“Is it?” The anger seemed to fade, replaced by something sad. “I don't know why it should be, Nick. I haven't been much of a wife.” There was no apology in her voice, only a tinge of bitterness in the statement.

“We've become strangers in the last few years, Hil, but it doesn't have to be that way forever.”

“It's already been that way forever, Nick. I'm all grown up and someone you barely know, and to tell you the truth, most of the time I can't even remember who you are. I have these distant memories of the parties we went to long ago, of how handsome you were, and how exciting, and I look at you, and you look the same….” Her eyes grew too bright and she looked away. “But you're not.”

“Have I changed that much in all these years?” He looked sad too. These were words they should have said long before, and never had, and suddenly here they were in a bar on a ship that had just set sail, beginning to open up their hearts. “Am I so different now, Hil?”

She nodded, her eyes bright with tears, and then she looked up at him again. “Yes, you're my husband.” She said it as though it were a terrible word, and he could see the old restlessness in the way she moved her shoulders and suddenly moved back from the table in her seat, as though to escape him.

“Is that such a bad thing?”

“I think—” She almost choked on the words, but for once she decided to go ahead and say it. He might as well know how she felt. Why not? “I think for me it is. I don't think I was ever meant to be married, Nick.” This time it was said in a voice of confession, the bitterness was gone, and she looked like a beautiful young debutante again, the debutante he had “raped,” in her words once, and got pregnant, and “kidnapped” from her home, and “forced” into marriage. She had rewritten the screenplay long since, and she believed what she said. There was no point arguing with her, or reminding her that she had wanted to go to bed with him, that it was as much her fault as his that she had got pregnant, and that he had tried to make the best of it with her, but she had never even wanted to try. “I feel … I feel so trapped being married … as though I'm a bird that can't fly, but can only flap its wings, hobbling around the ground, going nowhere, being made fun of by its friends. It makes—” She hesitated for a moment and then went on. “It makes me feel ugly … like I'm not what I used to be anymore.”

“You're even more beautiful than you were.” He said it, looking into her eyes, and taking in the creamy skin, the silky hair, the delicate shoulders, and graceful arms. There was nothing ugly about Hillary Burnham, except at times the way she behaved, but he didn't say that now. “You've grown up to be an exceptionally beautiful woman. But that's not surprising. You were always an exceptionally beautiful girl.”

“But I'm not a girl anymore, Nick. I'm not even a woman.” She paused as though groping for words. “You don't know what it's like for a woman to be married. It's like you become someone's possession, their thing, no one sees you as yourself anymore.” It was something he had never thought of, and it sounded a little crazy to him now. Was that what she had been fighting all these years? Was that what all the affairs were all about? Her fight to make herself separate, to be someone and something on her own? It was a novel thought to him.

“I don't think of you as a possession. I think of you as my wife.”

“What does that mean?” For the first time in half an hour there was anger in her voice again, and she signaled for another Scotch as a waiter drifted by. “My wife. It sounds like ‘my chair, my table, my car.’ My wife. So what? Who am I when I'm with you? I'm Mrs. Nicholas Burnham. I don't even have a name of my own, for chrissake. Johnny's mother … it's like being someone's dog. I want to be me. Hillary!”

“Just Hillary?” He looked at her with a sad smile.

“Just Hillary.” She looked back at him for a long time and took a sip of her drink.

“Is that who you are to your friends, Hil?”

“Some of them. At least the people I know don't give a damn about who you are. I'm sick to death of hearing about Nick Burnham—Nick Burnham this … Nick Burnham that … Oh, you must be Mrs. Nicholas Burnham … Nick Burnham's wife … Nick Burnham … Nick Burnham … Nick Burnham!!” She raised her voice as he shushed her.“Don't tell me to shut up, damn it. You don't know what it's like.” It felt good to confront him. That was something new in their totally separate lives. Now perhaps he could understand what lay behind her ferocious independence. But the funny thing was that it was precisely that that had drawn her to him originally and he knew it. She had liked the fact that he was Nicholas Burnham, with all the weight that carried with it. “And I'll tell you something else. No one in Boston gives a damn about who you are, Nick.” That wasn't entirely true and they both knew it, but it made her feel better to say it. “I have my own friends there, and they knew me before I married you.” He had never realized that that was so desperately important to her. He wondered suddenly if there was some way he could ease the burden of this anger she felt. And just as the thought entered his mind a steward approached them.

“Mr. Burnham?”

“Yes?” He thought instantly of Johnny. That he had got hurt somewhere on the ship, and they had come to find him.

“You have a message from the captain.” Nick glanced at Hillary and saw her eyes blaze, and he suddenly knew something more, that she hadn't told him in the past hour over drinks. She was jealous of him.

“Thank you.” He accepted the gold-banded envelope with a nod, and the steward disappeared as Nick took out the single engraved sheet with the formal wording. “Captain Thoreux … requests the pleasure of your company at dinner … in the Grande Salle à Manger at nine o'clock this evening.” It was what was referred to as the Second Sitting, and the most elegant of the two, the first one being at seven.

“What's that all about? Are they already kissing your ass, Nick?” She had finished the second drink, and her eyes were too bright, but not with tears now.

“Shhh, Hil, please.” He looked around to see if anyone had heard her. The idea that anyone kissed his ass embarrassed him. But there was no escaping the fact that he was a very important man, and it was inevitable that he would be pursued. He wore his mantle of importance well, albeit at times almost too humbly, which made it all the more insane that his wife resented who he was. He was the last human being on earth to cram it down her throat. But she had heard it all too often. “The captain is inviting us to dinner.”

“Why? Do they want you to buy the boat? I hear this tub is called France's floating debt.”

