Rules on the Water

"Is that a boat?" Juliet asks.

She's pointing at your skiff, sixteen feet of dented aluminum tied to the end of the yard's floating dock, with a forty-horse outboard you rebuilt twice and a bench seat patched with duct tape.

"It's a boat," you say.

"Take me out in it, Ethan."

Behind her, the woman with the braid closes her eyes for exactly one second. "Ma'am."

"Sefton, it's a creek. It's a puddle with ambitions." Juliet turns those gray eyes on Lockridge. "Wyeth, go sit in the car. You're making him nervous."

"I'm not nervous," you say.

"I know. You're making me nervous." She walks past Lockridge down the gravel toward the dock without waiting for anyone, and three Secret Service agents have to decide very fast whether to follow the President's daughter onto a floating dock in January. Two of them stop at the edge. The woman with the braid, Sefton, follows her all the way.

Lockridge looks at you over his glasses. "She does this," he says, and for a second he sounds almost fond. "Humor her, Sergeant. Please."

You don't like being called Sergeant by men in loafers. You go anyway.

The creek is flat and cold and smells of salt marsh and diesel. You keep the throttle low. Sefton sits in the bow facing backward, watching the shore and you in equal measure, one hand inside her coat. Juliet sits on the middle bench with her collar up and her hair whipping across her mouth, and she looks happier than you've ever seen her look on television, which is a strange thing to know about a stranger.

"So," she says. "Motor pool."

"That's what the record says."

"I read a lot of records. Most of them lie in the same boring way. Yours lies in an interesting way." She tucks her hair behind her ear; it escapes immediately. "You want to know why it's you."

"I want to know why it's anyone."

That surprises her into something close to a laugh. "Fair. You've seen the video."

"You threw a drink at a man."

"I threw a very nice Barolo at Carver Desjardins, who said something about my mother at a table full of people who laughed. I'd do it again. I'd do it with a better wine." She watches a heron lift off the marsh. "The video's real. The rest isn't. There are photos of me at parties I never went to, with men I've never met, doing things I would be too tired to do. My father's people think a husband makes it stop. Steady girl. Settled. Somebody's wife." She says the last word like a diagnosis.

"And you agreed."

"I agreed on one condition: I pick." She looks at you. "Wyeth brought me a binder of very handsome lawyers. I sent it back."

"And picked a mechanic."

"I picked a man who'd say no to Wyeth Lockridge's check in front of witnesses." A beat. "You did. In about four seconds. Do you know how rare that is in my life?"

You don't answer, because you're not looking at her anymore.

There's a cabin cruiser moored off the point where the creek widens, a forty-footer with a faded blue hull and its winter cover half on. You know every boat on this creek. That one wasn't there yesterday. It's sitting with its stern toward the yard, and in the shadow of the half-rolled cover, low, something catches the flat winter light for a fraction of a second and goes dark again.

Glass. Long glass. Steady, then gone.

You don't change speed. You don't turn your head. You say, conversationally, "Agent Sefton."

Sefton's eyes move to you.

"Blue cruiser off the point. Stern cover, port side, about two feet above the gunwale. Somebody's got a long lens on her. He's been on her since we left the dock. He moves when you look at the shore and stops when you look at the water. He's not press. Press wants you to know they're there."

Sefton doesn't look at the cruiser. She's too good for that. She lifts her wrist to her mouth and murmurs something, and on the shore one of the black SUVs starts its engine.

Juliet has gone very still. She doesn't look either, which tells you something about how long she's lived like this. "Is he one of ours?"

"No," Sefton says flatly. "He is not one of ours." She looks at you differently now. Not warmer. More carefully. "How long have you been watching him?"

"Since the yard."

"You didn't say anything."

"I was waiting to see if your people would."

Sefton's jaw tightens. She doesn't argue, which is how you know she's angry at herself and not at you.

You bring the skiff around in a slow, lazy arc, the kind a man makes when he's showing a pretty girl the marsh. By the time you're heading back toward the dock, the cruiser's engine has coughed alive and it's sliding out of the point toward open water, cover flapping, no name on its transom.

Juliet watches it go out of the corner of her eye. She doesn't say anything for a long time. Her hands are tucked into her sleeves, and you see, because you notice hands, that they are not entirely steady.

"That happens a lot?" you ask.

"Cameras happen a lot." She swallows. "That didn't feel like a camera."

"It wasn't."

The dock comes up. You cut the motor and let the skiff drift the last few feet in silence, the water slapping the hull. Sefton steps off first, already talking into her wrist. For three seconds it's just the two of you in the boat.

You've spent six years making sure nobody ever needs you for anything again. You fix engines. Engines don't die if you're late.

And this woman, who hates being protected, who threw wine at a senator's son and sent back a binder full of lawyers, just sat in your boat while a stranger watched her through a long lens, and her own people didn't see him.

"Okay," you say.

She turns. "Okay, Ethan?"

"I'll do it."

Her eyes search your face for the reason. You don't give it to her. She doesn't push, which you will remember later as the first time she surprised you.

"One year," she says finally. "Separate rooms. Kissing for the cameras only, if it can't be avoided. You don't get a vote on my clothes, my clinic or my mouth."

"Fine."

"Wedding's Saturday. The Blue Room. Try not to look like you'd rather be shot."

"No promises."

That gets a real laugh out of her, short and surprised, and a gull lifts off the piling at the sound. She steps up onto the dock, then turns back, one hand on the post, looking down at you in the skiff.

"There are rules," she says. "Two of them."

"Go on."

"Rule one." Her gray eyes hold yours, and there's nothing playful in them now. "Don't fall in love with me, Ethan."

"And rule two?"

She smiles, finally, and it's devastating, and it's gone before you can decide what it meant.

"Rule two," says Juliet Montague, "I'll tell you after the wedding."