It was obvious neither Jonathon nor her father knew what had transpired in the dawn hours before they’d exited the cabins. Charles had stalked away, visibly frustrated. Had she read him wrong all this time? His kiss hadn’t seemed like flirtation. It held passion and depth and … something else. Abby had thrown all her paintbrushes into a bucket and her canvas she skewered on a branch in the woods. It didn’t matter what Charles’s kiss felt like, or communicated, he’d had no right. No right to touch her, to play with her heart, and by no means, bring up her mother’s death as if he had some garish satisfaction in seeing her cry.
Now, the two of them stood in silence as they prepared for another day of fishing. Jonathon and her father had paired to go canoeing again on the Flambeau, whose intoxicating calm waters would suddenly boil into rapids breaking over rocks and speeding the canoe through its passageways. So it was she and Charles until they swapped for the afternoon and Charles received his own ride down the river.
“I hope you tip over,” she muttered as she tied a fly onto his line.
“Pardon?” Charles’s voice was clipped. The irritation between them palpable.
“Nothing.” Abby tightened the knot. She thrust the split-cane rod at Charles. “Go fish.”
“Yes, m’lady.” His dark glower could never be mistaken for charm now.
Abby winced. The morning’s emotions were still rife between them, but now, pushing through her clouded mind, was reality. Regardless of her earlier proclamation that Charles could smear her father’s services throughout Milwaukee and she didn’t care, Abby knew it was far from the truth. She did care. She had to care! It was Papa’s livelihood.
“Give me the flyline.” Abby reached for the line. Charles cast a narrow-eyed look her way.
“Why?”
Abby waggled her fingers. She wasn’t going to tell him what she was going to do. It probably wouldn’t work anyway. She didn’t need to explain it to Charles. Simply guide him. It was her job.
He tipped the rod toward her and watched with a black gaze as she removed the wet fly from the line. The tense air between them toyed with her nerves, and she paused for a moment to still the shake in her fingers.
She pulled out her tin fly-box and hooked the unused wet fly into its place. A wet fly probably wasn’t going to garner any fish even if Charles could cast a gentle line. Her fingers hovered over the hook she knew she should pull forth. The fish were feeding on half-developed flies. In her studies, Abby had discovered the scientific world called them “nymphs.”
There was no debating trying this fly. Somehow she had to rectify the tension between them. For Papa. For their future. Abby reached for the fly she’d tied and never used. An imitation of the semi-developed flies that floated through the water until their formation was complete and they rose to the surface to take off into the wind.
Her fingers deftly tied on the nymph as Charles held the rod. Its tiny body was nowhere near as beautiful as a wet fly, but perhaps—just maybe—Charles could catch a trout with this nymph and his opinion of his vacation might change. Because certainly, at this point, there had been no redeeming factors.
“There.” She released the line. “Now cast it upstream and let it float down. The closer you can land the nymph to the bank the better. The trout will be waiting for food to float by.”
Charles didn’t respond, but wielded the fly rod and barely missed a branch with the line before it dropped into the water. The ripples from the rough landing reverberated through the stream, but it was far enough up the stream it hopefully wouldn’t frighten the very timid and suspicious fish.
They watched the line drift down the stream. It was different not to have the fly floating on the surface where it was easy to see.
“Fish on!” Charles’s proclamation grabbed Abby’s attention. Sure enough. The tip of the rod bent, not dramatically, but a bend nonetheless.
Charles began to reel.
“Don’t.” Abby hurried to his side and put her hand over his. With her other hand she grabbed the line and tugged it through the guides on the pole. “Pull the line in. The current creates slack. We need to keep it taut.”
She transferred the line to Charles’s eager hand. He adjusted his footing as he pulled more line through the guides. Finally Abby knelt on the shoreline, ignoring the moist earth that wet the knees of her trousers. This was the moment. A nymph—her nymph—had caught a trout. Charles Farrington III had caught a trout!
When the brown-gold flash of the fish shone in the water, Abby leaned forward and scooped it into the net.
“Stop pulling in line!” she commanded.
“Oh!” Charles gave a nervous laugh and the line stilled, with the exception of the small trout that wriggled on the end. He rested the fly rod on the ground and knelt by Abby.
She wet her hands in the water and reached for the trout. Its black eyes stared up at them as if surprised to find itself out of the stream and in a net. The tiny nymph was lodged in the corner of its mouth. Abby flicked it out with a brief twist. An easy release with no injury to the trout.
“Let him go.”
She gave Charles a sideways glance. “You don’t want to keep it?”
“For supper? It’s so small it would only be one bite. No, let it go.”
Abby shrugged and released the trout back to its home. They both stared as it flashed in the water and disappeared. Charles fingered the line and the nymph, eyeing it with curiosity.
“Why haven’t we used this before?”
Abby looked away. “It’s—not the typical fly.”
“What is it?”
“A nymph.”
“A what?”
Abby glanced at it where it rested in Charles’s palm. “It’s supposed to mimic an underdeveloped fly. Sometimes the fish seem to feed on those rather than full-grown flies. I don’t know why.”
“You made this?” Dark brows winged up beneath Charles’s combed-back curls that argued against the pomade in his hair.
“Yes.” Abby struggled to her feet and moved away from his penetrating look. “Want to try it again?”
He watched her from where he crouched by the stream. “Abigail Nessling, you’re an enigma.”
