen and living room by a door that was kept firmly shut.

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