“If she is, she's a beauty and well worth it.” He had learned long since not to respond directly to her questions when she was in that kind of mood, it only made her more angry. “The invitation is for nine o'clock. Do you want to have something to eat now?” It was only four-thirty. “We could have something here or go into the Grand Salon for tea.”

“I'm not hungry.” He watched her eye the waiter for another drink, but he shook his head and the waiter disappeared.

“Don't treat me like a child, Nick.” She almost hissed the words at him. All her life people had done that, her mother, her father, her governess, Nick. The only people who didn't were people like Ryan Halloway and Philip Markham. They treated her like a woman. “I'm all grown up now, and if I want another drink, I'll have one.”

“If you drink too much, it'll make you seasick.”

For once she didn't argue with him, but took out her gold Cartier compact with the diamond clasp as he signed the check for their drinks, and put on a bright red slash of lipstick. She was one of those women who, with very little effort, could turn the heads of an entire room, and she came damn close to it as they walked outside to the promenade for some air. New York was already long gone now. The Normandie was going thirty knots, and scarcely leaving any wake behind her.

They stood there side by side at the rail, in silence for a time, and he thought over what he had learned about his wife during the past hour of conversation. He had never before realized how much she resented being his wife, or at least not for those reasons. She wanted to be her own woman, and not belong to any man. Maybe she was right, he wondered, maybe she shouldn't be married. But it was too late for those thoughts now. He would never let her go. He would never give up Johnny. He glanced down at her where they stood and for an instant wanted to put an arm around her, but he sensed instinctively that it wouldn't be the right thing to do, and instead he sighed softly in the wind as other couples strolled past them. He longed for that kind of friendship and ease with his wife, but they had never had that between them. They had had sex and passion and magic and teasing, in the beginning anyway, but they had never had the quiet that grows between two people who are comfortable with each other. In a way, he questioned if they had ever really shared love, or only their bodies.

“What are you thinking about, Nick?” It was an odd question from her, and he turned to look down at her with a slow smile.

“Us. What we have, what we don't.” Dangerous words, but he was feeling a little daring. The wind was whipping his face, and he felt oddly free here. It was the kind of magic they talked about on ships, feeling as though one were in a separate world. The rules of one's normal life, so carefully adhered to, no longer seemed to apply here.

“What do we have, Nick?”

“Sometimes I'm not sure anymore.” He sighed and leaned down against the rail. “I know what we had at the beginning.”

“The beginning wasn't real.”

“The beginning never is. But ours was as real as most. I loved you very much, Hil.”

“And now?” Her eyes dug deep into his.

“I still love you.” Why? he asked himself. Why? Maybe it was because of Johnny.

“In spite of all I've done to you?” She was honest about her sins, some of the time at least. And like him, she felt especially free now, especially after the two Scotches.

“Yes.”

“You're a brave man.” The words were open and honest, but she didn't tell him that she loved him. To do so would have been to strip herself bare, to admit that she belonged to him, and she would no longer do that. She tossed her hair in the wind then and looked out to sea as he watched her. Without looking at him, she spoke. It was as though she didn't want him to see into her soul, or maybe she didn't want to hurt him any more than she already had. “What am I supposed to wear to this dinner tonight?”

“Whatever you want.” He sounded suddenly tired and sad. The moment had passed, but he had wanted to ask her if she loved him. Maybe it didn't matter anymore. Maybe she was right. They were married. She was his. He owned her. But he knew that in her case, thinking that he owned her was a delusion. “The men wear white tie. I guess you should wear something pretty formal.”

She knew that in that case the raspberry and black satin outfit wouldn't do, and as they wandered back to their cabin on the sun deck, she mentally meandered over what she had brought in her trunks and settled on a delicate mauve satin gown.

When they reached the Deauville suite, Nick glanced into their son's room, but he still hadn't returned from his tour around the ship with his nurse, and Nick was suddenly sorry that he hadn't taken him himself. But as he returned from Johnny's room, he saw Hillary looking at him. She had taken off the white crepe de chine dress and was standing there in a white satin slip and stocking feet, looking more beautiful than ever. She was the kind of woman one wanted to ravage until she screamed. He hadn't thought of her that way when she was eighteen. But he thought of her that way now. Often.

“Good God, you should see the look on your face!” Hillary began to laugh her deep, throaty laugh as Nick approached her. “You look positively wicked, Nick Burnham!” But she didn't seem to mind it. She stood there, the strap of her slip falling off her shoulder, and he saw that she wore no bra, and every inch of her seemed to taunt him.

“Then don't stand around looking like that, Hil, unless you want to get into serious trouble.”

“And what kind of trouble is that?” He stood directly in front of her, and could feel the warmth from her tantalizing body. But this time he didn't play with words with her, he crushed his lips down on hers, never wondering if she would reject him. You never knew with Hil, it depended on the importance of her lover at the current moment. But there was no lover now. She was on a ship, miles from shore, lost between two worlds, and she stretched her arms up to her husband, and without further ado he swept her up in his arms, walked into their bedroom, and slammed the door with one foot before depositing her on the bed and tearing the white satin slip from her body. What it revealed was a white satin of a different kind, and his mouth drank in the cream of her flesh, like a man dying of hunger. She gave herself with a passion dimly remembered from the past, spiced now with the knowledge of years she had acquired since he met her. But he asked no questions now, he thought of nothing but his rampant desire for her, which seemed to know no bounds as their bodies plunged on the peaceful ship and his body covered hers and at last they lay spent. He watched her afterward as she slept, and knew the truth of her words of an hour before. She was his wife. There was no doubt about that. But he would never own her. No man would. Hillary owned herself, always had, always would. She was always just out of reach, and as he watched her lying peacefully in his arms, he knew with a bittersweet sorrow that he had always wanted the impossible. She was like a rare jungle beast one longed to tame. And the truth was, she was right, secretly he did want to own her.