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walk toward her, and she does not move. On his face is an expression
she knows well: an expression of both anguish and expectation. He
comes close to her, and she can feel his breath on her eyes. She hears
a shudder, an exhalation. He bends and presses his mouth hard into
her shoulder, and for a moment, Olympia is frightened. She can feel
his teeth. He has not done this before. There is a wetness on her
skin, and she knows suddenly that he is crying. He cries the way a
man does, both silently and noisily, gulping for air. It is a loss of con-
trol so complete that the weeping triggers the lust, or perhaps it is
the other way around. She wants to hold his face, to bring it up to
hers, to calm him, but his mouth is on her breast, and he presses his
hands so hard against her back, she can hardly breathe. They move,
or lurch, along the passageway, looking for darkness, for shelter, any-
thing to hide them. She bangs against the wall, and a picture falls. It
is a wonder they do not rouse a servant or a guest. She holds his
head, and they turn so that his back is against the wall. She steps on
the hem of her dress and hears it tear slightly at the waist. They en-
ter the chapel and stand looking at its deconsecrated altar, its
wooden pews. Behind her, she hears the door shut. Haskell fastens
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the latch. Olympia glides toward the marble slab and sits on it.
Haskell hovers over her. She cannot see his face.
What happened? she asks.
I did not tell her, he says.
She wraps her arms around his legs and bends her head to them.
I cannot live in that house, he says. I cannot. I cannot.
No, she says, rolling her forehead back and forth. And like
Haskell, she is crying.
I will go away from here, he says. I will find a reason. I cannot
be in this town.
Let me, she says, looking up at him. Let me be the one to go.
You are needed; I am not. I have already resolved to speak to my fa-
ther tomorrow.
He crouches down to put his face opposite hers. He digs his hands
deep into her hair. No, I cannot stay, he says. There is no vista
that does not remind me of you, that does not make me want you.
He puts his mouth on hers. It is a kiss, but more than a kiss.
Something akin to drowning perhaps.
But the body cannot content itself with kisses, no matter how en-
compassing or generous. The body will go forward on its urgent
course. Thus she lies down, her head against the cool marble, her
legs straddling the stone. The marble is hard and uncomfortable,
and she feels ungainly, her legs spread, her slippers touching the
floor on either side. Haskell kneels. His cheek is wet on her thigh.
He unfastens one stocking and puts his hands on her leg. She tries to
raise herself up to look at his face. She calls his name. But he is lost
to the most powerful sort of lust there is: that which stems from
hopelessness. She is frightened at least as much for him as for
herself. And yet she knows that she cannot stop this, that it will have
its own momentum, its own beginning and its own end.
And it is then that she turns her head to the side and looks
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through the open window of the chapel and sees Zachariah Cote
move graciously away from his place upon the porch, allowing
Catherine Haskell to step up to the telescope, lower her face to the
eyepiece, and briefly adjust the knobs until finally the scene onto
which Cote has precisely trained the instrument comes incompre-
hensibly into clear focus.
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he imagines it to have been like this: Catherine would
have stood up, her mouth slightly parted, one silk-gloved
Shand pressed flat against her bosom. Cote, feigning curiosity,
would have bent to the telescope and then would have righted him-
self, seemingly shocked by what he had just seen. My dear, he might
have said. I am so sorry. How dreadful for you. Which might have pen-
etrated the shock, might have made Catherine look up at Cote s face
and see the concerned frown about the brow that could not entirely
hide the sly smile at the lips. And perhaps she flinched and then
drew away and had the wherewithal to slap the man. Olympia hopes
that she did.
" " "
By the time Olympia reaches the center hallway, holding her
dress closed at the waist where it has torn, it seems that all about her
is a screeching, the sound of all the clocks of the world out of sync.
Have she and Haskell caused this, this chaos, this pandemonium?
Around her, people and objects are swirling, moving very fast.
Haskell has gone before her, and she looks for him, for Catherine.
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Her mother s face is white and frozen, and she cannot speak. Her
father comes to her, a question in his eyes. Is this true, Olympia?
he asks. She answers him, but it is as though she speaks a foreign
tongue; he seems not to be able to comprehend her words. And
then she sees the moment of recognition in his face, that slight shiver,
and watches as the knowledge finally sets in: the ruin, the loss of
everything he values his daughter, her reputation, the possibility
of ever coming to Fortune s Rocks again, the house that he loves so,
the life that he loves so. And she thinks the saddest moment of the
entire night is the brave manner in which her father then draws him-
self up and tries to maintain his poise even as the awful knowledge is
seeping into his pores, the way he tries to speak to his guests, to re-
assure them, to remain ever the able and affable captain, even as the
hull is cracking and the sea is pouring through the bulkheads.
Her father tries to take her hand, but she pulls away. She runs
from room to room. Guests are leaving, calling for their carriages.
She has to see Haskell. She has to find Catherine. She has to say
something to Catherine.
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