She turned her back to him but within seconds she felt his presence behind her, his breath warm in her ear as he whispered.
“An irritating, hard-headed enigma.”
The kiss he left just below her ear burned her more than his words, more than the grief that still welled just beneath the surface, and more than her traitorous heart that strained to turn and rest herself in his arms. To cry. To weep.
One didn’t heal in the arms of a man who would leave and who had no filter on his words or his thoughts, and who most certainly had no rights to hers.
Abby was never more grateful to be paired with Jonathon for the afternoon. Any more time with Charles might completely ruin her. Her nerves were frayed by the insistence of his attention, as if he were picking at old scabs that covered unhealed wounds, all the while attempting to gain her affection. She sat on the bank while Jonathon fished. He was adept at casting and required little guidance. She’d attached a wet fly to his line and this time of day the fish seemed to respond. The sun beamed overhead, birds flocked and swooped over treetops, and the sound of the Flambeau River in the distance was soothing music to her unraveling heart.
She closed her eyes. Having guests on their river was horrible enough, but having them pick their way into her personal history and unwrap moments of time she’d rather keep sequestered was sheer agony.
Had what Charles claimed that morning been true? Had Papa received an offer from Jonathon’s father to pay for Mama’s medical expenses and refused it? Was it Mama’s choice to die at home? Abby dug her fingers into the earth, capturing moist leaves in her palms. She couldn’t believe that Mama would have chosen to die were she given the opportunity to live. Charles was simply attempting to save face for the rich and spoiled. Or was he? The memory of the lingering hollow in his dark eyes haunted her. It was as if, this morning, Charles had been exposed alongside of her. But what had she seen in those depths? Pain. Unrelenting pain. She would recognize it anywhere. It reflected in her own eyes each morning when she caught a glimpse of herself in the mirror.
A shout startled Abby from her mental war. She hurried to her feet and caught Jonathon’s quick glance. He leaned his fly rod against a nearby tree.
“Was that Charles?”
Abby heard a shout again. The voice was laced with urgency. Surging toward the voice that was unmistakably Charles’s, she heard Jonathon charging behind her. Branches slapped her face as she tried to dodge them. Charles’s frame came into view, soaking wet, curls plastered against his forehead. He directed his attention past Abby to Jonathon, pointing behind him as he ran toward them.
“You’ve got to hurry! There’s been an accident!”
“What happened?” Jonathon edged around Abby.
“The canoe—it overturned.” Charles bent over, grabbing his knees and gasping in deep breaths. “Mr. Nessling—”
“What about my father?” Abby demanded. She didn’t bother to give Charles time to respond but instead, lunged past him toward the river.
“Abby!” Jonathon’s cry followed her and then his footsteps, and probably Charles’s, but Abby didn’t care. If she lost her father, too, if something horrid happened …
She broke into the clearing. The shoreline was littered with rock and debris from the river. She clambered over the slippery rocks and toward her father’s form, hunched in a crumpled heap half in the water and half on land.
“Papa!” Abby collapsed beside him. He was breathing, but his eyes were closed, pain etched in every crevice of his face. Blood soaked his arm from a gaping wound. “Papa!” She urged him to respond, but he was silent.
“Dear God.” Jonathon dropped beside her and assessed her father, ripping at his own shirt to tear off a strip of cloth. He wrapped it around Papa’s upper arm, glancing over his shoulder at Charles as he did so. “What happened, man?” Jonathon shouted over the roar of the white water rapids.
Charles heaved in deep breaths. His shirt clung to muscled arms and his broad chest. Abby couldn’t help it if accusation shot from her eyes. This was his fault, she knew it. It had to be.
“The canoe tipped.” Charles waved his hand at the river that coursed and rolled over rocks. “We both fell out. Mr. Nessling tried to rescue the canoe, but somehow he got trapped between it and that boulder. He couldn’t get free.”
Abby squeezed her eyes shut. She could see the accident in her mind. The canoe had wrapped itself around a rock and her father had been trapped between them. While they weren’t the largest rapids in the region, they were still powerful, and the currents didn’t always run parallel to the shore. If the canoe tipped and met the rock, there was a fine chance the current would hold the canoe there, possibly even breaking it into pieces as it folded itself around the boulder. If Papa had been caught between … Abby opened her eyes. Papa could be busted into pieces inside.
“What did you do?” She whirled on Charles, the words spitting at him with venom.
Charles scowled, the intensity of the situation lending itself to his own furious reply. “Nothing!”
“You tipped the canoe, didn’t you!” Abby struggled to her feet.
“Abby!”
She ignored Jonathon’s warning. “You did this!” She pointed back at Papa.
Charles’s lip curled in a wounded snarl. His eyes narrowed and he shook his head. “You would blame me.”
“Tell me you didn’t do something reckless that made the canoe tip. Tell me.”
“Abby.” Jonathon’s sharp voice pierced the tension. “We need to get your father help. Now isn’t the time!”
He was right. Abby stopped, but didn’t release Charles’s gaze. She couldn’t. Not until he admitted this was his doing. Her father wouldn’t tip the canoe, and if some mishap really did happen, he wouldn’t have been foolish enough to get caught between the craft and the rock.
“I know you did this,” she hissed. It was obvious she was right. Charles had no color in his face and in that moment, Abby saw him for all that he was. A foolish, stupid man.